EP394: Mastering Brand Clarity and Client Value With Kaye Putham

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Kaye Putnam: Welcome to marketing mistakes and how to avoid them. Here’s your host, Stacey Jones.

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Stacy Jones: Welcome to marketing mistakes and how to avoid them. Now I’m Stacey Jones and I’m so happy to be here with you all today. And I want to give a very warm welcome to Kay Putnam. Kay is the founder of kputnam.com. For over the last decade has specialized with a psychology driven brand strategies for entrepreneurs. Through work with hundreds of clients, from global brands to solo business owners, she’s developed the clarity code. Kay believes in pursuing audacious dreams and that there is a genius that lives inside every entrepreneur. When you have a clear brand, your clients love, respect and are willing to pay premium prices for your work. And it gives you the clarity and confidence to scale your impact and income. Kay works with students in our programs and with clients one one and is the host for podcast brand gravity show.

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Stacy Jones: Today, Kay and I are going to be chatting about building clarity around your brand to drive sales and work with clients who appreciate you. We’ll learn what works from Kay’s perspective, why should be avoided, and how some businesses and individuals just miss Mark. Kay, welcome. So happy to have you here.

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Kaye Putnam: Casey, thank you so much. I’m so excited and grateful to have this conversation.

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Stacy Jones: Well, I am excited because I always want to know how to get brands to appreciate an agency a little bit more because that is an agency’s woe. But how did you get started here? I mean, this is a unique career path.

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Kaye Putnam: Yes, I got started online out of necessity. My husband was in the military, so it meant that were moving around every two or three years for about a decade. And I realized very quickly that a traditional career path wasn’t going to work for me. So I had a marketing degree with a psychology minor from my undergrad and turned to online business as my playground. And we’ll dive more into this, but I’ll give a little spoiler alert. When I first started online, I was really awkward. So I knew all of the best practices, I knew the textbook definitions of marketing, but that didn’t mean that when I actually implemented it for myself and went into business for myself, that I got it right from the start.

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Kaye Putnam: So it has been a journey to figure out how to be authentic and compelling and interesting online so that I can attract the right clients.

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Stacy Jones: To me, that makes sense. So what does an average instruction, one one, working with someone look like? What is it? When you’re sitting down with someone and you’re diving into the psychology, how are you unearthing those? As you said, all of the entrepreneurs have genius within them. How are you helping them find that and make sure that it’s seen by others?

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Kaye Putnam: When I was going through that really awkward, kind of like, pimply teenage phase of getting started online in this entrepreneurship world, I was doing what a lot of people do and what a lot of people preach, which is to model what’s successful, do what other people are doing that have already seen success. And I was hoping and wishing and praying that I would just see maybe just a little fraction or a little sliver of the success that they’d seen and just didn’t work, because our humans that we’re selling to are smart humans. So I knew that I needed to find a different way. And through this serendipitous rabbit hole, the Internet links, I found this framework that I’ve been leveraging in my work since, which is called archetypes.

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Kaye Putnam: And archetypes are these subconscious patterns that show up when we are looking at different brands, when we’re looking at characters. Even the people in our lives embody different archetypes, and brands can embody these as well, so that they are positioned and differentiated in the market. And then also as a solopreneur or somebody who’s running your own business and showing up in your business, it can help you stay in your lane. So when I’m working with clients one one, we typically use the archetypes as a starting place to help define what is your unique genius, so that you’re not trying to just be a carbon copy of what other people have done in the past. And energetically, this is magnetic. It brings people to you when you’re standing in your truth, unapologetically. So we can dive into archetypes a bit more if you’re interested.

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Kaye Putnam: But it always starts there. And then we start to build all of the infrastructure and the systems and the ecosystem around that truth. So building a brand is a multifaceted experience. We have the very tip of the iceberg, the things that people typically think of when they think of brands, things like fonts and colors and logos and all of those fun things. But the real work starts down underneath the surface. That’s always where I start with my clients to figure out, okay, who are you really? And then how are we going to present that to the world?

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Stacy Jones: And is that part of that, the why? Why that actual brand is in existence and what their purpose is.

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Kaye Putnam: It’s connected to very universal human desires. So, for example, the explorer archetype desires freedom. I’m a magician and sage. Mix. The magician desires change and transformation, and the sage desires truth. So in that sense, it is, it’s connected to the things that all of us desire. And when we know what our core lever is, that core emotional lever that we’re going to pull on, that’s going to attract other people who desire that same thing.

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Stacy Jones: And so is that really what it is identifying those core archetypes and targeting those who align with those same beliefs or who are able to fit into the counter of what that is that they’re looking for?

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Kaye Putnam: Exactly. And it doesn’t mean necessarily that all of our clients are going to be the same archetype as us. The beautiful thing about universal human desires is that they’re universal. So even though I’m not a maverick archetype naturally myself, I’m not the person that goes and burns everything down and speaks what other people are afraid of saying. Typically.

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Stacy Jones: Yeah, I noticed that.

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Kaye Putnam: I love that. And I appreciate people like sage.

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Stacy Jones: I’m a sage maverick.

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Kaye Putnam: I love that combination. So point being, even though I am not a maverick, I love people like you who are willing to be that because that’s one of those universal human desires. So if I’m in a space in my life where I’m desiring more, just like Lion Roar energy, where I just show up as myself without apology, then I’m going to turn to somebody like you who embodies that energy and that emotional promise in their brand. So, yes, exactly. You’re embodying something. It gives you kind of blinders so that you’re not trying to be everything to everyone you’re standing in, who you innately are as a person, as a business owner, as an entrepreneur. And then people who value that at different points in their life will be attracted to you.

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Stacy Jones: And I’m sure you could do this, but I’ll just put you out and test you a little bit. Are there any famous entrepreneurs that you could say what their archetypes are tied to, kind of their brand?

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Kaye Putnam: Yes. This is actually how I got a lot of visibility right when I was starting my brand. And some of these people I might name are kind of like OGs in the space, so hopefully they’re still relevant. But one that comes to mind immediately that I actually used as an example in my quiz when it first came out. And then fun marketing tip for anybody listening. So I included these famous entrepreneurs as examples of each of the archetypes. And then I emailed these entrepreneurs. I said, hey, I featured you in my quiz, and then many of them actually shared my lead bankit, this brand personality quiz with their wider audiences. So it was a really fun campaign related to the quiz that’s still on my site today. That said, I love Lewis Howes. He has such, like a masculine hero energy.

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Kaye Putnam: He’s the school of greatness. There’s another entrepreneur, she’s not as active anymore, but there was one, her name was, shoot, I’m forgetting her name, so I’m going to skip her over her. But another one I love, she’s a writer. Ash Ambrjay. She’s also an author. She is like true maverick energy. She swears has bright neon colors in her brand. And again, she’s willing to say what other people are afraid to say. So those are two examples, at least, to get us started.

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Stacy Jones: Okay. Those are good examples. And when we’re thinking about someone like an Elon Musk, what would you say his archetype is?

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Kaye Putnam: He’s a controversial figure now, isn’t he? I think he has some maverick in himself. But his brand, Tesla, SpaceX, they are kind of quintessential magician brands because they’re pushing the frontier of what we imagine to be possible for reality, that he’s, like, bringing us into the future. So he’s a pretty typical magician brand.

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Stacy Jones: And so when you’re looking at this, and I know you’re working with all of these different types of businesses, right? But are there certain types of businesses, if you’re in a larger corporation, if you’re more of an indie entrepreneur, if you’re in the world of agency, are there certain archetypes that you see that are just kind of typical of the entrepreneur you’re working with?

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Kaye Putnam: Sometimes you see patterns when it comes to industries. So, for example, if you’re talking about the baby industry, people that are targeting families and mothers, often you’ll see the innocent archetype, which embodies optimism, joy, natural goodness, or you’ll see the caregiver archetype, which is all about mothering energy, just being loving, non judgmental, et cetera. But the beautiful thing that I love about archetypes is it doesn’t have to be that way. One of my favorite experiences as a consumer is standing in front of the ICE cream freezer in the grocery store. You have all of these products lined up. They have essentially the same ingredients. They’re selling exactly the same thing. Some differences, obviously, but if we’re comparing vanilla to vanilla, the ingredients are the same, the offer is the same, the industry is the same, yet they have all very distinct personalities.

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Kaye Putnam: So you have haagendas, which is like this kind of luxurious, decadent, almost sinful ICE cream. I really love halo top. It’s a newer ICE cream brand here in the US that has low calorie options. It’s the innocent, if you weren’t tipped off by the name there. We also have like Ben and Jerry’s, which embodies kind of this mix between the entertainer and the maverick. So you don’t have to take advice or you don’t have to be so inspired by your own industry. When you’re using archetypes as a framework, you can actually be inspired by a diverse set of industries that are all speaking the same emotional language that you are.

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Stacy Jones: And so what is this next step? So you figured out what the archetype is of the entrepreneur you’re working with or the brand. What do you do then?

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Kaye Putnam: Yes, and then it gets really fun. I think a lot of people get stuck in that space where they don’t have clarity. They don’t know how to show up online, so they just don’t. They spin their wheels. They spend forever procrastinating or working on things behind the scenes, and they never bring their brand forward. And that’s a tragedy because that means you don’t get to impact the people that you’re meant to serve and impact. So the second step answers that question is, how are we going to build the house or build the brand that invites people into your world? So we get to start to translate what we know to be true about you specifically, and then also you in the archetype sense, into outward facing cues. So touch point by touch point.

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Kaye Putnam: So from colors to the stories that you tell, to the names of your proprietary process and your service and your products, to the images, whether that’s brand portrait images or stock images that you’re using, you can apply that knowledge to each of those decisions so that you’re creating this cohesive narrative that people have a gut level understanding what you stand for as soon as they come into contact with any of those touch points.

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Stacy Jones: And so then what happens?

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Kaye Putnam: Then we build the marketing machine, which is right on par for your podcast here. So we start to build a three system marketing machine, usually. And this is one of the big mistakes that I see with a lot of the clients and entrepreneurs that I work with, is that they like to ignore one of the systems. So it’s really important that we have three different things happening in our marketing so that we’re continually inviting more and more people to your brand. I call it the brand gravity. System, because I like to think of brands as almost like a planetary body. And the more compelling you are, the more interesting you are, the stronger your gravitational pull is, and you can pull people into your world. So the first step is to attract new people to your brand.

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Kaye Putnam: So making sure that you’re getting in front of people who’ve never heard of you before. In the past, this might be ads, might be speaking, it might be some viral content that you’re creating on social media. And then second step is to nurture. So to deepen the relationship, build trust. This most often happens on the email list, so it doesn’t have to. It could happen on social media or YouTube or wherever you’re creating content. And then finally, we need to have some type of sales mechanism. So how are we inviting people from that free stage into our paid offers? This can look like a sales call or a webinar, et cetera. So I help entrepreneurs strategize that whole system and make sure that they’re staying in alignment with that overarching brand story in every one of those places.

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Stacy Jones: And then obviously, this is magic and it happens overnight and it’s super. Yeah, of course, you just wave your sorcerer’s wand, put on your magician’s hat, done, and out the door, and brands are chugging along with that.

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Kaye Putnam: Of course. That is the world that I would love to live in. Stacey, I don’t know about you.

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Stacy Jones: Where does the shit kind of hit the fan? Where does it not actually happen like that?

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Kaye Putnam: It doesn’t happen like that. In the same reason why most people don’t get married after one date, we have to take time to build a relationship. And in the world that I operate in, which is online businesses, we’re all working in this very high choice, yet low trust environment. So it takes time to build the authority and the trust that’s required to move people over the line, to actually take out their wallets and give you their hard earned money. So it takes some longevity, it takes some consistency, it takes showing up over time. We also have to get better as entrepreneurs.

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Kaye Putnam: I don’t know about you, but when I first started my business, I thought I was good, I thought I had skills, but I cringe when I look back at those first YouTube videos that I put out or the first web pages that I built.

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Stacy Jones: My first decks. Oh, my God.

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Kaye Putnam: Yeah.

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Stacy Jones: Websites, decks, everything. It’s even going back further than that. And how you represented. Like, when I was first graduating from college, I came out to LA, and this is back in the day, long enough ago that there was still a fax machine, that you had to send resumes out to work on sets of Hollywood to get your job as a pa. And I sent a monster load of resumes out like, I’m sure nowhere near as how many people have today, because everyone, by having to do it by facts, it put up kind of a guardrail. So everyone wasn’t just sending 1000 resumes out and you had to customize.

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Stacy Jones: But I’ve gone back and read those cover letters and seen the mistakes or seen just the strategy I did, and it goes back to all of us on anything that we do, that whatever we start out at, if you give it enough decades, you’re going to better. Yeah.

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Kaye Putnam: Like I said earlier, I think a lot of people get stuck before they start. And that’s such a mistake because you’re not going to get better until you’re in action. That is the practice of running a business. And I hope that this doesn’t sound like too discouraging. It’s not that you have to have a business for ten years before you’ll see success, but the long term benefits of a brand happen over time. There’s short term things that you can do. Absolutely. The more conversations you have with people that have an acute need that you can solve, the more sales that you’re going to have. So if you prioritize that in the beginning, you can see some success right in the beginning.

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Kaye Putnam: But when you want to have this whole inbound marketing system that is generating leads predictably, and sales predictably, it’s going to take some time to build that.

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Stacy Jones: And again, what you just said is spot on. Like the entrepreneurs out there who need to get things to be perfect before they actually open their doors are never going to open their doors because business is messy and you learn from the mistakes you make.

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Kaye Putnam: Yes. Thank you.

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Stacy Jones: Really. Well, that’s the best teacher.

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Kaye Putnam: And it’s one of the things that I actually love about online business. I’m so grateful that I don’t have to rely on magazine or newspaper or even TV ads to market my business. If I make a mistake on a web page, I can change it. If I put out a post on social media that flops, I can just create a new one. Everything has a relatively short and temporary shelf life right now. So it doesn’t have to be perfect. You can learn as you grow.

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Stacy Jones: And so now you have done the sorcerer’s hat, the magician, all of these things, and you do have the webinar and you do have all of the materials what happens next?

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Kaye Putnam: This is the fun part. This is actually where most of my clients come to me. So students tend to come in those first stages of building a brand, and then there’s something really interesting that happens once you’ve reached some level of success, once you’ve built this whole thing. And I think this is where the true brand building really starts. Is this more advanced entrepreneur? Because once you have just some of that traditional swagger and confidence that you can do something that makes money, then people start asking the questions of, like, okay, what is the impact that I really want to make? What is the legacy that I want to make? Where am I holding myself back? Or where am I hiding?

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Kaye Putnam: And that becomes a really powerful inflection point for a lot of entrepreneurs a little bit further down the road, where you get to decide who you want to be. Now, because we are never stagnant. We are constantly evolving. We’re constantly shaping our own reality. And that can be a really powerful opportunity to take a new look, to deepen your expression and your understanding of your own brand. And don’t start again.

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Stacy Jones: So the next step there is back to the beginning again?

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Kaye Putnam: Yes, straight back.

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Stacy Jones: Go through the processes, refine, make it better. Learn from all of your mistakes. And make more money.

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Kaye Putnam: Exactly.

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Stacy Jones: Are there known mistakes made along the way here? Are there things that, as people are doing, where are the fuck ups?

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Kaye Putnam: We’ve mentioned a few of them already, and I want to put an underline under them with, like, a sharpie. So one of them is modeling what you see other people doing, hoping that it’ll just work for you, maybe fingers crossed. It’s much more important to do the self reflection of who are you and what’s really important to you. I have an exercise I’d love to share. I call it the ten truths exercise. Literally get out a piece of paper, start each line with I believe, and finish that sentence as many times as possible. What do you believe to be true about your industry, about success, about relationships, about your family, and so on and so forth? Those can become really powerful point of view statements that are your own, that are not a carbon copy of what you’re seeing in the market.

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Kaye Putnam: So that’s one mistake. Another one that we mentioned is focusing too much one of the stages of marketing. I think that a lot of people get really comfortable, typically in that middle stage when they’re talking to people who already know and like them, and they avoid the work of either selling to them and making that ask, or they avoid the work of going out and finding brand new people and continually growing their audience because both of those situations feel scary. They’re an opportunity for rejection, but you have to reframe that. Yeah, exactly. I’m just going to keep pushing out free content and pushing out free content. And why isn’t anybody buying? So that can be a trap for a lot of entrepreneurs because there’s no.

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Stacy Jones: Call to action and there’s no ask.

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Kaye Putnam: Yes, exactly. Or if you’re constantly selling to the same audience and never focusing on growing, then you’re going to eventually tap out and oversaturate your current audience. So it really needs to be this cycle where you’re constantly bringing people in, constantly making asks, and you’re constantly deepening the relationship with the people who aren’t quite ready yet for the offers.

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Stacy Jones: Do you think that need of doing it? I know your preference is online, right, and marketing and that’s your go to in webinars and probably Facebook groups and places that you can actually have your voice heard.

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Kaye Putnam: Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about the question, Stacey.

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Stacy Jones: Yeah, I’m trying to figure out where I’m going with this. So with that, do you think that it’s hard for a lot of people where they see these talking heads that are like, Mr. Instagram, Mr. I have my community, right. And he’s like the hanch of guy and everyone’s following him and they’re going to follow that real estate dream that coaches whatever. I think that’s what people think of a lot of times when they’re thinking of having to have these social interactions online, that you have to be this big commando and that everyone needs to replicate that. And I know you’ve mentioned before, if that’s not who you are, that’s not going to work well. But is that something that a lot of people just look at and then automatically think they’re going to fail because they can’t do that 100%.

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Kaye Putnam: And I felt the same way. I’m like, I’m not funny. I’m not traveling to Bali or living in Bali. How am I going to be successful if I’m not doing these really attention grabbing things in my life? I don’t have a rags to riches story, or at least not one that happened in six months and really coming back to again, own truth, figuring out how you want to serve the world. And I like to do something that I call, I borrowed this from my husband. They do this in the military for some reason. They have this three ring binder where they collect all of their awards and their accomplishments and accommodations, all these different things in this binder. They call it the I love me book. So I have a digital version of this.

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Kaye Putnam: I love to collect all of the kind emails, all of the client testimonials, and just any proof that I can find that my work matters to people. So return to that as often as possible to keep your focus in the right place. And then also just understand. It really helps to be in communities of peers who are also building online businesses if this is what you’re interested in. It’s a unique environment. So often it feels like we’re speaking into the void where it looks like these gurus and influencers and people have just cropped up overnight. But in reality, it often takes this period of time where you’re creating content, you’re putting yourself out there and you’re hearing nothing, you’re hearing crickets.

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Kaye Putnam: So it’s just a unique psychological situation to put yourself in that is challenging, but it has amazing rewards and you get to work with incredible people all over the world if you decide to go down this path.

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Stacy Jones: And so for that, there’s so many different ways of showing up and being that person. What is the easiest, most fundamental way to start? Like, is it just posting on an Instagram? Is it Instagram live? Is there something that is easier for people to start who haven’t, who aren’t ready to start their own podcast, who aren’t ready to go out and seize the world by the horns and be that face that’s central to everything?

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Kaye Putnam: I love this question. I always like to turn it back and ask my clients when they’re asking me this, where should I be? Where are my ideal clients? What would be the best practice, the most strategic, et cetera? Ask yourself, what would your seven year old self be really excited about doing? Is it showing up on video? Is it drawing little drawings? Is it writing poems? What is it that is exciting to you to create? And that is what you should do. Because even if it is a podcast is big and complicated and kind of a behemoth to create. But if your energy is in it, you’ll figure it out. And if your energy isn’t in something and you’re doing it because you think that you should, you’re going to stall out, you’re going to avoid it, you’re not going to want to create.

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Kaye Putnam: So really pursue what it is that you just have a natural curiosity about. I hear often from clients where they hate talking just to a screen or to their phone and pretending that somebody is there. So I always encourage them. I’m like, find somebody to have a conversation with and record it, get on other people’s podcasts or have collaborative lives. That sounds like it’s fun because they really love conversation. So maybe that’s you, but maybe it’s not. So you have to do a little bit of soul searching there.

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Stacy Jones: And so from there, where do we go, Sid? Back to the beginning. Is there anything else that we need to dive into that would help support and give a little bit more structure planning?

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Kaye Putnam: Yeah, I think this comes a little bit later. So, once you’ve worked with perhaps a couple of clients, if you’re in a service based business and you’re starting to get your feet under you’re starting to deliver results, it’s really important to capture some of that social proof, some of those testimonials from those first people that you work with. And then that’s also the time to start thinking about what is my proprietary process, what is my intellectual property, and start thinking about a process that you can brand a kind of a through line or a step by step system that you can bring all of your clients through. This can be a really powerful leverage point because it gives you something to be known for more than just K. Putnam or more than just Stacey. You can be more than your personality.

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Kaye Putnam: You can become known for the transformation that you create and for the way that you do it. And it’s a really powerful way to differentiate yourself from other people that do similar things. So if I’m thinking about copywriter A and copywriter B, if one of them has a very well defined, unique system, maybe it includes something like a hypnosis to uncover my true message from my innermost subconscious. Yeah, that would be really fun.

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Stacy Jones: And that sounds a heck of a lot more interesting.

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Kaye Putnam: Yes, exactly. So think about what has created the best, most results, both for yourself and for the clients that you have worked with, and start creating a branded system around that you can start to promote in of itself as part of your brand.

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Stacy Jones: You can invite a psychic to all of your meetings.

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Kaye Putnam: Yes.

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Stacy Jones: How cool would that be? That I do. Would you like to try? I’m kidding, but. Okay, that’s good. So, Kate, how can people find you? Where do they go? Online, which is very easy here, because I know the answer. But I want to make sure my.

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Kaye Putnam: Listeners know I’m a good online business person. You can google me, you will find all sorts of things. But I highly recommend visiting my website, which is kputnam.com, and taking the brand quiz that can be a really fantastic starting place for getting some clarity about what to bring to the market in your marketing, in your branding, that’s going to help you stand out in an authentic way.

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Stacy Jones: And that’s k a Y e p u t n a m. So kputnam.com, thank you. So for words of advice, last minute here. As you’re parting ways, what would you share? What would you tell our listeners today to make sure that they take away?

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Kaye Putnam: I’m going to go the cheesy route. So forgive me, but I truly believe that everybody has a unique genius that they can bring to the world. We all have a unique story, a unique set of circumstances, a unique set of skills. And if you don’t do this work of building a brand, of packaging it up, of bringing it to the world, then the people that you’re meant to serve are missing out. So use your genius to change the world and do it boldly so that other people can benefit from what you know and what you’ve experienced.

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Stacy Jones: And on that note, Kate, thank you for joining today. I learned a lot and I love archetypes and I’m glad that you have shared why they’re so important for everyone.

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Kaye Putnam: Thank you so much for having me.

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Stacy Jones: To all of our listeners, thank you for tuning in to another episode of marketing mistakes and how to avoid them. I look forward to chatting with you this next week. And until then, if you would like to get your brand in the hands of any archetype you can imagine, any character from a TV show, a feature film that you think your brand would sound with, reach out. My team at Hollywood branded would love to talk product placement with you and how to make that vision come into a reality. Have a great one.