IAM519- Coach Helps Local Entrepreneurs Develop Strategic Branding

Brée, affectionately referred to as Baroness, is a digital engagement coach, mother, writer, oenophile, and blerd. Brée is a creative ninja who aids creative businesses in developing strategic branding through effective marketing and kick-ass content.

When she's not helping local entrepreneurs, you can find her articles on sites such as essence.com, or providing commentary on her podcast Fabulous Fuckery, passionate about improving the world for future generations, Brée can be found partnering with local and national organizations to raise funding and awareness for mental health, homelessness, and youth stem engagement.

In her spare time, find her sipping tea, reading, watching anime with her sons, or taking a refreshing nap.

• CEO Hack: Saying no at times
• CEO Nugget: Don't listen to naysayers
• CEO Defined: Following your passion, driving yourself and your career forward

Website: https://www.baronessbree.com/

Instagam: https://www.instagram.com/baronessbree
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/baronessbree

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Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, hello. Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today at Bree Nachelle of baronessbree.com.

Bree, It's awesome to have you on the show.

Bree Nachelle 0:39

Thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:42

No problem and pleasure is all mine. And what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Bree so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. And Bree affectionately referred to as Baroness is a digital engagement coach, mother, author, I'm sorry writer, oenophile, and blerd. Bree is a creative ninja who aids creative businesses in developing strategic branding through effective marketing and kick-ass content.

When she's not helping local entrepreneurs she can find her articles on sites such as essence.com or providing commentary on our podcast fabulous fuckery. passionate about improving the world for future generations Bree can be found partnering with local and national organizations to raise funding and awareness for mental health, homelessness, and youth stem engagement and in her spare time finds her sipping tea reading watching anime with their sons or taking a refreshing nap. Bree, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Bree Nachelle 1:35

I am, Thank you for having me.

Gresham Harkless 1:37

No problem appreciate you having you on and naps are life. But before we jump in more, I wanted to hear a little bit more about your story. And what led you to get started with your business?

Bree Nachelle 1:47

Well, I love social media, I work from my day job. And I wanted to figure out how to work with small businesses to help them grow you know, we see a lot of people when they start a Twitter page and Instagram and they're like, that's my business presence. But that's not how you engage your audience. And I wanted to be able to reach out mainly because I found that women and women of color primarily, haven't a lot of difficulties making a name for themselves in the digital space. So just helping them to get comfortable in front of the camera, and get comfortable with some content development has been helpful.

Gresham Harkless 2:21

Yeah, absolutely. When I see, you know, appreciate you, you know, seeing that there's something that you can kind of help out with and that can be true. Any entrepreneur, rather than, you know, sitting on the sidelines saying I can help out with it. So could you take us through exactly how you work with clients and some of the services you provide?

Bree Nachelle 2:37

Absolutely. So in the beginning, what we do is every searcher your presence, you know, because everyone feels that they're doing more aligned than they are. And that's not a bad thing, because it's a lot of work. And everything that you do to engage your clients is a start. But we have to be able to see where's the reach. Where are we engaging? And sometimes, our posts fall on deaf ears. So I am trying to figure out who is your market. Do you have an Is there a need in your region? Are you thinking just regional? Are you thinking national? Are you thinking globally? Sometimes our needs are bigger than ours.

So just from helping people to figure out what their strategy is to figure out what their endgame is, where do you see yourself in 10 years? Is this product still going to be a product you sell in 10 years? And you know, engaging in figuring out what's what, because a lot of times we don't think about that we just say social media, let me hire someone, get me 10,000 followers. And that's not real life. You can have 10,000 followers, but are they buying anything from you?

Gresham Harkless 3:43

Yeah, and they was saying likes don't necessarily equal dollars. So you know, unfortunately, that doesn't isn't the case. So it's interesting that you talked about that. Because I think just as you said, so many times, as entrepreneurs and business owners, we don't necessarily do a lot of that work to understand like, why we're doing what, what exactly we're doing. And like even, I think the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, one of the big things is to begin with the end in mind. So understanding where you're trying to go, and what you're trying to accomplish is a big aspect. And a lot of times we know we don't necessarily do that. So I appreciate you for having that as part of your arsenal and your step-by-step process.

Bree Nachelle 4:18

We're trying, you know, it's different. It's so different when you're doing it and helping other people versus pushing and playing. I can plug and play and download bots and do all kinds of cool stuff. A lot of it's a waste of time.

Gresham Harkless 4:31

Yeah, no, no, I appreciate that. Because I think that we don't necessarily, you know, do that measurement or don't drill down and figure out exactly like what we're trying to accomplish. So sometimes when we are using those bots and we do get those likes, and we do get the increase in followers, whatever that might be that is that vanity metric, I think would be the phrase people use. It isn't necessarily moving the needle toward what we're ultimately trying to do.

Bree Nachelle 4:54

There are a couple of rappers I want to say I think it was Mace, who last year when they were doing the Great Purge, have Instagram only had about 15,000 authentic followers. And you know, that's embarrassing. So you know, you don't want to be caught with your pants down. Because you're out here trying to stunt for likes and influencer campaigns and almost anybody can get an influencer campaign nowadays.

So, you know, just be authentic, and we need to make sure we know who we are because it translates online.

Gresham Harkless 5:22

Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny like a lot of times we look at some of these kinds of changes and purchases, as you talked about, and we see that as a negative. But a lot of times sometimes that just shows like how well you're doing, what you're doing, how much you're engaging, there's kind of a true measurement of that because it's kind of looking to kind of see who's moving the needle.

Bree Nachelle 5:43

Yeah, my only concern I will say is that now that the end of the year is coming, everyone's trying to sell their products, and everybody's going to Instagram Live at the same time. So like, if you Instagram Live, and I'm Instagram Live and everybody's a scrim live at nine o'clock every night? who's listening to you? You know, so we have to come up with a strategy for when is your audience online. When are they engaging with your posts? Is Instagram Live? The best thing could you do? Periscope, could you use what was gonna be called Twitter Studio was now just going to be called but Facebook Live? We got to play around with it and figure out everybody can't be on Instagram Live at the same time.

Gresham Harkless 6:19

No, absolutely cannot because somebody has to be listening, somebody has to be in the audience for sure. And yeah, I appreciate that.

I know you touched on like one of the groups and one of the the people that you work with are women of color. Can you talk a little bit more about why you feel like that isn't, I guess, haven't been able to kind of breakthrough as much as you would hope and how you're helping to do that?

Bree Nachelle 6:39

Well, I'll tell you right now in the podcast space. Women of Color, where we have some of the best podcasts, in my opinion. However, we're not getting that space with Luminary and all of these advertisers that are out there. But you see that they're the ones that are out there, echoing in the Twitter-sphere, they're out and Facebook, you see all these groups that are you know, so 1000, podcasts, groups, groups out there for the public interest, but we're not getting the leverage and the people who are the most authentic or coming across the best.

So it's like, what do we do, to sell our podcasts to sell our content because you're copying our content, black culture is king on social media, you have seen the Popeyes chicken sandwich. But when people have a book coming out, you know, you see this person posting to their friends and family to buy a book. More than likely your friends and family are not gonna buy that book from you. But you may have a tribe of people who are less looking for what you have to offer and tend to, unfortunately, women and moms, I will say moms, we don't want to get outside of our comfort zone, because it's scary out there.

So sometimes we have to say, Hey, I gotta do what's best for my brand. I believe in myself and step out there and be yourself. Especially when you, unfortunately, our friends and family may not see the vision that's on our hearts. And it's my job to kind of help women say, Okay, this is your vision, let's step out. Let's do this. What does this mean to you? And people can go hard. I'm proud of some of the people that I know and partner with. Because we don't know anything about podcasts, and this is brand new to everyone, we're going hard, and I'm excited for what 2020 holds.

Gresham Harkless 8:18

Yeah, absolutely. No, I think it's super exciting. Because as you kind of talked about, you find that in the digital marketing space, but also in the podcasting space that is still so fairly new that a lot of it is kind of developed. It's kind of like a newborn, so to speak, where you're starting to see it walk a little bit, and you don't necessarily know what it's going to be.

But I think a lot of those first mover's people that are going to be able to, I guess, be ahead of the curve are going to be those people that kind of jump in and start doing things and lean on, you know, experts like yourself to understand exactly how they're doing and what to do.

Bree Nachelle 8:49

We're trying and know what the word expert freaks me out because it changes so much. You don't know what, you know, you never know where you're gonna end up. And then two days later, they change all the algorithms and Facebook keeps trying to bump up their sales strategies in this day, you people are talking into a vacuum.

Gresham Harkless 9:05

Yeah, absolutely. No, it makes so much sense. So let me ask you this, what would you consider to be like your secret sauce or thing that kind of sets you apart or your organization and makes you unique?

Bree Nachelle 9:17

So it's a couple of things. The first thing would be authenticity. I meet people where they are. And that's real. Like, you know, I love people. I love challenges. Sometimes, we may not be a good match. And I can say to someone, you know what, I don't have what you need, but let me recommend someone else to you. That's part of being real about your business and your growth. It's not all about money. It's about making connections that will last a lifetime. Some of these people I've known for years, and they're like, Oh, you start a podcast, or Oh, you started doing this, this is dope. And they just help they want to support you just because they know you. And I call those your you know, that's your tribe.

And then you meet people on the way to conferences and events. it's like, well, I'm picking up my tribe, I'm meeting my people. So it's just that making sure you're being authentic to yourself. The other thing is, is to automate anything you can. Because I don't know, if I had time to do all of these things and all these steps in the morning, I got to post to Instagram then go to Twitter, and then go to Facebook. And then all the services are charging these crazy amounts of money to automate your feeds. But no one's telling you that Facebook business manager, you can post a Facebook and Instagram grand for free.

And then if you have some, there are some little hacks that I can tell you about if anyone wants to follow me online. But some hacks will post to your Pinterest account, there are some hacks, they'll post to your Tumblr, and they're free. So we have ways to get our data out there without having to do 50 steps, because I forget to post on Twitter all the time, I'm trying to do better. But we have got to remember to automate what we can because you're only human. You know, my last thing is to make sure you're taking care of yourself. My podcast is called fabulous fuckery. But it's the sophisticated, sophister ratchet destination for self-care and growth for entrepreneurs.

So we talk about yoga, we talk about, you know, what are you doing to take vacations? How are you doing with your time management, this season coming up is more about health care. But, you know, we have to take care of ourselves, we have these big dreams in our hearts, and the universe is gonna give you everything you've ever desired. But you have to take care of yourself in the process. And if that's therapy, or eating right, or going to the gym, you got to schedule it on the calendar just like you do all the other meetings.

Gresham Harkless 11:32

Absolutely. Well, awesome. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you about what I call a CEO hack. Could you tell us a little bit about some of those hacks and things that you do to be effective and efficient?

Bree Nachelle 11:43

One of those hacks is, sometimes we have to say no, you have a lot on your plate. A lot of people are naturally happy with these great business opportunities for exposure. And some of them are good opportunities. And some of them are not meant to be for you. And sometimes you just have to say no, and pass the plate to the next person and be able to be okay with it if you regret it later.

Gresham Harkless 12:09

Yeah, absolutely. No, I appreciate that. Now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is like a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. Or if you could hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Bree Nachelle 12:22

I would tell my younger business self not to listen to the naysayers.

Gresham Harkless 12:27

Awesome, awesome. Awesome. Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote and quote, CEOs on this show, but what does being a CEO meanto you?

Bree Nachelle 12:38

Ooh, um, you know, it means following your passion. It's not necessarily about the money. It's not necessarily about the visibility. It's about being in a place where you are driving your career and driving yourself forward.

Gresham Harkless 12:52

Absolutely, yeah, I think a lot of times we forget where you are and can't be the driver. So a lot of times the decisions that we make are the environments that we have around us to be able to reach where we want to go. So I appreciate that definition. Appreciate your perspective. Appreciate your time even more.

What I wanted to do was pass you on the Mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and listeners know. And then of course, how best they can get a hold of you download the podcast, and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

Bree Nachelle 13:17

All right. Well, um, right now I am working on so I write for magazines. I do freelance writing. And we're working on some things that are coming out in 2020. I'm finishing my book, which has not been titled yet, but it's a self-help book for entrepreneurs. Also came out in the spring of 2020. And what else am I doing? I have my blog, which is everything is located on barenessfree.com, and my podcast fabulous fuckery, we'll be launching its new season in a couple of weeks and have a holiday gift guide that is coming out on Saturday with just local and actually not local, but just tons of entrepreneurs that I've connected with online who just looking for an extra place to put the name of their company.

And maybe you guys can pick it up and see if you guys need some candles or some beauty stuff or therapy. It's a little bit of everything offered on the website. And what else am I doing? You can find me on Baronessbree.com on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Tumblr. And I feel like I'm forgetting another website. Instagram, thank you. The name of my podcast is fabulous fuckery, which is a sophisticated destination for self-care and entrepreneurial growth. We have so much fun on that podcast. And that's my baby. I never thought in a million years I'd be doing something like this, but it's fun. And if you or anyone else you'd like to have come on. You're welcome. All the links are on my website to come and be a guest.

Gresham Harkless 14:44

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And the links you just as you mentioned, are going to be in the show notes as well too. So wherever you're listening to this, you can listen to that. Also, subscribe to the podcast. And I appreciate you appreciate your time and all the awesome things you're doing and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Outro 15:07

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless.

Thank you for listening.

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