Always be Investing in Your Brand

As a business owner, entrepreneur, boss we often are working with very slim budgets or at least we often believe that we need to have a lavish budget to produce content and compete with the "Big Dogs" of our industries. I often here very successful people suggest that you if you want to take your success to another level you should hire a coach. I have found that it is not as easy as they make it seem, even though I have not given up hope and until my budget gets a little better I have another solution, Podcast. Yes Podcasting I have found to be an amazing (short-term, budget restricted) supplement to coaching as you can ear hustle on some of the best conversations from some of the smartest people on the planet. The only requirements are time and data and you can be easily on you way to gaining insights, suggestions, tools, stories and more from the best. Here are 5 of my favorite podcast :

• The Blog Millionaire by Brandon Gaile 
• The Social Media Examiner by Micheal Stelzner
• NPR's How I Built This with Guy Raz
• Hack the Entrepreneur by Jon Nastor 
• Social Pros by Jay Baer and Adam Brown

If you invest in 1 episode per day on the podcast of your choice (hopefully positive) and actually try the suggestions that the guest or host suggestion, do a progress check up in one year to see how your life has changed for the better, heck you might be in a position to hire a real coach. I have personally tried several strategies and tactics that I have learned from podcast, for example in the Blog Millionaire 's most recent episode titled "Every Blogger Needs These Seven to Succeed" Brandon suggested that to we purchase some tools and products that should make our videos better. The first product was a Lavalier Mic by PowerDeWise that you can plug into your phone and have better sound quality on your videos (link to products and book suggestions will be at the end of the post) for less than $25. Brandon also suggested a tripod by Acuvar that works with your smart phone for less than $15, quality looks great. I did purchase the items and tested them in the wind and more, so far so good, and that was a less than $50 investment in making better marketing material.


Book Suggestion:
I had the opportunity of watching a Facebook live with the Harvard Business Review Facebook Page and they had a speaker named Dorie Clark and she was amazing. She was speaking of gigs and the time that it takes to really get your business going as a consultant, marketer, coach, blogger and more. I am not completely finished with the book, however so far truly amazing and you will not be disappointed. (See book below).

Just remember "Your Brand" is you and you should always be investing in something towards your brand development i.e time, money, and effort. If you do not have the money then invest time,if you have money, then do both, but by all means, please do something.

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