Years ago I caught an Uber and it was a nice newer black Infiniti sedan.
Along the way, the driver explains that his day job is a financial advisor and he drives for Uber on the side for extra cash because he’s newer in the business.
Now ask yourself, in that moment, was he an influential financial advisor to me?
No, because I had already put him in the category of Uber driver. He couldn’t market and sell himself to me as both an Uber driver AND a financial advisor. In my mind, there’s only room for him in one category.
But we’re making this same mistake every day, and that’s the topic of this episode.
One of the missions of the podcast is to break down things that are confusing and frustrating so we can be less critical of ourselves and move forward with more calm, confidence and clarity.
So I want to dive into a common frustration we have with branding and marketing, which is how do we market ourselves when we sell more than one thing?
In my opinion anyone can become MicroFamous, yet we have to be strategic, focused and consistent to get there. To reach the level of being famously influential.
It’s hard to be strategic, focused and consistent when our energy is pulled in a bunch of different directions.
Not to mention the fact that people automatically put us into one category. “Jeff is a business coach, Linda is a consultant, Jay is an author, etc.”
Because people have a really hard time putting us into more than one category, it’s hard to become famously influential for more than one thing to the same people.
And when we’re talking about different offers and services to the same people, that’s basically what we’re doing. We end up confusing people.
And if you think everyone but you has their s#%t together, think again.
Even big companies who know better do this kind of thing all the time.
The best example I’ve seen lately are the hilariously terrible Bud Light Seltzer ads. Have you seen these?
So here’s the backstory.
Bud Light’s parent company tries to get into the hard seltzer space with a new brand and it flops.
So they come back with a brilliant idea to market hard seltzer under the Bud Light brand.
You can see how screwed up this idea is in their own commercials.
One of their TV ads starts this way: “The Bud Light logo makes people think our seltzer is a beer, so we hired recruited retired NFL players Nick Mangold to Block It Out!”
Now it’s a mildly amusing commercial, but it’s less funny when we realize we’re doing the same thing when we’re selling a bunch of different things.
We basically have to go around saying, “Hey I know you think I sell ABC, but I actually do XYZ! Surprise!”
Of course, we know we’re confusing people, we just don’t know what to do about it.
So we start asking ourselves questions like:
How can I be more clear with my brand and my message?
Could I put everything under the same brand?
Can I find one brand that allows me to do all the things I want to do under the same brand?
I call that the Search for the Magic Umbrella.
A Magic Umbrella is a brand or an idea that acts as an umbrella we can put over just about anything we want to do or create or sell.
And I see people twisting themselves into pretzels trying to find it.
It’s a very noisy, cluttered world out there. Especially online.
One of the core principles of the MicroFamous system is that in order to cut through the noise, we have to deliver a Clear & Compelling Idea.
An idea that is so razor-sharp clear that people understand it very quickly, and so compelling that it grabs their attention and makes them say, “Holy cow, I didn’t know that thing existed. How can I learn more!?”
Unfortunately, searching for a Magic Umbrella where we can market and talk about several different offers and services leads us away from a Clear & Compelling Idea.
Instead of a powerful idea that cuts through the noise and brand that gets attention from the right people, we end up with watered-down ideas and boring brands that say nothing compelling.
And we just keep confusing people, like Bud Light Seltzer.
My own music is a perfect example. I mostly set aside the whole musician side of myself for the first few years of building the agency.
I had it in the back of my head that I’d love to incorporate music into my daily life and maybe even my business life, but wasn’t sure how.
At one point I thought I had hit on it, a way to bring my music under my business brand.
Yet the more I looked at it and played with that idea, the more I realized I was doing both a disservice by trying to combine them.
So I set the music aside again until I developed its own brand. You can check out the YouTube channel for instrumental music, just search for “Prayer Prompts.”
And because I don’t need to fit my music under any business brand or integrate with a bunch of other offers and projects, I can be super clear and focused with the music brand. I’m also not trying to promote my music to the same people, I put it into its own silo where the music lives in a different place from my business stuff and speaks to different people.
In other words, my business is in one Silo and my music is in another Silo.
When I think about marketing and selling more than one thing, that’s my best advice.
Put everything in Silos, don’t look for Magic Umbrellas.
We need more Silos and fewer Magic Umbrellas.
So let’s get back to the question, What do we do if we sell more than one thing?
My best advice is this: Pick one thing to focus on and work toward becoming MicroFamous for that one thing first.
Derek Sivers made a point years ago that hit me hard and helped me set aside my music for a while.
He said you can get a lot done in 10 years. So think about your life in 10 year blocks.
You could focus on something for the next 10 year block, master it, and still have time to do 3, 4 or even 5 other things for 10 years each.
Still haven’t written that book or launched that app or released that album or started that side project you’ve been thinking about?
Maybe that’s OK. You don’t have to do everything right now.
That helped relieve some of the guilt and inner turmoil I had over putting my music on the back burner. Not all of it, but enough that I was able to focus on establishing the agency.
But while you’re working to become MicroFamous in one niche, what do you do with those other offers, those other projects, those other sides of yourself?
I think there have a few good options:
Option 1: Put everything else completely on the back burner and come back to them later.
“Strike a deal with yourself about your music.” That was one of the best pieces of advice I got from a mentor years ago. Set other things aside for now until certain milestones are hit, then you’ll pick them up again. The deal is to not judge yourself in the meantime.
Option 2: Put everything in Silos and split time equally between the most important brands, offers and projects.
Now if you haven’t established yourself in one space, I wouldn’t recommend this approach.
Trying to grab attention and build influence in multiple spaces makes it less likely that you’ll become famously influential in any of those spaces. It’s a big risk to take, even though it keeps the fantasy going that you can do it all at the same time.
But if you have an established brand or level of influence, and you want to work on something new, you may be able to split time equally if you keep things in separate silos.
Option 3: Spend 80% of your time on your primary focus, and 20% of your time on one side project.
That’s the phase I moved into with music this year. I devote a few hours a week to making music, but it doesn’t have to pay the bills or be my whole identity, so I’m less attached to the outcome.
I’m already known as the MicroFamous guy. So when people in the business world come across the music side of me, it adds dimension and builds more of a personal connection but it doesn’t confuse them.
It also doesn’t dilute the MicroFamous brand because I’m not constantly looking for a way to bring the music under the same umbrella as my agency.
So if you’re struggling with your brand, think about what it would look like to each offer, each project into its own silo.
My guess is that it answers all the questions you’ve been asking yourself about your brand.
So it’s not really a question of marketing, it’s a decision that needs to be made.
What is the one thing you’ll put your focus into now?
Make that decision, and it will free you up to become famously influential for one thing.