Ask Mik: "How do you build a business and personal brand at the same time?" | Ep. 106

Are you building a personal brand and a business at the same time and wondering why it feels like they are pulling in two different directions?

You are going to love today's episode because I am answering one of the most asked questions I get from women in business right now and breaking down the three types of selling I use in my content to grow my personal brand and my business simultaneously. This is not the influencer approach. This is what it looks like when you are building a real founder-led brand with real offers and a real mission behind it.

I pray this blesses you!

In this episode you will learn:

• Why a personal brand is the growth engine of your business and not just a vanity metric
• The difference between subliminal selling, hard selling, and organic selling and when to use each one
• Why hard selling in every single piece of content is quietly hurting your brand
• How to plant seeds of curiosity that open doors to converting conversations 
• What founder-led branding actually means and why it is the most powerful way to build a business online

Join my 10-day immersion, Voice of Conviction! I'll show you how to build demand for your offers, strengthen your authority, and create a brand that can't be ignored through the power of your voice. 🎙️ Get the tools and build the identity you need to increase profits inside your business and personal brand!
 🔗 Sign up now: mikaelainspires.org/voiceofconviction

🤍 Get inside the INNER CIRCLE Mastermind NOW: this is your strategic amplifier that builds unstoppable momentum, recurring revenue, in a brand that attracts high-caliber clients, more sales, speaking engagements, brand deals, and so much more. This 12-month Immersive Container is for Faith-Driven Women in Business scaling to multi-6 & 7 figure callings. Learn high-level leadership and sales, marketing ecosystems, personal branding, content strategy, premium offer suites, and so much more! mikaelainspires.org/inner-circle

🎤 Join us at Million Dollar Impact Live October 15-17, 2026 — where faith and business coexist for leaders ready to unleash your voice, own your story, and build a personal brand that acts as the growth engine of your business. Get your ticket now: mikaelainspires.org/milliondollarimpact

Related Episodes You Will Love:

• You've Avoided Enough: Here's How to Collapse Time Around Your Dream Life and 10X Your Business Growth | Ep. 104
• The 4 Moves That Built My First 100K Year and Is Now On Track to Double My Revenue This Year | Ep. 99
• THIS Is How God Used My Voice to Build a 6-Figure Business Without Burnout | Ep. 92

I pray this blesses you. See you next week.

Transcript

0:42

Oh my gosh, today is going to be so juicy with so many gems. I am so excited and ready for you to listen. Make sure you grab your journal, your planner, your notepad, whatever you're using to take notes, because you're gonna need it. Welcome back, or if you're new here, I'm Mikaela, founder of a luxury stationary brand Made by the Word, and business coach to incredible women leaders who are building and scaling personal brands. And I am so excited for this episode because it is an Ask Mik episode, which I haven't done this in a really long time, and it's a question that I get asked consistently. And what I've been doing lately is just testing out different styles of content and doing volume in this season just to get more data. And I actually had a question that someone asked. I filmed a video on it, and I got a lot of traction, a lot of business owners saving this post, a lot of people asking more questions based on this one video. And this video was all about Women in business who are building personal brands. So my text hook on the screen was, "For women building businesses and personal brands at the same time." And the question that I get asked is, how did you do it? How do you build a personal brand and a business at the same time? And I think about it so much different, differently than most people because a lot of women online who do teach personal branding are coming from the influencer and creator side of things. And I've been on that side. When I first started my business, I started in, first, I started in MLM, and I learned a lot of sales tactics, marketing strategies, um, building a business that way, but then I expanded into the creator industry, and I started getting paid for brand deals from multiple Fortune 500 companies who would pay me to create content for them, um, and put it on my page, and that was awesome. 'Cause at the time I was like, "Wow, I didn't know I could really do this." Then I went through domestic violence, started all the way over, and then God called me to start growing my own business and stop growing other peoples'. And so I now have the experience of what it looks like to build a business, like a for-real business, because a creator business and a real business is two totally different giants. And from, coming from both sides, I could, I can say that. But What I see is that a lot of women in business are buying programs and courses from women who don't have a business like theirs. And it's not that it needs to be the same exact business, but you're getting something from a creator who doesn't have the wisdom of what it takes to do what you're doing because, again, it's two totally different types of businesses. So I'm seeing women grab courses from them, and then they're wondering why their sales drop. They're wondering why they're not getting the results that they truly desire. And so while I can't break down every single piece today because we would be here for hours, I wanna share the topic in, like what I shared in that video on my social media that is going crazy right now. So the way that I like to think about personal branding is that personal branding is the growth engine of my business. My business is an extension of me, and my business is created to solve a problem. My whole, my whole entire heart posture is to serve Is to have the heart posture of walking in my mission and what, in my mission ground and my assignment and what God has called me to do. And in order for me to do that, personal branding is so key because your ideal client, your dreamy client, the people that you are meant to reach are buying from other people right now because they're more well known. They're buying from other people right now just because they make it sound better. And so building a personal brand is so much bigger than being widely known just to be widely known. Like, our goal as believers is to make Jesus known. So I'm talking about this in a expectation or a belief that you are rooted in your walk, and if you're not, that's okay. You can continue to grow. But I have plenty of episodes on that. Let's focus on personal branding right now. So a personal brand is what people associate when they think of something in their mind. It's building brand equity, so it's not just logos and, you know, pretty aesthetics and all of the visual identity things. Although those things are very important when it comes to building a personal brand, your personal brand is you. Like, you are the brand, and most people buy from businesses when the founder posts content online. And so what I wanna really talk about is three ways that I approach selling in my content as I'm building a personal brand. Now, again, there is a lot behind what I'm saying. Like, I had someone ask me a question, like, "What about if you sell multiple things?" Or, um, "What if you have multiple interests?" And all, and all of that. I'm more than happy to break that down on another episode. Um, but today, I really wanna center in on the three different ways that I sell in my content because this is how I've grown my business and my personal brand at the same time. But my framework for building and scaling a personal brand is vision Voice, visibility, and velocity So right now, we're gonna be talking about the visibility portion and only a piece of it. And I want to invite you right now to Million Dollar Impact, my signature three-day event that is happening in October. We're gonna be going over all four steps, and you're gonna be surrounded by so many powerful leaders, founders, CEOs, media personalities, authors, women in business who are building with God at the center, who know that they've only scratched the surface of what they're capable of. They know that God has called them to more, and they know it's going to require another version of themselves that they haven't had to be yet. And this room is going to turn those, that 12 months of momentum and work into one weekend. And I'm so excited, and it would be doing a disservice to not invite you because we're gonna be talking all about this. So you can go to mikaelainspires.org/milliondollarimpact, or you can just click the link in the description, whichever is best for you. Know that the tickets are capped for a reason, and I'm so excited, and there's so many opportunities for you to get media and all of the things. But let's go right into this episode. So the first thing that I do when it comes to selling in my content, there's three different types of selling that I like to think about. It is subliminal selling, hard selling, and organic selling. When it comes to subliminally selling your offer, subliminally selling your product, I like to think about it very plain and simple. And I'm just gonna talk about myself for this episode because this is a question that someone asked me. How did I do it? So what I do is, again, I have a luxury stationery brand. So I have journals, and right now we are working on bringing in planners and everything else. I also have my inner circle mastermind. So it depends on the focus of the video that I'm making. But no matter what, normally my journals are in my video At some point, whether I'm holding it, whether it's behind me, the whole purpose of this is to create curiosity. So when it comes to subliminally selling my journal, I could be filming a video talking about something that has nothing to do with my product, but because I'm holding it, someone is going to comment and ask me, "What is that book?" Like, "What are you holding?" It's the same thing when you start seeing your favorite person online. They start drinking this super bright drink, or they start using this specific mug in every single video, and then all of a sudden, every single person's like, "Oh my gosh, where'd you get that? Where'd you get that?" And then they, like, make it a big deal, and they use that curiosity as an authority piece of content to then hard sell And I love the curiosity piece because it also sparks conversation because someone can comment that, or a lot of people actually DM instead of comment in my posts. And so they'll send me a DM, they'll ask me, I'll tell them about it, but then it opens the conversation to m- another way to see how I can really serve them best, and then potentially invite them into my inner circle when they join. So that's subliminal sell. Another way you can subliminally, subliminally sell in reference to a digital offer is just by, like, mentioning a client. And it doesn't have to be like, "Oh, this specific client." It could be, like, you just naturally talking about your day and then being like, "Yeah, I had a call with my client, and then I was, you know, going to the store." M- Not making the story about the client, but, like, putting in a little drop for them to be like, "Oh, she does one-on-one?" So then they start thinking and they start paying attention, and you're just, like, planting seeds in different ways than most people. And this is a mark that most people miss. Most people feel like they need to hard sell all the time, which is the next topic that I wanna go into. Hard selling is just directly saying, "Hey, this is your problem. I have the solution for you. Like, here's exactly how to get it." Then, then you have your CTA. So a hard selling post is, like, a very intentional conversion-based post that you can create and film a video on. And it goes the same for physical products and digital because you're just directly selling to them, and you're not leaving room for curiosity, like at all. You're like, "This is your problem. This is how I can help you solve it. This is what's possible for you. You know that you're ready, or when you're ready, click this link, drop this word. You know where to find me." Like, there's so many different ways around how to do that. And what I see with business owners is majority of the time you are hard selling in every single piece of content, and you are really hurting your brand by doing this. I believe you should be selling every single day, but I don't believe you should be s- hard selling every single day. You have a business to run, so selling is definitely very, very important, and I would never tell you to not do it. But more and more people are lacking trust with the people that they see online. And so in a really noisy world, how can you display the human side of you? And you can also show the human side of you through storytelling, which storytelling could really be wrapped up in all these, and what I like to call it is story selling But we're not gonna go super deep into that right now because when it comes to story selling, there's so many ways that we could do that. Uh, but yeah, we're gonna be talking all about that at the event. And then we have organic selling. Organic selling is my favorite because I have a product that I genuinely love, that I'm passionate about, and that I know works for people, and it fits in my routine. And so when it comes to organic selling, you're basically showing how it can look in someone else's life. So for example, with my journal, I can write notes in my journal and then I can film a video, and I may not be talking about the product, but I've used the product and I'm reading out of it because I wrote in it. So I'm showing people how they can use the product. I'm also organically selling when I post vlogs because I make sure as a part of my routine in my vlog, I'm showing myself using the product When I'm filming a YouTube video, if I'm making a point about something, I can relate it back to why I created the journal and why it's going to help. Organic selling is my absolute favorite. And if I'm being honest, like, I am really good at hard selling, but I feel like there's so-- like, I could be so much better at it, which is what I'm working on. But organic selling just comes so natural to me, and I think it's because of where I started in my journey with being a creator And then when it comes to digital, it's the same concept. You can organically sell your digital offer. When you're creating it, you can film pieces of yourself creating it in your day. You can post a picture of that on your, um, story. Like, there's so many different ways to organically sell a digital product without hard selling it. And so I am just loving this conversation. As I'm talk-- I feel like I'm, uh, talking so slow. I just want you to know I'm not reading off of a script. Like, I am just going off of the dome right now, and that's why I'm kind of talking a little slower today because I'm thinking at the same time, and as I'm thinking, I'm, I'm having more thoughts on things that I could talk about. I just believe that when you're filming and doing all these things that God has quite literally called you to do, scripting is fun and it's amazing, but sometimes it's like you just need to trust your relationship with Him and trust that the Holy Spirit will remind you what to say. Because sometimes when you're going off of a script, you don't leave room for the Holy Spirit to, to talk. And so there are things that I've said in this podcast that I absolutely did not say in my social media video. And now I'm just... I'm, I'm even more lit up and on fire for this conversation because I really believe this is a powerful topic. I've coined the term founder-led branding. When you have a business and you have a personal brand, that's called a founder-led brand because the personal brand is the growth engine of the business. You already have the business. You know how to sell that. Now it's about a personal brand showing who you are. And I'm excited to go more in depth into personal branding on this podcast, talking more about what it takes, the vision side, the voice side, the visibility side, the velocity side. And when I think about velocity, velocity is like amping it up. H- It's about scaling. So it's like once you've built it, how do you scale it? And yep. I'm like girl, we can, we can get all into it. Okay, but I really pray that this blessed you, that you had some takeaways of how you can implement this in your own business, in your social media, in your own content. Okay, I love you. Bye.