(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Welcome to the Business Credit and Financing Show.
Each week, we talk about the growth strategies
that matter most to entrepreneurs.
Listen in as we discuss the secrets to
getting credit and money to start and grow
your business.
And enjoy as we talk with seasoned business
owners, coaches, and industry leaders on a variety
of topics from advertising and marketing to the
nuts and bolts of running a highly successful
business.
And now, to introduce the host of our
show, financial expert and award-winning author, Ty
Crandall.
Hello, and thanks for joining us today.
I'm super excited to be here because today
we're talking about really one of the most
important elements that I find with growing a
seven-figure business and beyond, which is branding.
And this is something that is probably one
of the most overlooked things that I deal
with when I'm talking to small business owners,
but it's also one of the things that
if you get this down on the business
side and especially on the personal side, then
it really is the roadmap to success with
building a million- or multimillion-dollar business.
So with us today to have this conversation
is Siobhan Burns.
Now, Siobhan is a dedicated mother, wife, engineer,
motivational speaker, and business owner as well.
She's born and raised on the South Side
of Chicago, and her life took a pivotal
turn when she moved to Des Moines, Iowa
at the age of 12.
Now, this transition opened her eyes to a
broader world of possibilities, and she also began
to envision a future beyond her previous surroundings.
So a trip to Detroit ignited her entrepreneur
spirit, setting her on a path of success
and empowerment as well.
So as a first-generation college graduate, Siobhan
has launched three thriving businesses, three, the Posh
Interior, Chase & Cannon Enterprises, and Siobhan Burns
International.
Her passion for helping others succeed has led
her to build successful business coaching YouTube channel
as well with over 11,000 subscribers.
And through her platform, she equips aspiring entrepreneurs
with the knowledge, tools, and resources needed to
overcome challenges, offering startup education, financial management training,
and affirmations for success as well.
So balancing her professional endeavors, Siobhan remains a
devoted wife and mother of two beautiful children,
continuing to inspire, motivate, and uplift others on
their entrepreneurial journeys.
Siobhan, thanks for joining us today.
Thank you for having me, Ty.
Oh my God, that was an awesome warm
welcome.
Thank you.
Yeah, well, it's really cool because I enjoyed
talking to you before we got started and
I heard something that I think everybody should
hear.
What set you down the path?
Like what got you down the road of
getting into coaching and running your own businesses?
Well, so I actually had a child, actually
my first baby, and I was working in
the engineering field and my drive time was
about maybe a little bit over an hour
and Detroit actually went through a flood and
that was back in 2013.
And my son, he was about six months
old and I panicked, I freaked out and
I was like, oh my God, I'm not
able to get to him because I was
on the road for about two to three
hours trying to travel home.
And so it started me to think about,
okay, I know I wanna be there for
my children or son at the time.
I wanted to figure out ways I could
make income at home.
And I've already, I was at the time
I already dabbled, I had an Amazon store,
that store at the time was called Sugar
Baby.
So I was selling baby products.
I was kind of successful, but I wasn't
really taking it serious.
So, and that kind of sparked my entrepreneur
spirit, just wanting to be there with my
family to have that flexible time to spend
with my family and to just raise my
babies.
Wow, that's interesting.
And I love the pivotal moment where people
jump into entrepreneurship and you've run a few
businesses.
So as you became more and more and
more successful, what led you down the path
of actually coaching and helping other entrepreneurs become
successful?
That's an excellent question.
Actually, I started coaching other entrepreneurs when COVID
happened.
The Posh Interior, the business that you mentioned,
is still in existence today.
We do custom window treatments and we were
shifting at the time when COVID happened, we
were shifting from residential to commercial.
So I noticed I had a smaller YouTube
channel then I was just posting content in
my business experience.
But I noticed that a lot of people
that I was coming in contact with, they
didn't know how to get the proper funding.
They didn't know how to start their business.
They were not organized to actually get the
proper funding like PPP loans or EIDL loans.
And it was a big influx of people
coming to my channel and actually asking me
for help.
And so that ended up starting how I
started my coaching business.
I've always believed that, and I've always said
this, that in order to build a seven
-figure business, to be honest, it's not hard.
You have to have two things, scalable way
to bring in leads, digital marketing, Facebook offers
a lot of that.
And the second thing is you've got to
be able to figure out how to become
an influencer, how to become an authority in
your space, which is really one of the
things you specialize with personal branding.
But from your perspective, why is personal branding
so important?
A lot of people don't realize before a
customer actually will buy from you, they need
to see you maybe two, not two, but
almost eight times, six to eight times before
they're like, oh, I actually need this.
And not necessarily your name.
It could be whatever your business name is.
And it's so important for you to develop
a good rapport or relationship with your market
or your core market, or maybe even not
your core market, your cold market, and branding
consistency, because like I mentioned before, if people
don't know you and they don't really trust
you, they're more likely, or they're going to
look at commercials and stuff like that, or
see what they see on Facebook.
And then they're going to decide, oh, I've
seen this person before.
I've seen this logo before, like Credit Suite.
I've seen Credit Suite before.
Let me try their services.
And then they may not know or realize
that they need it at the time, but
eventually it's what we call top of mind
awareness.
Okay, I know Credit Suite, I need a
credit card.
Let me go to Credit Suite to see
if I could get some finances for my
business.
So it's so important to get your brand,
I would call it brand recognition out, even
if you're not actively looking for product or
some services.
So I think it makes a lot of
sense.
And I see on the business side and
on the personal side, why it is so
important.
But that being said, what are some of
the advice that you're giving your coaching clients
about things that they should be doing to
develop their personal brand?
Number one, you don't necessarily need domain name,
but I would say get a Facebook.
So some of my clients are older, so
they're like, oh, they have Facebook data, but
they don't have Instagram.
Or make a video, YouTube.
I mean, you don't even have to be
on YouTube.
Just pose the video down and make a
YouTube video of talking about your expertise or
whatever products or services that you are rendering.
So those type of steps being prevalent in
the social media spaces.
Also, if you want to, there's a, if
you could write blogs on your expertise, some
people, they don't have time to watch a
video or maybe surf the internet or social
media.
They like reading.
So blogging is a good technique.
And then like, see, since I'm in the
service industry, there are certain platforms you could
go to and you don't need a website.
You could post your blog on the actual
social media platform like Pinterest, Facebook, Houzz, those
type of platforms.
You don't need a domain.
Some people are worried about, oh, if I
get a domain, I got to worry about
having somebody service it for me.
But you really don't need that at this
time.
But just being consistent and putting your name
out there in social media, that's really going
to help you.
I really appreciate your insight with that because
something funny that I do, and I don't
usually have a lot of people that I
dislike or get into an argument with, but
when there's somebody that I really have a
clash with, I go buytheirname.com.
Like if they have, and I, Sean, I
don't do anything with it.
It just makes me feel better.
You know what I'm saying?
Like the fact that I own it.
So first of all, you have to get
yourownname.com because there's people like me in
the world that will get it.
And there's people that are unscrupulous that will
do bad things with it.
Isn't that funny?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But the other thing is that, you know,
my TikTok handle is at business credit because
to your point, when it's good when you
have channels that come out like TikTok to
grab your name, to grab your company name,
to grab even what you do, because a
lot of these channels, when they first hit,
you can grab that.
And I had hundreds and hundreds of people
following forever put my first video on just
because of my handle.
So even more reasons to do what you
said on both social and owning your domain.
Yeah.
So the social, what channels do you recommend
do you think had the greatest impact?
Because I think that's one of the problem
is business owners, there's so many places we
can be.
So how do you recommend somebody figure out
the best social channels for them to start
in a kind of state, you know, put
a stake in the ground and say, this
is mine and choose the channels that they
are going to be able to release content
on?
That's a good question because it depends on
what type of business you have and what
type of, what's your niche like.
And I'm not saying your niche of what
type of business you have.
I'm saying like, what is your wheelhouse?
Do you love posting pictures and putting a
little text at the bottom?
Or do you love writing a long text
form and maybe a video or two?
So it all depends on what your preference
are.
But I noticed if you're trying to reach,
right now the platforms to be on is
Facebook.
Facebook has a wider reach and they'll pick
up your, whatever you're trying to post and
it spreads faster.
It can actually go viral on Facebook.
Whereas other platforms, their entry to the market,
trying to reach audience size or whatever, it
varies.
It's kind of hit and miss.
But Facebook is a really good tool, especially
if you are a business owner.
I would suggest Twitter, Twitter Spaces or X.
And we met on LinkedIn.
Now, LinkedIn is another platform I like, especially
if you are trying to do business to
business.
So I will prefer, or I like to
see my clients on LinkedIn if they're trying
to reach other business clients.
Because you could post a video, you could
put your bio in there.
And there's a lot of things, almost, you
know, your resume.
And so people could actually research you on
that particular platform.
But it all depends on what do you
like posting.
But if you're trying to reach people, Facebook
is, I think hands down right now, is
my number one platform.
Then I would say, if you're going to
business to business, LinkedIn.
And I do like X.
Some people don't like X.
I like X because you could type in
long text messages on X and actually post
a video as well.
Great advice about choosing the right channel.
Once you figure that part out, what advice
do you have about strategically creating content regularly
for those channels?
Well, I'm doing a video right now.
And the video is called how you could
use AI to help you with your business,
AI tools to actually streamline some processes.
And there's plethora of AI tools that you
could use to repurpose content.
So say for instance, you're a blog writer.
You like writing blogs.
That's something that you like doing in your
spare time.
You could actually use this AI tool and
they would sort out the blog writing content
and into many different posts.
And they, on this particular platform, you could
actually generate pictures with the blog or if
you have your own pictures.
So you could get about 10 posts out
of one blog or making your blog into
a video.
So that, and that's called a vlog.
I'm not for sure how many old people
are following you.
You could vlog the blog and that's another
piece of content.
And then you could split up your content,
your vlog.
Like I'm pretty sure you'll do this to
this video.
You could chop it up into many different
points and it could be like five different
short mini reels or shorts on YouTube, they're
called shorts.
But there, you don't have to keep on
continuously.
Oh, what I'm gonna talk about today.
No, you have, if you can have one
subject, I would suggest if you're first starting
off playing your content by subjects and talk
about, create your blog, one blog a month.
And then splice it up, create a video,
that's five pieces.
Then splice the video up, that's another five
pieces.
You essentially will have 10 to 12 content
pieces that you could post on your different
platforms.
And once you get in that regimen, it'll
come easy.
But AI is a great tool.
And now a quick break to hear from
our sponsor.
Hey, it's Ty Crandall with Credit Suite.
Many of our subscribers wanna get the most
money to grow their business at the best
terms.
Whether you're looking for startup capital, low interest
credit lines and loans, or business credit, we
can definitely help you.
So give us a call at 877-600
-2487 or schedule your free consultation at creditsuite
.com forward slash consult to see how much
money you can get approved for today.
People are kind of scared of AI.
It's a great tool.
You just gotta train the AI to speak
or think like you.
And once you get to your preferential platform
that you would like to use, so.
Yeah, we refer a lot of people to
a company called Profit Lifter and Profit Lifter
sets up automation, CRMs, things like that.
And I think it's interesting because like their
technology, you're writing emails, blog posts, it's all
being written now by AI, which is a
game changer.
It makes me think about how much time
I've freaking spent over the last decade creating.
I mean, thousands of emails, blog posts, all
this stuff.
So like you said, it's a game changer.
I don't even think you're gonna be able
to survive or grow in business in the
next few years if you haven't figured that
out, if you don't.
No, and you're not gonna remain competitive.
Right.
Because your competitor is gonna turn over content
or service a customer two to year one
or three to year one because they're using
AI to assist them in their business.
So you gotta remain relevant.
Times are changing.
So I think we just have to kind
of get prepared and get ahead of it
and learn those types of tools while we
can.
One of the things I see you do
really well in social is storytelling.
So what have you found the value of
storytelling is to be able to kind of
be able to expand your personal brand and
be able to get your audience to actually
engage?
So storytelling has not come easy for me.
I acquired that skill over time, but people
like authenticity.
You know what I'm talking about.
I would've struggled with that.
It's not a word.
I'm an engineer.
I'm not a word.
But they'd like to see your authentic self.
And when you tell stories like, hey, this
happened to me today.
I stubbed my toe on the bed and
I decided to, hey, I don't have a
credit card.
The doctor charged me something and I don't
have a credit card.
So I call credit suites, you know, something
like that.
But they like the authentic thing and you
plug in your business when you're being authentic.
And I think when you are authentic, people
tend to share your stuff and people tend
to want to ask you more questions and
that could be a potential customer or even
respond to your things on social media.
So I think storytelling is a acquired skill.
Some people are natural.
But I think it's important for us to
just to be authentic, authentic to yourself and
to others.
And people appreciate that.
I don't know if that answered your question.
No, absolutely.
And I love that because I think that
so many people, one of my really good
friends, Derek Harper, says that done is better
than perfect because perfect never gets done.
And I see that that's what a lot
of people do is that they're so anal
about releasing perfect content.
But what I find in the world, I
don't.
Like I release videos or I'm tripping over
my words.
I even acknowledge them.
I can't speak today.
But what I find is that that stuff
has more engagement, more response than anything else.
Like the rough around the edges stuff.
It's not like crystal clear, high def camera,
you know, using my phone, walking around or
saying things that are even sometimes inaccurate or
acknowledging that I don't know how to do
something.
I was on Periscope.
I'm dating myself now.
That was the very first live social media,
very first.
And I remember in the beginning, I was
like, I don't know how to do this.
And then my audience would just help me.
And that audience still, those people still follow
me today.
I mean, it's just, there's something about being
there along somebody's journey and then watching them
trip up and seeing that they're human, that
people really relate to.
And unfortunately, so many people try to take
that out of their content.
And that's the wrong thing to do, to
your point.
Yeah, it's the wrong thing to do because
people wanna know that you're not perfect and
you're human.
They love human experience.
They love interacting with somebody that's like them.
One of my buddies, it's funny because one
of his advice to get engagement on social
is he says, you always mess something up
that's obvious because then people will come in
to rescue you and help you in the
chat and that gets all kinds of engagement.
So he'll do like improper math.
He'll say something and then do the math
improperly.
People are like, oh no, it's not.
It's not seven and six, I think.
So it just goes to speak to human
nature that we naturally want to help other
people.
So when you are tripping, when you're not
perfect, people like that.
They resonate with that versus having this polished,
polished persona.
I think that so many people think you
have to have when you don't.
Yeah, you don't need it.
Yeah.
What do you think?
How do you put your identity?
How do you put your values, your ethics,
your identity?
Like what's your advice to figure out how
to take those elements of who you are
and put those into your personal brain?
Because I see a lot of people just
try to copy everybody else.
If they see somebody they like, then they
look at them, they try to study them
and copy everything they're doing.
But how do you really create a personal
brand around your own identity, your own values,
like the things that are important to you,
your own kind of personal story?
Yeah, that's a great question.
And we go back to being authentic, being
true to yourself.
If you're just starting out and you're questioning,
oh, what is my morals?
What is my values?
What is my mission statement?
I would suggest to like write a one
-page, I wouldn't say a business plan, but
it's called a business plan, like a one
-page business plan.
Write down your values and your mission statement
and what you are truly passionate about and
then build from that.
And a lot of times I would go
back to my original business plan and look
at it like, oh yeah, I'm kind of
off track or maybe my plan needs to
be changed.
And then I always incorporate it.
You always got to remind yourself, this is
what my mission statement or my values or
whatever you put on your paper.
But then you incorporate that into your advertisement
or whatever piece of content you're trying to
put out.
But you don't want to look at other
people, oh, I didn't do it like this.
No, who are you?
You always want to look inside yourself and
say, who am I?
Would I actually say it like that?
And say, speak how you normally speak.
Don't try to be or copy somebody else
because you see, oh, this person gets so
much engagement.
You could copy their, not what they're saying,
but like how they formatted their piece of
content, but you don't have to copy what
they say.
Put your being authentic, put whatever your values
are into your content.
And like I said, you have to be
true to yourself.
It's not like a magic formula.
You know if you're true to yourself.
You just look in the mirror, say Siobhan,
and would you say it like that?
And that's how I would go about it.
And I tell my clients all the time,
would you actually sell this person, this whatever
product in this way?
Or you're trying to make an advertisement.
Would you actually put that in there?
Like what about this product that you like
to sell?
Or why do you wanna really wanna sell
this product?
And then if you really stand behind your
products and your services, that goes back to
your core values because you believe in your
core values.
So it's really not hard.
You just gotta be authentic and stop trying
to copy people.
And how do you link the business and
the personal brand kind of together?
Because I know you use Credit Suite as
an example.
We're in financial services, right?
So it's kind of a little bit more
professional polish per se, but I'm a jokester.
Like I've just always been that way.
I have a class clown in my class
in high school, still never changed.
Like I'm still that guy.
So, but then when I do my personal
stuff, I'm just more lighthearted.
So how do you kind of link the
two together with kind of who you are,
but with the business identity itself?
Yeah, so that's easy to do.
In your post, like since we're talking about
branding, in your daily post or whatever your
post and put, if you're lighthearted, put funny
messages in your brand.
If you're making content, I tend to be
really crass.
And I guess as a matter of fact,
matter of fact, most men follow me because
I'm too blunt.
I'm not like all rainbows and rainbows, and
I guess bunnies.
So I have more men following me on
my YouTube channel than anything, but that's me.
So I tend to, when I deliver my
message, I'm very pragmatic.
Okay, this, this, this, and this, and this.
And I'm also a jokester.
So I will make a joke.
And sometimes the joke doesn't fare well with
other people, but they end up finding, your
audience end up finding you.
So, but you always want to incorporate yourself.
If you're thinking about, hey, I want to
incorporate my brand with my branding self in
my business, put little inklings of yourself into
your brand message or your content.
And then your people will find you.
Everybody has their people.
It may take longer than others, but you're
fine, you try.
Sean, I've loved everything we dove into today.
Will you tell me, what is something that
I should have asked you that I didn't,
that you think is important to anybody out
there that's starting a business, trying to get
the traction, and that's looking to do the
best job they can at building their personal
brand?
I think the most important thing is to
remain consistent and do what you promise to
do.
Your word is everything.
Persistency is everything.
It's nothing wrong to say, oh, I think
I want to pivot my business talking points
or whatever.
There's nothing wrong with that, but you have
to remain consistent, true to yourself and your
core values.
And then I believe that you can't lose
if you just do those two things.
And of course, if we're talking about sales,
you got to learn how to talk to
people and sell, so.
I love it.
Sean, thanks for coming on with us today.
Really appreciate you joining.
Well, thanks for having me.
So listen, if you're watching this, personal branding
is really, really, really important.
Like I said, to me, if you're building
a seven-figure business or beyond, it's one
of the two.
Once you get the personal brand down and
you do the things that Sean's talked about
with blogging and social media and finding your
identity and creating the content, and she's given
you the strategies to be able to do
that, then what happens is you start to
solidify yourself as an expert.
And when you solidify yourself as an expert
in an industry, then what happens is that's
how you really grow to build a seven,
eight, nine-figure business.
And here's why.
Because everybody else is out there paying per
lead.
Every time lead, they get cost of money.
But if you're doing this the right way,
you're not paying for that.
You might go out and pay for leads,
which you probably should but then you're still
getting a lot of your business coming from
just free, organic social media, as happens for
me, as happens for Sean as well.
She's got a big following because of everything
that she's taught you today to be able
to follow in her footsteps and do the
same thing.
This is why personal branding is so important.
It starts there.
Once you identify and figure out your personal
brand, then you can expand from there.
But we just scratched the surface on this.
And by the way, Sean talks about a
lot of different things.
So you should go to her website, which
is seanburns.com.
Let me spell that for you.
It's C-H-A-W-A-N-N
-E-B-U-R-N-S.com.
So that's Sean, C-H-A-W-A
-N-N-E-Burns, B-U-R-N
-S.com.
And I'll put that on the show resources
page as well.
When you get to Sean's website, first of
all, you can access her social media links
and she's active there.
You can get daily tips, not just on
branding.
She's talking about a lot of things.
I just actually noticed, she's even talking about
business credit, consumer credit on her website and
in her blog, amongst many other things, right?
That she helps learn from her students what
they need and then teaches out there in
the world.
So you can follow her on all of
her social channels to be able to get
daily tips.
You can even check out her blog, right?
She did a lot talking about why you
should have a blog, what to do in
a blog, how to have a blog, blogs.
Well, a lot of this you can access
on her website as well.
So you can see real world examples of
this.
And it's all at seanburns.com.
So make sure that you check that out.
And by the way, take less than a
minute to subscribe to her social channels because
then you're getting daily tips about all of
these things that are important, including building your
personal brand.
So make sure you check it out at
seanburns.com.
Again, that's C-H-A-W-A-N
-N-E, burns.com.
Thank you very much for tuning in.
Take care.
Have a great day.
You've been listening to The Business Credit and
Financing Show with your host, Ty Crandall.
Watch for our next episode to get even
more insight on financing and growing your business.
And don't forget to check us out online
at creditsuite.com for even more business growth
strategies.