We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brittany Barnhart a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Brittany, thanks for joining us today. Can you share a customer success story with us?

Being an entrepreneur is hard, it requires a lot of time, effort, organization, and intention (and a lot more). I often see new entrepreneurs prioritizing the wrong things. They think that they have to have every single thing figured out, but the reality is that you don’t need to. Your first iteration of anything that you do in your business is going to be a test, and you’re going to continue learning year after year.

A recent client of mine had just quit their job and had no idea where to start.
“Do I focus on my newsletter? Instagram? How do I sell my services? Do I need to redo my website? Branding?” They had all of the questions because there’s this perception that you need all of these things to just START your business.

They booked a VIP day with me, which is 6.5 hours of strategy, collaboration, and consulting where we can focus on their service funnel, messaging, customer journey, and more. They wanted to spend this day building out their service funnel as well as identifying ways that we could generate long-term leads.

Through our 6.5 hours together, we were able to go through the P.O.W.E.R method and create a service funnel that actually worked for them.

We were able to:
– Purpose: Gain clarity on who she wants to work with based on their purpose
– Observe: Observe their current audience, what their hestiations might be when deciding to work with them, and any confusion that their existing messaging was creating
– Workflows: with the last two, we were able to make an informed decision to create a new service that they could beta test the next day. During this stage we: named it, created the process, identified the platforms necessary to test it, and how they could use this as an opportunity to pitch them into an ongoing contract (if they’re a good fit for it.)
– Execution: With all of the information at hand, we identified how they were going to start talking about it and booking it
– Refinement: We discussed things to consider after running their beta test, so they could refine the offer and officially launch it.

We had a VIP Day on Wednesday and at that time they had one client. By Monday, 5 days later, they had booked 5 clients!!

They sent me regular updates with the excitement that this offer was working, and by following the P.O.W.E.R process, they felt more confident moving forward because they understand the why behind everything.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I’m Brittany Barnhart, the brand & business strategist behind Powerhouse Brand Studio. I work with impact-driven entrepreneurs to help them build brands that attract & convert their audience by using my P.O.W.E.R method.

The P.O.W.E.R Method is a 5 step process that any entrepreneur can use to build their brand as a whole, consider when creating new initiatives, or use it to audit blind spots in their business. Each letter stands for: Purpose, Observation, Workflows, Execution, and Refinement.

By following this process, I help my clients close the gap between their audience and selling their services. At the beginning of the process, my clients are often struggling to articulate their unique value, they’re launching services that not a lot of folks are buying, and they’re getting on sales calls and feeling like they need to defend the value of their service.

But through our work together, we focus on establishing the entrepreneurs unique purpose and how we can position them as an expert. Then, we start to observe their audience and competitors. This enables us to understand who their ideal client is on a deep level, so we can create a brand that reflects the entrepreneurs expertise. This means that with this solid foundation, we can create a service funnel, messaging, marketing strategy, customer journey, website experience, and more.

My business started 7.5 years ago after I kept seeing entrepreneurs start businesses that they were excited about but struggled to attract their audience. My background is in graphic design and branding, so they would come to me for a logo or graphic assets that they needed, but it would fall short because they weren’t bridging the gap between their audience and their services.

From there, I started learning about brand strategy and how to apply it to business development. I see a lot of strategists focus on the idea behind the brand, but a major goal of the work I do with my clients is to not only help them understand the focus, but also how it’s applied. There is a lot of education involved in my 1-on-1 services, because I want my clients to feel like they understand the why behind an initiative, how it connects to their ideal client, and how they can build their brand with confidence.

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

What helped build my reputation within the market was:

– Focusing on a specific audience so I could understand their unique struggles
– Establishing and naming my process (the P.O.W.E.R method)
– Getting crystal clear on the impact of my services and process with a client
– Increasing speaking opportunities to build brand awareness

By focusing on these 4 steps, I had clarity on who I wanted to work with so I could take the time to understand their unique problems or goals within their industry. Not only that, but understanding who your ideal client is helps you figure out what spaces you should be in to build brand awareness.

Over time, I tested and refined my strategy process to ensure that it worked. The more I learned about my ideal client, the better I was able to create a offer that works for their needs and helps to build their business.

Additionally, once I felt confident in the P.O.W.E.R process after years of testing and refining it, I adjusted my marketing strategy to focus more on speaking opportunities to build brand awareness.

These four steps take a lot of time, but they’ve helped build my reputation in my network.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

“If you launch it, people will come.”

Over the years on social media, it’s become easy to scroll through Instagram and see other entrepreneurs selling out programs and assume that we can do the same thing.

You can, but we often compare our year 1 with someone’s year 10.

What I see happening, and what I’ve also had to unlearn, is this idea that: If I build an amazing program or product with all of these incredible features, people will absolutely buy it.

People aren’t buying the features and benefits of your program, they’re buying the transformation that you’re providing.

When we understand our ideal client, and the transformation they desire, we can then build programs or products that attract and convert your audience. But without that understanding, you’ll hear crickets when you launch.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.powerhousebrandstudio.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/powerhousebrandstudio/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerhousebrandstudio/

Image Credits
Heather Nash of Heather Nash Photography