We were lucky to catch up with Asia Dore recently and have shared our conversation below.

Asia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry?

If you’ve ever searched for information about branding, you’ve inevitably found hundreds of articles that claim you should build your brand like massive corporations such as Apple, McDonalds, and Nike did. And that makes sense in theory – clearly these companies are successful! But in reality, branding your small business by emulating a multi-billion dollar corporation is the biggest branding mistake you can make as an entrepreneur.

A corporation builds their brand by creating an image and then constantly pouring millions of dollars into controlling that image. As small business owners we don’t always have the luxury of millions of dollars, so instead of manipulating perceptions about ourselves we have to actually treat people the way we want them to feel so that our brands form organically. This is not a bad thing – this is authentic branding!

A corporation’s brand has to be crammed into a box so that everyone within the corporation can easily understand how to adhere to it. It’s stiff and unwavering. But people evolve and change, so our brands have to evolve and change with us. There’s too much nuance to being a person AND a business owner to cram it all into a box. Let your brand be a true extension of you instead of its own immutable entity.

Plus, when we brand like the corporations do, it saps us of our humanity – which is our strongest asset as entrepreneurs because business is all about relationships between humans. People buy from people.

Asia, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

As a brand strategist, I help my clients discover, leverage, and communicate what makes them unique so they can position themselves as the go-to experts in their niche!

I hate to admit this, but I had NO idea what branding or marketing were for the first four years of my business. I searched the internet for hours and hours, but it seemed like everyone was just regurgitating the same unhelpful information. All the pros were telling me I should build a brand, but no one was telling me HOW to do it.

So I’m on a mission to simplify and revolutionize the concept of branding for entrepreneurs. Branding is an incredibly powerful tool in business, but it’s often pushed to the back burner or diminished to logos and color palettes. When we embrace depth and strategically use our brands to build our businesses, that’s when true growth happens. That’s when we start to connect with our ideal clients. That’s when we stand out – even in the most saturated industries.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I marketed my business solely on social media from 2014-2021 with two main strategies:

1. Show up as my actual self instead of just a business
2. Publish content worth paying attention to

So many entrepreneurs are scared to show their true personalities online because they’re worried about coming across as unprofessional, but showing up as your true, unique self is the most effective way to connect with your ideal clients!

Social media can be a really effective marketing strategy, but like any marketing strategy it has to be used intentionally. Create content that’s actually valuable (and by “valuable” I mean make sure it’s either educational, motivational, inspirational, or entertaining). Start conversations and get to know your followers. Interact with other people’s content. Focus on building relationships instead of building an audience, and I guarantee you’ll see success with this kind of marketing.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

It really came down to one thing: I focused on developing my unique brand strategy and then showed up for it consistently! Your brand IS your reputation, so it’s really about figuring out what you do, who you do it for, how you do it differently than everyone else, and why it matters – and then sharing that over and over and over again so you become known for the thing you want to be known for.

Branding truly isn’t complicated. It’s not about controlling a narrative or saying the exact right curated things in the exact right curated way. It’s truly just about deciding the type of people you want to work with, and then doing and sharing and creating the things that make them feel the way you genuinely want them to feel. And if you focus on that consistently, your brand (AKA: your reputation) will build itself.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://asiadore.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asia.dore
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@asiadore