Brand Gems

Brand Gems is a podcast that explores the story behind amazing people, products, and organizations and the “little things”, the marketing gems, that made all the difference in their success. Listen to Brand Gems to find inspiration and lessons to help you with your personal, professional, and entrepreneurial endeavors. Brand Gems host, Andrea Wade, is a business consultant, marketing strategist and brand architect who helps businesses, executives, and entrepreneurs identify new opportunities for their product, service, and expertise.

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Brand Gems

10. Brand Gems for the New Year

January 04, 2023 • Andrea Wade

With the new year comes big plans and dreams. This episode recommends 3 areas of focus that will help you in general as you transition into the new year, a new quarter, or whenever you seek inspiration to begin a new phase. No matter if you are someone who reviews goals, daily, weekly, and monthly or someone who prefers to focus on annual goals, these Brand Gems are worth remembering all year.

[ EPISODE 10 TRANSCRIPT IS NOW AVAILABLE ON MY WEBSITE ]

Click here: https://diamondbrands.media/brandgems/
Episode 10 Transcript: https://diamondbrands.media/brand-gems-episode-10-transcript/

[0:00 - 0:34]

Hello, I'm Andrea Wade, the host of Brand Gems, the podcast where I highlight a person, brand or organization and discuss the key elements that contributed to their success. I'm a marketing strategist, brand architect and an MBA who likes a little fast company and Forbes mixed in with her Netflix Binges. I'm also a consultant who enjoys discovering those rare nuggets that make a business unique. Listen to Brand Gems for ideas to leverage in your personal and professional endeavors. Now let's begin the treasure hunt.

[0:35 - 0:59 ]

Hello and thank you for tuning into Brand Gems. We are officially in the new year. I don't know about you, but it seems like these years just fly by now, here we are. Hopefully you had a good break, good time off. I'm sure that you're getting into the year and thinking about how you can be super productive and just make sure that this is your best year yet.

[1:00 - 1:58]

So in this episode, we are discussing the start of the new year. Brand Gems for the new year. Things to think about doing. I have three considerations as you start your new year: benefits of investing in self, benefits of starting, and the benefits of being curious. Benefits of investing in self. Now, this can mean time, resources, and effort as I was preparing for this episode, I came across a story that I think illustrates this perfectly. At the time of this recording, TikTok is a massive social platform that is continuing to grow. I'm saying at the time of this episode because in the news there's all kinds of threats of regulation and maybe getting rid of TikTok since it's owned. It's a Chinese owned company and there are all kinds of concerns with that. But right now it's huge and the growth doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon. So anyway, back to the story.

[1:59 - 2:51]

There's a lot of people, things, products, fashion, trends, books, and things that get discovered on TikTok. Book talk is a thing, and it helps authors, librarians, all things related to reading get discovered. It also led to an unlikely person, an illiterate 33 year old man, Oliver James, becoming one of TikTok's biggest book talk stars. So usually the stars of book talk are bestselling authors, maybe English teachers, librarians, or book collectors. But here you have this illiterate man, and his follower count now puts him over the follower count if you take the New York Public Library, the top five publishers, and the last bookstore combined. And it all started with him declaring that he couldn't read while taking on the effort to learn to read.

[2:52 - 3:18]

Imagine that in today's world, being an adult who can't send a text, read a menu, complete a job application, or read a story to your child, definitely not an easy path. So after a challenging path that included jail time, Oliver, who is now a personal trainer, found himself in Orange County, California. It turns out that learning he was going to be a father is what motivated him to want to read.

[3:19 - 3:53]

He was determined to be able to read to his child. He knew it wouldn't be easy, and he decided to make his goal public to hold himself accountable. Although he now has over 100,000 followers on TikTok, he quote, unquote, read alone for a year before anyone discovered him. He'd spend 2 hours a pop on TikTok knowing he was going to be a father. He committed to reading every day, and he did it. The article tells the story of how, or rather why, Oliver never learned to read. But the Brand Gem that I want to highlight is the benefit of investing yourself.

[3:54 - 4:18]

At 33, Oliver made the choice to invest time to learn something that will dramatically improve his life. He could have watched the years go by, giving all the reasons why he never learned to read as a child. But he made an adult decision to make a change. A brand, as it relates to people, boils down to how you show up in your life, the actions that you take, what you are known for. Oliver's Brand is resilience and determination.

[4:19 - 4:50]

The second Brand Gem that I want to highlight and make sure that you keep in mind as you start this new year is the benefit of starting. In Brand Gems Episode Three: Authenticity As A Competitive Advantage, I spoke about Tabitha Brown's journey. Although her authenticity is what her fans and supporters have responded to, she had to start in order to get feedback, just like Oliver had to start learning to read in order to learn to read. Taking that first step is key. The path may not be linear, but it gets you moving.

[4:51 - 5:13]

What we do know for sure is that unless you start, you can't get anywhere. So going into this new year, think about what you are going to start doing. Six years ago, my mom, uncle and I started family meetings. We all had things that we wanted to accomplish and determined that we could help encourage each other and hold each other accountable.

[5:14 - 5:44]

We all live in different cities, so this meant that we had to set a regular time to meet. We determined that we would have the call the first Sunday of each month. We set guidelines to start. I went back in my notes and found these instructions for our family meetings. Define your top two to three goals. Why? They are important, meaningful, significant. How will your life be impacted? What are the monthly or weekly steps you will take to get there? What do you want from the monthly meetings and team members to get you there? These meetings have been incredibly valuable.

[5:45 - 6:07]

I think I said we started six years ago and we're continuing to do them. Goal setting is a skill in itself, and we each have our own way of setting goals and utilizing the meetings. How I set goals now is completely different from how I started setting goals six years ago, and that's fine. I think the key here is that each person has to define what works best for them.

[6:08 - 6:42]

What I can also say is that our group accountability has helped us all to accomplish things that might have fallen by the wayside, but for our public commitment and our commitment to each other to hold each other accountable. If there's something you're looking to start, also think about accountability partners. Can you set a regular meeting with a few people to keep you on task? When Oliver first started to read, he was by himself. But as people started following him, if he missed a day, he would actually hear from his followers, checking in, making sure that he was okay.

[6:43 - 7:20]

So there's nothing like the friendly and loving pride of someone who is vested in your success. The third Brand Gem is the benefit of being curious. The world is changing so fast, it can feel overwhelming at times. Staying curious is essential on multiple levels. Not only will it keep you current in your industry, will help you sort between fact and fiction, and it can lead to a new interest or hobby. My curiosity at the beginning of the pandemic led me to start listening to different podcasts, which eventually motivated me to launch the Brand Gems podcast.

[7:21 - 7:48]

In episode five, Curiosity is a Roadmap, I talk about how curiosity led to Malcolm Gladwell's career. What are you curious about? Follow it and see where it takes you. There is so much pressure to start the new year with a bang and to take on all of these new goals and habits. I offer that you think about your brand, who you want to be, how you want to show up, and let that drive your actions.

[7:49 - 8:25]

Maybe you have your goals and intentions for the new year already. However, if you need some inspiration, you can't go wrong with one or all of the following. Remember, there are benefits to investing in, self starting and being curious. My objective for future episodes of Brand Gems is to give you the inspiration and motivation on your journey. Maybe an episode will spark an idea, or maybe one will provide clarity to a key action for an idea that you're ready pursuing. I want to make sure that your time here is well spent.

[8:26 - 8:32]

Thanks for tuning in. Until next time. This is Andrea Wade with Brand Gems.

[8:33 - 8:42]

You just listened to another episode of Brand Gems. Be sure to follow so you don't miss future episodes. And please share with anyone you think will find the information useful.

[8:43 - 8:44]

Until next time.