Borrow 8-lessons to grow your brand

My takeaways from selling 10,000+ books, growing 450+ paid readers & booked for four-figure workshops & keynotes

Hiya 🌊! I’m Lucy from Hype Yourself. The cheerleader for solopreneurs. I want to make getting yourself out there feel more fun and less ick. Today’s article is a free-to-read bonus for all readers❤️.

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Lucy Werner and co-founder of my children, co-author of Brand Yourself, Hadrien Chatelet

I co-wrote a book on branding with the co-founder of my children. As a Valentine’s Day special and because hearts are important to us, I am sharing my best takeaways for you. You can support our 🫀 fundraising efforts here.

I started properly building my brand in 2019. I was writing my first book, and I wanted to make sure I had an audience to sell it to.

I started with 0 subscribers on my newsletter, 1,000 people on Instagram and barely any presence on LinkedIn.

Building my brand has helped me sell 10,000 + books, grow a newsletter of 450+ paid and receive four-figure bookings for public speaking and workshops.

In case you don’t finish this article. Short version = time. It takes time. You have to be willing to celebrate the beauty in the boring.

This is five years of unreasonably consistent brand-building. There are no sexy overnight hot takes, but there are eight very applicable takeaways you need to know.

“A beautiful brand is amazing, but a meaningful one is better” Hadrien Chatelet

1. You don’t understand what your brand is

• It is not your colours, fonts, images, or a trending Canva template. These are your brand assets. They only match you if you fully understand who you are.

• You might know my husband for being French, creative, dyslexic and colourful, but if you take his clothes away he would have the same brand values (albeit he would be colder)

• It isn’t just for big businesses with huge budgets - we can borrow the best of big global brands and easily tweak them for our small businesses

• Your logo should be the last piece of the puzzle, not the first. Your visual identity should come from your brand strategy, so let’s start with that

2. Your values are your guardrails

• Know your values: Write down all the values that apply to you and your writing. Then, pick 3-5 that apply. These are your guardrails.

• Cross-check: Ask your audience or good friends what values they associate with you. They might give you a word you were not expecting. If you have several that are similar, group them together and then pick the one that feels the best.

• Stick to your guardrails: Collaborations. Press articles. Podcasts. Guest writing. Don’t get swayed by people with a big following to partner with. Start with: does this person align with my values (or risk egg on your face later). Example: a publication with several big-name creators that promotes writers and creators getting paid wanted me to work for them for free. They didn’t even align with their own values. Hell No.

Saying it louder for the back. Don’t just collaborate with people because they have big numbers. Know your worth. Know your values.

Example: Mine are fun, creativity, family, inspiring & educating

3. Vision

• Hold your horses. Before you start creating and throwing spaghetti at the wall, what is your vision about. What do you dream about when you think about the future of your business?

• Move. A vision makes you move. And if you have team members or freelancers they will be able to support what you are working towards.

• Eureka moment. It’s your big idea. The one you are willing to sacrifice the next couple of years of your life to make succeed.

• Keeps you safe. On the days when the sales go down. The grey lines on Substack backend are angrily shouting at you in grey or there are not any bums on seats, your vision is your best friend. Your motivation and your northern light.

• Curb the comparisonitus. Is ‘insert triggering name here’ on the same path as you? No, your vision is yours and yours alone and keeps you focused.

Example: To bring my decades of experience working for big PR & creative agencies and make it affordable to help the independents grow, because I believe they will leave the world in a better place.

4. Mission

• Vision is future. Mission is how you get there.

• Write a mission statement. What is your core offering? What are you doing on a daily basis? Who is your primary audience? What are the unique ways you are doing this?

• Be precise in your mission. Make it original fundamental and memorable.

Example: I’m on a mission to create a newsletter and events to help solopreneurs like you with promoting your work so it feels less painful, removes the time-sucking stress and, dare I say, I will make it fun?

5. Who are you for?

• You will appeal to no one if you try to be for everyone. You will drown in your promotional efforts because how do you even begin to focus? It is a fear mindset. Have the confidence to pick a type.

• Is it for me? Does your ideal reader, buyer, or client understand when they land on your page that it is for them? Or even better, do you make it clear who it is not for?

  Example: I’m for creative solopreneurs, writers, artists, service-based consultants

6. Moodboards are underrated

• Digital or offline. There is no right or wrong way to Moodboard. If you want to cut out magazines, go for it. If you want to do a fancy Notion template, knock your socks off.

• Need fonts & imagery? I have kept with the same font and visual guidelines for six years but if I was starting from scratch I would create a moodboard of the fonts and images I like.

• Advanced. I use mood boards for my PR stunt ideas. I put inspiration from stunts I’ve seen, outfits that make me do a double-take, art that I love and hero press articles that I want to land.

  

  7. Bake in diversity & inclusion from the start

• Send the lift back down. Got into an influential room? Say the names of people who deserve to be in that room who might not usually get a platform.

• Pick your shoutouts better. If you have any platform, a newsletter, a podcast, or a social media account - one of the easiest things you can do is to make a concerted effort to champion underrepresented talent.

• Don’t make it an afterthought. Social media can make sharing outrage popular, but as independent creatives, we can create a huge wave by all individually hyping positive narratives as part of our routine, not just when we feel called to be reactive.

• I am not an expert in diversity and inclusion, and I will always seek to improve and educate myself on this topic. I am clumsy, and I make mistakes. But it is better to stumble forward and learn than to say nothing at all.

  

8. Get quotable

• Stop using other people's quotes: Ok, a bit dramatic. What I mean is that we have all seen the same famous quotes. It doesn’t help set your brand apart. Find new or underrepresented talent to quote instead (and credit them!). Be a thought-sharing leader.

• Better yet, use your own quotes. You don’t need to write a book to be quotable. What are your catchphrases? What do you say that nobody else says? Repeat yourself. (Watch all 17 Seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race for a masterclass in repeating catchphrases).

  

  Example: A few things I say ‘show a bit of ankle’, ‘stop selling - start sharing’, ‘hype yourself’, ‘put yourself where you don’t belong’
  and ‘beauty in the boring’

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