Branding is KEY with Darlene Hawley on Expert Talk 9@9

Hey everybody, welcome to the show. You know where you are 9 @ 9 with me TGo. And as always, I love bringing great experts to tell us all kinds of cool stuff. But over the last year, other than the word pivot, I have heard your brand, your brand. If you're going to start a business, you got to worry about your brand.

You got to worry about how you're going to get your word out there. Consistency, which is why we do the 9 @ 9, every Tuesday and Thursday, because of consistency. And I have great friends that are in my corner that are going, this is what branding is. This is what building your business is. And today I brought somebody on. She's a good friend.

We have a lot of fun guys should have been here before we went live. We have a lot of fun, but she's a brand expert. So she's going to answer those questions for you right now today. Hey, Darlene Hawley, what's happening to be here with you today. Hey everyone! Woo Let's go. Let's go. All right. Before we get into that,

how you doing, girl? I know the kids just went back to school. You've had, have you taken a deep breath yet? Is it, is it, you know, real yet? What's going on? We're on day five Here in Southern California of the kids being back in school. And it's definitely not real. I come home to my home office and it's just me here now again,

which is totally different than the past year and a half has been. And it's a little too quiet. I'm definitely not wanting them to come home, but I'm still getting used to like my flow back at work again with actually being able to come home, relax for a minute, dive into my work and actually get all my work done in peace and quiet,

which I haven't had for a while. So you had a little taste of emptiness syndrome way before it's time to have empty nest syndrome. Yes. Yeah, the past couple of days I'm like, wait, is this how it used to be? I guess it was, it just, it's been so long since I had like actual quiet me time that wasn't me like locking myself in a bathroom and taking a hot bath and like hoping and praying the kids didn't come in just so I can have like that 20 minutes of Zen time.

But yeah, it's, it's weird with them being back in school, but it's really nice also to come home and like actually be able to concentrate and get my stuff done and way less time, which is what I talk about all the time with my clients is like work efficiently, be succinct with what you're doing, get everything done quickly and strategically and easy.

So you don't have to work a ton. And then I feel like because of COVID, there was never any like big blocks of time that I could actually work. So I feel like I've been working in the nooks and crannies of being a Mom and doing everything else. So it's nice to have a chance now to just go back to scheduling and get everything done on my time and not have all the interruptions that was coming with COVID.

Now I've got this visual of an English muffin because you said nooks and crannies, and now I'm hungry. Okay, nevermind. So I'm, I'm just thinking, you know, they're young Moms out there to probably started their first business while all this has been going on for the last 18 months, they got into a rhythm with the kids being home and you know,

family significant other that, and building their business. And now they're going through that as well. It's it's quiet now. And now they have to adjust their schedule. How do you get motivated to not work in the nooks and crannies, but actually dedicate time while the kids were at school? How do you get motivated to do that? I Love that you asked that because so many people that I talked to you ask that question all the time.

They're like I come home and I'm used to the kids being there. So a lot of Moms will start their business even before their kids are in, even in kindergarten. So they're used to working with them and they go to school and then they're not sure how to handle the quiet. And the best thing that I can say is come home and give yourself like 10 to 15 minutes before you actually start work for yourself.

Like go through the house, like organize the kitchen at breakfast morning was crazy, clean up the kitchen, get all those things, put away, exercise, take a few minutes for you. And then like, whatever time it is for yourself, like I usually set the time for 9:30 for me, I come home like usually by 8:30, 8:45 from dropping the kids off.

And then I give myself till 9:30 to like settle in. And then at 9:30, that's when I start work. That's when I come into the office. That's when I start my day, I look at my list because the night before I've already written out what I need to work on that next day, I've already looked at my client appointments,

confirmed appointments, and then I just hop in the office and I get really clear and strategic, like for what my schedule looks like. And I know exactly what I'm doing for each of those hours, so that when I finish up and I'm done for the day, I can either take a little bit of quiet time for myself again, before I go back and pick up the kids.

And that schedule seems to work the best. Like just giving yourself some space at the beginning, at the end, almost bookmark your work schedule. Like give yourself some quiet time in the beginning and then some space at the end that we don't feel like you're rushing from task to task. Actually breathe for a minute. Take a second for yourself. Like sit down and make a smoothie and sit on the couch and just relax for a minute.

And before you leave, we're just gonna talk about food this morning. Apparently I'm hungry too, but then you can transition to going to picking up the kids I know for myself, the most overwhelmed, I typically feel as if I'm like, go, go, go nonstop. If I leave one call and I'm racing to the next call,

or if I finish working on creating a blog or content or recording a video, and then I automatically have to hop on a phone right afterwards, it doesn't give myself that space that I need to just kind of easier pace business. I call it like, kind of like a slope model. Like I don't want to be go, go, go. That system doesn't work for me.

So just clear your schedule a little bit, make it a little bit slower. I mean, first I want to thank you because I realize now that you jumped on literally right after dropping off the kids and cause we meet a few minutes before we start the show and we're writing your Zen time. This is waiting for you. You're supposed to start your day we're in your Zen time.

So I want to thank you for that. But then I got to ask you your website. Cause I know Allen has been popping your website in and out, but I know people are listening too. So where can they find you before I ask this next one? Yeah. My website is DarleneHawley.com and it's D A R L E N E H A W L E Y.com.

And when you get there tons information about who I am, what I do, how I support my clients. And you can hear my story as well, which is a big part of our brand. I know we talked about talking about branding and we kind of got onto a Mom tangent. I know that means you gotta come back and do more. Your like one of my good friends. You got to come back, but before we get further away,

I do need to ask you a couple of brand questions before I get hate mail one, you know, quantity versus quality. You know, you talked about blogging video. I heard it go by when you were talking a minute ago, is it more important to just kind of turn on the, you know, as they say fire, hose it and just blast out as much as you can,

as quick as you can, or is it more important to put out quality content no matter what you think, Quality content on a consistent basis. And that looks different for everybody. For me, that looks like creating content one time per week. And I send that, I think that one piece of content and it goes to my newsletter. It goes to my social posts.

It goes onto Pinterest with part of my blog, find a way to build consistency. You mentioned it in the beginning today, be consistent. You don't have to show up every single day. That's exhausting. Nobody, nobody needs to spend that much time creating social media content. It's actually a great place to nurture your audience. It's not the best place to find new new clients always.

It's a great place to nurture them though. So show up consistently find a rhythm that works for you. For me. That's one time per week. Some people I know do two times per week. Some people do two times a month find a schedule that works for you and do that consistently and start small. And then you can see if you can scale.

And if you have the bandwidth to do even more, I love it. I love it. I know we're going to get cut off soon. Let's give the web address one more time. Yeah. It's DarleneHawley.com and I work Primarily with service-based online entrepreneurs. So if you were a service-based entrepreneur and you are ambitious and want to grow a business, if you're a coach and expert, a consultant. Those are definitely the people that I love to work with and chat with and see how you can build your brand so that people go, oh my gosh, you're amazing. I want to work with you. And you're really attracting the right types of clients to you. And you're standing out online. You know I hope you come back on a regular basis because I think we need to talk about branding all the time.

So maybe we, you and I can talk about, you know, you being a regular drop-in and we could just pick a topic because brand is a small word, but it's a humongous market to talk about. And we just touched on it because we got into talking about school and kids... Really Allen, really So we only got to touch on this much of branding.

I know. And we're going to have Darlene come back and hopefully she'll come back on a regular basis. If you guys want to know more about Branding, she's our expert. She knows what she's talking about. Go check out previous interviews that was done with her and we'll get her back as soon as we can. Maybe next month. All right. Thanks for watching.

I hope you'll be here next time. and as always I'm TGo and I will talk to ya next time. Bye. Bye.