Today on the podcast I am delighted to welcome Maddy Shine. 

Maddy Shine is a small biz business mentor and visibility expert who helps women-owned business legends grow their businesses by becoming more visible. She has helped thousands of clients get more visible through teaching her free and paid online programs and membership community Visible Vibes.

She has been described as actual human sunshine - you can even use her GIFs which have been used over 690 million times! Maddy believes it's up to us to find and get booked by those who want to work with us. Maddy also runs a second brand Sassy & Soft designing WordPress websites and SEO projects for women-owned and queer friendly businesses.

Maddy joined me on the podcast a few years ago to talk about SEO, and today is here to talk about marketing with personality. We discuss what marketing with personality means, how that applies to you and your brand, and you can use this to make your business more visible. 

It’s a really inspiring conversation, as Maddy is so passionate about the importance and positive impact when women running their own businesses are visible. I know you will come away energised and excited to talk more about your product business. 

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USEFUL RESOURCES:

Maddy Shine Website

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Maddy Shine LinkedIn

Visible Vibes Community

Sassy and Soft Website

Maddy’s Previous Podcast Episode: Using SEO To Get Your Products Found

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Welcome to the bring your product idea to Life podcast.

This is the podcast for you if you're getting started selling products or if you'd

like to create your own product to sell. I'm Vicki Weinberg, a product

creation coach and Amazon expert. Every week I share friendly,

practical advice as well as inspirational stories from small businesses.

Let's get started.

Hello. So today on the podcast, I am delighted to welcome Maddy Shine.

Maddy is a small business mentor and visibility expert who helps women

owned businesses, businesses grow their businesses by becoming more visible.

Maddy actually joined me on the podcast, oh, I want to say a few years

ago now to talk about SEO. And today she's here to talk about

marketing with personality. She's going to explain what marketing with

personality means, how that applies to you, how that applies to your brand,

and how you can help yourself and your brand be more visible. So I

would love now to introduce you to Maddy.

So, hi, Maddy. Thank you so much for being here. It's wonderful to be

here. Thank you for inviting me back, Vicki. You're so welcome. And so, as you

have alluded to, you have been on the podcast once already. If you don't

mind, I'm going to ask you to reintroduce yourself. Tell us all who

you are. Tell us about your business, what you do and who you support.

Absolutely. So my name is Maddy Shine. Sadly, not the name I was born

with, but that's the name that most people know me by. I am

a blue haired marketing SEO small business

mentor who I work mainly with women who run their own

businesses. And I've been going twelve years

now and I offer all sorts of different services

to help women. I educate them. I also

do services for them with my brand, sassy and soft.

And so I really try and help in as many ways as possible so that

women can run their own businesses in a way that works for

them. Amazing. Thank you. So today we're going to

be talking about marketing and marketing with personality

more specifically. But let's start off with a really

basic question, which is why do we need, when I say we, I mean

women. So why do women need to be visible and make ourselves

and our businesses visible? Beyond the obvious, obviously, we all need to

sell things. Yes, absolutely. Well, the thing is,

we really need to be working on our visibility, particularly as small businesses,

because, you know how we all love to say, support small business, shop

small, all this kind of thing. Well, actually,

without kind of reasons to back that up, then

beyond a nice gesture, why are we really doing

it? So I think that when we work on our visibility

and show our personality and show our brilliant

uniqueness. We all have it, whether we're introvert, extrovert,

bluehead or otherwise. We all have a

personality where we enjoy what we're doing. We

enjoy speaking to people about what we do. And

it's important to share that because there is so much

awfulness going on in the world. And I think that when we

are showing up with what we're doing, what we have built from

scratch, and we get paid money to do that, I mean, how lucky

are we to do that, first of all? But also because we are

supporting ourselves, we are supporting our families.

I just think that these stories need to be told. And that's why

I think it's so important for particularly women who run their own businesses

to be visible. Thank you. And, I mean, I

know that this is something that I struggle with. Naturally. I'm quite shy. I find

it quite hard to put myself out there, and that's just my

reason for it. But I'm sure you have heard lots of

reasons why many of us do struggle with making ourselves

visible. What do you think of some of the other reasons that people

hold back on doing this? Well, let's not forget

that it was only possibly two generations ago where this would be a

frankly unheard of thing. We are pioneers. This is still

a very. In the grand history of time, this, you know,

women being visible sort of thing is quite new.

Sure, women were, you know, were sent out to earn money for the family and

all that kind of stuff. That's not new. And let's not forget all the unpaid

labour that women do. But the whole

concept of actually using our voices,

speaking up, putting ourselves out there, people listening to

our opinions, us like, you know, becoming leaders, this is all

relatively new. And I think that women do struggle with that because

the concept of a confident woman is still so

unpopular in so many different worlds

and still so frowned upon, even

if people are sort of, you know. Oh, yeah, no, I love a confident woman.

I love a strong woman or whatever that's still considered to

be. To look like a certain way, you know, so,

you know, certainly not shy and certainly

not, you know, introvert or anything like

that, you know. And I think that when we actually

do kind of move forward with confidence,

then we can sort of start to see, oh, look at all the things that

are possible. But at the same time,

we haven't been told that many things are possible. What we've been told is that

we'll face trolling, we'll face going viral for wrong reasons. We'll

face ridicule and we worry about

the risks involved. So it's really important to me to show

that there are so many different ways to look being

to be visible rather than

get focused on those reasons why we're not.

That makes a lot of sense. And I think another thing that I certainly have

in mind, and I'm sure others do as well, is that fear of the

feedback that you might get from putting yourself out there. It

feels very vulnerable, actually. Absolutely. I mean, I speak

to people all the time who are worried about asking for reviews from,

you know, from customers. So, you know, it can really kind of go

down to those kind of details as well, where people are so worried just

to send that automated follow up email, you know, would you like to leave a

review on Google? Would you like to leave a review on Amazon Etsy, wherever they're

selling? And I think that's so, you know, it kind of breaks

my heart in a way, because actually, you have put your heart and soul into

making these products, into selling these products whenever it is you're selling. And

actually, when you're, when you know, what do

you think of it? Have you, did you enjoy it then? Actually, the

customer is, you know, very likely to say, yes, I love

your product. I'm very. It's completely, not only is it fit for purpose, but it's

great and everybody loves it or whatever it is you're selling. And so I

think actually giving people the opportunity to show their

love and appreciation is actually

a bigger way, a sort of slightly more expansive way

than, oh, God, I'm scared to ask for

feedback because what if they

hate it? To be honest, customers who hate things will tell you

anyway, won't they? Let's face it, we've all had unhappy

customers, unfortunately. But if you ask for feedback and they haven't given

it already, that, you know, then either they're going to say, here's how

much I love and appreciate your product, or they're going to say

maybe some kind of suggestion which actually would be really useful and will only

ever improve what you're doing, or they're. Not going to bother.

That's the other one. That isn't it. Or they're going to do anything at all.

They're just going to put it in. The junk and move on with their day.

Because that's true as well, isn't it? Because sometimes we can feel the fear about

doing some of these things, but actually, to the person on the other end, it's

such a small thing because I get loads of these emails, you know,

will you review this and that? And if it's a small business, I always do.

But equally, it's not a big event for me to get

an email from someone saying, please leave me feedback. I either will or I won't.

And most nine times out of ten I will,

but it's not an event. But I think for those of us on the

end of having to ask for this feedback, it feels, I think we play it

up a little bit to be bigger than it is, maybe, for sure. I mean,

this is a good example. I get constant automated emails from

delivery companies, not the company selling, sending out the

product, the delivery company saying, how is your delivery

experience? Well, obviously I'm not going to respond to that.

Until last Sunday at 07:30 in the morning,

I got a delivery of my toilet paper from

this lovely eco company. I've been buying them from years on subscription,

but they've never delivered at 07:30 on a Sunday morning before. So obviously it

woke me up. And when I got the how is your

delivery? I wrote a very stroppy email saying, well, I

don't expect to be woken up at 07:30 on a Sunday morning,

thank you very much. And to be fair, they sent an email

almost immediately back, I'd say within the hour saying,

really sorry, these are our hours operation

and this is how we can deliver an efficient service. I'm sorry, blah, blah. So

it was just like, okay, fine, I know you're not going to like, change your

policy, thanks to me, but, you know, I did want to just have a space

just to say I'm not happy about being woken up at

30 on a Sunday morning. And I think that's very sad as

well. Thank you. So one of the reasons obviously

we need to be visible is because we need to let people know what it

is that we're selling. But I think yet another thing that can hold lots

of us back, and I'm speaking again from experience here, is

when you have something to sell, it can feel a bit cringey and a bit

awkward to talk about the thing you have to sell. And I know that's silly,

but I also know I'm not the first person to say this, so how

can we sell our products without

feeling a bit yucky about it? Well, again,

it comes back to reframing. So when, you know, just like I was

saying with the review, feedback, email and kind of panicking about

what they might say and actually giving them the space to either ignore it or

love and appreciate it, then actually it comes down to, that's the same

thing when you're coming down to what you say on your website about the product

or what you say on your social media, emails or anywhere else that you might

be marketing. So really what you can start to think about

is think about those really happy customers. That's the thing that when I'm

getting like, oh, God, no one's going to want to hear me going on and

on about this again, you know, because we all get it. It's only natural

because, again, it's relatively new for us to show off like this,

essentially. And so, actually, when we think about the happy customers, the

ones who can't get enough of what we

buy, you know, what we sell and, you know, they have left good

reviews and they have used lovely language. We can use

that language, but also we can keep them in mind when we

are putting ourselves out there and when we're talking about why other

people, because there'll be other people like that happy customer out there who

are desperate to know about our products. They just don't know about us yet.

And so when we are talking about it and trying to find that confidence to

do that, then that will make it slightly

easier. I'm not going to say it's radically changed overnight, but it'll make it slightly

easier every time you do it, every time you show up to talk about

your beautiful products. That's really helpful.

Thank you. So we said right at the beginning we were going to talk about

marketing with personality. Yes. So, Maddy, what does that mean?

What does that mean? Well, the thing is, you know, when, you know, when you're

at, you know, out for drinks with friends or

you're at a dinner with friends or whatever, and

they ask you about your business, of course, because that's what good

friends do. And then they'll sort of say, you know, that they'll get

you started on something. And we've all been there when we're completely, you know, we

might have had a glass of wine and we kind of go off on one

about this particular product that we're making or something, a new

idea that we've got kind of on the go or something like that.

What I'm talking about is getting that kind of stuff out there in your

marketing platforms so you don't have to radically develop

this kind of confident, you know,

strong personality. If that is not your natural vibe, if it is, great. But

if it isn't, and particularly if it isn't, then I think that that's when

people kind of go, oh, marketing with personality, that's what that means. And

actually what we're doing is we're just finding a way that feels comfortable

for us. But at the same time, you're still working on a marketing

plan and whatever, again, whatever that plan looks like to you.

So you might be thinking about, well, why do

people love what we do? Why do you know? And then

sort of coming at it from that kind of enthusiasm rather

than the worried about what people think. And I

think that's the really solid kind of base for what I mean by

marketing with personality. And the next thing I was thinking about

was when you're at markets, and I

keep seeing those jokey reels about the different kinds of customers that show up

at market stalls, the ones who show interest and ask questions

but still don't buy. But actually, when you're thinking about all those

questions that people ask you whether they buy or not, that's

all juicy fodder, if you like,

for marketing with personality, because that's all personal to

you. That's all personal to you and your

products. And I think that sometimes when we get

kind of caught up in, well, you know, what do you want from me? It's

a mug. If you want the mug, great. If you like drinking tea, buy a

mug. But actually, it's like, how was it made? How were the

colors chosen? What kind of branding is it? Is it for, you

know, is it clearly for quirky people or is it for color lovers? Is it

for, is it dark? You know,

whatever it might be, you're looking at the unique aspects. And I think

that particularly with small businesses, we

get caught up in this idea of the saturated market. Oh,

well, there's loads of people doing what I do now, so, you know, you can

get a bit demotivated. But this is where marketing with

personality comes into play. Because if we're

not using our personality, if we haven't got that,

basically, if we haven't, if we're not creating that unique brand for ourselves, because that's

what I'm really talking about, then we're only ever going to compete on

price, and then it's just a drive to the bottom because we can't

compete with mass producers. We're small

businesses. So I think that would be where to start

with that. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And as you were talking, I

was reflecting on the fact that obviously, I interviewed loads of product

businesses on this podcast, and I interview people who

sell all kinds of things, but I can have a few people

on who sell the same products I've had quite a few guests on who sell

jewelry and every one of them, the impression I have of

them and their company and their products will be different because of

what they've told me and what's important to them and the story

and how they got started and why they got started,

all of that. I think that I was reflecting when you were speaking,

that's the kind of the, that's the kind of thing we're all interested in. I

can't tell you how many times I've bought something of someone because I've introduced them

for the podcast and I've just been like, oh, I love the fact that you

did this because of that. I love you inspired by this, or you retrain.

Whatever it is, you hear someone's story and instantly there's a bit

of a hook there. And it's, it's really interesting. And I

think, I think maybe that

part of what you're talking about is just finding a way to talk about your

products or an aspect of your product or your business or you

that people are interested in. Yes, absolutely. Your

story is such a big part of it because, well, that's

partly why you know them well enough to interview them on your podcast,

because they have developed a clear brand. They've got the story out there.

They're telling those stories. They're telling their why. They're showing their

why. You know, I love to talk to businesses

where it's really clear what their story

is, why they exist. I was talking to

this company the other day and their entire

business is secondhand kids clothing, which is amazing. And

now they've just started a rental branch of it as

well. There's going to be a real story

there and that people can emotionally invest

in. And I think that's, again, why the marketing with

personality is how you can win over

brands who are not doing this, no matter what kind of size of

business you are or how long you've been going. And

I think that this is one of the reasons the podcast is great for this,

is that you're hearing people tell their story in their. I don't know. I

would say that because we are recording this world podcast, I do think it's true.

There's something about hearing people tell their story or talk about their products or their

business in their own voice and their own words. You really

get a sense of them. And it's probably why it's my favorite way of

finding out about new people, new businesses. But

for those of us who maybe, you know, because going on a podcast and being

interviewed absolutely isn't for everyone. So what other

ways do you think there are for businesses to sort of

inject some personality into their marketing if perhaps

you're, you're introverted or, you know, you don't want to maybe be on a podcast?

Maybe you don't even want to be on video. Maybe you don't even want to

show your face. How else can we do

this? You can tell your story in your social media captions

if you don't want to show your face, if you don't want to do video

yet, or if you want to mix it up, tell your story in the video.

In the social media captions. I cannot tell you how many social media

posts I read. And I'm just like, they clearly

spent so long on the graphic that they just couldn't be bothered with the caption

or whatever it might be. Or they just thought,

we're assuming too much of what the reader knows and

remembers. And so, you know, we all, we all scroll, don't we?

We all scroll. We don't press like, on everything. We probably look on quite a

few different accounts, all that kind of stuff. Or we look on our explore

page and we're just browsing. And I love

the ones where people tell stories. And that can be as

simple as using the adjectives that

happy customers have used to describe your products within that story.

It could be just simply how you made it. You could keep it super

simple. Heck, you could even use AI to help

you tell that story. I wouldn't say make. Let I tell them, make up the

story, put a draft version in and let them maybe

jazz it up a bit. But with,

if you're wondering where to start with that, that's where I would start telling the

stories. More on your social media captions. Another way to start with that

video. Emails. Set up that email list. I started my

email list with 16 people ten years

ago. And, you know, I really,

you know those people because I emailed them regularly. They would then tell

other people and so on and so on. So that word of mouth became really

strong because I was chatting away in my

emails. I wasn't kind of, you know, getting head up on

the structure and the conversion rates and the open rates, everything.

I was just sending it out until it started growing and that

it did. So there's different ways to do it. But then, of

course, with video, you don't have to show your face. You

could just do voiceover on the video and that could be for stories,

reels, TikToks, whatever videos you're doing. But I do think

it's important for, you know, to

acknowledge your progression as you create different types of

content. And what I really like to do is encourage people to

play around and find out and if you really hate it, delete it.

Like no one's going to know, it's absolutely fine. But really

playing around with different types of content and having a look at going, oh,

maybe I could do a piece of content like that that I saw Joe bloggs

do over there and really sort of seeing, particularly the

voiceover. I think that's a really great way to, again, inject some

personality and really kind of say, oh, right, okay, so they're like a nice,

calm brand. Great. That's, you know, that's exactly what I want from my

scented candle or whatever it might be, or, oh, look,

they, I saw a business yesterday. They repurpose

broken paddling pools and inflatables and they make

handbags out of it. I mean, that's amazing. But as you'd expect, the

maker was doing a video and she had colorful hair and she was talking

very enthusiastically and all this kind of thing. So it was all very

on brand. So I thought, great, because there's a story there and there's

personality. So really there's all sorts of different. Ways to do

it that makes sense. Thank you. And I liked your point as well

about looking at content and getting inspired by other people's content as

well. Absolutely, yes.

Who is it that said there's no such thing as an original idea? I mean,

I don't know how true that is, but I do think that we are allowed

to be inspired by other people without directly copying

them. And in fact, I love that feature on reels

where you can remix a reel. So I've actually just recently had a

reel go viral, which, funnily enough, I'm not

in. It's Elmo from Sesame street.

But I put my own caption and I put my own

text on it because I remixed someone else's reel.

And I've had, I think, over 8000 saves of that reel now.

So, you know, that kind of visibility is obviously going to be

really important to me. Yeah, I can

see that. And I forgot about the remixing. I've never remixed a meal a reel,

as you can probably tell. I forgot that was even a feature. But that sounds

like a nice way, perhaps to start using reels as well, to use

something else as a starting point. Absolutely. Because I love making

people laugh this funny clip of Elmo really shows off my

brand personality as well as giving some useful information in the

caption. And I've got a few others saved as well. Like, I

love SNL, so I've got a few reels of those saved that I'm going

to remix at some point. I found another Elmo one, you

know, so it really kind of helps give an indication. I think memes

and clips like that can also really help show off your brand

personality as well. That's a really good point.

Now, you've said that the clips that someone chooses to share,

especially on a business account, does give you a good indication

of who that person is, what they like, what their personality is, what their sense

of humor is, perhaps. Exactly. You know, from that,

from that kind of content that I am a joyful,

optimistic sort of person, you know, that I am not going to be

this serious corporate, minimalist

kind of brand. Not that there's anything wrong with that. You just know that I'm

not going. To be that and coming off track a little bit. I'd also like

to say that we get that from your website as well, Maddy, which will be

linked in the show notes for anyone who wants to look. Your website

is very, very different to, I want to say, any website that

I've looked at for someone who does similar to what you do, if you see

what I mean, your website is really distinct. It's got a lot of personality.

Before I even spoke to you, I had a strong sense of what kind

of person you would be through your website. So is that something else

we should be thinking about? When we think about marketing with personality, should our

websites be an indication of that personality

or. Not necessarily. I'm curious. I'm a massive

fan of having a strong brand, but I should

say this, I did not start off with that kind of brand. That is

so much pinterest planning on secret boards of

what kind of branding I, you know, and when I say branding, I mean

it was the style of photography because there is like kind of big

extrovert, you know, it's me in a pub with blue

hair, space buns, quite casual these

days, but really kind of, you know, with a powerful

stance but relaxed. I like to call it sassy and soft. That's why I

named my second brand. And with

my strong branding, I really wanted it to feel like a. A

welcoming bar, you know, where you could pull up a chair next to

me and have a good conversation. And that's really what I wanted for

my branding. So when you're thinking about your branding. Absolutely. Go first.

You know, go and speak to brand designers, because I'm no brand designer, but

I did work with a brand designer to develop that

website so that I was really clear on what kind of fonts I wanted,

what kind of fonts I didn't. The color scheme and all that kind of stuff,

and the brand photography as well. I worked with a great brand photographer for those

photos. So I did a lot of planning and a lot of

evolution over the years. And I think that's also something I wanted to bring

up in this chat as well, is that

we don't allow ourselves to evolve. We kind of say, oh, we're

unhappy with our website or we don't like how our Instagram aesthetic

looks or whatever, but actually we don't think about what we want

instead. And so we use that as a reason not to be

visible. And so what I would definitely encourage everyone to

do is hop onto Pinterest look up,

because there's all sorts, obviously, on Pinterest look up color schemes that you love.

And it could be from anything, take inspiration from anything. I think I got mine

from old photos of Madonna from the eighties,

from a couple of neon bars I found from America,

you know, and from small photos of Susan

Sarandon and, like, Drew Barrymore, things like that. So, you know,

icons from, yeah, eighties and nineties and how I really

wanted that to look. And, you know, it could be different for everybody.

But hop onto Pinterest and it's really fun. Do some vision boarding.

Yeah, that is fun. So when we're

thinking about selling products, how do we add personality

to our marketing? Because I think this might be something

where people are coming a bit unsullied. Because I think if you're a service business

or you have a personal brand, it can not always, but it can feel

easier to put some personality into what you do. I do

think it can possibly be harder if you're selling products,

particularly if you're not visible as the face of the

business, let's say. So you have a brand and it's

your brand, it's your business, but you're trying to put the products front and

foremost rather than yourself. I don't know if I'm wording this correctly, but

I think you get the gist of what I mean. How do we add personality

when it's all about the products? Okay, so let's take the

scented candle example, shall we? So

if I was selling scented candles,

I would consider how do people want to

feel about those scented candles and my guess is that

they want to have long, hot bubble baths. They want to have a relaxing

time of it in their home, in their home office. They want

to have a break from everything, all the noise. So we're thinking quite

calm and quiet. If they're kind of quite minimal

designs, I might be thinking, okay, so we'll do quite minimal

videos. We'll use nice classical music. We won't use

upbeat. We'll use kind of lo fi sounds. We'll search

for that on reels. We'll create video content

with kind of maybe beautiful textures. We'll will

try and invoke that sense of what people

want from buying that candle. And that's how you

can start carving out that personality for your brand.

Because when I say marketing personality, it doesn't have to be yours. No,

obviously it could look easier for me because I've got a

personal brand, but if it's not you, then it's actually somewhat

easier to develop a personality

for a brand that is not actually yours. So like I was just

describing, with that calm, quiet, beautiful music,

calm surroundings, you could create that

personality. And that's what people are buying into

that makes sense. And do you think there's an element there or thinking about

the personalities of your customers?

So coming back to candle example, if you have

a sense of who your customer is and why they're

purchasing from you, is there some of that goes

into it as well? I don't know whether there does because actually,

if you think about it, all sorts of different people buy scented candles. All

sorts of people might buy any products. And so I

actually quite tempted to move away from the traditional

client or customer avatar, if you like the customer

profile. I'm thinking about their values and their

wishes. What do they want from life? So people

buying a scented candle could be a woman like me who's

living at home alone and they have a stinky cap, but they also like

long, hot baths. So they're like a scented candle. Right. But

I also equally could be a busy mum with five kids

clamoring all over the shop and her yelling at her husband

or, you know, whatever, going, I just need five minutes peace and quiet.

Okay, can you all, can you just take the kids out or whatever it is,

you know, on a Saturday morning and the mum can, like, put down a candle

on and like, have some five minutes of quiet. So we're not

going to look the same, be the same, or live in the same area

necessarily. We might well do, but actually what we want

is that calm and quiet. And so that's the personality that you have to tap

into, in my opinion. Thank you. And the reason I wanted

to ask that does come back to what you said before about, there's a lot

of advice out there, and I don't hear it as much now, but certainly

ten years ago, you'd be hurt. You'd be told, make an avatar for your

customer. Think about what they're called and where they shop and what they read. And

I'll be honest, I never did any of that because it seemed like an awful

lot of work, but that always was the advice. But then when you

try and do that and then you think about the personality of your

brand, I was thinking, that's actually a lot. So I think that'd be really comforting

for people to hear you say. And, of course, there's nothing wrong with people who

want. If people want to create an avatar for their customer,

that's all good, too, to hear you say, you don't

have to do that when you're thinking about how you add

personality to your own brand. Definitely not. I think that

I've always. Because I always used to wonder, like, why is that the

advice? And I think I might have even given that advice, and I thought if

I give that way back when. But

actually, when I start to think about what are their

values rather than what newspaper do they read,

then I tend to. I tend to get a better match

anyway. So I might then sell to

people who don't have the same values as me for, well,

sorry, the same, you know, news. They might not read the same newspaper as me,

or they might not live in the same town as what I'm thinking. So then

I used to think, well, where does that fit in with my ideal customer profile?

But actually, they have the same values as me, which is they

also want to learn how to take up space. They also want. They also

want to thrive as a woman running their own business. They, you

know, they might have feminist leanings, they might not. They might be

curious about feminist leanings, you know, all this kind of thing. So that's. That would

be why I'm lean. That's why I lean more into that stuff, rather

than, you know, she's 36, she lives in

Peterborough. All that jazz, I think it makes sense. I think

it's just looking at the other way around, which is if you build a strong

personality for your brand, you will attract people who have the

same values and possibly the same interests, depending on what your brand

personality is, rather than doing it the other way around and trying to

create a brand personality for a

customer avatar who may or may not exist. Exist, yeah,

for sure. I mean, so I haven't even mentioned my gifts yet, but

in lockdown, I learned to create gifs of myself

and I learned how to get them visible

on the Internet, and they continue to go viral. So they have been

seen, I think, over hundred million times now, which is

kind of wild. I can't really, like, envisage that number, but, yeah, that's

what. That's what I'm told by the stats. It's a big number.

Right. But I know that when clients or

friends or friends of clients or, you

know, clients of friends, whatever, they. I'm being used in all

sorts of different meetings, discussions, conversations, and I often get

tagged. And then I. Then there's another sort of aspect

of, oh, well, that's Maddy. She likes to, you know, be optimistic

and joyful, and that's what her gifts are and that's why they've gone so

popular. Not always, of course. You know, like, celebrities have used

my gifts, obviously not knowing that is I.

And of course, there's no way I can message them because they're never going to

read their dm's from people they don't follow. Right. So. But

no, it's all sorts of different ways to help

that idea of who you are and what you do out there.

Particularly. Particularly if you don't want to get your face out there.

Conveying that concept of what you're selling

is just as important as the product. That's really

helpful. Thank you. And I also think it's really helpful to know that you and

your brand can have entirely different personalities.

I think that's also really useful and hopefully reassuring as

well. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Although I would say

this when you're selling, so I know one of

my clients is sells country living products. So

horses, dogs, gardening, all those kinds of things. She makes

them and personalizes them, and it's amazing. And

she is very much a fan of all those things. That's why she wanted to

create that business. That's why she's very passionate about it. So I

would just be wary if you're looking at selling products

and, you know, maybe I'm wrong, so forgive me if I

am, but it usually there is a strong overlap. I call it like

a Venn diagram, you know? So your personality probably shouldn't

be, your own personality probably shouldn't be radically different from what it is you're trying

to sell because otherwise it's not going to work. Yeah, absolutely. I think I was

thinking more along the lines of you could be quite an introverted,

quiet person, but maybe the products that you're selling,

your brand could be quite bright and loud and colorful,

perhaps. I think I was meaning more like that because you're absolutely right. I mean,

if you are, I don't know, very big on sustainability

and you're selling, I don't know. So I can't think of a good example. Plastic

straws. But you know what I mean. Yeah. Then that doesn't

fit. So I think, absolutely. I think your business values and your

brand values need to align. But I think there is a bit of space with

a personality that maybe if you are quite shy, for example, you could have a

bit more fun with Persona of your brand.

Yes. I think it's also interesting, just if you do

sell at markets as well and sell in real life, to also keep that

in mind, because then people might have an expectation,

I suppose, of, oh, okay, so you've got a bright and quirky

brand. But then I've met a lot of bright, quirky introverts, actually,

so forgive me, I'll stop talking.

The story is really interesting, though, because you do get an eye. You do have

sometimes, whether we want to admit to this or not, we do sometimes have

preconceptions of what x person will be based on

their brand, their products, what we've seen online. Yes, I think we

do. We do. Yes. And it's not. And it's not always what you'd

expect. No, definitely not. Definitely not. Sometimes it's fun to blow up people's

expectations. Oh, yeah, definitely. So,

Maddy, thank you so much for all of everything that you

shared. I think this is really useful. I think it's a lot to think about

as well. Actually, one final question before my

final question. So the penultimate question is, so do you think

that for a product's business, it's okay to not

put yourself front and center of your business if that

doesn't. If that doesn't work for you. So when we talk about your brand

personality, is it okay to be the founder of a brand and actually

let the brand lead and keep yourself a bit quieter?

Absolutely. I give you full permission to do that as long as you do push

the brand personality. So there's like a caveat to my answer,

because what I've noticed is I have, you

know, I meet business owners because, of course, you know, down the pub

even, I get into conversation with people and say, oh, I run my own business.

I make beauty products or something like that. And I'm saying, okay. What

kind of marketing do you do? And they do the most stunning photography. They

really do this one particular business I have in mind, and they'll

never show their face, and that's their style. Absolutely fine.

But they're not pushing what they are doing

enough. So I'm not saying it's not good enough. It's

beautiful. But they need to be looking at other ways

to push that and develop that brand

personality now that they have the beautiful photograph. So

I think I would just say if you want to detach

yourself from that and not be the face of your brand, absolutely fine.

But make sure you're really pushing the stuff that you are doing.

That's really helpful. Thank you. And so finally, Maddy, my

real final question. What would your number one piece of advice be

for marketing with personality? To

play around with different styles,

different platforms, and find out what

works for you before you start finding

out, you know, before, before you burn yourself out trying to find what

works for other people. Because without you, there is no business. And that's what

the main thing is. That's really good advice. Thank you. Because it can be too

easy to think, oh, I should be on this platform because so and so is

doing that, or I should create gifts because Maddy's done it or whatever the

thing is. So, yeah, that's really good advice. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you so much for

listening. Right to the end of this episode, do remember that you can get the

full back catalog and lots of free resources on my website,

vickiwineberg.com. Please do remember to rate and review this

episode if you've enjoyed it and also share it with a friend who you think

might find it useful. Thank you again and see you next week.