Episode #174 – What’s Your Brand? (And Why it Matters)

I have some TERRIFIC NEWS!

After a 6-month process, our rebrand is complete and the new website is LIVE!

Going through a rebrand was really clarifying but guess what, if you don’t know what YOUR brand is, you’re gonna want to get on that.

Yeah, you might not need a REBRAND like, for a company, but you definitely need to know who you are and what you’re all about.

I’ll tell you why in this week’s podcast.

❤️ Love, Sari

H2H Fun-damentals™ masterclass is here! This is the only online trial skills training that will let you have more fun, feel less stress, and never worry about winning again - I swear.

>> Check it out here

⬇️ ⬇️ And, scroll down to register for the free LIVE training I'm doing! ⬇️ ⬇️

“When we get more clear about who we are and how we want to be in the world, we have better lives.”

sari de la motte

EPISODE 174 TRANSCRIPTION

Sari de la Motte:

Welcome everyone to another episode of From Hostage to Hero. Sari de la Motte here with you today. I am so excited for today's episode, because I have a huge announcement. But before we get to that, let's talk about reader shout out. And so George M. has given a five-star review at Trial Guides and he says, "Fantastic publication. The author discusses numerous issues that lay just below the surface. I've been trying cases since about '73," I was born in '72, so that's a long fucking time, George, "Both in Texas and Nevada. And the only other publications I've read over and over again are Balls' Damages and Friedman's Rules of the Road. I'm finishing my second reading of From Hostage to Hero." Well, thank you George. That's good company to keep. I'm happy I'm that up there on your list of books and that you're reading it for a second time.

Have you read the book, listener? If you've not, you can go to trialguides.com. And if you have read the book, I would love a review, because they make me happy and I love being happy and I try to make you happy, which is part of what the announcement is today. If you've been following me at all, that we've been in a rebrand process for the past six months and a rebrand is a big fucking deal. It is a lot of work, it's a lot of fun, but it's also a lot of work. And you might have seen some of the new pictures that have been coming out. We've been redoing the podcast cover and so on and so forth. But today, the website is live.

Now, I'm not going to give you the website URL until the end, because I want you to stay with me and listen, because I know you're all going to rush over there and look at the brand new website, which is beautiful, although it's probably in the show notes. So those of you who really want to go and look, go and look, but make sure you pause and come back, so we can play together. All right. So before we talk about the new website and all the details there, because as much as you love me, that may not be that exciting to you. We're going to talk today about, what's your brand and why that matters.

If you've ever been through a branding process. It's funny when you think of the word brand, the brand is like a brand of a company, but it's also something that you do on a cow. You like brand them with a hot metal brand, I guess is what it's called, which seems really inhumane. But the reason I believe that they do that is to say, "This cow is mine. Brand it." Put that brand on there. And I was thinking about this when we were going through the rebrand processes that a rebrand is very similar instead of saying, "This cow is mine," we're saying, "This is who I am. I am mine and this is how I define myself." At least that's how it went for this rebrand process.

Now when you think about a rebrand and when you think about branding yourself or rebranding yourself, you might think that it's a process in which you are adding things on like, "Here's all the things that I want to tell the people that I am, and here's all the new offerings that we're having." And what I found to be true and what I think is true, if you do it right and our company absolutely did it right, definitely want to give a shout out to FreshSparks marketing agency, is that it's all about a taking away. It's about getting super clear about who you are and how you move through the world and why you move through the world in that way. And that's what I want to talk about today and how this is also very true for you. Because even if you're not doing, and I'm assuming you're not doing, a rebrand of your law firm, I think the brand, meaning figuring out who you are, is going to bring you happiness if you do this right.

And when I think about branding and how it's more about taking away and getting clear and getting rid of the things that you no longer want to be or do or have, it's the same thing with nonverbal communication. So often people believe that they're coming to me to learn, in terms of the nonverbal piece that we offer or the body language piece that we offer, how to communicate nonverbally when that's not necessarily true. So often, at least where we begin, is with nonverbal communication, is taking away the things that are getting in your way. Why are you doing this weird nonverbal tick? Or why are you adding all these extra words or why are you speaking so quickly? Or why are you gesturing so wildly or whatever it may be.

Oftentimes, at least where we begin, and oftentimes where we stay, quite frankly is, what can we get rid of so that the true you can emerge? So yet you're not getting in your own way. That you can communicate to your audience and of course for us, the audience is the jury without anything distracting and so that your message can really be impactful. And that's really what branding is all about.

Now, in our case, the reason why we did it is exactly what I just said. It's because we wanted to get more clear about what it is we're doing and why we do it. And if you followed my trajectory, I was... Way back when, it was like SJ Consulting, J being the initial of my middle name. And then eventually we went to Forte, which is a musical term and those of you are out there listening right now, you're like, "Oh, I remember Forte." Maybe you weren't around when Forte was around, but that's when I was doing a lot of consulting with non-lawyers, speakers, different corporations. And forte is a musical word that means what you're good at, but it also means loud. Our website was called, or not our website, but our newsletter was called The F Word, which also makes sense when you think about who I am.

But as I started to get away from working with corporations and business people and more with lawyers and trial lawyers, I just went to, Sari de la Motte Coach and Consultant. And this time I've even gone more clear on who I am and how I want to deliver that message. Now the reason why it was so important, and this is what I want you to be thinking about for your life too, is that when we get more clear about who we are and how we want to be in the world, we have better lives, period.

So many of us are operating in the world without any clear idea of what it is we actually want. And this I think is just really why so many of us have not been or are not happy in our lives. Not that happiness is the be all, end all. I don't think that happiness is what we should be chasing because happiness is a feeling and feelings come and go, right? For me, it's more about fulfillment. But when we look at one of the reasons why we are unhappy, I really believe it comes down to living lives that we don't recognize. And why don't we recognize them? Because we rarely go in and look at what it is we truly care about and who we really are.

That's really the same when you're doing a branding process for a business. When you're trying to appeal to everyone, when you're trying to offer services that everyone asks you for because they make you money, I mean, these are all things that I've done by the way. When you are trying to please everyone in your messaging, that's when your business actually tanks. I've been there, where I've had to pivot and I had to stop trying to appeal to everybody and stop trying to do all the things, because my business was suffering.

But the same can be said for you and your life and your brand so to speak, is that the more that you're trying to please everybody, the more that you don't know what it is that you love and what you want and how you want to live your life, the unhappier you're going to be and the more your life is not going to work. I suggest that y'all go through a rebrand process right now and I've got three questions, because you know, I love my threes, on how you can start thinking about what truly matters to you and how or if your life aligns with those things.

That's exactly where we started. In any rebrand process and you know this, if you've gone through it, they start with who you are and why you do the work you do. And who your client is and why you love them. And we don't start with, okay, here's what we want to sell. Here's what we hope people buy. We start with who we are and who we want to, I would say minister to, I use that word quite a bit. It's from my old religious days. And then we build from there. And that's how I think a life should be built as well. What is it that you love? Who are you? And then how does your life flow from that? Instead of, what are everybody's expectations of me? What are the ways to make money? How's everything coming to me versus how do I want it to go?

So here's your three questions. The first one is, and this is going to sound so existential, but it's so true. It's true of business and it's true of life. Why do you exist? Now I don't mean like why are you on this planet? What is the bigger reason? Here's the secret to answering this question. You fucking get to decide. You get to decide why you are here and what you want to do while you are on this planet. That's the big secret. I mean, it shouldn't be a secret. You hear it all the time. But I definitely think that until you go through a process where you ask yourself these questions, you start looking at your world and you're like, "Wait a minute, why am I doing the things that I'm doing? Why am I in this job? Why am I working with these clients? Why am I spending my free time this way? Why am I not having any free time?" Whatever it may be, you get to decide. But that is the primary question.

We are here for a very short time. Even if your life is blessed to be long, 80 plus years, that's still a short amount of time. You get to decide why you exist. So you need to ask yourself, why am I here? What is it that I want to do? And how do I want to be in this world? Which is really the second one. How do I want to be in this world? So one is what do you want to accomplish? Why are you here? For me, it's all about changing the way that you try a case so that it is fun, so that you trust yourself. I'm going to talk a lot more about our company's values and how we came to those in the next podcast. But for me, my mission and my life purpose statement, and you may have heard me say this before, is I am the microphone that helps people find their truth and speak it powerfully. That is what I feel I am here to do on this earth.

So when you figure out what it is that you want to do, the second way is how do you want to do that? How do you want to be in the world? Just like with our branding company, once they figured out who I am and why I am doing the work that I'm doing, then we started looking at, "Well, how do we want that work to be delivered?" Now in my case, that had everything to do with being unapologetically myself. I knew above all, because there's many ways to work with trial attorneys. There's many ways to help people find their voice. There's many ways to work with speakers, work with juries, all the things. I knew that my particular way of doing that is to be unapologetically myself.

So how do you want to be in the world? How do you want it to feel when you are doing the things that you are doing because you've decided this is how you want to exist or why you exist? What's the way in which you want to do that? For me, it's unapologetically being myself, but also unapologetically loving you guys. I tell you all the time that I love you. That is not a message that you hear in this world. I don't mean just the world in general, that's true too. But specifically in the trial lawyer world. You don't hear that. Ever. I don't think. And I don't saying it because it's a marketing ploy, I say it because I mean it. I do this work because I love you guys and I love the work that you do and I'm going to tell you that. So I'm going to say shit that some people aren't going to like.

Which brings us to the third question that you need to ask yourself and that I had to ask myself and that the marketing team had to ask me, which is, who are you willing to piss off? Because this is really where the rubber meets the road. Once you decide why you exist in the world and once you decide how you want to be in that, how you want to bring that forward, then you've got to decide who you're willing to piss off in that process. So now is the time to reveal the URL of our brand new website, because it really fits here in this number three.

So when our marketing team and I were going through the rebrand process, they asked if they could send a survey to current clients, really good clients, people who are on the fringes, basically everybody. "What do you think of the current brand of Sari, now?" And you know what came up over and over and over again? In addition to, "We love how bold she is. We love how she's funny." Thank you, thank you. I loved reading so many of those things, but what came up on nearly, not all of them, but a lot. A majority of the surveys says, "We love how she swears." Now what started as a joke has now become an entire brand, because here it is. Drum roll.

The name of the new URL of the new website is, sariswears.com. Because you know I do and you know I love it. So Sari, S-A-R-I, swears as in bad language, .com. Not that I believe that there is any such thing as bad language. Now there's some fun stuff in there. I swear that you're never going to have to worry about winning again once you learn the H2H method. I swear that I love you. And so there's some fun things that we're playing with and what became a joke actually ended up becoming this entire brand, because it's not that swearing is my most favorite thing in the world. I mean it's like maybe my second most favorite thing in the world. But it's that that in a nutshell encompasses my living unapologetically. That I can say and be whoever I am and my people are going to love me.

Now this comes to the third thing. Who are you willing to piss off? In my swearing, even back in the days of The F Word, the name of my newsletter, back in the day, the latest word from Forte, people had trouble with that. That was even before I was actually swearing. I was just... An entendre, I was just kind of hinting at the F word and people had trouble with it. Well, just recently after... We haven't even rolled out the brand, this was a couple weeks ago, somebody emailed and said to me, "You might be taken more seriously if you stopped with all the gratuitous profanity." So obviously I'm pissing people off.

Now, outside of the absolute laughable nature of that email, I mean who's to say I'm not taken seriously. I'm taken pretty fucking seriously if you ask most people. And all the things that I could have gone and places I could have gone with that of, "Oh no, I pissed somebody off." This is exactly what I'm talking about. And this is exactly what I want you to hear today, is that when you decide why you exist and how you want to be in the world, you're going to piss some people off. And in fact, if you are not, you are doing it wrong.

When you start to live your truth, when you start to get really clear about who you are, a couple things are going to happen. One is you're going to piss people off, but two is you're going to start living a life that is so amazing that you've never dreamed that a life like this could be possible. I know, because Kevin and I live this life. Nearly all the things that have been on our list for years of things we've wanted to either accomplish or own or be, have come true. And it's because a while back we decided that we were going to get clearer, and clearer, and clearer and we're going to take bigger and bigger risks. I'm also talking about that in an upcoming podcast, which about investing in yourself.

And when we did that, our life got so much better. But we also pissed some people off, because there are people who didn't think I should be charging as much as I charged. There are people who think I shouldn't swear. Now I've made my whole brand around swearing. There are people who thought I was too full of myself. There are people who thought, whatever it may be. You have to be willing, if you want to live an extraordinary life, to piss some people off. So I'm going to leave you with the question of, what's your brand? Because, it matters. Because branding is just a way of saying clearly to the world, whether that's through a website, whether that's through your business, or whether that's just the way you show up every day, "This is who I am."

And if you are not clear on who that person is, other people aren't going to be clear, first of all. But second, you're going to live a life that is less than extraordinary. And I know for a fact that an extraordinary life is possible for all of you. And you don't need to hire a fancy company to figure out what your brand is. Just ask yourself those three questions. And I'm not suggesting that's easy. This could be a lifelong process of figuring out why you exist and how you want to be in the world and who you are willing to piss off. The last one's pretty easy for me. I could easily answer who I'm okay off. There's some people I'm not okay pissing off. It's a very small group. But there's some people, I'm not okay with that.

But in general, these are questions... I say that it could take a lifetime, but here's my caveat before I let you go. I also don't want you to make it a lifetime in terms of, don't take this too seriously. Why do I exist? I put on my white robe and meditate and drink my green tea. You can fucking decide why you exist right now. Doesn't have to be a huge process, but once you decide, why you exist, how you want to be in the world, and who you're willing to piss off, go out there and get that shit done. Live that extraordinary life.

I hope you love the website. Again, it's www. Www, that's so hard to say, sariswears.com. Drop me a line. There's a way to contact us through the website. Let me know what you think. If you hate it, great. I'm willing to piss you off because I love it. But I'm sure that my people are going to love it. And if you see some weird something on there, let us know because it's right now, we just rolled it out. We're going to find some weird kooks in there and kinks. So kooks, I don't think that's the word I wanted. Kinks in there, so let us know. That'd be also very helpful. All right, I love you. I love you. I'm going to keep telling you. Talk soon.

Go to my new website, sariswears.com. That's my name, Sari, S-A-R-I and the word swears.com. The link will also be in the show notes. Check it out. It's fucking awesome.