🔌 The business of being yourself

In partnership with

👋🏾 Hey Hey!

Here’s what I’ve got for you this week :

• What you don’t know can hurt you 🔑

• Tabitha Brown’s Playbook : Alignment over everything 📓

• Don’t miss this blessing 🔥

• Grown folk’s music straight from Barack Obama’s playlist 🎵

Today’s email is sponsored by HubSpot 🙌🏾

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📣 THE MANIFESTO 📣

These are the House Rules! Get into it.
And when you’re ready…memorize it so you know its real!

I AM A STRAIGHT UP ORIGINAL™.

I am unapologetic in my beliefs and obedient to my gifts.

I do everything with intention because I am passionate about my assignment.

I cannot stand cookie cutter…I value MY story. 

And I do not ask permission.

I control my own narrative.

🔑 MAJOR KEYS 🔑

I learned pretty quickly working as a brand + marketing strategist that a lot of us in the online business space operate in a black/white mentality.

If it worked for you, it should work for me. If you used this template, I’ma use it too, and expect the same results.

And conversely, if it didn’t work for me, that means it won’t work for you. (**cough** Facebook ads **cough**)

It’s always been strange to me how we take certain things as law and fact, even without prior knowledge. Even without research.

For example, on that Facebook ads point: Most times I find that people who believe that paid ads don’t work for them have never actually learned how to run them or why they work. They just popped open the Ads Manager, started tinkering around and put real $ behind one ad set…only to lose that money and not get the results they were looking for.

They don’t know that targeting is the key to getting them to work.

They don’t know that re-targeting is necessary to their ads strategy.

They don’t know what metrics to track so you know what’s working and what’s not. (Because likely they are working but you’re looking for an ROI in dollars as opposed to leads generated.)

They don’t know to always test first, so if you lose money its $5 here, $20 there…versus hundreds at a time.

I could go on and on.

The other group of folks who won’t run ads? They’re the ones who heard out on the internet streets that Facebook ads don’t work, and they’ve decided to take that as fact.

They won’t even try. It’s wild 🥴

Another example: those who swear against selling low ticket offers like a $9 tripwire, $27 ebook or $49 workshop, because they believe you have to “charge what you’re worth”, and if you don’t sell high ticket, you’re doing an injustice to yourself and your clients.

So I’ve had folks sit in sessions with me, swearing off charging less than $2000, but wondering why they can’t drive enough traffic to their offers to generate the leads that will actually pay their price.

They don’t know that low ticket offers shouldn’t be sold alone, but inside a funnel that takes your buyer from a $27 offer to a $9 tripwire to a $97 One Time Offer (as an example).

When they see a smaller offer, they have no idea thats there’s actually a strategy in place that ups the Lifetime Value of your customer, generates paying leads for your email list, liquidates any ad spend so the ads end up costing $0 and boosts sales of their “bread + butter” offer the next time it drops.

They know none of that…But will get on Beyonce’s internet and yell at the top of their lungs about how dumb you are for selling using a strategy they know nothing about.

Again. WILD.

Many times, we project what we think, not what we know. And our brand loses out in the meantime.

Basically you’d be hating from outside the club while you’re still waiting on your own thing to pop off enough for you to actually do what you say you wanna do.

Everything ain’t for everybody. Probably every strategy and template you’ve ever heard of does work and has worked. 

That just doesn’t mean it’ll work for you.

Your brand should be about YOU : How you want to serve and the audience that values how you want to serve.

Other folks’ thoughts and projections have nothing to do with how you run your business, how you pay your people, or the $ that hits your bank account.

So with that thought, let’s get into why we’re really here today!

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📓 THE TABITHA BROWN PLAYBOOK 📓

Now, imagine you like to run your business off of what is in alignment to YOU…and someone else tries to tell you you’re doing that all wrong.

No seriously. IMAGINE THAT.

There’s been a lot of talk this week about Tabitha Brown and the way she runs her business. Actually, less about the way she runs it, and more about what certain people THINK is going on behind the scenes of her (many) businesses.

To be clear, I don’t know more than anyone else on the subject, but being that I research my faves and their brands in my spare time — or rather, all the time 😂 — I do know what Tab herself has said about her business model. And I think we all could learn a ton from her words.

So, let’s get into it.

I’m sure most of us here are familiar with Tab’s backstory, but if not:

As a kid, she saw Rudy on The Cosby Show and decided she wanted to be an actress. She would move from North Carolina to Cali several times, always chasing that dream.

Some of the jobs she had while waiting to take off? A Macy’s associate, UPS call center manager and a nursing home attendant. Over the years, she would audition and book a variety of smaller gigs, like music videos, infomercials, commercials, and extra work on One Tree Hill.

It didn’t always look like it was gonna happen, especially after she got sick with a condition that’s still a mystery to her. But that condition led her to try out veganism, which became a game changer for her health.

So what did work for her? Creating content! And lets be clear, it was not something she wanted to do. In fact, her agent at the time told her NOT to do it, because Hollywood wouldn’t take her seriously.

But it was something she knew God called her to do. And so she was obedient. (👈🏾 remember that.)

It was the summer of 2017 when she committed to being obedient to whatever she heard God say to her.

It was December of 2017 when she took a break from Uber-ing for the day to grab something to eat from Whole Foods. She walked out of the store that day with a TTLA sandwich, turned on the camera, ate half, and by the next day, she had gone viral.

It’s been up ever since.

Tab says no one was watching her first videos from that summer, only a handful of family and friends. But she was consistent because she’d promised God she would be. 

When God says something, and then it actually comes to pass…why on Earth would you listen to or care what anyone else thinks about your moves?!

Ain’t no way 🤣

After that first viral video, her managers at the time told her it was just a 15-min worth of fame type thing. It wasn’t anything they could help her with or even wanted to.

So she fired them, and hired a producer friend who was also on the come up.

She realized that everything had to be in alignment for her to stay obedient and maintain her “freedom”. See, when she was pounding the pavement to get to her dream, she tried everything that was programmed into her, first.

Covering up her accent, wearing her hair straight, dressing a certain way. But she heard God say, “How you gone stand out if you’re trying to fit in”?

And that there? That changed her life.

Everything she has done since 2017, in that space of being free, has been in service of herself, and secondly, her family.

While collabing with McCormick on a social media ad, they asked if she’d be interested in making her own seasoning, something she’d prayed to come to her if it was His will. Her answer was yes, if it could be salt-free, because that’s how she cooked nowadays.

Enter McCormick’s All Purpose Seasoning by Tabitha Brown (Sunshine, Like Sweet Like Salty and Very Good Garlic).

When Target started sending her stuff to include in her cooking videos, she noticed how easy they were to work with, and how they never tried to edit her content, have her reshoot it, or wanted her to change how she talked.

They ended up asking her if she had any other ideas for projects they could work on together. As in, they asked her what they could do for her. The result of that partnership was them signing her to develop products across all four of the categories in Target stores — Food + Beverage, Apparel + Accessories, Kitchen + Dining, and Home Decor.

This type of deal has never been done before.

I said, Tabitha Brown is the first person that Target has ever done this deal with. And she gets to reap the rewards of years of partnership + an alignment of all parties’ goals.

Now, as we sit here in the Fall of 2024, Tab has a few different setups across her companies. She has some JVs (joint ventures), a few wholly owned subsidiaries, and licensing deals.

She also has her haircare company, Donna’s Recipe, which can be found on their website, as well as inside Ulta and Target stores.

She says that each partnership is not the same, but that if she doesn’t like something, she’s gonna say, “Oh that’s not for Tab”, and walk away. (Which we’ve seen her do with The Food Network 🤫.)

Over the course of the past few years, she’s also built up a squad of heavy hitters to assist her with all of the deals that align with her.

She’s got agents at CAA for acting gigs, lawyers to protect her IP and negotiate her deals, financial advisors helping her invest in real estate and the money market, a Chief Growth Officer and a Business Manager who helps her develop her new ideas and find partnerships that work for her brand.

And that’s just a few. She’s recently said that she has 26 people on her team!

Tabitha Brown is doing big shit. Mogul shit. Empire-building shit.

And that’s not even what’s special about it. What’s special is, every single piece of her brand system is aligned to her and to the gifts that God gave her. She’s built this thing from the ground up for decades.

It’s been six years and some change since her viral TTLA video, meaning she was in her late 30s when things finally started to come together for her. And those things coming together led to her being sought after for the roles that she dreamt of having ever since she wanted to be one of Rudy Huxtable’s lil friends.

Don’t play wit her.

🗣 TAB’S TAKEAWAYS 🗣

What can you learn from today’s playbook?

Be obedient to your gifts.
Your gifts are yours and yours alone, and they will not help you if do not use them. Only you have to understand why you do what you do.

Consistency separates those who are aspiring from those who are doing.
Once you find your thing, stick with it. What you’re seeking comes after the momentum, and momentum has to build. Whether it’s fast or slow, it’s the repetition that gets the ball rolling.

Your helpers are next to you, not above you.
Stop looking for someone to look down and give you a hand up. Get with your peers and build, together. That Chief Growth Officer I mentioned? He’s the same person she looked to when hiring her first manager as an influencer. They’re still together, hitting their goals and building their dreams, year after year.

Stop trying to fit in. Period.
Yes, it’s scary to be the different one. To try your own thing. Chart a new path. Don’t try to out run the fear. Learn to get comfortable with it. Once you decide you wanna stand out, you have to choose to actually stand out. This one actually is black and white!

Build a brand system centered around you.
When you focus on what’s right for the brand you’re building, you’ll be able to discount other’s thoughts and projections easily. Every brand is its own animal, especially if its built specifically for you. Try focusing only on yourself, your needs and your gifts and it’ll be easier to disregard everyone else. You can’t do that when you’re trying to recreate what others have done, which is an issue that most of us run into.

🔥 YOU’VE GOTTA SEE THIS 🔥

A clip that made the rounds this week that you must take with you on your journey.

Our fave, Tyler James Williams from Abott Elementary, shut CultureCon down last weekend in this viral clip (over 1M views!)

Press play ▶️

culturecon

View more on Instagram

TLDR : Before you “make it”, you have the freedom to try and fail. Use it.

🎵 ISSA VIBE 🎵

If you’re gonna be coming up with dope ass ideas and strategies, you’re gonna need some dope ass music to inspire you! Here’s a tune that I’ve got on replay this week.

Heard about this one from Barack Obama’s 2024 Summer playlist and it’s giving grown folk music for sure. Lemme know what you think!

🪩 KEEP THE PARTY GOING 🪩

Need help bringing your whole self to your brand? Here’s how I can help!

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Want to discuss how you can build a brand system centered around YOU?
Grab a free consult with me here and let’s talk about it!

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