ep. 019 • 3 Benefits of Branding Your Henna Business

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Chelsea Stevenson: Welcome to the Hennapreneur podcast, the exclusive podcast of its kind, dedicated to giving you an honest look at the reality of making a living as a henna professional. I'm your host, Chelsea Stevenson, professional henna artist and business strategist. I teach budding henna artists and seasoned henna pros alike how to build vibrant, profitable businesses doing what they love. I went from being the girl who could barely piece together a fluid design to being owner of the most celebrated henna boutique in my city and with years of experience growing my own business and helping others to do the same, I'm here to spill all the tea on what it takes to be a bonafide hennapreneur. Our show starts in just under 60 seconds, but first, here's a quick shout out to my sponsors.

This episode is brought to you by my new free, on-demand training “The 5 Mistakes New Henna Artists Make (And How YOU Can Avoid Them)!”

Are you an aspiring henna artist or a henna enthusiast who has really big dreams about working with henna? Maybe you're struggling with sourcing quality henna paste or preparing it yourself is really more challenging than you expected. Perhaps you're curious about what it takes to work as a henna artist professionally or you think you might be ready to start taking clients, but you're just not sure where to start. If so, this training is for you. Inside of this training, I'm teaching all of the foundational information you must know about henna before you ever take your first client. I also lay out the basics of what henna is and how it works so that you can get started confidently working with henna moving forward. I teach you some really insightful tips about how you can protect yourself and your budding business from the very beginning with a number of best practices, and I'll outline the five most common mistakes that I see new and aspiring henna artists make so that you can get started without all of the hassle and the headache of falling into those traps. To register for the training and to watch it instantly on demand, you can visit hennapreneur.com/biggestmistakes. All right, let's get to the show.

Hey, hey hennapreneurs! Welcome back to another episode of the Hennapreneur podcast. Today we are talking all about branding, ayyy! So before we get started, first I want to make sure that we're on the same page when I say we're talking branding, what exactly it is that I mean. I feel like a lot of times when we mention branding, the first place that our minds go, as you know, visual creators, we often immediately think about, like, a logo or the colors that we're using in our pictures or the way that our Instafeed is laid out. Like, we tend, because we're visual artists, we tend to think in the visual as well. And so when we think about many times we think about it from the aesthetic standpoint. And don't get me wrong, there's something to be said about having a really nice, clean visual aesthetic in your brand. And we'll talk a little bit about that in just a bit.

But when I talk about branding, I like to approach branding from a much more holistic standpoint. A much more holistic perspective, okay? When I talk about branding, and you guys will hear me mention this, especially if you work with me closely, when I think about branding, I like to consider branding as being the way that we make people feel when they see us, when they hear about us. Really, your brand is the— the way that I like to best describe your brand is, what people say about your business when you get up and leave the room, right? It's not so much how you feel about your business and it's definitely not what it is that you're putting out on social media that, like, is the end all be all of "this is my brand". No, no, no. Your brand is identified by what other people perceive from you and by what other people think about you and the story that other people tell about your business.

So as a business owner, as a hennapreneur, as a marketer, your job is to craft a story, craft an experience, craft an aesthetic as well, but craft a larger holistic experience that is going to inform the story that the public will then regurgitate on your behalf and on behalf of your business. Does that make sense? So we're not, when we talk about branding, I'm not talking about just having the pretty logo. I am talking about building an air around your business that speaks to specific values that speaks to a specific, um, perhaps perspective or that is going to create a connection with your audience in a different way, um, and in a way that's going to be unique to you and to your business, okay? So that when you aren't in that space, when you aren't present, people then describe your business in the way that you hope to be recognized, in the way that you hope to be described, right? Okay.

So that's what branding is. It's what people are saying about your business, about you when you get up and leave the room. It's how they feel about you in your absence, right? Okay. So now that we have the what, this is what branding is, this is how we're talking about it, now let's talk a little bit about why branding is important. And I want to spend time with you today discussing this because I feel like many times I'll find that as hennapreneurs we tend to go one of two directions, right? One, we focus so heavily on having a clean brand aesthetic, just the visuals, right? The color, the logo, whatever. Like, the first thing that we want to do is run off and have someone create a logo for us, which there's nothing wrong with having a logo. Please understand, I do feel that it's important. You should have a logo, absolutely. But your logo, it feels great to you as the business owner, and it does serve a purpose for brand recognition, which is what we're going to talk about soon. But it's not what's going to make you money. And so the brand logo is not, this is not, it's not the priority, okay? But many times as a business owner we'll find that, you know, henna artists will come in and they'll be like, "Oh yes, I'm going to start a henna business and the first thing that I need is a logo." And designing a logo makes us feel legitimate. But designing a logo is not going to push sales. And designing a logo is not ultimately going to be what's going to cause clients to choose to book with you, okay? But what is going to cause them to book with you and what is going to, you know, going to cause them to want to do business with you and ultimately what's going to allow you to be more profitable is by creating a brand experience. And so, many times we'll have henna artists that will come into the industry and this is the direction that they go and they— it's, it's meant with good intentions, but it's very misguided and so we miss the mark. We make the logo and then we still wonder why we have no sales. Or the alternative is, we have the artist who don't focus at all on branding. Like we just totally ignore the fact that it exists and we totally ignore the fact that it's something that you should have as a business owner. And because of that, they're almost overlooked or seem to be very amateurish or seem to be, perhaps, just misaligned or flighty. Flighty. And flighty is not the word that you want people to identify or to connect with your business. That's not the direction that we want to go either, right?

And so we want to avoid being either of these two groups of people. We want to avoid being, you know, falling into either of these two traps. Either going into branding, thinking it's purely aesthetic or ignoring that branding is a thing that you need to do. In both of those cases, these are huge mistakes, okay? Instead, we want to take the middle course, right? We want to understand that branding is important both from an aesthetic perspective and otherwise. But we also need to be aware that branding is something that's going to require a lot of curation on our part and a lot of consistency. You see, when you're building a brand experience, you have to show up and repeat the same things. Repetition is going to be your friend. You're going to have to show up and repeat the same things over and over and over again because you're going to build trust.

Okay, so today I want to talk to you about three reasons why leaning into a brand strategy, why formulating a brand strategy is important, and how they benefit your business, okay? So the first way that building brand consistency and building a branding strategy for your business, the first way that that benefits you is by client recognition, okay? Client recognition. This is the thing, when you have a strong brand presence, and this can be from an aesthetic perspective or it can be from a messaging perspective, it can be from the experience perspective and so forth. When you build consistency into the way that you're showing up in your marketing and the way that you're showing up on social media, the way that you're showing up in your community, then it becomes easy for people to notice you, acknowledge you, recognize you when they see you, even if you're a mile away, right?

I'm going to give you guys an example and I hope that she doesn't mind. This is like the ultimate shout out, if you will. Recently we completed the Accelerator program for the fall round. Okay. And if you don't know what the Accelerator is, the Accelerator is a 100-day business intensive that I run. It's run twice a year, once in the spring, once in the fall. And it's done in a small cohort. I limit seats. We work very closely together over a period of 100 days. And during that time we build out the ins and outs of your business. Um, so we literally start at the foundations and then we move into branding, of course, and we talk about how to attract your ideal client. And we set up the systems in place, we build a website, we— I mean we do all the things. And by the time you come out of those 100 days, you have full systems in place to engage the market, to build your business, to bring in more profit, to be more sustainable, all of those things. Like, literally, it is an MBA for henna artists. It's... yeah. And if you're wondering, I did mention, yeah, we're doing it again in the spring. Enrollment will open in February. So keep that in mind.

But we just recently finished out the fall round of the Accelerator and one of my students, Christine of Mind Body Henna —she's based in Austin, Texas — she's an excellent example of what I mean when I talk about branding and doing branding well from a recognition standpoint. If you go, and you guys are welcome to check out Christine's Instagram. Christine! I know that you're listening with, like, your coffee and I'm sure that your jaw is on the ground. I apologize for just tossing you out there, but I'm going to let you know, I think you're amazing. Okay. So, what Christine does incredibly well with her marketing on Instagram is that she has created such a clean, such a clean experience on the platform that I can be scrolling through Instagram and I don't even have to, like, I don't have to look at who posted it and I don't have to look at, like, any of that. I see her post, I see her pictures or I catch a little glimpse of the caption and I know immediately, this is Christine's post. And normally I'll backtrack and I'll be like, "Yeah! That was her. That was her." Why? Because she has created such a clean and strong opportunity for her customers, her clients, her potential clients, her followers on Instagram to recognize her brand. For her, that looks like using consistent colors in her photos. It looks like using consistent images from a content creation perspective, you can expect to see certain types of images on her feed and even the way that she chooses to write out her captions, you can tell that the conversation is always pointed back to a couple of regular themes and this is something that she learned inside of the Accelerator. And this is something that she's doing to implement in her business.

And let me tell you, I can tell you that it works because even for me, and I'm not even in her market, you know. Even for me, I can scroll through Instagram and I know when I see Christine's posts without ever seeing Christine's business name. Now, how does that benefit you? Like, if you were to be able to implement a strategy similar to this, how would this benefit you? Let's say I was local to Christine and her specialty is that she works with prenatal clients. That's her niche and she does an excellent job at that, right? But let's say I'm expecting. I'm a, you know, expectant mother, and I'm looking to get henna done and I follow lots of henna artists. But if I'm scrolling through Instagram, right? And I already, I follow a bunch of henna artists because I enjoy seeing the art of henna and I continue to see Christine's turquoise blue, rich purple, emerald green come up on my feed and I see the photos of the crisp, clean designs on prenatal bellies. "Ah! Okay. This is the service that I'm looking for." And because I know these colors, I know this conversation, I know how these images make me feel. "I bet that's Christine. Why don't I book with her?" You have to understand that from, like, a consumer perspective, right? Customers, clients, consumers, they are much more likely to choose a brand that they recognize versus choosing one that they just find on the fly, right?

So let's say someone, and please understand, most people are not going to book with you the first time that they see you. It's said— it used to be said, that people would make a decision to purchase a product or a service from a company typically only after seeing that company about seven times over. I would argue that that number has likely gone up significantly. Considering the amount of content that we consume on a basis, because this is a number that was kind of tossed out, like, way back when, before social media was what it was... you know. Before it was what it is today. So today, when we think about all of the content that we consume on a daily basis, you know, platform hopping between Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and TikTok and, you know, all of these places. Let alone the things that we are seeing on the news and the things that we're seeing in our daily lives and the tasks that we have to take care of and our obligations and all of this. You can imagine how many times you must be seen as the business owner before someone remembers you instinctively, right? So I would say it's probably not seven times. I would wager something significantly, maybe three, four times more visibility would be required.

So, for you, right? Keeping that in mind, for you that means that every single time you show up on social media, you're going to want to make sure that you're providing a similar experience so that you can be recognized. Because every single one of those touch points, every single one of those opportunities to be recognized and opportunities to be identified is going to count towards one step closer for you closing the sale with that potential client. Does that make sense? Okay. So with that in mind, okay, having that, that sort of perspective on this is why, you know, branding would matter to me as I'm building out my content, you need to remember that again, the customer is going to be much more likely to choose a brand that they do recognize over something that's unfamiliar.

So if you're showing up, but you're showing up inconsistently and it's difficult for that person to identify that that's you every single time, then they're not making those connections in their mind. They're not making those, um, those touch points in, in their mind, if you will, and they're not being reminded that it's you. So it's important for you to have that clean, um, you know, client recognition or protect potential prospective client recognition by way of clean branding. And that branding is going to be not only, again, from the aesthetic standpoint but also in your messaging, also in the way that you show up, and the way that you choose to make that viewer, that audience member feel when they consume your content, okay? So that's the first, the first reason why it's super important for you to lean into having a really nice well put together brand.

Is 2020 the year that you launch your own 5-star henna business? If so, I want to take just a second to talk to you about the Accelerator by Hennapreneur. The Accelerator is a 100-day online program for high-aspiring henna artists who want to build a profitable business doing what they love — creating with henna. Whether you hope to start your henna side hustle on the right foot, make henna your full time career or even take your existing henna business to the next level, the Accelerator can help you in so many ways. Inside of the program, you'll have the hands on guidance of a 5-star, seasoned henna professional, AKA yours truly, helping you and supporting you every step of the way as you do things like clarifying the direction you're going in your business, identifying and maximizing your competitive edge in the market, developing your brand's unique aesthetic and culture, communicating with your target market effectively and with authenticity, designing a website that converts browsers into bookings, pricing and positioning your services for maximum profitability, establishing really sustainable business practices, and introducing things like automation to protect your time and your professional boundaries. See, the Accelerator provides you with both the targeted guidance and the invaluable support that you need to successfully launch a henna business that's both profitable and sustainable the first time around. You can learn more about the program, check out some additional details, see if you're a right fit, and get on the program wait list by visiting hennapreneur.com/accelerator.

The second piece is credibility, okay? This is... this is important. And I feel like... I feel like I shouldn't have to say this, but I do. And I know that I do because I see it day in and day out, right? And this is no shade. Sometimes we just don't know what we don't know, right? So here is me saying, "Hey guys, listen." The fact of the matter is that the culture around the arts, the culture around being an artist is that artists are flighty or artists are, um, they lack business sense. They're unreliable. Artists are, you know, these things. And the way that that translates from culture into someone feeling secure paying you a premium rate for your services is not to your advantage. It's not to my advantage. It's not to our collective advantage as an industry.

And so what we have to do as professionals, right, is we have to build credibility. We have to change the rhetoric. We have to change the thoughts surrounding what it is to be a henna artist. That's why I encourage you guys. That's why I call you hennapreneurs, right? It's to remind you, you're not just an artist, you're a business owner. And when you start to make that shift and when you start to look at your business differently through that lens of professionalism, through that lens of growth as a business person, then you treat it differently, okay?

So what does this have to do with branding? When you choose to build an intentional brand experience for your clients, for your prospective clients, for your audience as a whole, to see, you know, for them to witness and for them to engage with, it's going to increase the credibility that customers have for you. It will increase the credibility that the industry has for you. It will increase the credibility that your market has for you at large. When you think about those people who are local to you, right? When you have credibility, that's what's going to make it easier for people to part with their money. When it comes time to secure that booking.

Let's say you're looking to hire a florist and you go online and you just know, "Look, I want to buy flowers for this friend." Let's say you have a friend who's going through something and you want to send them a bouquet. And you go online and you look up "florists in my area" and you come up with a list of different websites. Um, perhaps you look up, you know, "#florists, my city", whatever on Instagram and you come up with different profiles and you start to dig into these lists and you start to look and see what these different people are doing, these different businesses. And the ultimate goal is, you want to find the best flowers to send to your friend. The way that you're going to look at that business that has, you know, a totally Instagrammable sort of experience — the pretty pictures, the styled photos. All of that, that's going to be very different for you than the website that you go to that looks like it was just like tossed together by some, like, mom and pop firm that, you know, learned their coding skills in the 80s and never went back to another class on design again. This is something that happens. This is something that happens.

And as a consumer you would look at that person with that clean, crisp, updated website and that nice, beautiful Instagram feed and that, you know, Pinterest layout that's super inspiring, and that Facebook page that shows lots of engagement. You would look at those things and you would feel that that person is more credible, by leaps and bounds, than the person whose website looks like it was built in the 80s, built in the 90s, has a bunch of typos, isn't consistent. It doesn't look clean. It doesn't look modern. Who are you in that space? And be honest with yourself. Right now, if you were to look at your business in comparison to your local competitors, in comparison to other businesses in the market outside of our industry, how credible do you find your business to be? How credible would you find your business to be if you were the person doing the hiring?

If you were looking to, again, to purchase that bouquet for your friend and you know, "I'm looking to purchase a bouquet of whatever type of flowers" and you find these two competitors, you're 100% going to go with the one that seems more credible, even if it's the first time that you lay eyes on that business.

And so building out a consistent brand, building out a clean brand aesthetic, building out clear brand messaging, having very concise brand voice, all of those things are going to lend to the credibility that the market sees from you and it's going to build trust, right? Remember, we purchase things, we want to do business with— We buy from those people and those brands that we know, like, and trust. So if you can create an air of credibility around your business by way of clean and consistent branding, then you're also going to make it much easier for your market to identify why they want to open their pocketbooks to do business with you. Why they want to choose you as their henna artists for their next function, event or appointment. Okay. Now, credibility aside, we've got this recognition piece and we've got this understanding that we want to be credible in the market and those are great, but let's also think about something that's a little bit more long-term, got it?

It costs significantly less for you to retain an existing client than it does for you to attract new ones and that's why it's so important that you build client loyalty. That's where you're going to have those repeat clients who come back every two weeks or every month or those clients who even if they don't come back all the time, they're always making referrals and tagging their friends in your posts and things like this and you know that they're, they're generating additional business for you just because they become raving loyal fans. And having a clear brand makes it so much easier for you to acquire those types of clients. Why is that? When you take the idea of your brand being recognizable, and when you couple that with the sharing of values between yourself, your business and your clients, you create a space where loyalty just is birthed naturally, organically.

What that looks like is, your clients seeing your posts, seeing your content, seeing your art, seeing and hearing what you have to say, listening to the messaging that you're putting out there, listening to those things that you find worth sharing, and then they identify themselves with that. When you share values. And this could be anything from values, like the value of self care and the value of independence, the value of having fun, the value of, um, you know, safety, whatever those values are that your client has, that your ideal client has for themselves and for their lifestyle. When your brand also conveys those values, it makes it very easy for your clients or prospective clients to create what's almost an emotional connection to you, okay? And the thing about creating that emotional connection with your audience is that's where you have people who will come back to you over and over and over again and will refuse to go anywhere else because they've become loyal because they've fallen in love with what you do and how you do it, okay?

And what's beautiful about brand loyalty is that once you've got those people who are out there and who are like super excited about your brand, those are also those people who are going to generate for you value from a revenue perspective, years and years and years to come, even perhaps beyond the time that they personally have come to see you. This sort of loyalty? That's transferable. That type of loyalty, that goes from generation to generation and that also goes even from that person to that person's friends and their group, their social circles. Even if they're not booking with you currently, their loyalty to your brand because you guys have the same shared values is such that they will recommend you to their dentist, to the person at the grocery store, and to that person who they happen to bump into on the subway. Like, they will make the recommendation. And you need people like that in your corner. You need clients like that in your corner. That is a cornerstone of having a sustainable business.

So the more you can cultivate that sort of community around your business, the better and the more profitable your business experience is going to be as well. So as you're building your brand, how do you make that happen? Right? That becomes the question. And the answer to that is that your brand's voice and your brand's message needs to be consistently in alignment with the values that your ideal client has, with those values that are authentic to you in order to create a space where everyone feels really well aligned.

So as you are thinking about how you can show up better and show up different and do more for your business and for creating that brand experience as a whole, I want you to really consider how you're aiming to make people feel. What is it exactly that you want people to say about your business when you're not in the room? Is it that you inspire them? Is it that you make them feel beautiful? Is it that you are there to celebrate them on their wedding day and that your, you know, your presence was calming during the time of anxiety, during their pregnancy or... What is it? What is it that you want people to say about you and the experience that they have with your business as a hennapreneur?

Whatever that is, that's going to be your starting point for how you'll craft out your brand's experience as a whole so that you can place that into a brand strategy which is going to give you a lot more competitive edge in the market, okay? That's what's going to differentiate you from everyone else. That's how those prospective clients and hopefully soon-to-be clients and returning clients, raving fans, that's how they have the opportunity to recognize you and really back you, right? And really come behind you and say, "Yeah, this person, this business, this brand, this is one that I really appreciate and one that I really align with and one that I want to do business with. And I want everybody else to do business with them too because they're awesome!" Okay?

So we talked a little bit about branding, what that is, why it's important. And for you, I want to just give you a little piece of homework if I can. I'd love for you to give some thought on what it is. Again, what it is that you want people to say about you and about your business when you are not present in the room. What do you want your brand to stand for? What do you want your brand to look like from the aesthetic standpoint, but more importantly, how do you want your brand to make people feel? That my friends is where the money is, okay?

So if you're not already a member of the Hennapreneur community, I want to invite you to join me inside. You can find us on Facebook. There is a link to the group in the show notes, so come and join us. We're going to have some conversation there about branding and about what it is exactly. I'd love to hear from you what it is that you'd like to make people feel through your business, through your brand, and how are you going to be more strategic with your branding in 2020. All right, until next time.

Hey babe! I wanted to give you a quick thank you for tuning into the show today. That was super cool of you to hang with me all the way until the end. Of course, I've got all the links that you might need from this episode inside of the show notes that you can find at hennapreneur.com/podcast.

If you enjoyed the show and want to stay in the loop with Hennapreneur, be sure to subscribe to the podcast too. You'll get all of the new episodes as soon as they come out. I'd be so grateful if you'd take the time to rate or leave a review on Apple Podcasts while you're there. That tells iTunes that, "Hey! Hennapreneur is about something good!" and it helps us to reach more artists who would love the show. All right, that's all for today. I'll be back soon with another episode but for now, let's get back to work, hennapreneurs!