You Can’t Be Me | I Don’t Do Court, I Tweet

#LivingSugarFree #BrandManagement  #Reputation

The reason I’m good at what I do, is that I do what I’m good at. That’s called staying in your lane and owning it.

You can be you, and the best at it. But you can not be me. When you try to be like other people, for the sake of popularity and/or selling, that’s when you skrew up.

Words, patents, and copyrights are tough. Basically a way to get money by the government and products to push by corporations. If consumers didn’t fall for hype, branding wouldn’t be so important. The corner small business is a wonderful concept and works perfectly well in any scale and size… But because of the bad business person who takes short cuts and/or  knows how to trick consumers, quality brands need to be protected.

Until you are financially in a position to play this game, because it is a costly and time consuming one, take these steps:
1. Always make copys (songs, books, articles, scripts, jokes, blogs, classes, proposals, etc.) and certify mail them to self. Do not open. Also archive them on the cloud with date stamps.
2. Research domains and Google new ideas. Rarely ever was it never thought of before.
3. Use your brands hashtags to own your online social media space.
4. Own your profile names and email addresses everywhere.

There’s nothing you can ask me about branding that I can’t relate to. I’ve been on many sides of the ‘unfair’ spectrum. I’ve been harassed for using common words that are widely known when someone decided to copyright them. And I’ve had my registered brand hijacked by folks who claim to be “sugar free” in the definition, which has been mine for over seven years (not the phrase, that’s been around forever). How do I know? I did the research before I started. Patents and copyrights are all about uniqueness.

I can tell you from proven experience how to create a clean brand, protect it, and be respectful of others. If you are looking to get over, get rich quick or take advantage of a brand or your customers, I can’t help you… as a matter of fact just kill yourself now and save us all the headache.

If you have a vision and want to do it the right way, regardless of challenges and hard knocks hoping to one day share your experiences with others, you’ve come to the right place.

For starters, do some research when you ‘find yourself’. This is a cliché thrown around in social environments. But if you don’t know who you are, how can you brand yourself? If you are two steps from a nervous breakdown should you be coaching? If you hate kids should you be teaching? If you don’t get sales, service, hr or any other business basic, should you be selling business success products? If you can’t give up doughnuts, should you be selling fitness? All of these questions are yours to ask yourself. If the answer is yes, own it. If the answer is no stop living in someone elses lane.

I can’t tell you how many ‘gurus’, and experts are making a killing and I wonder how they function in public without a straight jacket. If you have to secretly call someone to live your brand and can’t publicly acknowledge that expert as part of your brand, you are stealing their lane and you won’t succeed. “Fake it until you make it,” doesn’t mean to fake the entire brand.

Once you understand who you are, embrace it. You can’t sell what you don’t buy. Sooo, if you don’t love who you are, how ya gonna sell it? Also you will be looking for key phrases and catch phrases to describe what you don’t like. How are you going to do that? You will be cleaning the words up and trying to make it look good but it won’t be believable. If you’re weird, own it. Know that it’s only the opinions of others that have you doubting your unique greatness.

So when I receive the dreaded message from a friend saying “is this you?” I already know what is coming and how I will handle it. First of all, if it was me, you wouldn’t have to ask. Second, I’m so in my lane, you can’t Google sugar free without seeing me.

Make no mistake, you can not succeed riding off the unique greatness of someone else. You will always pale as a cheap imitation because you are being an intentional  fake, duplicate, nock-off, etc.

Let’s discuss it… http://xeeme.com/AndréaRaquel