140- Ditch Your 9-5 Before the End of 2025- Step 4: Build the Brand

140- Ditch Your 9-5 Before the End of 2025- Step 4: Build the Brand
===

[00:00:00] Welcome back to the MaYapinion Podcast, where I share my opinions on leadership and entrepreneurship for women. I'm your host, Maya Roffler, and I'm really looking forward to getting into our next step today. We are doing a series right now called Ditch Your nine to five before the end of 2025, and of course, as I say, every week, you can utilize these steps at any time.

I'm just encouraging as many women as possible to leave their corporate job or nine to five, that's not fulfilling them. Not fitting into what they dreamed for their life and using these six steps that I'm reviewing over these six episodes. So I've covered three steps already. So we're now, believe it or not, already on the fourth step.

This step is an important one. It's called Build the Brand before the break. So build the brand before the break is really taking the time [00:01:00] to tap into your actual brand. We've done some auditing, we've done some research, we've validated our business idea. But now we wanna actually create that brand that look and feel based on our validated business idea, based on the fact that we've already started our Freedom fund and trying to break free.

And we're working towards that. So now we want to actually look at building the brand. What does that look and what does that feel like? So the first thing I want you to look at is your business name. For example, my name, MaYapinion, it first was a podcast. It was this podcast.

This podcast has gone through different iterations, as I've shared on the show many times, and for those of you who have listened since the beginning, you know, it's kind of had a different focus, but we really honed into the MaYapinion brand. That's my name. And oftentimes the people will say, well, how did you come up with that name?

It's such a cute name. It's such a fun name. Look [00:02:00] cute and fun are not always the best for business. I think it's important to have memorable, but I don't really think it's important to be, you know, kitschy all the time. It's worked out well for MaYapinion, but it's not one of the names that is kind of in your face about what we do, but how I came up with this name is.

Everybody has always told me that I'm super opinionated. That was something that came up throughout my lifetime, and so in my twenties I started thinking about this as kind of a name, and then when I launched my first show. Many, many years ago, we used the name, MaYapinion, because it's something that I have been using and then I trademarked it, so it works for me, but I wanna use another brand that I own, as an example.

The Surviving Siblings. The Surviving Siblings is my other podcast. It's my other brand, and I've trademarked that as well. It's exactly what it sounds like. It is surviving siblings. Siblings who have had a brother, sister, or maybe one more than one sibling [00:03:00] die. And they come on the show and they represent that we have workshops, we have an annual summit, and it's all under the surviving siblings name.

So my audience knows exactly what they're getting with that name. So I want you to take some time in this. Part of this process and think about what you want your name to be, because it's really important. Sure, you can change it in the future if it's not working, but when we, you were kind of testing everything when we were going through and we were validating our business idea in step two.

What worked? What resonated with the audience? Were you already using a business name? Were you testing that? If people aren't flocking to sign up for something or flocking to maybe listen to something, they're not understanding your name and your brand. So it's really important that people understand what your brand represents.

Now, I want you to think of a brand like Nike or [00:04:00] Adidas. Not everybody knew in the beginning that those were, you know, obviously. Shoes and sneakers and tennis shoes or whatever you call it. And now it's athletic gear, athleisure, things like that. But so you can have a name and create a household name, you absolutely can, but I want you to be very strategic about it.

So really spend some time thinking about that and use some of your business validation in deciding for the name. I'm not gonna change my opinion, but like people did have to learn what does that mean? What is my giving her opinion on? Well, I'm giving my opinion on entrepreneurship and leadership and my opinions to all of you to help you launch your own business and to help you on the entrepreneurial journey.

So there is a little bit of a kind of a journey and a work through when you're trying to create that brand awareness. So just be realistic about it. But what I really want you to spend time on is you know, you might have this great, I can't tell you how many times I've worked with people, put it this way instead, and they tell me, oh my God, may I have this great idea [00:05:00] for this business?

I'm like, cool. Shoot. Tell me what is it? And they'll tell me the name. I'm like, awesome. Have you looked to see if someone else has used this name? And my client will look at me. Deer in headlights. Oh, I haven't. I'm like, that's the first thing you want to do when you're building the brand. You want to Google that name.

So let's say you think Apple is the cutest, funnest name, clearly I'm being silly because it already exists, and you'll find that right away. So if you come up with a name and you think it's a great idea, I want you to Google and see if anybody else has used this. I also want you to check, and if you don't find that, check the URL.

Make sure nobody else has grabbed that URL, because how are you going to drive people to your business page if you can't buy the actual URL? So just be mindful of that. Now, sometimes people will buy a URL and maybe they buy the.com, but like the.org is available, and so there's workarounds with that, but you have [00:06:00] to be sure that nobody is using your business name.

Especially when you're first just coming up with ideas and you're validating your business ideas, and then now we're building the brand. This is the time to really make sure like, no one else has done this really with this name, and this is something that's clear to an audience and we're also going to build.

The aspect of what it look and feels like. So do you want your brand to feel more feminine and soft? Do you want it to look more modern and chic? Do you want it to look what colors speak to you? What colors speak to your audience? And that's why step two goes really well with step four. Today's building your building the brand.

Because when you're validating your business idea, you're gonna take those validations in to building the brand. What worked when you were asking the audience? Whether they wanted to participate in this or buy this from you or whatever it is that you were selling, product service, and then taking that [00:07:00] and creating that into a brand.

So for example, if you found when you were creating your, or validating your business idea and creating that, if you found that predominantly your audience was maybe 21 to 29, the brand should feel young and fun. Something that comes to mind right now is the labu boo trend. I've gotten into it too. I think Labu boos are super fun, but this is a young audience.

Sure, there are moms out there that are buying them, reselling them, doing all of that, but it's a young look and feel. That's a young kids brand. So the packaging, everything that's. Done with the brand. It's all fun, big into energy. Like fun, fun, fun. So that's how the brand feels. It's sparkly, it's shiny, it's fun, bright colors.

So that's what I want you to think about when you're building the brand. How does this feel and how do you want it to feel? Because how do you make people feel is also going to attract the right people, the right audience for you. [00:08:00] So also think about your one-liner. For me, with MaYapinion, it is, you know, I share my opinions on entrepreneurship and leadership.

I help women create, be able to be entrepreneurs. Boom. You know exactly what I do with that. With surviving siblings, it's pretty clear what we do there, right? We help surviving siblings. We help them through our workshops. We help them through our podcast. We help them through our support group. We help them through our annual event, our merchandise, our books that we put out.

And we have taglines like Keep on Surviving My Surviving Siblings. Like it's empathetic. And so you know what you're creating and what kind of community you're creating and what kind of people you're helping. So I want you to think about that for yourself as well. What kind of community are you creating?

What kind of people are you helping? So again, that's why it aligns so much with the validating of your business. Now we're taking those validations and building the brand from there. But you want to understand, look, and feel. We wanna even understand, not just [00:09:00] color, but like what kind of font are you using?

You wanna be consistent on your platforms. How do you want your website to look? Now that we know no one else has our website. After you validate that and discover that as you're building the brand, you also wanna make sure, does anyone else have the social handles? So if you know you're gonna utilize Instagram, which you're crazy if you don't, if you know you're gonna utilize TikTok, which you're crazy if you don't, LinkedIn, all your main platforms, Facebook, you need to check and make sure that nobody else has used those handles.

'cause you might be free and clear on a website, but you might not free. Be free and clear on a social handle. Maybe an influencer has already used that handle based on what you're selling or what your service or product is. It just depends. Sometimes there's influencers out there that have these cute handles and we don't know until we look it up and realize that's already taken.

These are all the research things that I really encourage women who work with me to look at and we go through and we really make sure, and I feel like it's my job on [00:10:00] this show. And also when I work with you, whether you come to a group that I do or a workshop or you work with me just directly. That you learn from me because when I was first starting out and building these different brands, I didn't always know to look.

By the time I started surviving siblings, I knew to go and look and to grab these things, but with MaYapinion, I didn't know. I just, you know, fingers crossed I got lucky on some things and eventually got the domain and got the things that I needed. But in the beginning, I didn't know. And there were some handles that were taken and some things that were taken that I wish, you know, on social media, different.

Sites that I wish I had, but it's much easier to come up with something that's not taken than try to go and buy and acquire these things. That's why I like to spend time on this and thinking through the brand. So social handles, websites, anything where you think you would need that, you definitely wanna think through that and Google that and look through that.

Now with the brand, as we're talking about a tagline, we also [00:11:00] wanna think about what are the three pillars that we're going to focus on? So again, taking in that step two and from validating your business idea from that, it's great research to go, okay, so we're gonna go back to our vegan weight loss plan that we did in step two.

So I reached out to these audiences. I reached out to women over 35 that are vegan, that wanna lose weight and just had a baby super niche market. Love it, love it, love it. 'cause you know exactly who you're targeting. You don't have to be that niche, but it does help 'cause you know exactly who you're targeting.

What I found from these women who went through my program or downloaded my guide or all of the things that I te tested during the validating the business part, what I found is these are really the three things that I'm going to be focusing on because these are the three things that they really resonated with.

They liked having something consistent every single day. So maybe you're gonna talk about the consistency of [00:12:00] developing these habits into your daily practices. Vegan daily practices for women. Maybe that's one thing that you're gonna put in there because you realize doing these groups and testing the market that women really liked the daily touchpoint.

Okay, maybe that's one thing. You've gotta have at least three things that you're really focusing on. The next thing could be something like recipes. They really loved reading your recipes and they that, so that's another thing. So you're gonna daily check-in daily things. Maybe that's gonna be your social media.

Maybe you're gonna come up with a plan for them and then. Maybe they really loved your recipes. So that's the next one, and you're just gonna keep focusing on that. Another thing that maybe resonated with them is they loved. Maybe you had like a challenge for how much water you can drink in a day, or maybe you had certain exercises for, you know, an exercise plan for 30 days and then it would turn over and you kind of mix it up every 30 days.

I don't know your business plan as your business plan, but [00:13:00] these are, we're just talking about these things to get your mojo going and for you to think about it for your own business. And I'm just using the example we used before. Because I think it helps if you strategically know, think of what you're gonna talk about.

Think if you're in a, it's like that good old elevator pitch. If you're in an elevator with me and I ask you, Hey, what is your, what's the name of your business? And you tell me, we're gonna use my company as an example, MaYapinion. I'm like, oh my God. That's awesome. What do you do? I talk to women on my podcast to help them with entrepreneurship and leadership.

And I help women ditch their nine to five and create a business of their dreams as an entrepreneur. So now you know what I do. Great. Well, how do you do that? That's what we're talking about in the content, , the three content pillars. Like what are you gonna focus on? How do I do that?

Well, for me. I'm explaining to you guys in six steps how we do that. But for me, I would say, [00:14:00] one, I give them laid out steps on how they can achieve this. How they can successfully leave their nine to five without just throwing up their hands one day and leaving. No, I actually give them steps to set them up financially, emotionally, mentally, and physically, so that they can leave.

That's one thing I do. Another thing I do is I give them tips and feedback about where I succeeded and where I failed so that they can learn from that and they can come back to those resources and that again, they can learn from me. And then another way that I do this is that I share content on social media and I share daily things with.

All of you out there. So what I mean by that is I share behind the scenes like, what does my life look like? What are some things that you can do as an entrepreneur? So I give steps, I give behind the scenes, and I give tools so that women don't have to make the same mistakes as me. I actually have more pillars than that, but those are just things in a nutshell to get you thinking and driving.

So now I've told this person the name. [00:15:00] Of my brand, what we do, right? We help women. Learn, help women understand entrepreneurship and leadership from a perspective of myself and for themselves, and also other women that come on the show. I help them leave their nine to five, their corporate job that they're not happy in, and develop something that will become financially successful there for them and fulfilling.

And then I broke down three ways that I do that, even though there's even more additional ways that I do that, right? I'm offering workshops, I'm offering one-on-one, things like that. But this is the content that I'm sharing. I'm giving steps on how to do it. I'm sharing what to do and what not to do based on my successes and failures, and then tips and behind the scenes of the daily.

So I want you to think about that for yourself. What is the brand that I'm creating? What is the name? What is the look and feel? What are the colors going to be? What is this gonna look like? What are the fonts that I like? Am I, you know, more modern? Am I more feminine? Like, what does that look like?

Take [00:16:00] some time writing this down. And again, if you haven't downloaded it yet, I have a free guide for you that goes through each one of these steps and has all of the things that I'm talking about in the guide so that you can do this exercise. It was important to me that there was a guided exercise to go with this.

Once you get that look and feel, remember, don't go too far down the look and feel before you Google that website. Google that name, check all the social medias because I don't want you to get so attached and so in love with a name. And then guess what? You can't have it. You can't have it. Nothing is worse than that.

I can't tell you how many times I've worked with someone and they come to me with this awesome idea, like I said earlier, and they tell me. Oh my God, Maya, you're right, it already exists. So the podcast already exists. That's another thing, right? If you wanna do a podcast, if you're wanting anything, you wanna do YouTube, channel anything, make sure you're checking it In that process.

Come up with your tagline, like what is your tagline going to be? What is that like? So you can really pack a punch. If you were in an elevator with me, you could say, what do you do? What do you do? And then [00:17:00] think about those three pillars that are like, you are gonna have more likely. But those are your three main content pillars that you will take to build your brand on social media, to build your brand on social sites.

That's what you're gonna focus on, and that's the information that you're going to give your audience. Whatever, whatever you're selling, service, product, whatever you're providing, that's the knowledge that you're gonna be giving them, and that's what you're going to be focusing on because people connect when they understand what you're talking about and what you're giving to them.

And then take it a step further bonus for this, and this is in the guide as well. Think about your lead magnet. This is going to come from step two as well. When you validated your business idea, what really stood out, what was most successful, that should be something that you're offering to your audience.

I don't. Love, love free, but I am a fan of giving free information. There's a difference. I don't want you to give away everything, [00:18:00] but I do want you to give value so that people want to buy from you, and that's whether you have a product or a service, whatever it is that you're offering.

I do think that we have to allow people to connect with us. Can't just hide everything behind a paywall, but at the same point, you have to be compensated for what you do, which I talked about in previous episodes. Think about that, that's the bonus. Tapping into your lead magnet and what that will be.

And it needs to be something simple. And even if you are selling a product, I love to see something. Maybe, you know, we're offering a sample for free. If we're offering a service, maybe we're doing, you know, we're showing what our service looks like in a little nutshell, a little preview, maybe a preview video, something that they download.

But it's a way for you to acquire leads. Okay, so building the brand before you break away from the corporate nine to five. So spend some time really thinking about this. 'cause this is really developing what your brand looks and feels like, and also the messaging to your [00:19:00] audience and don't forget to download the guide below and you can also find it @ MaYapinion.com.

Don't forget to follow me at MaYapinion podcast and at Maya Roffler on all major social media channels, and we'll see you back next week. Thanks so much for listening.