5 Beliefs That Will Keep Your Brand SMALL
Welcome to the UnCloned® Insider Audio Newsletter. My name is Audria Richmond and I am your marketing and launch strategist. I work directly with my clients to teach them how to build uncloned brands and launch profitable marketing campaigns. We are the brand that you come to when you want to become or remain the obvious choice of your industry. Hey, Uncloned Insiders.
Audria Richmond®:Hope you had an amazing weekend. Oh, this weekend was so amazing. We hosted the Unclone Weekend Intensive and it was amazing. I love it. I love it.
Audria Richmond®:I love it. We was testing it out. It may be a offer that we continue to do, but we may not like mass marketing. It may be just something that we pull out as needed. Right.
Audria Richmond®:But nevertheless, today I want to talk about five beliefs that will keep your brand small. Okay. And the reason I wanted to have this conversation is because I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs a lot, obviously, because I coach advise and consult with small businesses. And one of the things I noticed is that a lot of small businesses think very small. They think very small when it comes to how much they can make.
Audria Richmond®:They think very small when it comes to how much impact they can have in the world. They think small when it comes to, you know, revenue, like it's just so many areas. Right. And I know for me, when I first got started in entrepreneurship, I was just happy to be able to pay my bills. Like everything else after that was a bonus, right?
Audria Richmond®:Like if I could travel, that was a bonus. If I could buy some extra clothes, that was a bonus. If I could, you know, sign up for a tool that I couldn't afford at one point, but now I can, like, that was a win to me. And that's honestly thinking very small because that means that I had the mindset of enough. And whenever you have the mindset of enough, it is because you have not allowed yourself to dream bigger.
Audria Richmond®:You have not allowed yourself to explore the potential and the possibility of what could be. And a lot of it has to do with how you were raised and how you were brought up in life and how you were taught to look at life, right? Like, I didn't have parents who was like, hey, as soon as you get out of high school, you better go to college and this is the school I want you to go to and this is your career path. Right. You know, I have quite a few friends who had parents that were like that.
Audria Richmond®:But my parents weren't like that because my parents were working class people who was happy to have a job and so that's what they told me like get out of school and you know, once you get out of school, go get a job like that was the path. That was the thing and so I think for a long time, I didn't even know how far entrepreneurship could take me. You know, when I first got started with entrepreneurship, I was treating entrepreneurship like a hustle, like a side thing. This thing that would be cool if it did make money. And one of the disadvantages to that is that I didn't take it seriously.
Audria Richmond®:And I noticed that sometimes when people have other ways of making money, especially if they can have ways of taking care of their livelihood. They tend to not take the business as seriously because they have another source of revenue, whether that's a nine to five was whether that's a working spouse, whether that's inheritance, whether it doesn't matter, right? What I have found is that a lot of people stay stuck as it relates to growing their business or even thinking big about the business because it's not something they need, right? Like I think a lot of the business owners are just happy to have a business. They think it's cool for social communication, being able to hang out with people and be like, oh, I got a business, right?
Audria Richmond®:Or being able to go to entrepreneurial events and stunt in front and dance and clap your hands and all the things in between. And I will tell you firsthand that my reality check was in 2020 when we did close to almost a million dollars in sales with just me, a VA, and my husband that have to tell you that like it was a mental shift in my whole brain. Right. And you know, even before then, I had already quit my job in 2014. So I was already used to entrepreneurship, but it's a difference between, you know, working a business and running a business, right?
Audria Richmond®:Like in 2020, a lot of people say, oh, 2020 was the worst year ever, blah, blah. It wasn't for us. We did so well. Right. And I don't believe that 2025 will be a bad year.
Audria Richmond®:It's all about how you see things and how you look at things. Yes, there's a lot of crazy stuff happening in the news. Yes, there's a lot of stupid stuff going on. But at the end of the day, how you feel about yourself, the activities that you take every day, every single thing you do is directly tied to your emotional state. So if you get on social media and somebody says something to piss you off, guess what?
Audria Richmond®:You've changed your state. And so everything you see is going to be making you mad and pissing you off and you won't be snapping on folks and snapping on your kids and you weren't even mad when you got on social media. Now you pissed off and you popping off on folks now. And I don't think people realize how important your emotional state is, especially when you're an entrepreneur. Like, we don't have the freedom.
Audria Richmond®:Right. And I'm more so talking to full time entrepreneurs right now. We don't have the freedom to play and be on the internet and joking around and Kiki and with folks in the comments and all of that. Like we're running a real business, right? And when I say a real business, I'm talking about a real business that have to pay taxes, right?
Audria Richmond®:I'm talking about a real business that hire and employ people. I'm talking about a real business that understands that it has to operate every day in order for it to be efficient. Right? You can't take, you know, these long, elaborate vacations and vacation your people to death like Amazon never takes vacations and we never know when Jeff is on vacations. Right.
Audria Richmond®:And so we have to learn how to think bigger as it relates to our business. And I feel like a lot of the coaching and mentorship that I have received and I'm not saying everybody, but a good portion of the people that I have invested to work with, learn from all the things. A lot of them taught me how to be small, how to be a solopreneur who should be happy that they're making $100,000 Right. And when whenever you join something that puts a cap on how far they think you can grow, that should already tell you how they see you and how they think about you. If you're in a program and your coach see you as somebody who can't even do 10 ks a month, dollars 25,000 a month, 100,000 a month, dollars 1,000,000 a month.
Audria Richmond®:If your coach is starting to see their entire tribe like that or their entire community like that, they're going to start teaching small strategies. Right. I always tell my clients, I think big now. I can't always say I've always thought super big, But right now I'm in my enterprise thinking phase, right? And, you know, when I think about all the learning and a lot of the stuff that I learned early on, there was no how to hire training.
Audria Richmond®:There wasn't no, you know, how to systemize your business to run without you. There was no this is how you build a leadership team to this day. All of the stuff that I just said I learned in somebody's book or now I'm looking for a more advanced, more mature business owner who really I really don't really want to work with people who just only have like an online marketing mindset because those people kind of live in a vortex. How they think about business is so, you know, small thinking, right? It's like, you know, for the own and let me let me explain what I mean by this.
Audria Richmond®:Just give you context. We're to get into these five beliefs but apparently, I'm feeling compelled to share more today But let me give you an example of what I mean by that. Sometimes you could be getting coached by someone and they're teaching the traditional thing, right? You need to have a value ladder. You need to take them from, you know, the cheapest thing to the highest thing and they have to graduate from one level to the next level.
Audria Richmond®:And like everybody has masterminds now and everybody has, you know, accelerators and intensives and all the things and there's nothing wrong with it, right? Like we're actually working on accelerator now. I just did a weekend intensive. The problem with the online marketing space is that they don't teach you beyond the online marketing space, right? They don't teach you beyond the funnel.
Audria Richmond®:They don't teach you beyond the offer. Right. And it's one of the reasons why we restructured our entire business from our product suite all the way down to how we communicate and talk to our clients from October of twenty twenty four to now. We've been talking heavily about building a brand that has lasting power that is remembered, that is referred. And most importantly, it's the obvious choice of this industry.
Audria Richmond®:Speaking of which, I hope you have your ticket for Unclone Brand Live because it's because it's going down. Okay. Head over to Unclone.live and get your tickets now while we are in the early bird phase of ticket pricing, right? You just missed super early bird pricing. Do not miss early bird pricing, which you're still getting crazy savings before we go into our regular pricing.
Audria Richmond®:So if you don't have your ticket, head over to Unclone.live to get your ticket now. Okay, now let's get into what I wish I would have learned, right? Like if everybody online is just teaching you build a funnel, have a value ladder and that's it. That is the depth of people thinking, teaching, coaching. What about where who's the coach that's teaching you how to build a leadership team?
Audria Richmond®:Who's teaching you? I mean, I've identified some people now, but when I was looking for this information, none of the programs I was in teaching me that they were only teaching me how to do, how to be replicas of the other people in the online marketing space. It's one of the reasons why we talk so much about being on clone and being different and standing out the whole night. Okay. So, with that being said, I was like, what are some of the things that that people are teaching, you know, small business owners that's really keeping them small because they keep on promoting these beliefs, right?
Audria Richmond®:So, the first belief is you don't need a team. There's a whole community of people who are advocates for the solopreneur. And I'm not saying that solopreneurship is horrible, but I think it's horrible if you do desire to be big, but you're staying small because it's convenient. You're staying small because it's cheaper. You're staying small because you don't want the responsibility of being a leader who has to manage a business, run a business, have payroll in be strategic and so on and so forth.
Audria Richmond®:Like people who love solopreneurship do not want the responsibility that comes with running a bigger business. Right. And big doesn't always mean better. Right. But what I mean by this is like, it's only so far you can go by yourself.
Audria Richmond®:I don't give a damn what nobody say online or whatever. It's only so far you can go by yourself. Because even when people say they don't need a team, they still paying for AI. That's still slick a team. And then you still need help.
Audria Richmond®:That's the whole point I'm saying. Whether it's automated, a robot, or actual human, everybody needs help. So that could be a belief that's keeping you small is thinking that you don't need a team at all. The second thing that's keeping you small is thinking that you don't need paid ads or paid ads or advertising in general. I see a lot of people want to just create content.
Audria Richmond®:That's it. I'm only creating content. That's how I'm getting clients. It is what it is. I'm just going to keep on beating a dead horse.
Audria Richmond®:And if you've been posting content consecutively and consistently for one year. Let's just use one year. I only want to I only want to go that deep with it. But if you've been consecutively and consistently posting content every single day for a full year and you cannot tell me and track down to the penny which piece of content drove sales, you need a new strategy. Okay.
Audria Richmond®:One of the earliest things I did early on before I even knew the magnitude of what I was doing, I understood that I need to get in front of new people because the current people that I was connected to at the time, they were not going to help me promote. They didn't even know what I was doing when I did transition into having an online business. And I just knew for a fact that like I'm going to have to market to new people who don't know who the hell I am. And the fastest path to that was ads. Right.
Audria Richmond®:And I'm not even saying you got to use Facebook ads. There's so many ways you can buy ads. You can buy ads on Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google. They've got all of these different neighborhoods that you can do. They got magazines and sponsorships and partnerships, vending.
Audria Richmond®:Like there's so many ways that you can advertise and market your business. But the fact that you have this belief that I'm not going to spend 1 red cent and I want to make millions of dollars. That is hella goofy. Okay. Alright.
Audria Richmond®:Number three, you think that you are too small to think like an enterprise. This helped this hurt me the most, right? Like I used to think that like, oh, you know, big companies are cool, but I'm not really there yet. Right. And I believe that when you don't start with the end in mind and you just start with where you are, that can really keep you smaller longer than you need to be.
Audria Richmond®:Right. Because if I knew like, for instance, now my thinking is I do have enterprise thinking now, but I haven't always had it right. And so even today, I was like, I want us to do $10,000,000 in a year. What needs to be true in order to do that? And I had to make a lot of lot of lot of tough decisions.
Audria Richmond®:Okay, I'm going have to close this program. Okay, I'm going to have to end this. Okay. I'm going have to cancel that. Okay.
Audria Richmond®:I'm going have to create this and I'm going have to increase the price on that. I'm going to have to hire eight people. I'm going have to hire 10 people. I'm going to have to put this infrastructure in place. I'm going to need to meet with my accounting more.
Audria Richmond®:I need my accountant to help me with budgeting and projecting. You get what I'm saying? So like when you start thinking from the bigger goal first and not from where you currently are, you get a way bigger thought process and confidence around like, oh, I could do that. But the other thing too that nobody tells you and this is not even on my list in order for you to get to new levels in your business, you have to change as a person. Right.
Audria Richmond®:And I'm not talking about changing for the worse because some people do get worse when they get more money. But I'm more so talking about like you're going to have to evolve in your thinking. You're going to have to evolve in your approach. You have to do new activities and new things because your old activities ain't going get you where you're trying to go. If if my current activities were were going to get me to 10,000,000, why would I set a goal of 10,000,000?
Audria Richmond®:Like, I already know when I set the goal for $10,000,000 in sales, I already know like I'm going to have to completely shift how I'm thinking, how I'm showing up, how I'm approaching content, how I'm approaching hiring, how I'm thinking about infrastructure, how I'm thinking about my business, has to change. Okay. And so that was number three. Number four is thinking the only way to get clients is by creating content. This is probably the one day.
Audria Richmond®:Oh, I would say burn my biscuits the most. Yeah. And basically, there's this notion and this thought process that if I create more reels, if I make more posts, if I do more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, If I do more, more, more content, basically, I'm going to get more clients. And let me say this, there are a lot of people who winning with content, so I'm not even shitting on content, but a lot of people who are killing it with content, you can tell they put more time, energy, and effort into those pieces of content. The people who fail at content are the people who's being lazy with their approach to content.
Audria Richmond®:So, you're posting content, but you're doing the bare minimum. You're not being creative with your content. You're not being innovative with your content. You don't have original approach or original thoughts or original content. So yeah, you could be doing content, but you're not making it original to you.
Audria Richmond®:At Unclone Brand Live, we have this like original content framework that we talk, which is so good. It's so fire. If you want to know what it is, make sure you go and get your ticket at Unclone live. That's U N C L O N E D dot live. L I V E.
Audria Richmond®:Okay, now this is what I want you to think about. Okay, There's so many ways to get clients. Y'all beyond content creation. So, if your only strategy for getting clients is posted on Instagram or posted on Facebook or posted in a group, I'm telling you, you're thinking small. I want you to transition into how can you pitch yourself every day?
Audria Richmond®:We call this opportunity hour. How can you pitch yourself every day for one hour every single day in your business in five key categories? How can you network? Not just any old boring network, but like networking doesn't always mean go to a room and be in a group with forty and fifty people and y'all awkwardly looking at each other like, oh, don't come over here and talk to me. I'm talking about networking strategically.
Audria Richmond®:Like, How many people can I introduce myself to today? That's still networking. Even if networking is happening one on one, even if networking is happening through coffee chats, who do you need to establish a relationship with that can help you close deals or get deals? Right? Think about your network.
Audria Richmond®:The other thing is speaking. You all could be speaking, getting on stages, creating your own stages like me doing this podcast. I'm speaking in the form of a podcast. When I did our weekend intensive, I was speaking in the form of coaching and consulting When I'm doing content on YouTube, I'm you know what I mean? I'm speaking in the form of content creation.
Audria Richmond®:Activate your voice. You're not going to get good at speaking if you won't even exercise your voice, your thoughts, your opinions, or how you see things. Okay. Another way you can grow and scale this is next level. Developing a speaking team.
Audria Richmond®:We talked a lot about this on our Unclone Life Circle call last coach week. Oh my god. It was so good. But nevertheless, you all could put a team in place that you train and go and present and represent the brand. You could be doing vending, then you could create a vending team who said it had to be you all the time.
Audria Richmond®:Again, enterprise thinking and then sales representatives. Sales representatives are not just reserved for big companies. Who can you get to help you do close the sales? If you suck at selling, who can you train or get some sales training for and then have them go and do sales for you? Right.
Audria Richmond®:You got to put on your enterprise thinking cap, right? And then the last thing, the last belief that's keeping you small is thinking that you have to have all your offers complete before you can sell your first offer. So we just completed the Unclone Weekend Intensive and the whole focal point of the intensive was one offer. We did talk about product suites and client journeys and all of that stuff, but we got hyper, hyper, hyper focused on one offer because if you can't learn how to sell one offer repeatedly repeatedly and predictably and you know exactly how you're gonna make money from it, you should not be creating offer two, three, four, five, and six. Also, a lot of people feel like they have to have and even me, I'm guilty of this as well.
Audria Richmond®:Everybody believes that they had to have 15,000 products in order for them to be profitable. Right? And you're disguising that under the notion of multiple streams of income. No. You're gonna have multiple streams of headaches.
Audria Richmond®:Okay, you're going to have I don't think people realize the infrastructure that has to be put in place for one offer, let alone two, three, four, five, six, 70 nine, 10. Okay, so I rather you build one offer at a time, put a system in place where it's predictable and it can make you money and so on and so forth. Then add on the next product, then the next product, then the next product. It took me many years to get the perfect product suite. So don't feel like you need to know your entire product suite today at five, right?
Audria Richmond®:Especially if you just get started. Now, if you're a little bit more established and obviously you already know how to sell what you have, you already know how to move people from one product to the next. But I just want you all to know that like in this season, you got to evaluate how you're thinking. Okay. So with that being said, make sure you do not allow these five beliefs to keep your brand small.
Audria Richmond®:So number one was thinking that you don't need a team. Number two was thinking that you don't need paid ads or advertising in general, thinking that you're too small to think like an enterprise, thinking the only way to get clients is by creating content and thinking that you have to have all your offers complete before you can sell your first offer. So hopefully you enjoy today's audio newsletter. Quick reminder, make sure you leave your biggest takeaway inside of our community. If you're not a part of our community, you can visit Unclone.group and request to join our private community where we continue the discussion of today's audio newsletter.
Audria Richmond®:Let me know in the comments your biggest takeaway and don't forget, go get your tickets now to Unclone Brand Live at Unclone.live. Can't wait to see you there. Until next time y'all. Let's go live an uncloned life and build an uncloned brand. Bye y'all.
Creators and Guests
