What's up? I'm Rachel Spiewak and this is Rock Your Tribe Radio where community, fun, social media and business collide. I firmly believe that parties are the answer to all of life's problems. Seriously. Building a community, bringing people together for a common purpose and serving them, that's your mission as a business owner. Let's make it happen. It's time to rock your tribe.
(00:28): Welcome to the show. You know that I tried to rock a science nerd vibe in my Facebook group before it became rock your tribe. Yeah. The group was called the tribe lab, which didn't really roll off the tongue being experimental, being methodical and strategic, being a smarty pants about stuff. Yeah, that's me. But the scientist persona calling my group a lab when I was constantly making music references the mismatch between the brand world I created and the brand persona, I naturally show up and this was creating a big problem. After all, I was selling help with Facebook groups. It didn't make sense that I had this branding mismatch with my group while I was billing myself as a high ticket coach for Facebook groups. And that's when I saw the best lead magnet I've ever seen. It was bold. It was bright. It was in your face.
(01:22): It was about branding. It was by Haley Shane, the Slayer of boring brands. I needed Haley to kill the tribe lab and help me start something that was really me. I sent her a message right before my birthday in May, 2020. And then we started working together right away and launched rock your tribe, the brand just a few weeks later. And now today it's June, 2021 and we just celebrated our first brand. Aversary Haley's released a case study about me and rock your tribe, the group, and my business with a look back at what I've accomplished since then. It's pretty amazing. I've worked with hundreds of business owners. I've spoken at multiple summits. I've launched a membership. I added over a thousand members to my Facebook group, which is still highly engaged, profitable, and grows on autopilot. I've sold out, offers, partnered with Monaghan digital so I can provide implementation services as well as strategy.
(02:16): And I became a member of Facebook's invite only power admin community. Oh, and I launched this podcast and there's more, but you get the idea. And now I'm spoiled on million dollar branding. Thanks to Hailey. And our work together is a reason why I talk about the brand world. When I'm helping you build your digital community. When you build your digital community as your brand world, it becomes magnetic. It keeps your tribe coming back for more. And you'll never run out of content ideas when your community doesn't feel right when you're having a hard time coming up with conversation starters and no one's really having any fun. I can almost guarantee it's a brand world problem, but you don't have to take my word for it. Let's talk to Haley Shane, the Slayer of boring brands and get her take on building your digital community for your business as a brand world. Welcome Hailey happy brand aversary brand. Aversary it has been one year since you slayed my boring brand and
(03:17): It just stayed dead. And a new one has took its place risen from the ashes. So, so let's back up and tell everybody why we're here. What we're talking about just over a year ago, I reached out to you Hailey Shane, the Slayer of boring brands, because I was billing myself as a Facebook groups expert, but my banner sucked. And like all of my visual identity was janky. It was like DIY Canva. It wasn't even nice Canva. It was like bad Canva. And I'm not showing up as comfortably as I want to because my visual identity doesn't match what I feel like I'm doing. So I saw a lead magnet of yours and I loved it. It was so punchy. And in your face, like take no prisoners. And I was like, you, your brand, your branding, my business, your branding, my Facebook group. So that's when I sent you a message on Facebook, let's do this. And so that's how rock your tribe. The brand of my Facebook group was born because I had launched my group six months prior to that. And it went through a couple of different names through our work together. I discovered that branding is so much more than a banner to your Facebook group. Now on our brand diversity, it's been a year. Let's talk about it. So welcome Hailey. Thank you for being here.
(04:39): Thanks. Thanks for having me. That was a hell of an intro. Now that I've told everybody what you do, let's hear it from you in your own words. Tell us about yourself. Yeah, That's pretty much it honestly. So when people have these kinds of identity, crisises, crises, crises, crises, they come to me to help them figure it out. And that's pretty much what we did with you. Cause I think you were using, you were using braiding that not only, I mean, it didn't look good, but it just wasn't you, it wasn't your vibe. It wasn't your style, your energy. And it becomes a burden after awhile. When you try to kind of square peg in a round hole yourself into whatever some coach or digital marketer or expert on whatever tells you that she needed to do and you try to do it and you just try to force yourself into it. Eventually you just can't keep up with it anymore. And so I think that was really, really the issue that you struggled with more so than the visual identity and all of that, which is important.
(05:41): The funny thing was my brand was right under my nose the whole time. It was how I naturally show up. And so when we, when we first had our initial meeting, we looked at the typical thing, right. Is looking at the brand archetypes and how like, I'm the Sage, I'm like the thinky teacher person. And you're like, no, no, you're the creator. And I was like, oh my God. Yeah. Cause we,
(06:08): You know, we had talked too about your kind of affinity for, for music and stuff like that, which was awesome. Cause I'm a musician. I used to DJ as well and play drums and was in bands and stuff like that. And so that once I think we figured that those two things out like you help people run Facebook groups and you were a DJ. Like once you find the kind of direct middle between those it's like, oh, it's community easy. And then we could actually go visually in a direction. That made sense. I'm actually glad
(06:38): I went through the wrong branding first too, because this stuff has really become a part of what I teach now. Something that I teach is that your digital community, whether it's a Facebook group or a discord server or whatever container you put your community in, it's got to be your brand world, which is a concept that I've heard you talk about. I want to hear from you about the brand world, because I've mentioned that on this podcast before, but first I want to ask you, what was it like working with me to brand my business and my community. It was awesome
(07:12): In a word. Yeah. Yeah, no, it was awesome. You were super open to changing anything that we needed to change to get to where we needed to go. I feel like hacking your ego is so very important when you're doing this, like online social media. It's not a bout you like that. You know, it's about like removing all of those layers. So you can get to who you really are because that's how you're going to be most effective.
(07:40): Yeah. Well, and it's just like, cause the rebrand that I went through with myself too, and like this kind of new found like spiritual aspect and stuff like that, that I was pulling in like in like taro cards, you get the death card. And like when people see that they freak out because it's like, oh my God, I don't want to die. It's like, no, that's a good card. And like that was kind of half where the title Slayer or boring brands came from. Okay. Yeah. That, and then like, anytime that, that something like that needs to die, just kill it, kill it. Just let it go.
(08:15): So when we started working together, had you branded a community before like a digital community or was that something new for you? It was somewhat new. I had done this on discord before, which is a very, very different platform than Facebook groups. So yes and no, in a way is the scope of a branding project different when there's a community involved? No, it's basically the same thing. It's like building the personal brand and then applying it to the committee.
(08:47): Yeah. Building what it is that you need, whether it's one person or it's a billion dollar business, like obviously they're going to have different needs, but really the way that you approach it should be the same. That makes sense. Cause that like strategy at a very foundational level is it's always the same. You're figuring out the same stuff as you always are. So
(09:14): I've heard you talk about this concept of the brand world and the way that I present the brand world. Some, my listeners and my Glines and customers and students is imagine you are throwing a house party. Like your digital community is your house party. We know it's your spot, it's your furniture, it's your decorations, it's your kitchen and your record collection. And you're curating an experience for your tribes. So it's your palette. We know you're, we're in your house, but you're creating a hospitable and entertaining situation for your people. So that's like the visual that I give to people.
(09:50): Yeah. Which is super on brand for you. I think to explain it like that. Yeah. As like a, as a house party, it's a house party in your own words, how would you describe a brand world far off the way that I've always described it is going back to an example that I've always used, which is like in a video game, like what characters are there? What's the world, what's it look like? What's it feel like what's it sound like, like, are there MPCs, what do they do? What's the goal? You know, what's the dialogue, all of that influences like brand strategy at a very foundational level. So if you can kind of think of it as a world that you're building, rather than going through it, like, okay, we're going to find our target audience. Cause like that's boring and it's not new information to anybody, but if you can start to kind of think of it like that and get a little bit more creative, it helps to visualize what that actually looks like all together. When you get into branding and then marketing and then advertising and copywriting and all of that, it's all one big world that it has, all of that stuff has to live in and it's based on a brand strategy. And then you build that world up based on that.
(11:09): Right. And so I think I would add to that you're describing an ecosystem, but I think the community is really where your tribe hangs out. I mean, people interact with your brand all across platforms. Like you're, you can be interactive anywhere, but I feel like the most kind of digitally hands-on interactive space is inside a contained community.
(11:34): Yeah. Whether that's a Facebook group or a discord, anything like that, anything that you have more kind of personalized control over like that you can really start to kind of tailor it exactly how you want. What's the relationship between a digital community and a brand world like does a community have to be a brand world necessarily? It doesn't have to
(11:58): Be, I think it lends itself really easily to be because naturally we want to hang out with other people and we usually want to hang out with other people that are exactly like us. And so where it is that you hang out, you're going to find people that are a lot like you, whether that's bar or restaurant that you go to a lot or a Facebook group that you're in all the time or a discord server that you're in all the time, you're going to find as long as it's branded appropriately. And that foundational work has been done. You're going to find people that are similar to you that have similar interests and values and all that.
(12:32): So do you, if a business, a brand has a digital community to warm up leads and drive sales and, you know, build up their army of marketers and all of the great benefits that come with having a digital community, would it be who've them to conceive of it like a brand or
(12:52): that world at kind of a surface level, think of this as like a free to play game, going back to the video game references that I use, think of that as like the free trial. And then if they want more and they're like, okay, this could be kind of fun. Like I'm sort of into this. And then they can kind of go through the stages and the different levels, whether that's private coaching or like done for your services or whatever that looks like in your business courses, whatever, they can kind of get like a little bit of a taste for it and see what that world is like. And if it's somewhere that they want to hang out and then go deeper into it and spend money on it. Yeah,
(13:34): Absolutely. And that's why I talk about having a proof onboarding process into your digital community, into your brand world. Because even if it's a free community, your giving people a taste of what it's like to be onboarded into your paid offer. And I think a lot of people with digital communities kind of gloss over this, I think a lot of people kind of skip this step or don't see that this is a direct like line into what it's like when we actually pay to work with you. So you got to think through like coming into my free communities, got to look a lot like coming into my paid community or my paid. Yeah,
(14:12): Exactly. And I think that, that, and I've discovered this just over years of doing this is where people's identity crisis starts to kind of rattle a little bit because you might have somebody and they want to express themselves in a certain way. And they want to do things a certain way and all of that, but they're scared for whatever reason or another, or they were in corporate for a little bit. And they've kind of internalized that, which I see that a lot. And they still feel like they have to be like corporate professional bot speak. And so that's really where that identity crisis comes to rear its head. Because if you can't figure it out at that level, no matter what your marketing is, your sales affiliate programs, groups, discord, servers, advertising, none of it's going to work, not for very long
(15:01): Rocking a digital community. That's the future of marketing. Do you want to get ahead of the curve? Let me show you how to use real life, community building strategies to grow your brand, your authority, and your army of marketers. Head over to rock your tribe.com to send me a message let's get this party started. So
(15:20): Why there are people so afraid of identifying and living in their personal brand conditioning? I mean really like in the work that I've done, that's really what it is. That's really what it comes down to. And I hate throwing that word around. Cause I feel like it gets thrown around so much. It's kind of lost its meaning that that's really what it is. You start an online business and you're new to it. And so you start to like follow these certain people might say, oh no, you have to do it like this. And you have to use sales scripts and you have to DM people all the time. And so you do that and then maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't, it probably doesn't. And if it does you get clients that you hate, you know, cause you were reading from a sales script, but you're making money. So it's like, oh, well, you know, I guess it does kind of work.
(16:04): This is just going to be really hard, doing it all wrong. When you first, and you said this earlier, like when you first saw my stuff, you were like, this is like in your face. And I was very upfront about how I am. You know, I've got a hand tattoo. I cuss, I play video games. I drink energy drinks all day. Like this is the kind of person that I am. If I took all of that and it went away and I branded myself as like pink and purple and flowers and gold and boss, baby mommy, preneur or whatever. How long do you think I can keep that up?
(16:44): I think you'd last like all of five minutes. Yeah. Probably if I had to do that and kind of put on that persona all day. Yeah. I'm giving myself maybe a week or I'm like screw this, but some people do it for years. This is what happens when I'm consulting with business owners and their digital communities. They'll say to me, things like I can't get people, engaged people. Aren't joining my group. I run out of things to talk about. And I'm not billing myself as a branding expert, but I've seen enough of this to know that I know to look for that. And I know, I mean, you can tell when it's off, you know, if you spend time talking to somebody and you know what you're looking for and I can see people so far and then let them know, like at this point you should really work with a branding professional to carry this out, but I can tell you what I see. And you're just spoiled on good branding branding, because it does so much of the heavy lifting in your business for you. Yeah.
(17:44): It's when it's done correctly. And there's a lot of people out there that say that it's and disguise it. Like that's what it is when it's really marketing. And then people get burned by people like that. And they're like, well, I did branding and it didn't work. Like, no you didn't.
(17:59): I think of it like with a digital community, your branding is, there's like an outer shell of branding, right? It's like the wrapping paper, it's your banner, your description. It's what people see from the outside looking in. And so you want to attract the right people who are like, I need to get to the present that's inside that wrapping paper. And then when they unwrap it, it's like, if you used Christmas wrapping paper on like a 4th of July, Halloween gifts. Yeah, exactly. And so it's like, it's almost a bait and switch kind of, it can feel gross and yeah. And I don't think it's intentional at all, but you cannot help eventually showing up as yourself because your self just leaks out. Right? Like if you're trying to be one persona, because you think that's, what's going to attract the right crowd for you. But if you're on social media and you're just posting stuff who you really are, is going to leak out anyway. So I'm glad I went through the process of developing,
(19:02): Even though you are spoiling on it. Now I am spoiled now, but I'm glad that I went through the process of trying to brand myself. I'm glad that I listened to other people's input. They meant, well, they weren't wrong. I was the science nerd thing is not false at the same time I launched live video Palooza then like over a year ago. So I had this event in my group that I just naturally put together. Right. It just kinda pulled it out of the air, live video Palooza Lala, Palooza reference. I'm making all these music references in my group, but trying to do this, like, you know, scientists thing. And it was your brand is really right. It's right under your nose. And it's just an edited, tailored version of you. That's kind of turns up.
(19:49): Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. My, I have no problem coming up with names for offers or copy or anything like that because all of that foundational work that I did was correct. And this is what happens with content when you are not settled in your persona or you think you're someone that you're not, or you're trying to be someone you're not, it's so stifling with content, you just run out of things to talk about.
(20:19): Well, and it gets exhausting too, having to think, okay, well, I have this thing that I want to say, but I've got to say it like this persona or this person would say it. And so that alone is it just, it gets crazy. And
(20:34): So this is what I recommend to people because the most important thing to do in your digital community every day start a conversation. Easiest way to do it. Ask a question. And so 80, 20 rule, once you figured out your brand, right? You're like in your brand bubble, 80% of your conversation starters can be right on target about your topic dialed in and then 20% just play in your brand. So that gives me the wiggle room for online Valentine's day to post something like we're making a Valentine's day playlist. What love song would you put on the playlist? And so giving yourself that wiggle room to just play in your brand still builds your brand authority, but you don't have to be like, so dialed in to your topic a hundred percent of the time, which makes things, makes things boring.
(21:24): Yeah. And with that, if you can figure out really what that persona is, you'll never run out of to say, like, I promise all of you, like, despite your best efforts, I will never shut up because like, I know what it is that I need to be talking about. And I know how I need to be talking about it. Like, it's just, it's second nature at this point. The way I see it is when you have a digital community, you're just talking to awesome people about your favorite stuff. It's that simple.
(21:59): That's pretty much it pretty much a brand. Just like talk about awesome stuff in the way that you would talk about it. And I think that if you're not intensely curious about your tribe, then why bother having a community? And if you're not intensely curious about them, how are you going to serve them? Do you know everything about them already?
(22:20): Right. Exactly. Every single client that I've worked with in one way or another is different. Yeah. Every single one, like they all come to me for the same reason, but I don't work within a particular industry. I've worked with, okay. Like you, for example, you've helped people run Facebook groups and build communities and tribes and you were a DJ I've worked with million dollar companies that do CPG ads, two completely different things. But the strategies it's always the same, let's figure out how you need to show up and what that looks like. So I got a million dollar brand strategy. You did no wonder. I'm so glad
(23:01): You did well. I'm really glad that I chose you based on your fit in your face. Lead magnets. Yeah. Cause I come from entertainment world. I come from DJ world and it'll look like a club flyer. Yeah. And I come from that world too. I mean, you know, like going back to the whole multi faceted thing, like, yes, I'm a brand strategist and that sounds like this crazy title, but like I've played drums for 16 years. You know, I was a bar rat forever.
(23:32): Well, I'm glad, I'm really glad we did this. And a year later, a year later looking back, so we are debuting your case study about me. And so that forced me to finally put pen to paper figuratively. I typed it, but list out all of my accomplishments since you rebranded. I mean, officially branded, I can't really, it's not even a rebrand. It was like my first official branding of my business and my community, what I have accomplished since then and how it was facilitated through the branding. And I made this list the other day and I was like, holy, that's a lot of stuff then. You know what I I under counted the number of consulting clients I had, I thought about it later. And I was like, oh my God, I forgot about all these projects from last summer.
(24:22): Crazy. Seeing it like that. Cause you gave it to me. So I could put it into the case study in like a Google Excel sheet. Yeah. And like looking at it like that, like before and after it's like, holy. And that was in a year, which is not really not a long time
(24:39): First started. And I was just trying to help internet entrepreneurs, solopreneurs create awesome Facebook groups, whatever that may mean a year later, I've spoken at all of these summits. I have, you know, people in my world who are like, you need to add a zero to the end of your prices. I've had that conversation before. It would not have been possible without being spoiled on branding by you.
(25:06): You're welcome. Thank you. Sorry. No, it's good because it's become part of the strategy and because of you, I can speak intelligently about it. So the door that people walk through has a big sign on it, right? Like digital community. And then once they're sitting down with me or at the bar having some drinks, talking about it, a big part of the conversation every single time is your brand. Every time it's the basis to everything.
(25:37): It really is. You know, like every time someone's like, I can't get people to engage in my group. It's I don't say it quite like that. Right. That's ongoing Oregon. Right? That's on-brand for you. Yeah. I am arrogant about it. Like I know my stuff and I know what I'm talking about and I can back it up, but I can explain to you why I'm saying it. Like I am, but like, I'm not going to be like, oh, well, you know, you should try. No, it sucks. Make it not suck. Yeah. Basically
(26:13): I just asked this in my Facebook group the other day, if a community member asks for your feedback, are you brutally honest or do you spare their feelings? And I intentionally asked this in a binary provocative kind of way, but a lot of really cool answers came out of it. But your answer was pretty great. I don't know if you said something to the effect of like, you should only expect brutal, honest honesty for me. Yeah.
(26:40): Yeah. I think at this point, anybody, anybody that knows me and that's followed me for any amount of time, knows that if you want to do the whole, oh well, can you give me advice on this? Like, I'll give you advice. We go to advice and it'll help, but might get your feelings hurt too.
(26:59): I usually tell people, I'll usually preface things with people. Like I'm going to give you some very honest feedback here. Are you okay with that? I feel like, I feel like I need a little bit more consent. Like it's not because I think that people and I find this in communities because it's so question and answer oriented. People don't know what they're asking for. Sometimes they don't know what they've gotten themselves
(27:22): Into. Yeah. I usually, if somebody doesn't know me super well and they asked me, I'll be like, do you want to know what I would do? Or do you want like honest, you want my honest feedback on this? Are you sure? Are you really sure because I'm kind of an. And if they say yes, I mean, I'll just, I'll give it to them.
(27:43): So Hailey, where can people find you actual Brandon and it's not censored. It's spelled out well or thrilled on ID. If you've listened to this entire thing and you actually do want to work with me and you're serious about it. It's the real website is thrilled. ADI, where you can find me on Facebook. Saley shine.
(28:06): Well, if you want actual branding and you want your brand world to do the heavy lifting for you, if you want to filter in the right people and repel the wrong people, or I guess they're also right. People, you know what I mean? If you want to have a easy time engaging your people, if you want endless content ideas, you should talk to Haley. Yeah. Talk to me, come talk to Hayley. So we'll wrap it up there. Thank you so much for being here. Haley. Awesome.
(28:42): Was that awesome or what do you have more clarity now about building a brand world? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Head over to Rocky tribe.com and drop me a message. Thank you so much for being here and as always you rock,
(29:02): This is the podcast factory.com.
