Fuse Your Authentic Self Into Your Brand - After the Show

And so I've got to know Ann, over the past several months, and would consider her a friend. After listening to this episode, you're probably like, "Oh, Ann's awesome. Like I wanna be friends with Ann too." Such an inspiration. Such an incredible story of resilience and I just love her jewelry and what she's doing today. So this was such a great conversation. If you haven't listened to it yet, go back and listen to it and then come back over here to After the Show.

Now, my two big takeaways with Ann was really including yourself and being like weaving yourself into your business. What I mean by that is as you listen to this episode, Ann talks a lot about her Japanese heritage and culture and the things that she wants to bring into her pieces. And the things that she believes from her history and from who she is. And so often because I've been teaching social media for over a decade.

So often I see retailers and businesses that just do the same thing all the time and just promote their products or promote their store. And it's very vanilla.

It's just the same thing. They have fears around having their own personality or doing things the way they want to do it. Or there's a lot of things that hold us back, but we won't weave or fuse our self into our messaging and into our products or into our brand out of fears. And here's the deal. This isn't necessarily right for every retailer because you might have a very clear brand that has nothing to do with who you are.

Like you know, Walmart. Sam Walton started, the founder, with Bud Walton of Walmart. And maybe back when they got started, it was something that they were sort of weaved into, but you do know what started as a family business. And today it's like a big chain. It's a big box. They're not going to weave in their own personality, right? There are certainly retailers that we work with that has like their brand and that is a standalone brand.

But what we often see working well today is the personal brands and is the fusion

of our own personality and our interests and our backgrounds and our cultures into our content or our products or our brand. And when you see the brands and you see the people that are having a personality. And it doesn't mean, when I say having a personality, it doesn't mean that you have to be funny. Like it just means that you're actually being you. You're humanizing the content.

However that is, you're just being you and you're showing up and you're talking to your customers and you are bringing your beliefs or your things that you love or your creativity into it. And what I mean by that and into it, it could be social media, could be email. It could be your signage in your store. It could be a promotion. It could be an event. That makes me think of there's a store that presented at the Retail Success Summit many years ago, Jessica and Serendipity is her store.

And she did this Harry Potter event and it was really cool. Like all the themed of Harry Potter and the drinks and the decor, and it was wildly successful. I have to imagine, I don't know this about Jessica, but I have a feeling she really likes Harry Potter. So it's a way that her interests got woven into her business that then created things for her community to go do and connected deeper. And I just think there's so much opportunity for us to allow ourselves to fuse.

I'm really liking this word fuse or fusion into like allowing ourself to fuse our interests into our business. It doesn't have to be so culture and business. Like that's where corporate is. And that's why corporate is harder to create long lasting relationships and loyalty. But as a small business, you can take your interests or your culture, like Ann did with her Japanese culture and weave that into your world.

So I think that was a big takeaway for me and I love how Ann's doing it and her stories of what she's doing it in that way. And I would recommend listeners. It's for this episode to really analyze like, is there something that you are really passionate about? Or you are really interested in? Or something you do really love that you could pull through your messaging? Your brand, or even through an event.

You don't necessarily have to completely change your brand or your store name or anything like that, but it's more about integrating more of who you are. That can connect your customers to you and create loyalty.

Now, speaking of loyalty, that is my second big takeaway from Ann's episode. She is doing a really cool loyalty program around membership. And in my opinion, I've felt this for years. I just think that retailers have such an opportunity to offer a membership. Subscription boxes are an example of a membership, but that's like a whole different revenue channel. Like you'd have to create a whole new product around that.

But with this membership idea, how Ann's doing it, is you pay a certain amount a month, I believe, or I think it's annually. I have this up here. Yeah, an annual membership that gives you 20 percent of all pieces, including sales and design. Basically it's $50 for the entire year. And on her sales page, she says, "if you plan on spending $250, your membership pays for itself." And so I love this because it makes the customer feel like a part of something.

It shows me that, okay If I'm searching and I find a couple pieces like a couple pieces for me. And I'm gonna give my mom something and I'm gonna spend like four hundred dollars. She's helping save me money by me joining. So I feel taken care of It's not about like, "oh, I'm trying to be like push membership or sell membership." It's about taking care of your customers and connecting with them in new ways that gets them to buy more, feel exclusive and feel part of your world.

And so I really, for me. Look, I ran a membership website for 12 years. Over 12 years now. You have a lot of membership websites out there, like information websites, but you don't see a lot from the product example. Now you do see a lot of loyalty where based off of your spending or visits in or combination of those two things, you can rack up points and then see those discounts.

But with this, this is different. This is a revenue driver where you are spending, you know, in Ann's case, $50 a year to be a part of the membership. But then it's getting you a birthday gift, free ring sizer, white glove, customer service, other surprises and perks throughout the year. She has early access to special offer, sales, and events and a member only portal, which I love. So when you go to her website, there's VIP vault.

And she's doing such a good job because she has just Shop, VIP Vault, and Talisman Quiz. So she has a quiz to help you find your perfect piece. She's got the VIP Vault and people are like, "Oh, I want to be VIP." Like that is so strong and that's amazing. That's the first thing I clicked on when I came to her website. And then it's encouraging. It says, "Here's where you could log in," or "Here's where you can learn more about the Vault."

So I just think she's doing a lot right with this membership, what she's offering, her titling of it. Like awesome job, Ann. And I think there's a lot of opportunities for retailers, our listeners, you possibly listening to this. To offer a membership and maybe membership isn't right for you. Maybe it's more about the loyalty program. Like I mentioned, a certain amount of purchases gets you discounts or certain amount of times in gets you savings.

And this is actually, that's a perfect transition for our guests. That's coming up on Sunday. Our next guest is Nick McHenry, the founder of One Shop Retail. He's got a loyalty platform. And in that episode, we talk a lot about loyalty. And in fact, I just listened to that episode again this morning. Holy cow, Nick, like he has so much energy. He's talking about so much, like we cover a lot in that episode. So I hope you get to tune in, but it's a lot about loyalty.

So it's perfect timing coming off of this episode with Ann and how she's doing her loyalty through her membership and what she offers. And I think that there's a good opportunity for you. So maybe you're looking at membership. Maybe you're looking at loyalty. Definitely listen to Nick's episode, cause you're going to get additional ideas from him too. But those were my big two takeaways is that weaving, infusing your personality and who you are into your store.

Showing that on email, social, in your store, being just allowing yourself to do that. And then of course, offering something really special to your audience that creates that connection. Relationships and creates more buying and creates loyalty. Whether that's a loyalty program or memberships. My big takeaways, I'd love to know your takeaways.

You could go to the Facebook group and go to facebook.com search for rooted in retail, join the group, introduce yourself, share with me what your takeaways were. And I'd also love to know, do you have a membership? Share in that group. Do you have a membership or a loyalty program? And if you're willing to share a little bit more about what you're doing in those, we all would love to hear what you're doing and to get some inspiration for you from you. So please share.

If you don't have one, go to the group, see what other people are saying. And remember that I am rooting for your success. Have a great week ahead, bye.