Finding Your Voice: Build a Brand That Connects & Converts with Lori Lyons | 012

Hello. Welcome to Leading with Purpose. My name is Mark Porteous. My guest today is Lori Lyons, founder of Ignite your business and a Master of turning your message into a brand that connects and converts she helps purpose driven entrepreneurs clarify their voice, build authentic websites and grow with confidence. Lori, welcome to learning with purpose.

Thank you, Mark for having me. I'm excited to be talking about purpose.

We should have been hit record like 30 minutes ago, where we just started chatting and hanging out. I know, right. I love the term that you share with me. You had listened to some of the other podcasts in this series and said that it was like a Sunday drive. Tell me a little bit more about what you said just

Yeah, yeah. It's a conversation with you. Is like a meandering Sunday drive. You take it where it goes. And I shared the story that when I'm from Atlanta, I grew up in Atlanta, and when 285 which is the nightmare around Atlanta beltway, yes, when it was first finished, I don't know what year it was, maybe 68 or something. I was young. My sister was younger, and my parents decided it would be fun after church one Sunday to take a ride around 285, now if you're six and 10, that couple of hour ride took seven weeks. It was forever. We were in the backseat of the car, you know, doing the at some point, we were like, This is my side of the seat. No, it's your side of the seat, drawing the line down the middle and, like, hitting each we're so

Bored travel games back then, we're very different than travel games.

Oh yeah, I think we were so bored we didn't even do travel games. Our sole purpose at that point was to make my parents miserable, so we'd go home. But we hope that this conversation

Will be a little bit different than that, but definitely a Soul Sunday. I love that conversation. And again, the idea is leading with purpose. So what we could dive right in with that? Again, based on who you are, your background, we'll go into that. But what does leading with purpose mean to you? Lori, oh

Gosh, you know. And thinking about, you know, what we were going to talk about on on the podcast today, and I thought about the title of leading with purpose. And, you know, there's the there's the clinical definition of being a leader that we all know. And, you know, if I look back on my life, I've always been, I've always been a better leader and a not so good Indian, or, you know, follower. I'm not a really good follower, not so good follower. No, exactly, exactly. So, you know, it's in thinking about what are the characteristics of a leader, and how many different roles we have as a leader, because we have a leader of an organization, we have a leader in our business, we have a leader in our family, we're leaders in social I think one thing we all have in common is that we put others ahead of us. We put others ahead of what our driving purpose is. I'm, I just came off of two years as a as a president of a women's organization, and my I felt my role was to put the best interests of the organization ahead of what my purpose would be, my individual purpose. And I kind of, you know, looking back on leadership roles, I kind of see that as what a leadership is. You know, in business, I want to put my clients goals and how I can elevate and lift up my clients ahead of what I want to do, sometimes to the detriment. You know, I'm not always saying that that's a good thing to do, but I think that's what to me, that's what the heart of leadership is, is, is setting goals and putting others, you know, lifting others up and elevating them.

And I love that you talked about all the different types of leadership that we have. And when I'm thinking about the difference between like in business, which is mostly what we're talking about, versus like in their family, versus the bigger picture, like political things. I loved your form of leadership, of putting everybody else first, but there's a point where if you put everybody else first, you don't have the oxygen mask on yourself. You can't take care of yourself, yeah, but there's also this point of when you put the oxygen mask on yourself first, and you suck all the air out of the room, you don't care about everybody else. We don't want that

Right, right? And I've been on organizations where that's the case, it's like, and, you know, and it's hard for me to to be involved in those kind of organizations, because I don't feel like there's the betterment of the whole is the is the goal. And, you know, even in business, when I look at when I look at coaches, or I look at people that I work with, in business, I want to see, you know, yeah, we all want to make money. Yes, we all want to do, you know, there's reasons that we're in business, but you know, what is, what is the human part of that? What is the you know, how are you going to make me a better person? How am I going to make you a better person? And I think that that's the ultimate leadership is making each other better, right?

Yeah, and I think that is something that we're moving into around leadership, rather than it be the guru model, that it's more of a community model

Right, right? Yeah, it's, you know, it's the, it's the mastermind model, you know, listen to, you know, one of my dear, our dear friends, is Jay Fairbrother, and listening to his, his interview with you on community. And I was like, That is so good. And it's, I see that's a lot of where we're going is that communal sharing of ideas and communal lifting each other up. And even though it's communal, you still have leaders, because everybody has their own characteristics and their own qualifications and their own skills as leadership. You know, I'm really good at certain things, but I really am terrible and suck at others. So, you know, I look for people who are complimentary to what I need. And can, you know, we can lift each other up.

And I love the conversation around community. You've been known for your branding and being able to help people express their message through their their websites and everything else. And you also are evolving and seeing a lot of the changes that are happening in the market, and being able to focus really on building community and building your own brand around the not just the the branding, but right building community. How did that kind of come about for you? How did you become that's a big shift. You're very well known in your space, and to be able to shift is challenging for a lot of people, but I think a lot of people are feeling the same kind of a thing going on for themselves.

Oh, yeah, and it's a very scary shift. That's one of the things we were talking about before we hit record, is how scary of a shift it is, because you get into this comfort zone, it's like, oh, look, I've but I've been, it's something that I've been wanting to do for several years. And it's, it's when you get into that comfort zone, it's so much easier to say yes to something that you're comfortable with than to say, I can't do that because I'm doing this really uncomfortable, scary thing, so I don't have bandwidth for this comfortable thing. And that's kind of where I am right now, is I've discovered over the years that my one of the things I'm really good at with working with my clients, is working on their messaging and working on helping them elevate their business and doing other stuff besides just the website. I've got a team for that. I've got, you know, I've got people that do that is far better than I am, that actually build the stuff. So the more I thought about more I thought, This is what I'm really enjoying doing these days, is doing the, you know, helping them pull out who, who they are, and who they work with, and what do they really want out of their business. A lot of, a lot of business owners I work with are in this midlife space. They're, you know, they're me 12 years ago when, you know, at 52 I was floundering and saying, I've gotta, I've gotta figure out this business thing. And it just kind of, I fell into this. So that's my sweet spot right now, is working with that midlife business owner and helping them come to this conclusion and take those big, scary, audacious leaps.

Yeah, when we're talking about the scary, we're talking about courage in particular and and the courage that it takes to do that. And I think a lot of people are being called to courage, whether they want to or not. Right now this lot of shifts that are happening globally and in our industry in particular, as experts, and how we show up, whether that's social media or AI. And so courage is necessary, and great benefits and great rewards on the other side,

Yes, and and I think, I think you know that traditional coaching model is is shifting and changing, and I think that that's for for entrepreneurs out there and people in your audience who are of that age, that season of our life, where we've we don't necessarily want to do that hustle and grind and that bro marketing that's so popular and we see all this stuff about because a lot of us, we want to, we want to have a business. We want to have a successful business, we want to to put our gifts out into the world, but we also want to play with our grandkids. We want to travel with our spouse. We want to do the things that we've earned the right to do at this point in our lives, but yet, we don't want to give up working. We don't want to give up this business. And I think that's we're causing a lot of conundrum within a lot of, a lot of the the business owners now, who are my age? Who are, you know, I feel guilty when I'm not when I'm not working this weekend. And I've had people say that to me, you know, I didn't work this weekend, and they said it like, like somebody's killed the dog, like they feel guilty about it. It's like, great, you know, I spent this past weekend reading a book, and it was not a business book, it was a it was a spy thriller book, and I didn't feel the least bit guilty about it, even though I had 1000 other things, because I needed that. I needed that. So that's kind of where I think a lot of us are in our spaces. We have. To take that that time

And again. You're in a lot of different communities. So, you know, building a community for yourself isn't that extraordinary, that you haven't done it before, you haven't been a part of it first for other people. Like, how do how do people find communities where they do feel resonant? What do you you because you talk about connection and conversion, and I think those are so important. But how do you create connection if so many people are living in these silos, especially since 2020, when people were at home and they were like trying to connect on Zoom,

I think that the best way to do it for me is to get outside of this camera. You know, Mark You and I live, you know, 700 miles away from each other. This is the only way we could but we met in person. We you and I met first, eyes to eyes, nose to do well. You're taller than me, so it was not quite that but, but you know, we had known of each other. We had never met. We met at podfest last year for the first time, and you came and gave me a big hug, and you're like, I'm so glad to finally meet you. That connection was invaluable. It was like immediately your giving and your spirit. We had that immediate connection, and then we connected further on, on a business cruise, and, you know, sandbar on a sandbar, having fun sitting there talking about all you know, everything under the sun for an hour while you know the catamaran was was a few minutes away. That kind of connection is hard for me. Is hard to do on a two inch by two inch square. So I would say to people that are that are saying, I need to make connection. Go find it. Get out in your community, because there are places in your community, you can make that connection even if you're just putting your first your toe out. And it's sad because I hear so many business owners now say, I don't, I don't go out anymore. You know, you just can't make the same kind of connection as you can on Zoom. You just can't. So, or at least in my in my opinion, you just can't. So I would say that's the first thing, is find something within your community that you feel comfortable doing, and go out and start refreshing and practicing how to do that. Again,

I love that because again, we do live in such a digital world, and we're grateful to be able to connect when we're a seven hour drive away and and yes, came to Orlando, and then on the cruise, and then again in Orlando, and we're only seven hours away, but we need to connect with people in Europe and California and everything else, but just connecting in local events, like finding local things to do. I say, if you can't find one, make one

Exactly, Oh yes, absolutely. There's all kinds of ways that you can make them in Europe, yeah, you know. And even though you know, like now, most of my, well, all of my client work I do online, but I've met all of my clients. There's not one client that I have that I haven't, in some way, shape or form, met and establish that relationship first. So if we're looking at, you know, how to build your business, go out again and start finding you can find them. You know, even if you live there, there's, you know, a woman that I know of that lived in a little small town in Ireland, and, you know, then created a six figure business, seven figure business from that little small town in Ireland because she made it happen. So there's ways to do it, and you just have to, you just have to, you know, put on your big girl panties and go, you know, and do it.

I love that again, for getting out and having the courage to get out. And then let's go back to the digital part. You know, this is a big part of what you're doing, is helping people get their message out and then have it speak their voice, rather than your voice or somebody else's voice. But that takes a lot of courage as well, especially for somebody who is in a shift, who might have been laid off or may have just, you know, whatever the change might be, how, and I know that you have a whole team that does a lot of the technical stuff for building website that people get overwhelmed by, but really that the your magic is the deeper work. How do you help people to overcome the all of the self doubt and the Who am I isms and all of that? How do how do you get people to have the courage to build a website in the first place?

It's easy to talk about it from a business perspective. You can look at all the numbers and the you know, and say, This is what you need from a business perspective. But the way that, especially if you're a small business owner, when you get into the digital world, whether it be social media, your website, emails, whatever it is, you have to give a certain part of yourself to make it connect. If you've listened to any of my podcasters, I don't care for the word authentic, because so many people say I'm going to try to be authentic. If you're trying to be authentic, you're not being authentic. So you know, going in and finding who that person really is is part. Part of what I do and and, you know, really digging deep with them. We, you know, we, we can make it all kinds of fancy words and say, I get your origin story, you know, I really delve into who they are, why they're in business. We not just, don't just talk about the problems and the solutions, because that's an easy thing to do when you really get into the symptoms of the problems. That's when you can really dig deep into their business and find out what what is drawn to them, how they get their clients. Because people recognize themselves in the symptoms of the problems that you solve. They don't necessarily recognize the problem that they have, but they know they got the symptom of it. And I, I use this example a lot of a client who came to me and he said, I work with with clients on imposter syndrome. Then, okay, how many clients do you have that come to you and say, I have imposter syndrome? I need your help. He's like, Well, I've never had anybody do that, but that's what I help them with. I said, All right, so let's talk about, what are the symptoms of imposter imposter syndrome? I can't get started on things. I procrastinate, blah. You know, there's all of these symptoms. Do they see themselves in that? And it's like, yeah, I said, that's where your message is, is the symptoms of the

problems, and that's what we can really get into. And, you know, by having those deep conversation, it leads to other deep conversations, at least other so it's, you know, it's just a, you know, it's like the wall falling down when you hit that first or the Domino, dominoes, yeah, when you hit the first domino, the rest of it falls, because you get into a really good, vulnerable place, and you can talk about things that are really important to you, and, you know, and deep So, and that's that's always very cool, very excellent

Being talking about deep, important conversations, and sometimes all by yourself. You mentioned a podcast. You've got a new podcast that's gonna be coming out, but we'll just talk to how many podcast episodes do you have of your current show? What is that? Again,

Is right? I will be coming up on 300 episodes. I started this in, I think 2022, I launched it on April Fools, because that was my own personal little joke. Love it, and I did, I did guest interviews, and then I followed up immediately with an expert interview, because my goal for my podcast was I wanted to elevate my expertise and get myself and do some visibility. What I discovered was I had a lot of content, and I was moving away from that guest, that that guest follow up episode, two more solo episodes. And as I have changed, and as I've been led to go in a different direction, then I'm still going to keep the podcast. Is still going to be the Encore entrepreneur, but at 300 episode 300 I'm announcing the new which is a rebrand. It's still gonna be same, but it's midlife Business Academy, because I love teaching, and it's gonna be more of a teaching thing. But I'm also gonna bring back some guests, because I really miss having guests.

Well, I love that, because that was a we had talked about that before the interview. I want to start doing more solos. I'm like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe that. Yes, I should be doing a lot more of my own content, but I do love these conversations. It's literally fun to be able to have the one on one. And so you're moving from the 300th episode of encore entrepreneur. Yes, it's midlife Business

Academy. So 299 will be the Encore entrepreneur. 300 is announcing midlife Business Academy, so I've already got all the next year's episodes lined up, and I know what I'm going to be talking about, and I'm really excited. And it's it also goes along with the framework that I'm developing along the customer journey, because there's a lot of talk about customer journey, but what we find, what I've found happens is, depending on where you are in your business life, whether you're a beginning business owner, whether you're a stage two business owner, which is that, you know, you've hit six figures, but yet you're not into mid six figures is a very different type of business than 500,000 and above, because that's when you start pulling in a lot of a lot of team members. And you you know, it's a whole different business. So that initial 6k to 250 here's the things that you should be doing. If you're running Facebook ads, and you're not a mid 500 figure business, you don't need to be running Facebook ads necessarily. That may not be where you you need to be in your business. And if you're just starting out, you definitely don't need to be doing that. There's other things you need to be doing first. So we're taking them a stage at a time and saying where in the customer journey you should be focusing on that 100,000 to 250 business owner is where our sweet spot is going to be. So that's what we're talking to.

Yeah. That that's beautiful. I love again, knowing where you can be the most help in moving the needle, but also helping other people identify the same thing for themselves. Like, where is it that you really want to be focusing your energy?

Yes, and it doesn't mean that if you're a 500 you know, a 50,000k business owner, that you can't get value from it, but it's you take that with a grain of salt, because you're not ready for some of this, and you know, and some of this you may have already done, and be doing it successfully, and that's where you should be in this stage of your business, I think. And we hear so much online about you need to be doing this, and you need to be doing this, and I mentioned earlier tongue in cheek with the bro marketing, there's a lot of that out there that is not relevant to a lot of business owners, and we feel that pressure that we have to do this. Because some, you know, somebody said this on on Facebook, or somebody said this, you know, standing in front of their jet, you know, and their rolls, Royce pulled up to the jet that they've rented, saying, This is what you have to do. And that's not that's not true. That's not all

That some of the worst business advice I ever got was, if you do exactly what I did, you'll get the same results. Right? Yeah, different people in two different ways. And yeah, I think that it has to be aligned. And I love that, that you're working with your clients, not only to help them understand where they are in their business, so that they're doing the right thing in the right order, and not throwing lots of money into ads or things before they're ready, but also aligning with who they are, who they want to be. I know that's a big part of it is not about the doing part, but really unveiling the becoming

Sure, sure. And as I said earlier, with this, you know, at this stage of our life, we don't necessarily want to, you know, to hustle 70 hours a week. There's other things that are important to us in life. And I don't want to feel guilty about reading a book all weekend. I don't want to feel guilty that I'm playing with my grandkids or, you know, one of the one of these days, hopefully have, we'll have grandkids to play with. But it's, you know, there's other things that are priorities in our life, but yet we still want to build a really nice business for ourselves, because that's, you know, it's, it's something that we've dreamt about, something that maybe you were sitting in a corporate cubicle and thinking, you know, when I get out of here, I want to help, you know, women lose weight. Or I want to help men with, you know, talk better to women or, you know, something, and just pulling that out of the out of the air. But you know, there's other things that we want to do and other things that we're good

So it's funny that you say that because I'm curious, for people who might not be ready or are almost ready for your work when they are in their mid life and they're they feel the change coming. How do you help them identify what that message is? I know there's a whole process, and it's another he saw that now, but when people are starting to say, is it a weight loss thing is, my wife went through cancer and she thought that was it, she's, oh, wait, I don't really want to spend my life focused on cancer, right? Look at the fun stuff. And how do we do that? What might be for somebody out there that's just thinking about this, what is a seed that you can plant for them to think about what they should be doing or could be doing, to share their message?

Well, it's interesting, because when you look at somebody who's going to start something new, the first thing that they will say in, you know, in general, is, but I don't know if I've got an if I've got enough experience to do this, or, I don't know if I know enough to do this that, you know, talked about imposter there, that imposter syndrome will rise at the head that like, oh, I don't know. Will people, you know, will people pay me for this? Because, you know, I was an actuarial and, you know, in my corporate career. So we look at the things that they've done. We look at their experience in life. I call it their career capital. What is your career capital? Because you may have been an actuarial. I can't having heart should have chosen something easier to say. But if you know this may have been what you did in your corporate life, but what did you do around that you know you may have helped your wife through cancer. Here's what I've learned. I've I know so many of my friends who've got parents that are you know that they've they've lost parents through and had to take care of elderly parents. What did you learn from that? I want to help other people that are going through this do the same thing. There's a lot of learnings that we've that we've experienced over our lives. That may not be something we learned in a college degree or in a coaching program, but you learned it through experience. And that's where you go and you say, All right, let's let's break down your experience. Let's talk about what you've done in your life. I had somebody come to me recently that said, Oh, I don't know if I can do this. I'm not. I'll use the term leader, because we're talking about, you know, leading with purpose. I've never been a leader. Well, let's start looking at all the things that you've done when your kids were in school. You were involved in their you were their room, Mom, you were in the PTA. What did you do in. PTA. Oh, you were president of

PTA. I don't know about you, but if you can do president of the PTA, there's not much in this world you can't do.

I like these for three years. I know

Absolutely. So you start looking at all of that, and you start breaking down the gifts that you learned from when you were doing what you were doing that you are paid for. And so many of us have that. How many times do you volunteer for Habitat humanity or something that's a not for profit that you're passionate about? You may have you know, I, my son was in Boy Scouts. I was the assistant cub master, and when he was in Cub Scouts. I put out a really unattractive uniform and got up there and made a fool of myself in front of 125 you know, first through fifth grade boys. If you can't, if you can do that, it's like, why can't I make a tick tock video? I mean, you when you look at what we've done in our lives there, you know, some things now don't seem so scary.

I love that comparison, because I think a lot of parents can compare to like, oh yeah, I'll go on a field trip and dress up in a clown costume if I have to. But wait, go on a tick tock video and speak from my heart.

I know, right, right? And that's, I mean, I, you know, I'm, I'm, you know, talking. Let me do the little Blake Shelton, point my finger at my myself, because I'm, you know, had a conversation with my VA this morning about putting myself out there. And you know, when am I going to get her video so it happens to all of us.

Well, Laurie, I'm so grateful to be on this journey with you, and I love watching you evolve and your clients, and I'm curious again for just the last word, if somebody is thinking, Yes, I'm ready, what would you say to encourage them to take the next step, whatever that might be for them,

I would say, close your eyes and take the step. Because it's like somebody says when, you know when we were thinking about having a child, well, one away. Well, I can afford it. You're never going to be able to afford it, so you just got to do it. You know, sometimes in our lives, we just have to, we just have to close our eyes and do it and take that step, take that leap of faith. Because there's all kinds of things in this world to support you. You just have to find it, ask for it, and support will come, you know, I this is a very generous group. This is a very generous community, you know, and ask and you shall receive, because it's out there.

I think that's a really important one, Ask and you shall receive. So many givers are very good at helping other people, but could use a little bit work on their ask muscles,

Absolutely, absolutely. And that's ask muscle

Absolutely, as K muscles, having an ask and asking for support isn't always easy when you're the one who's always giving the support.

Oh, I find it's very hard, very hard to do that. So yes, I totally, totally relate to that, that statement. So yes, expand the Ask muscle.

Expand the Ask muscle. Yes. Lori, I again so grateful to be on the journey with you. Thank you for being here on leading with purpose. I'm excited for the next evolution of your podcast, and we'll have links down below how to connect with you and everything else I am just very, very grateful. Anything else want to say before we say goodbye,

Mark, as always, and you know, in about two months, we'll be on a sandbar again, having a, you know, having a cocktail in the ocean. And I look forward to continuing the conversation, if not before. So thank you for having

Absolutely. Let's make waves together. There you go. Thank you so much. Lori, thank you for listening again. We appreciate your comments. So make sure to post down below, and we'll make sure to respond to every comment. Bye for now.