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Show Notes

If you’re looking to grow your business and make a splash on the professional scene in 2023 and beyond, positioning yourself as an authority is key. As we discuss with my friend Mary Henderson, having credible authority in both your industry and area of expertise will help strengthen your reputation as a leader and help increase visibility for your brand. We’ve got plenty of tips to help you get started on building this authority so stay tuned for more insights into how you can become the go-to expert in your chosen sector. In no time at all, you’ll be able to build your business up with the confidence of an authoritative specialist!

Connect with Mary

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maryhendersoncoaching/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Mary__Henderson

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maryhendersoncoaching/

Website: https://www.maryhendersoncoaching.com/

Want to Work with Jennifer and her Virtual Marketing Experts Team?

Are you a coach, consultant, or online course creator who are looking to grow your business, increase your income, and scale your impact? Connect with me at YourMarketingMatchmaker.com I look forward to hearing from you.

Jennifer Tamborski 

Hey there, everyone. Welcome back to Marketing Matchmaker. I am super excited about today’s guest. We’re talking all about branding today. So I’d love to introduce Mary to you, Mary Henderson is a transformational leader and an internationally recognized personal branding and online business specialist. So Mary, help business experts systematize, digitize and commercialize their knowledge. That’s a lot of “ize” in there. So basically, she helps business owners and coaches and culture consultants in those people wanting to transition into those fields, create a profitable online business. Welcome to the show. Mary, thanks so much for joining me today.

Mary Henderson 

Thank you, Jennifer. It’s great to be here, too.

Jennifer Tamborski 

It’s awesome to have you. So tell me a little bit about you and your brand, and kind of what you do for for your business?

Mary Henderson 

Absolutely, I would love to. So I typically help industry experts, you know, these are people that are transitioning out of senior corporate role, roles, they’ve been doing it for 20-30 years, they have accumulated a lot of knowledge, they’ve accumulated a lot of wisdom and a lot of a skill set. And these people typically say, What do I do with all of this knowledge, there’s wisdom, and there’s, I know, I could solve a problem. I know, I can help a business or a person, but I just don’t know what to do with all these 40-50,000 hours of experience that I’ve accumulated.

And, and and, and these are even people that are already starting out as coaches and consultants, Jennifer, because what I have found in all the years that I’ve been doing this is that the problem with a lot of these type of people that I help is that they want to be known as an authority because they they have the right of course they do.

You know, I mean, I work with so many people that have got PhDs, they’re certified, like, out of the hills, like they’ve got 4000 patients. Do you know what I’m saying? So they are genuinely authorities in their area of expertise.

But they’re the world’s best kept secret.

Nobody knows what they do. Nobody knows what they can promise. And the biggest biggest bottleneck I see Jennifer is that most of these people don’t know how to organize that information into a transformational program that is systemized but also delivers 100% outcomes and results. And the transformation very important.

A lot of people create courses based on what they think the audience would want. But we can’t actually do that anymore. And so so my people are super intelligent, they’re super smart, they need help organizing the information, they have no idea how to position themselves as a brand. And again, you know, creating your personal brand essence is not just about the font type and the colors, it really is about understanding who are you genuinely as a persona, you know, what are your values? What are your core attributes?

How do you merge all of that together and create your brand story that makes you believable and trustable, to very important key words, and then Systemizing, all of that information into an actual system is critical. Because then and only then can you wrap around digital assets that can create ecstatic brand experiences, and a lead generation strategy, which ultimately becomes the effect of the cause. And all of these elements need to come into fruition and implementation in order for that type of human being that I work with. To be successful in their. In their in their. In their endeavor.

Jennifer Tamborski 

Awesome. That is a lot that you help your clients with, and all of it incredibly critical when it comes to businesses. So let’s talk you had said brand essence in in that let’s talk about that. When you said Why Why can’t you build your personal brand, you can only define your brand essence.

Mary Henderson 

That’s a very good question, Jennifer, because I get asked this all the time, but but also, I see so many people talking about or pushing this ideology that you know, I can help you build your brand. You actually cannot help me build my brand, ever, ever. The only people that build my brand, and my clients, the people that love my content that that follow me support me, and also my brand advocates.

They’re the only people that can build my brand. I absolutely cannot build my brand. It’s such a narcissistic ideology that doesn’t exist, but we can define our brand essence and what that means is that I’m unpacking my natural state of being who I truly am based on all of these attributes, my passions, my gifts, my talents, my core values.

It means that hopefully I’m living by. But all of these attributes, that’s the only thing that I can merge together to actually define the essence of who I truly am. And therefore how I’m actually going to show up. Because that I can define, I can define how I want to show up. Therefore, that’s going to create an

A feeling of perception, if you will, in the marketplace of the type of person that I am. But I can’t build it, it’s not possible for me to build, you know, I can’t force you to follow my work on Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn, I cannot, I can produce content.

And if you like that content, you’re going to support me by engaging or maybe follow my work or my profile. So you can get notifications when I’m posting. Okay, now we’re in business, now, you’re helping me build my brand, currency, because you’re supporting my content.

Jennifer Tamborski 

I love that perspective. Because I often say to people, that your brand is not what you say it is, yes, you can define the essence of it. But your brand is what your audience says your brand is. And it all everything revolves around your ideal client in your audience, that’s you honestly, most people don’t even this sounds mean, but people don’t care about you, they care about how you can help them, which means that your brand has to be focused on them.

Mary Henderson 

100%, you’re absolutely spot on. And at the end of the day, if our brand, can’t decrease pain in someone’s life, or enhance someone’s life, through not selling just the content, our presence, our messaging, what we stand for, then it’s going to be very, very difficult to actually stand out and be seen and be heard.

Because then we start blending in and we start saying, Well, why do people not engage with my content? why don’t why can I stand out? Why this? Why that. And so we’re going to the blame game, instead of actually taking a step back and asking ourselves, okay, but what’s going to what’s going to really, really make me stand out? Well, let me tell you, it’s really easy.

You just have to be you and unapologetically yourself. And once you can actually shine through us unapologetically yourself and not worry about vanity metrics, then things will start turning around. That’s that is absolute for for sure.

Jennifer Tamborski 

I love that because authenticity is like the cornerstone. And I think authenticity often gets a bad rap because people have used it so much.

Mary Henderson

Yes.

Jennifer Tamborski

In reality, it’s just being yourself, right? Just being who you are show up as who you are. And those that weren’t are going to connect with you will want to connect with you. So you have this in the form that you filled out, you have this statement of people want to see you in action on social, they no longer want three tips to anything. What does that mean?

Mary Henderson 

Well, have you seen of light that everyone is promoting this chat? GPT? You know, AI? Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, and promoting it. These are digital marketers, content writers. It’s like the next big thing since sliced bread.

Okay, so let’s think about that for a moment.

And what’s so scary about that, you are now going to see the rise of digital marketers coaches on a whole new level, right, because they’ll position themselves as experts, and they won’t even be producing their own content, they will be using these machines to produce the next three tips, the next three steps, the next three secrets, I’m not kidding you, this is going to be amplified on a whole new level now.

And so a lot of people are vulnerable and desperate. So what happens desperate people always want the shortest, the quickest path is you got it to there to ease their pain into their life. And you and I know, Jennifer, that doesn’t exist, that’s just complete and utter nonsense. You know, I have been in business since 2005, on my own, and I’m telling you, it’s still a daily grind, you know, every single day, I work hard, I work on my business, in my business, etc.

So there are no shortcuts. That’s just not true. But let’s think about this idea of using these AI machines. And and I mean, three tips to what, how can I give you three tips out of my 40,000 hours of experience, and a system that is act that actually took me three years to actually develop, three years. So imagine designing this system for three years and not earning $1. So so how do I get three tips out of that? You know what I mean?

But what I can do is and be really smart to actually grab attention. Why wouldn’t it be better if I just decided to show up on social media? And just in my mind, talk like I’m just having a conversation just with Jennifer. Don’t worry about anyone else, just with Jennifer, and actually asking, you know those questions and pulling people into a real mature, elegant dialogue rather than all these noise that all these marketers are pushing out there, it is phenomenal and mind blowing, that these type of people are pushing this ideology and and giving it currency so that it can, it can manifest into something much bigger than what it is today.

Okay, so, and they don’t actually realize that they’re doing that because if we support things of that nature, it’s only going to grow exponentially. And it will impact those people who are genuine people who have got genuine wisdom that can solve problems in the world.

And by the way, that is the only way we can solve problems in the world through wisdom only, because even AI machines need super smart people behind them with wisdom. Right? So wisdom is the only currency that can solve problems, not copy from Ai machines, which by the way, most of them don’t even stack up when you put them through the, you know, the tester where that actually test whether the content is legit, is original or not. A lot of them don’t pass that test.

Jennifer Tamborski 

It is a real thing when it comes to the ai, ai systems. I you know, I do, I think AI is great to give you an idea to start with, like, if you have writer’s block, it’s a great, great way to start something. But definitely do not think that you can just take whatever the AI wrote and plop it on your website or in your social media or whatever and expect it to be accurate. It is a computer. So it depends on who put it in there on what on the information and be for it to really grab people’s attention because you right people want you they don’t want the fluff.

Mary Henderson 

Well, this is the other thing, Jennifer, I don’t need an AI machine to write my content, because I have a system in place. And I’ve got infinite ideas just because of the system that I’ve built. And this is why it’s so important to build systems. Because then you could it’s your bespoke solution.

It’s nobody else’s, and AI cannot copy my solution. Simply because I’ve experienced it, every single moving part is humanly experience. Lots of trials and tribulations made up with a massive feedback loop. So in my system, I can pull so many ideas, and literally talk about it just as you were talking. You and I are talking about it right now.

Jennifer Tamborski 

Yeah, I love that. And, and I think I think people get a very, they almost get afraid when it comes to creating content right like there. I think it pops up with those imposter syndromes, and all of that kind of stuff kind of rears its ugly head, even for those PhDs.

Mary Henderson 

Oh my God, but even worse for the PhDs because they work in a very linear mindset. So everything has one plus one has to only equal two for them. So they that they’re so driven by their brain, and they don’t open up to anything else. They’re not fluid.

So could you imagine pushing those boundaries, and I’m telling you takes a lot for me to break those people to just say just be yourself, a lot of them are very concerned about what their colleagues will actually say about. I had an a client, she was a PhD in neuroscience. She was a neuroscientist PhD in like, she was amazing. And like absolutely amazing. And an absolutely incredible coach on top of that, but her biggest issue was she was so afraid of all of her academic colleagues actually judging her because she was on LinkedIn, and started to promote content, you know, talking, you know, opening up conversations, and her professor actually called her and said, you look like you’re prostituting yourself on

Jennifer Tamborski

oh my gosh,

Mary Henderson

oh, yes. Oh, yes. This happens massively in that academic community. So the next question is, well, your professor is sitting very comfortably in that corner office, earning all this money from all of these donations that he’s that he’s collecting along the way, who’s actually going to be promoting your business? How are you going to get new clients because they’re not donating? They’re not helping. They’re not bringing in clients for you.

So we have to put ourselves out there doesn’t matter who you are. And you can do it did. I said a very important word before. I don’t know if you’ve picked up on it, but I said elegantly. We have to do it elegantly. So if you actually get on, get on social media and correct content that’s elegant, believe you meet you will be seen and you will be heard.

Jennifer Tamborski 

Awesome. Thank you so much for all of that. So one of one of my favorite questions is, what is the biggest marketing mistake you or one of your clients have made? And how did you overcome it?

Mary Henderson 

My biggest mistake, Jennifer was advertising on Facebook, and actually not really knowing what I wanted to say who my audience was, and even articulate the sort of my, my, my solution as well like this was when I was first starting out.

And that was because I engaged a digital marketer to actually help me do this massive push campaign, it was the worst thing I could have done, don’t get me wrong, my day was full of strategy calls of desperate people who had no money to ever invest in that in themselves, they just wanted a conversation.

So my advice is to always go organic first. Because when you do organic, you can test on your Facebook personal page, or LinkedIn, personal page, or even Instagram, YouTube, or even podcast interviews, and just test if the content sticks with the people that you’re connecting with. Because until we actually and until we master I believe, organic reach, it’s very, very difficult to actually then create a Facebook ad campaign without understanding what sticks and what doesn’t.

Jennifer Tamborski 

I mean, I think that’s very valid, obviously, you know, we specialize in ads here. So we do a lot of that. And understanding your message is the first step like you have to know who you are before we can take you on as a client, it doesn’t, it’s not going to do you any good if you’re unclear, because we want to bring in the wrong people to you is, that’s a waste of time and money for both of us.

Mary Henderson 

And I think Jennifer, you made a very valid point. And that is that you as a client have to know who your target audience is, it can’t be the digital agency or the coach that you’ve been that you’ve engaged, it cannot be like that, you have to actually I need to be able to say, Jennifer, these are the only people I can serve from start to end.

And that’s what we work with. Rather than saying, I didn’t know who my audience is, it could be anyone. So then it becomes so difficult, you know, for everyone involved in that campaign. So I wish that I had just clarified that.

And also, I wish that I stuck to my guns because I was easily influenced by this agency that my target audience were mompreneurs. And that couldn’t be further from the truth. Yeah. And so I was just talking to the wrong audience. But But had I done my organic first? Could you imagine if I came to you and said, Hey, Jennifer, look at all these posts that are absolute, I’m killing it. I want to leverage these that’s like a candy store for you. Because you’ve got now feedback.

Jennifer Tamborski 

Absolutely, makes our job easier. It absolutely does. It can you know, I mean, we can write content all day for our clients. And if they don’t know who they’re talking to, we don’t know who they’re talking to. So it’s definitely It’s a hand in hand kind of thing. I always say marketing is a multi layer system, organic traffic is incredibly important doing it organically getting those results first, and then come to us so that we can amplify your results.

Mary Henderson 

Yeah, that’s that’s exactly what I would do. And that’s exactly, you know, going down the Ad part is exactly right. Because once you collect all of that, that data, it really, really impacts the campaign beautifully.

Jennifer Tamborski 

Awesome. All right. Thank you so much for coming today and chatting with me, Mary, I loved this conversation. So for those of you in the audience out there, they’re struggling with your brand or you’re not sure about where you your brand positioning needs to be. Reach out to Mary I will have all of her contact information in the show notes. And we will see you next week on Marketing Matchmaker.

OUTRO: Thank you for listening to the marketing matchmaker podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love to hear your feedback. Please head over to Apple iTunes and leave a review so we can hear from you. And if you are a coach, consultant or online course creator who are looking to grow your business, increase your income and scale your impact. Connect with me at your marketing matchmaker.com I look forward to hearing from you.