Join host Brian Mattocks as he interviews Rachel Gogos, Founder and CEO of the brandiD and MyPath101, to explore her experiences in brand building and helping students find their path. Rachel shares how her businesses have evolved and the challenges she faces in marketing. She also discusses her innovative approaches to sales and partnerships. This episode highlights the importance of strategy and implementation in brand building, the commoditization of branding, and Rachel’s commitment to assisting individuals and businesses. Moreover, Rachel underlines the significance of faith, persistence, and mindset in her journey towards becoming a successful multi-business magnate.
Rachel Gogos, a serial entrepreneur and personal branding expert, has dedicated her career to helping individuals find their purpose and leverage their unique identities. As the CEO of brandiD and MyPath101, she empowers students and businesses to build successful paths through personal branding, digital marketing, and identity development. Rachel’s extensive expertise in this field, including being one of only 15 worldwide with a Master’s level certification in personal branding, makes her a remarkable guest to explore the importance of personal branding and digital marketing for entrepreneurs. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Hard to Market:
- Rachel Gogos launched brandiD, a personal branding and web agency, over a decade ago, focusing on building WordPress sites for thought leaders and entrepreneurs.
- The brandiD’s growth has been primarily organic, relying on word-of-mouth and high-quality work, but recent years have necessitated more intentional sales and marketing efforts.
- Rachel explores various marketing tactics, including podcasting, social media, LinkedIn presence, lead magnets, and potential partnerships and workshops.
- Embracing an organic and dynamic hosting style creates a more authentic and engaging experience.
- Brand building is becoming commoditized, but the combination of strategy and implementation sets businesses apart.
- Rachel’s services cater to high school and college students, thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and small business owners.
- Persistence and a long-term focus are essential in overcoming challenges and achieving success.
Resources:
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Quotables:
- 5:05 – “The podcast that I launched a little over a year and a half ago was certainly more of a marketing tactic for us. Just an opportunity to get my voice out there and my own thought leadership. And of course share the platform with as many other thought leaders as possible and share their stories, social media, but mostly organic.”
- 11:15 – “The price point is $19.97 per month a subscription, like I said now for any college student that’s like a couple of visits to Starbucks. In a month, it’s really not that much money. But again, we know most likely they won’t want to spend the money on something like this. And that’s why I’m more trying to do it through these other organizations or consultants where they could maybe bundle it into their offers that they have.”
- 14:10 – “So with the podcast, it was something that had been on my mind for years and years and years and I was always working on it in the back of my mind. And then some years back I started, I had a client who had a very active and large podcast and we became friends over the course of working together and we started kind of brainstorming ideas for my show. Because I wanted it to be a little different, of course. I wasn’t sure what the angle should be. So it took another couple years after connecting with her on it that I finally launched it. And I’ve just really enjoyed it because it’s an opportunity to meet, to your point about the network, just lots of new people that you wouldn’t normally have a conversation with or interact with because they’re in different industries or different parts of the country.”
- 15:22 – “I don’t know about you, but I mean, we use ours in a lot of cases to just connect people together. Like “Hey, who do you want to meet? Take a look through the list of folks that we’ve interviewed, if you want intros to any of those. Let us know and we can make those work. That’s been really a powerful place to sit as well because when you become that connector, you gain some social sort of capital as it were. And when you ask for like, “Hey, can you share this on your social media? Or can you do this or that, whatever, it usually works out reasonably well. So there’s just a ton of positive investment that’s come out for us in that relationship development stuff.”
- 20:55 – “The things that we’ve done as of late have been the email follow on. So we sent out “There’s a new episode for the show that you’ve been featured on.” We also invite guests to connect to each other. Like, “Hey, if you want to meet our new guest that’s going to be released in this episode or whatever, let us know.” That process has been good and we get some uptake on connecting guests with each other. But we also get, essentially those guests that have been on the show now are sort of scoping out what’s coming.”
- 25:05 – Brian: “I’ve never heard you lead the conversation with like, “oh yeah, we’re a web team.” The angle of that conversation takes you out of that commoditization problem that the WordPress website builders have, right? You now are no longer in direct competition for web design. You’re in competition for access to people making a brand statement. And that’s a different sort of conversation. And I like the strategy. I think that’s pretty insightful.”
Rachel: “Yeah. Though I do feel like even the brand part is starting to become commoditized as of late. I think there’s a lot more people offering the brand building, like brand voice services too. So I’m hoping that pairing the two together, the implementation, not just a strategy. Because I always say strategy’s great, but it’s nothing if you don’t do something with it.” - 29:05 – “Sometimes I think I’ve been my own worst enemy in the aspect of my personality that is a little bit more on the introverted side. And I didn’t want to put myself out there and I think it has definitely stunted growth at times in my professional, like on my professional journey. So just really working on my mindset and remembering that my work is here to be of service to others. It’s ultimately not about me, it’s just being that channel or that bridge.”