Building a Resilient Personal Brand Offline and Online
Mar 22, 2024
Anthony & Jhanilka Hartzog
Have you ever felt stuck when social media or cell service goes down? In this episode, we talk about when Instagram, Facebook, Verizon, and T-Mobile had issues. We share how our cleaning business stayed strong offline when the online world was shaky. Discover how to build a strong brand that lasts, even when big companies have problems.
We also talk about personal branding and how it affects your business. We focus on being real and making connections that matter. Join us as we discuss creating a strong business identity that works both online and offline. Let's build a brand that stands out, with or without social media!
🌟 Don't forget to drop us a review to support us! Leave us A Review
Have you ever felt stuck when social media or cell service goes down? In this episode, we talk about when Instagram, Facebook, Verizon, and T-Mobile had issues. We share how our cleaning business stayed strong offline when the online world was shaky. Discover how to build a strong brand that lasts, even when big companies have problems.
We also talk about personal branding and how it affects your business. We focus on being real and making connections that matter. Join us as we discuss creating a strong business identity that works both online and offline. Let's build a brand that stands out, with or without social media!
🌟 Don't forget to drop us a review to support us! Leave us A Review
Podcast Sponsor: If you are interested in a spot shoot us an email at info@thehartrimony.com
Speaker 1:
Instagram, facebook and a few other platforms were down. Oh yes, this is right after Verizon, t-mobile. I wonder if this is all a coincidence too, because T-Mobile went down.
Speaker 2:
Is it a coincidence or is it not?
Speaker 1:
AT&T went down right around elections.
Speaker 2:
Are you a conspiracy theorist? Because then you would say it's not a coincidence, it's just a cyber attack.
Speaker 1:
It could be. Listen, I'm not one to think about things like that, but I was just like OK, well, AT&T went down, T-Mobile went down, Could it just be technology. Yeah, it could be technology. And then Facebook went down on election Tuesday and then it was like why did all of this stuff go down around the same time? Was it a goal?
Speaker 2:
to get us to A lot on the power grid.
Speaker 1:
Was there a goal to stop us from voting or get less people to vote? Could be.
Speaker 2:
Well, I didn't realize it was on election Tuesday, so I would never have put two and two together. I feel like if you were going to vote, you were going to vote. You didn't just find out about voting that day. I don't know that that changes anything personally, but maybe you didn't know, had no idea and that impacted how you were able to move around. But it was down for what? An hour, two hours. How long it was down for a couple hours, yeah, so it didn't stop everything.
Speaker 1:
So I can't say. But the challenge would be if there was reminders that were going out, there were text messages that were going, whatever it was, you might have forgot, so I guess. But building a business that is offline is super important Because you do that in this day and age?
Speaker 2:
That's always the question. It's hard. I don't know if it's possible, but I guess I don't know anyone personally that has a business that they started completely offline. Now you may not continue to be online, but in some capacity. So I was speaking to a friend and she said she's been offline and she's just been getting referrals for her business. But she was like I'm trying to figure out how to do it without having to be on social media and I'm like your email list is the only thing I could think of, that you don't have to be on social media, but how you build an email list, you probably got to get back on social media at least for a little bit, fundle some people in and then you can turn it off and build your email list in that way, and that's why people always talk about it's important to have an email list or something that is outside of Instagram or YouTube, a podcast, a blog, something else that's more static, just in case things go down, because the likelihood of everything going down at once is like zero to none.
Speaker 1:
So think about it like this Our cleaning business wasn't impacted due to Facebook being down, instagram being down YouTube.
Speaker 2:
So you can build. Oh yeah, that was started offline.
Speaker 1:
So our cleaning business was completely built offline, meaning it wasn't based off the fact of our brand or likeness or social media.
Speaker 2:
But we still use online marketing though, so is that completely different from what you're saying?
Speaker 1:
with social media, I would say absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2:
I would say it's completely different because, just because Facebook and Instagram, twitter, went down and even so, when we're saying building a brand, you mean building a brand outside of social media, not just outside of online.
Speaker 1:
In general, yeah, I think what people think about offline is. A lot of times it goes directly to social media. When I'm thinking about offline. I'm thinking off of Well, you said that off of the computer. No, no, yeah, that would be complete in 20.
Speaker 2:
That's not like in this age.
Speaker 1:
I don't know how that's 2024, if you're trying to build a business that is completely off of computers, internet, internet. I don't know how that?
Speaker 2:
works. I don't know what the hell you would be doing you want to do.
Speaker 1:
SEO.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just off of social media, because even, I mean at the bare minimum.
Speaker 1:
Let's say, you just have a website that's online yeah. So when I say building something that's offline, in a way, I'm talking about building offline of social media social presence, so that you don't have to be interacting online every single day in order to get clients.
Speaker 1:
So when Instagram and Twitter went down, there were people scrambling and I even reckon we were busy during that time, but I didn't even recognize that it was down, because I was, we were busy doing something else. But when I came back I was like, oh, this is down, and it made it trigger me to think about this conversation too, because I checked our. I checked our cleaning business for the day. I think we had about nine cleanies or so, which is, like you know, a couple of those like $2,500 for that day, and it didn't impact us at all, right? So that's the importance of having a business that is not based off of your online brand, your online presence or even your personality, because they're not looking for us. They come to our page on social media and say, hey, let me find out where the hard dog's off for the cleaning business and even so, we don't even advertise our business on these digital platforms so it is super important to have a business that is offline, especially outside your personality.
Speaker 2:
Now does that go? We had an episode before talking about building a facist brand and I know I see different things that people are saying like they don't feel like that's possible, but I think it depends on the business. Yeah, it absolutely depends on the business. So, like a service based business cleaning, mowing nails here, I don't think it really matters what you look like or really how you act until I show up and you don't act right. I'm thinking about like the hairstyle and stuff that may be a little different, but other businesses it may not require and some it does. Like people purchase from you. A lot of times people say it's not necessarily always the product, it's like they purchase from you because they like you, the person, they like what you're saying, they agree with you, they see themselves in you, that type of stuff. Like that happens, but not for every single, not for every single product, if you will, or business, if you will.
Speaker 1:
People buy people buy the story. Less people buy the story before they buy the product. Most of the time when it comes to businesses like that, when you're just looking for a needs based business, there is no buying a story. I'm not looking into the long story or any of that.
Speaker 2:
There is a service that I need done.
Speaker 1:
There is someone that I need to do the service and that's pretty much it, yeah, so when you think about building a business that is quote unquote, offline or off brand, you have to think about that as well. Like, no one is buying most of the time people are buying into your story for a product or service like that, but when it comes to other products, you got to think about that.
Speaker 2:
Which is reminding me. We had Alani's second birthday party last week, two weeks ago, can't remember exactly. We did a little, a little house party at our house and last minute I'm like, oh, let's get a bouncy house. And I actually use thumbtack. So it's funny because we have marketed thumbtack. What can I compare it to? Well, it's just a company where you can go find service based business or anything really you can find anything on thumbtack?
Speaker 1:
If you look, it's like a Google for service based businesses Right.
Speaker 2:
But I actually have never used thumbtack as a customer. I had used it for our business when we were marketing our business starting out, but never as a customer. But we went. I went on there to find a bouncy house. Found someone booked them, not because of what they look like, just they had a few reviews. Asked them they respond. They responded well. Asked them their price was in our ballpark, good to go, and just it being faceless. They don't. I don't need to know their story, I don't need to know anything. I just need to know can you provide the service in a timely fashion? And came to the house, set it up and we ended up knowing who they were and who we were, who they ended up knowing who we were. Sorry, based off of the cleaning business. But that just goes back to things being faceless and you're still being able to sell and nobody needs to know that information for specific products. Like it doesn't matter what you got going on in the back, I just know you could provide the bouncy house.
Speaker 1:
That was yeah, that was actually funny. They know us from social media. Yeah, so when they pulled up with a bouncy house, the husband was like what's your name? And I'm like we told him our names and he was like super appreciate. Oh my god, I know you guys from Instagram or whatever. It's just because I can't believe that they I'm servicing you guys and it's just. The world is just so small. Now. He didn't know us from our cleaning business.
Speaker 1:
He knew us from social media and he also had a cleaning business as well, but the world is just so small that you know when. When you book them, we didn't care. We just knew that they could provide the service and that's what we needed. That's what we really cared about. But when you are trying to build the business based on your brand, there's a lot more things you gotta think about. So if we were now, if you translate that to the branding side of, if he knew us, or if he came to our house because we were who we were, we were complete like eight holes or anything like that, it would be. It would have been no love there. But people kind of you know, perceive you based on the social media, president, but then also you know the value you could give them online as well.
Speaker 1:
So, yeah, they're opposing cons to it, but how about I say you got to be mindful of those cons.
Speaker 2:
Thank you for tapping in with us again. As you know, we always ask if you guys can, please, please, go ahead and leave us five star review. Go ahead and write something. If you're enjoying what we speak about, if you listen to us week to week, please be sure to let us know that helps us to continue grow and for other people to listen to our show as well.
