You Are The Brand Workshop with Mike Kim Experience & Takeaways
I attended a two-day, You Are The Brand Workshop with Mike Kim a few weeks ago. It was an amazing experience with inspiring entrepreneurs and many mind-blowing moments! I met new friends with businesses from start-ups to owning multiple businesses.
Mike Kim is a personal brand strategist, host of the You Are The Brand podcast, and author of the best-selling book, You Are the Brand.
How I found Mike Kim
I’m not a great salesperson. I was working at Zales, a jewelry store, during college. I didn’t sell anything to anyone except to my future husband. We used my employee discount to buy our engagement and wedding rings and that’s when I knew he was the one (so financially responsible! Haha!).
In 2019, I’d been in the photography business for a year, trying to find a way to market myself without being salesy, which was challenging as an introvert. I googled a few marketing keywords and found the personal branding world which included Mike Kim’s podcast. I’ve been listening to Mike’s podcast ever since that day. At the time, it was called the Brand You podcast and now it’s called You Are The Brand with Mike Kim, the same title as his best-selling book.
I love the way Mike shares his knowledge on his podcast about how to build and use our personal brand to market our business. The tips he shares are simple and actionable and I love listening to the stories he shares about himself, his clients, and his peers.
I applied some of the tips I learned from his podcast, focusing on telling my stories, giving value, showing up authentically, being consistent, and building relationships. Slowly, I built my personal brand with a small following of mostly people I met through networking. My business began to grow steadily after about a year. I truly believe it was because I took the time to build the know, like, and trust with my audience.
Mike’s Marketing School
When I found out Mike was launching a marketing school, I was hesitant to invest in a year-long membership at first because I didn’t know if I would be the right fit for the group. I’m not a public speaker, I’m not a coach, and I don’t offer online courses. I’m a branding photographer working with clients locally.
However, I knew I wanted to learn more from Mike along with the people he would be inviting to speak in the live calls, so I joined his marketing school. One of the exciting things for me was that I could attend his in-person You Are The Brand Workshop in Fort Lee, New Jersey. It was under a 30-minute drive from where I lived, so of course, I immediately signed up when he opened the registration for his workshop.
You Are The Brand Two-Day Workshop
I’ve never been to a two-day workshop, but I went in with no expectations and an open mind. I was just excited to learn because I knew this workshop was based on the strategies that Mike shared in his book.
I got there early and settled in, looking over a copy of his book in front of me along with a brand new notebook and pen to take my notes. Slowly, as other attendees arrived, I felt more excited and couldn’t wait to get to know the other attendees. Some of the attendees knew each other because they were in Mike’s mastermind groups. Other attendees were from the tri-state area, some from other states, and some from Canada!
We covered so much during the two-day workshop. Mike picked out a few key topics from his book while sharing some amazing stories, case studies, and examples. He also gave us time to work on a topic we had discussed and to ask any questions so he could show us how to apply the techniques from his book. That was very helpful!
Takeaways
My biggest takeaways from the workshop were:
- Your clients don’t want to make more decisions than needed. Make it easy for them to make a choice. “When the vision is clear, the decisions are easy.”
- Take the time to differentiate your message to help your business stand out.
- When creating a service or product, you need to meet your audience where they are at that moment, so you can be the solution to their problem.
- Mike markets his business in trimesters rather than quarterly. It was a very interesting concept and I can see why it works. I will have to give this a try!
- Focus on things you are great at AND love doing. For everything else, either charge more to do it or outsource it.
- Offering an online course, a book, a digital product (i.e., templates), or doing affiliate marketing only works if you have a large following and discretionary income because these products require a lot of work and marketing to get enough sales to make it worthwhile.
- How to offer bonuses for a service or product. The bonus sandwich concept.
- The most important takeaway for me was “You are responsible to your client, not for your client.”
I was struggling with the last point for a long time as I noticed my clients were not using their branding photos. I would think to myself, “Oh, they must not like the photos.”, “They didn’t have the time or resources to use the photos or do marketing for their business.”, “Is there something else I can do to help?”. Mike told me that my clients hire me to do their branding photoshoots and the deliverables are the branding photos. Unless they want to hire me to consult or help them with their marketing, it is not my responsibility. He is right! I immediately felt the weight lifted off of my shoulders.
Invest in Yourself
During these 5 years in business, I learned that when I invest in myself to be around like-minded business owners who understand my struggles and challenges, I grow personally and professionally. I also love being in a workshop or mastermind group to get feedback from others that may notice things about your business model that you’ve overlooked.
Invest in yourself and do the work. You got this!
Sharing one of my favorite quote from Mike (from his Instagram page):
If you want to learn more about how you can build your personal brand and grow your business, I highly recommend listening to Mike’s podcast. Click here to learn more about Mike and his podcast: https://mikekim.com/
If you are ready to show up confidently with a library of custom brand images to elevate your marketing, contact me and let’s chat!
