The importance of personal branding for business owners

Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with Claire Bahn, serial entrepreneur and the CEO and Founder of Claire Bahn Group (CBG), a strategic marketing communications and branding agency. We talked all about personal branding, how important it is and how we can make it authentic to us. As always, I’d love to know what lightbulb moments you take away with you and what you think, so please feel free to connect with me on my social media!   KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST What personal branding is and why it matters Why your personal branding is never one and done How a great personal brand is a foundation for a successful business Why you need to get out of your comfort zone and take action   THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE Personal branding is so much more than a logo! Every tiny little bit that goes into you and your business is your brand, including how you speak to people and how you show up.   LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Claire Bahn Website   Transcript Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast and I hope you have the most wonderful Christmas cuz at the time of when this episode's released, it's just gone Christmas 2022. So I hope you had a wonderful time and you enjoyed the rest with your family. Are they saying that, Sometimes it's not a rest, is it? Cuz sometimes she's mad busy doing all the other stuff and the children are hyper and there's like a whole rush. Anyway, that's done now for another year we don't need to worry about it. So this week is the last episode that I have recorded and then I'm taking my break. I don't know how long for, I don't know what it's all about. I'm just fancier to having a break from recording episodes. So this is the last one I've recorded and it's with the very lovely Claire who is talking all about branding and how important branding is and how we can make it authentic to us, and I really enjoyed this conversation. It was a nice one to finish on. So I don't think there's anything else for me to say. I'll hand over to Claire. It is my pleasure today to welcome the last guest for a while, actually, which is exciting. The lovely Claire Bahn. How are you doing, Claire? Claire: I'm doing well. Thank you so much for having me and, and I feel so honored, not, you know, to be your, your last guest. So thank you so much for having me. Teresa: My pleasure, my pleasure. We had a conversation a little while back when I was on your podcast, so I wanted to make sure we got you on mine cuz it was a great conversation about a lot in common, which is funny. And we ended up talking about all sorts of random stuff. Hilarious, which will not surprise my lovely listeners because I do digress at  times. And Claire we always start exactly the same way when you explain to my audience who you are and how you got to do the thing that you do today. Claire: Okay. Well, basically I'm a, a personal brand strategist and I'm the CEO and founder of Claire Bond Group. And we are an omnichannel strategic marketing agency and basically how it happened, I mean, literally it was so organic started out doing marketing and 4- 500 companies in New York. I decided to go into acting cuz it was always a dream of mine, funny enough, and during the last recession and that I basically used all of that marketing knowledge into marketing myself. Then my acting friends were like, I need you to do that for me. So that's really just how the whole personal branding really started for me. It was like, oh, I need to make sure that you know, agents and casting directors know who I am just by looking at my photo and things like that. So that's really how it started. And then I founded another business where we basically personally branded people for online dating and LinkedIn. While it was in 2019, while I was pitching my business up in San Francisco, I was actually on a podcast by, with a pretty well-known angel investor up there named Jason Calacanis. His podcast is called This Week in Startups, and basically, he came up with the idea of Clair Bond Group. He said he was a, one of the original investors in Uber, and he said, you know what, you started at Uber X. You need to start at Uber Black. He's like, I need you to, instead of helping you know the masses, you need to, you know, go up level and he is like, I want you to, you know, he is like, go and find, you know, million Dollar Listing those guys that are on that show on Bravo, if you guys watched it in the UK. Those are, those are your clients. I want the, that's what I want you to do. My very first client at the end of 2019 was an angel investor. He's still a client today and that is how we started. So it was like literally someone suggested it. I was like, I know how to do this cuz I'm a marketer and yeah, that's just really how it started. So it just kind of, Snowballed and yeah. Teresa: So there's so many, like you just skimmed over this story that touched on like, this thing and this thing and this thing and this thing and this thing. So I've gotta go back to the acting. So what did you do? Why did you stop doing it? Like, was it always your dream? Claire: It was always my dream. I was like, that kid that would like talk to myself in the mirror and I would be accepting my Oscar, and that was me. So it was one of the things that it, it kind of was kind of pushed into it. My, I lost my mother in 20 2006, and it was kind of like you, when you lose someone that's very, if you've ever lost anyone, it's like so important to your life, obviously, as your mother would be, as a 20 year old 20 something. And so I just was like, you know what? I can't like, my can't life can't end with me having these things that I've never tried, these dreams that I never went for. I can't, that's just not how I wanna live my life. So that's what really was the impetus to do it. And then obviously it got laid off , so then it was like, okay, well yeah, no one's hiring me cuz it was 2009. So that's really just kind of how it started, and I did. That's actually what kind of made me move here. I moved here in 20 2012 cause I was like, more TV and film was being shot here than in New York. I was in New York at the time. That hasn't change yet. The world has just changed. Things started moving to, to Vancouver, moving to Toronto, moving to, you know, Atlanta has a lot of the, what used to be the Los Angeles. Like workers, like one of our, our friends who was interesting cinematographer, he literally, he like split his time. His family lived here in, in Los Angeles and he was living in Atlanta because his, his kids were in high school. And he is like, I don't wanna uproot, you know, move them to Atlanta. They need to finish high school and then, his wife moved out and yeah, it really, so the, the industry changed. So that's kind of why I stopped doing it. The industry really changed. But funny enough, I, I do have my team queued up. I found my, I got it it did a target commercial. It was for the like a holiday commercial in like 2003 13 actually. And so I have, I have them, they're gonna post that I did like a Walmart commercial. Like I just, it, it was fun and I really enjoyed it. But the sad part is, is that, I mean, because everything was turning to be non-union instead of sag, you really didn't get paid what you were worth, what people used to get paid, and you could no longer live on what you made. So I was like, I was not satisfied. It's really hard to be satisfied if you're doing something and it doesn't pay your bills. It doesn't, you know, and, and you feel kind of.. Teresa: You've gotta love what you do. You've gotta be paint. Claire: Yeah. And the other thing that kind of bothered me is I felt, I felt used. They used me. They use my face. They used me. And I, yeah, I just felt used. I was like, here you are, you know, do your thing. I'm gonna pay you nothing. Yeah that's used. So that's how I felt. So I was like, I don't wanna do this anymore. So the very last thing I did was a Nissan commercial. So anyway, I don't wanna do it anymore. Teresa: Who was the most famous person you met while doing acting? Claire: The first thing I ever did, I was background for Sex of the City too. I didn't meet them, but I saw, skin in the bathroom, but that's not anything. The thing that I think was most interesting is one of my friends, Adrian Martinez, he has gone on, he was my, like someone in my class and he was gone on to be in a lot of TV shows, been in movies with like Will Smith and her name is escaping me now. But anyway, but yeah, been in a lot of stuff and so he, that one was, was kind of cool. And like sometimes we still like DM each other on Instagram and things. But yeah, that was actually kind of a fun one that you see the people that you know. Actually do well and you're like, yay. Teresa: Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. I was saying to you before we came one that my friends live in LA and I made the mistake once of asking him, he's been in LA they've been there like 16 years, and I made the mistake once of saying, have you, have you ever seen really famous? Now they were my husband's friends and I, this was the first time I met them and he went, no, not really. And then for the rest of the week that we were there, literally, oh yeah, no so this person. Oh yeah. I've...