Relatable Branding with Megan Gillespie

Relatable Branding, the Benefits of Your Real Life Becoming the Centerpiece of Your Brand.

Welcome to this episode of The Determined Mom Show. Today we have a very special guest, Megan Gillespie, a realtor and the owner of Megan Gillespie Real Estate. And she’s also the co-host of the Boss Ladies and Babies podcast. I’m very excited to have you. This is an important topic because everyone’s lives this year got mushed together with work. We will talk about relatable branding, the benefits of your real life, and becoming the centerpiece of your brand. 

How do you get started working from home?

It just happened as the natural progression of my career path. I was a hairstylist for about ten years, so I ran my own business throughout that. Managing salons and doing the booth rental thing out on my own. And I loved every part of that. But then it just got to be a lot on my body, and I wanted to do something different, and that’s when I decided to jump into real estate, which is such a flexible career.

And at that time, I thought I would go into an office. But when I realized I didn’t have to do that and I could work from my car, it could be my office, or my bed could be my office. The freedom of that just was so perfect. I just stuck to mostly working from home, going into the office occasionally, and then when my daughter, who’s now two, was born, I was already set up to work at home.

I have to go into an office, report to somebody, and not make my schedule. It just all worked out perfectly. And I know for me, that was another reason I became my boss as well, because it’s like, other people telling you what to do, it’s not so fun.

What does relatable branding mean, and what must we do to get there?

I became so passionate about this, and so relatable branding is the idea of branding yourself through your own life so that you can balance your life and your business without feeling like I’m this person at one point.

At another point, I’m this person. And so my passion for this started to grow when I was pregnant with my daughter. I just was so worried about how I would balance my life as a real estate agent and this, the idea of a mother I wanted to be.

And when I first got into real estate, I just had this vision in my head of the perfect real estate agent wearing suits and buttoned up and so polished in everything they do, and showing up on social media with only very promotional and clean and perfect posts. And as much as I thought that I wanted to show up differently than that, that was just my idea of how it had to be.

And we met up when I was pregnant, and I was her first kind of Guinea pig, and she tried out her lifestyle photography on me and taught me a lot. You don’t have to be the person that you think you do. You can be all of it and show up in your business as this one person with all the pieces of your life.

And it hit me. It was like this light bulb, aha moment that I was, wow, why didn’t I put that together before? This is amazing. And it inspired so much of what I’m doing now and what I’ve done up to this. My best friend and I created the Boss Ladies and Babies podcast, centered around balancing who you are as a mother with who you are as a businesswoman.

When you make the switch and decide to put yourself out there and be vulnerable and find relatability points with people through social media, through your branding, through podcasts that you do, just any way that you put yourself out there as your brand, you are going to relate with somebody, and you are going to be that.

It broadens your horizons at the same time that it narrows them, narrows the focus. You’re just being vulnerable and showing parts of your life that somebody will feel like; I’ve gone through that same thing. I instantly trust this person so much more. And that’s amazing. And this is my opinion. Still, this year, I would call it polarization, where everybody has an idea about politics or racism and everything like separating people. It’s helped me focus on utilizing people who support things.

You must be true to who you are and what’s important to you. I have not kept quiet even in my real estate business in, you know, the boss ladies and babies platform has not kept quiet about our beliefs on politics, human rights, everything. Because if I were to keep quiet about that, I wouldn’t be being true to who I am.

How can that help us to lay that foundation and get to where we want to be with our brand? 

I just launched this program, and it’s called the Brand U Strategy, and it’s something that I have been thinking about for a long time. Still, I only knew exactly what it would be the last few months; Boss Ladies and Babies have been such a wonderful place for women to come together with each other.

I’ve wanted to do it since I discovered this idea of building your brand in this way; I want to relate to other women and make them feel like they’re not alone. I was marinating on this. I had this calling in my soul for so long, trying to figure out what this was.

Another aha moment where I realized I could teach other women to do what I’m doing because it’s so much more than just a pretty logo. And it is building beautiful colors and making a brand to be recognizable. That’s all part of it too. But you are putting yourself and your motherhood journey out there in a way that is still professional and can make you earn trust and respect and relate to people who could eventually be your clients.

Would you happen to know how I can do that? And so I’ve finally figured it out and created this program. And so my mission through all of this has always been to keep it real, that’s my real estate tagline. That’s it. It’s everything.

When they experience any interaction with me, I want people to feel like it is authentic. Through the brand U strategy, it’s teaching women how to incorporate their motherhood journey as part of their business brand identity, which probably sounds foreign to a lot of people, but also, like you were saying, with 2020, so many of us are in a position now where we’re home, our children are home. We don’t have a choice but to let them show.

I was comfortable with that and permitted myself to accept that that is how you would show up. And just realizing that being vulnerable and raw is not unprofessional is what I teach through this program. I can break it down more if you want; I would love to hear more about if you have different phases or different ones. I would love to hear. 

It’s creating a very clear mission and foundation for your brand and teaching you how to guide it in a way that centers you in the middle of it. And then, we do some research on your target audience so you have a clear idea of who your target audience is, and then a full branding audit on all of your materials to ensure that you are consistent.

So, of course, you know that logos and graphics are essential, but they need to be at the top. And then, the third piece to the program is a little bit of social media support where we just look back at, okay, this is my foundation, this is how I want to show up, how this is my audience, how can I do that?

But we also know that we’re two busy moms, and you know, we want, we’re doing this so that we. Relate to and show up and support other women. And so our page could always be more aesthetically pleasing, but it’s real life. And it’s that balance, you know, there’s, there are beautiful pictures, and there are messy pictures.

This is the way that branding is going. And I think if people don’t. Opening up and being a little bit more vulnerable, they will get left behind because this is how things are going, so anyone who could benefit from this group program is great.

I also offer one-on-one strategy sessions for each piece of the program and,  running the whole program together, And it’s, you know, it’s still just so fluid. We can focus on what’s holding you back and what your pain points are as we go along and build this brand around you because it is so unique each time I run the program; it will be so different.

And there is a huge benefit, just in my experience, to having a group program because not only can you learn from yourself, the coach, or the teacher, but you learn so much from all of the other people in the program. I always think that’s mind-blowing.

I’ve learned so much in any mastermind I’ve ever been in or group coaching experience. Always a plus when they’re from different industries or backgrounds because they have so much more knowledge of other parts of things that you don’t. And you can suck that in like a sponge.

And just like, again, that big piece of relatability and just feeling not alone. I mean, I’m a stranger, and I’m asking you these questions that will make you. Dig deep into your soul and think about what being a mother and a businesswoman mean to me.

Grow with you, and you can bounce ideas off each other moving forward. It is. It’s just a beautiful thing. It’s enormous, and I can’t say enough about that experience. So if you’ve not done that before, I highly recommend it. And I also highly recommend checking out Megan’s program to get you into that mode of revamping your brand or starting your brand.

Business tips to women out there because our audience is split. Not everybody is a businesswoman, so it’s fun to have. The spot that’s just for businesses and, you know, tips that we’ve taken from our own experience and put that in there, and there’ll be some little nuggets of the brand you information coming into that space as well.

Then we have our full-length episodes where we interview other moms and businesswomen and just go there and go deep and have fun and hard, heavy topics. Depending on what happens with this pandemic, we have goals to do, like live meetups next year, but that’s awesome.