The Confident Entrepreneur With Jennifer Ann Johnson

The Branding Game Has Changed with Samantha McGinley

• Jennifer Ann Johnson • Season 3 • Episode 47

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Branding has already changed—today’s winners lead with trust, clarity, and a human voice. In this episode, branding coach Samantha McGinley breaks down the shift from logo-first to identity-led brands built for a social-first world.

We dive into defining your ideal customer, using psychology in design, and building a brand that’s authentic and intentional. Samantha also reveals common traps—from creating content for yourself instead of your audience to rushing into personal branding—and how to avoid them.

You’ll learn her 90-day content test method, the four stages of brand development, and when to bring AI into your process. If you’re pivoting to a “brand of me” or wondering how to scale with purpose, this episode delivers clear answers and next steps.

Samantha leaves us with three pillars: be real about your journey, turn everyday moments into content, and know your audience deeply. Subscribe, share, and let us know which tip you’re trying first.

Visit us at jenniferannjohnson.com and learn how Jennifer can help you build the life you dream of with her online academy, blog, one-on-one coaching, and a variety of other resources!

Jennifer Ann Johnson:

In today's fast-paced world, the rules of branding have been completely rewritten. Gone are the days when a catchy logo and slogan were enough to make your mark. The brandy game has changed, and if you're not adapting, you're falling behind. In this episode, we're diving deep into the new landscaping or the landscape of branding. We'll explore how social media, customer experience, and authenticity have revolutionized the way businesses connect with their audiences. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting out, understanding these shifts is crucial for your success. Today we welcome into the studio Samantha McGinley. Samantha is a visionary branding coach and marketing strategist with over eight years of experience in transforming brands and elevating marketing strategies, dedicated to empowering entrepreneurs to not only stand out, but also scale their ventures effectively. Her commitment to sculpting distinctive brands, mastering cutting-edge marketing techniques, and devising strategic social media approaches has consistently helped clients deeply understand their audience and attract their ideal customers. Welcome. Oh, it's so wonderful to be here. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. I got a little tongue-tied there. There's there's so much. You do so much. I'm like consistently. I don't know why I always struggle saying that word. I can't wait to dive deep into branding with you.

Samantha McGinley:

Oh my gosh, it's so fun. I love branding and like the title of this podcast, branding has changed. So let's get into it.

Jennifer Ann Johnson:

It has. So for our listeners and for me, really, what is a branding coach? What do you really do? Like at the end of the day, what is a branding coach? Totally.

Samantha McGinley:

So it's kind of like I would say it's newer, obviously. It's I've only found like a few people in like the niche itself. But branding coach for me and like what I focus on with my clients is how to find your ideal client, how to really idealize your ideal customer, like how to create that vision and bring it to life. Because brands have changed in the sense of okay, we think of branding in the way of like logos, fonts, websites, and then also you think of iconic brands like McDonald's, even Lamborghini, Nike, like these iconic brands, but social media has changed that. Social media has made it to where brands can be people. So when we take that and basically bring that into concept, branding is all about how you represent yourself, how you're talking to people, your messaging, your overall foundation. And so it's how you're putting yourself out into the world. And so as a branding coach, I help people basically conceptualize that whole idea of like how they're talking to their audience, how they can bring out their entirety of themselves into their brand and make it their identity because brand is not just a business, it is an identity in itself.

Jennifer Ann Johnson:

And it's interesting that you brought up uh the colors and logos and fonts because that's what we traditionally think of as branding. Like, think of Coca-Cola. Yeah, you know, I can I can picture it. Like that's what we thought it was, but it's become more than that. Like you said, it's become uh especially as entrepreneurs. Yeah, no, it has.

Samantha McGinley:

It's crazy to see how much it's evolved, I would say, and to see how also it's a very new concept still, because it's like, like you say, logos, fonts, colors, it's a thing. But then if you go into that even deeper of like your logos, fonts, and colors, what's the psychology behind all of that? Right? Because it's like your logos, your fonts, your colors. Those are still things I work on with clients, but I'm still like, who is your ideal audience and what is it that you're trying to represent through that? Because I have clients that are like, I'm working strictly with men, mid-50s to early 60s, late like or like late 60s, and they're presenting the idea of sophistication, moving from mid-senior level to senior level positions. And I'm like, great. So then we're thinking about royal colors, we're thinking about blues, blacks, whites, yellows, golds, because those are the things that most men are attracted to, of just like that symbolism, because there's a lot like Michigan, Berkeley, big schools with big football teams have those colors, right? And so, like, people are naturally drawn to them. So when we're thinking about the energy of one concept of like what men like, what is drawn from that, there's so much more psychology behind it that people don't understand. That it's like, okay, cool. I'm not just gonna give you a PDF of just your brands, your fonts, your colors. I'm gonna get into it. I'm gonna be like, who are we talking to? And why do they need those colors? And why do they need to hear that and see that from you?

Jennifer Ann Johnson:

And that's a lot of research, right? That has to go into first of all, let's back up. So, your ideal customer, I uh in my world, I call it your ICA, your ideal customer avatar, who that is. You first have to figure out who you're talking to. How do you advise people to go about that?

Samantha McGinley:

One of my favorite things to say as a very interesting concept is okay, cool. Maybe you're new in the world, maybe you're already established. You have to go down to come up. So breaking that apart in the sense of I love to do this exercise with my clients of to go down to go up is breaking it apart and using only your mind. So, who is that person? Like, if we're just sitting chit-chatting in the sense of like, what's their name? What do they do? Like, you know so much about your industry, you know who you're talking to. But sometimes I take, I sit with someone for usually it takes me about an hour, hour and a half sometimes to really sit with them, conceptualize the idea. Because it's like, what do they need from you? What are they doing? Are they a busy mom, like working? And like, are they trying to supplemental income bring supplemental income into their household for their kids? Like, what is it that they're doing? What how are they struggling? And that is a whole framework that I work on because AI is available, AI is fantastic, and I love using AI, but sometimes this is one thing that I'm like, I demand and I require that we sit and we work this out from simply just your creative side of like your brain of who you're talking to, because that is the first thing I start off with clients. I'm like, who do you want to talk to? Like, why do you want to talk to them? And so AI can't tell you that. No, and it's cool because once you do all of this, once I build out this framework with my clients of who this person is, then it's so much easier to pop that into AI and give a content calendar, give so many more ideas based off of that one person, because then you're talking to them exactly how you want to.

Jennifer Ann Johnson:

See, and that's the thing. I I think for me, like getting in the heads of the people that you see as your customer, but you're a third party, which helps because when you're in it, you go, Well, I think this is the person. And you know, my shopper is this, this is what they like to do, but is it really? Like, you know, the questions to ask, to take it, you know, from my perspective to a branding perspective and say, let's let's dig this out of you. Let's figure out who your customer really is. Because it for some of us, it may not be who we think it is. Do you ever have that happen?

Samantha McGinley:

I do, because actually we end up thinking more of ourselves than we think about our clients, which happens a lot because burnout happens so often when we're creating brands, building brands, building businesses, like when we're generating content, everyone has burnout. But the one thing I I've noticed consistently is that burnout happens when you start posting or start creating for yourself instead of for your client. So I often I have a couple of those checks every like every month or so of like, hey, how's your content going? And how are you feeling? And how is the the thing that you're building feeling with your audience? Because if it's feeling you're starting to get that burnout feeling, let's readjust. Like, let's reclaim that because recentering to your target audience makes it so much more effective. And because at the end of the day, we all got into this line of work of being an entrepreneur to help people. So we can't be in the mindset of ourselves, we can't get stuck in thinking about what we would need to see, how we would talk to ourselves, because at the end of the day, we're not our client.

Jennifer Ann Johnson:

So I I have an interesting question in the respect of you have a business owner, an entrepreneur who has been doing this one thing for a long time. Then they decide, you know, I'm not just defined by that brand. Okay, I need to become the brand of me. They become the brand of me, but they need to relay to their audience that the person that owns this business is, yes, this person owns this business, but they also have their own identity out here who's trying to do something else. So kind of pivoting the message. Have you seen that, worked with that? How what advice would you give to somebody who needs to or wants to pivot their message to something else, all while still maintaining the image of I'm the owner of this company, but I'm becoming my own brand as well?

Samantha McGinley:

Totally. The one thing that comes to mind to first say is that when we're building something, we have to know that not everyone likes change. So you're always going to see a decrease in engagement. Like you're always going to see a slight downfall in whatever you do. Because in actuality, in what I've done and how I've observed things, it takes fully about a year to just have the brand recognized and to reach, I call it like different stages of brand development. And so about a year to really be in the zone. But when people want to build their own personal brand, I say great. So if you have this established business and you want to build out your personal brand, how you do that is you start to do the things you have to identify what you want to do with that first. Is that building another business? Is that just lifestyle content? Is that kind of coming along with me? And one example that I can think of is a very dear friend of mine who owns a salon and she has her personal brand. She's been on a show and has gotten very well recognition from the show that she's been on. And so she's built her personal brand off of being on that show. And so when she started posting more content about the salon or about two salon owners, it wasn't resonating on her personal brand side. And so she had to start listening to her audience and being like, okay, they want to see more lifestyle content of what I'm doing and more days in the life. And so when she made that shift, it changed her whole personal brand. And then her business is now her team. And that takes a lot when you're when you've built something and allowing for that almost not even delegation, but just that freedom for your team to be like, we've got this. Like it's just come in it as you please, like come in it as you want. And so, as watching her with her all like with her team, it's so fun to see how much more free she feels because her personal brand is on this whole other side and she can run her business. So I would say it just takes some time of what you really want to do with that personal brand in the sense of are you kind of moving towards that content creator influencer model, which isn't a bad way to do it because it's like brand deals are an opportunity. You can go for more lifestyle content, more days in the life of being just an entrepreneur. Or are do you want to build something else? It just is a matter of that lens of figuring out what direction you want to go. And so for me, I'm like just think about your audience, who you want to talk to in that realm of building your personal brand as you start to step away, but also know that it takes time. And within that time, you might feel like you lose a couple of people, but that's okay because you're gonna call in the people who really want to know you.

Jennifer Ann Johnson:

So let's say you don't know, you know that you want to create your personal brand, but you kind of have an idea of who you what you want to do. Let's say you step from owning a business to then you know, the the linear thing would be coaching. Okay. I want to coach other small businesses. Going from that that's not as big of a leap, I guess. Uh, but but you don't know what that looks like. Is it fine to just start creating and just start putting one foot in front of the other? And you know, a lot of people say start before you're ready. Do you just start creating content without having that clear vision as to who the end user is gonna be of it? Or do you really have to take a step back, wait until you know that to start creating?

Samantha McGinley:

I say within the first three months of when you're just kind of figuring things out and like what you want to do, I like to call it I'll keep it clean, but it's just kind of just like your your your effort period. Like just come just completely just mess around, go find the thing that is resonating with your audience and use 90 days. Because if you're just posting like content in the sense, so with TikTok, like the algorithm itself, sometimes it thinks about it takes a while for you get out to get out of like 200 views on TikTok, which it because it's just trying to figure out where it wants to put you. Think about it in the same way of just when you're producing content for the first couple of months, think about which way is resonating more. How are you finding your audience and where do you want to go? Because sometimes you end up finding a love for filming one content versus another. And so, if if in this example, if you're pivoting into just solo coaching and wanting to help other businesses, that's kind of again coming down to go up because you have to think about the foundational work of building a mission statement, building an avatar, building your brand again. And it seems so repetitive, but I constantly remind my clients that that coming down is the same way that you would climb up a peak, right? You're like, okay, to maybe get to the tallest peak of where you want to go, which would maybe be success, you have to go through a couple of peaks just to get there, just to see the ultimate view. But when you get to the first peak, you're like, oh, this view is great, this is fantastic, but I want to go there. So more often than not, what do you have to do? You have to go down to go back up. Right. And so it's that same thing of take 90 days, even if it was before like work with someone like me, or before you work with someone in marketing or whatever, to just find what resonates with you. But then also remember that building a foundation of your mission, your avatar, and all of the other things at the baseline is going to help you grow because that's where it all starts. And without that, you cannot build your brand effectively.

Jennifer Ann Johnson:

And you know, I think as entrepreneurs, we get very impatient and we kind of forget what it was like when we built our first business and how slow it actually was. Yeah. But then when you build your second business, you're like, I don't understand why it's not happening like right now. And it's not happening right now because your first business didn't start that way, but it's been so long for a lot of people that they don't remember that.

Samantha McGinley:

And it's it's funny. I was sitting and talking with another coach not too long ago, and I was telling, I was asking him the very question of like, how do you explain to clients of that same phrase of you have to go down to go up? And he gave me the example of a Christmas tree, of how it almost gets shorter as it goes up. Because as you continue to build brands and make businesses, the first like leg of the bottom of a tree is like really long, right? But then every time you do something, it gets shorter and it builds up the tree. So that's kind of the same way as that in the sense of how I look at the four stages of brand development. First, you have the recognition of like your team and maybe some of the people around you. The second stage is your audience kind of starts to get that idea of who you are and what you do. The third stage is your peers, so friends of friends. So they're like, oh, hey, I've seen her content, I know her. Like I can start telling her about it. It's when you get personal referrals and all of those things. And a lot of the times, people, it takes a while to get from the second stage to the third stage. Your audience really has to understand you. And it's incredibly important. But taking that into consideration, when you get to the fourth stage, that's mass market. Like that's Jen Gottlieb level, that's Gabby Bernstein level, that's you can sell anything and be at that point where your audience is like, okay, I'm in. Like I already know who you are and what you do. And also, it doesn't matter what you do, I just know your brand. So when you think about it like that, it just takes some times to go to each level.

Jennifer Ann Johnson:

And a lot of people look at, and I know we've heard this saying in in all of the circles that we're in, right? Don't compare your chapter one to someone else's chapter 20. Yes, you know, and it's true because we do, we're human, and we see somebody, you know, the big names in the world posting on social media, and we're like, I want to be them, and we think that it just happened overnight, you know, and it really didn't. It took a long time for them to, you know, what you're saying go down to go back up. It's taken many of those cycles, but we don't see that.

Samantha McGinley:

Exactly. And Gary B highlights that a lot too. He's like, you guys just look at me now, like of where I am and where my brand is, but you don't think about 10, 15 years ago when it was nothing. Like I wasn't, you know, I was I was where you guys are just building things, and I just put out a lot of content. I just put out mass amounts of content and saw and tried to see what stuck. And that's why he's so successful now, is just he's built his brand over time. But I we were even having this conversation with one of my other clients who works in like image consulting, and she was talking about people, they just want to get to the stage of billionaires where they can wear like flip-flops and t-shirts and shorts. And I'm like, you think about how long somebody wore a suit before they can do that, and it's the same thing with brands. You think about how long someone has to get there before they can just sell whatever, be whatever, have people behind them. So that's where it's it's like it's okay. Like, what are we in a rush for? Like, I know that we're we want we want to make money and we want to be successful, but that's why I emphasize to a lot of my clients of you have to remember your why. You have to remember why you got into this, because at the end of the day, we built a business to help people, so we need to remember that.

Jennifer Ann Johnson:

Absolutely. And you know, I love the Gary Vee conversation because you're right, like we totally don't see any of that, nor do we care because all we see is what we see now. Exactly. And we want to be that. So is the personal brand something that's here to stay?

Samantha McGinley:

I think so, yes, because as I mentioned kind of at the beginning, social media changed that. It really did, because YouTubers like it's no longer a business name that needs to hold recognition in order for people to get things, like Alex Earl, for example, or even Mr. Beast on YouTube, or any famous influencer, TikTok, or whatever. They have millions of followers, and those people will buy whatever that person says, and that's why they're called influencers, creators, because they're being influenced to to show other people what they're doing, but because they've made such a strong personal brand that it doesn't ultimately matter what they do. They'll always they're always gonna have people behind them because they took someone along with the journey. So, yes, personal brands are here to stay, especially. I mean, as long as we're in the social media sphere, yeah, it's always gonna be a thing.

Jennifer Ann Johnson:

Something interesting that I've I've thought about with the influencer area. So I remember back in the day when as a business owner, I basically paid an influencer um money or product to influence their followers to my brand. I and I'm gonna let you speak to this, but I'm gonna give my opinion. I feel like it seems as though it's kind of going the other way around a little bit right now. Like influencers are important, but the influencers has really they've really built up their brand and um put themselves out there, and they're more apt to be very careful as to who they endorse and and what they do and what they don't do and and those kinds of things. But I I don't know why I feel like I would be less apt to believe somebody that I know is getting paid. Does that make sense? Is that really the case or am I making that up?

Samantha McGinley:

I think you're observing a yeah, I think you're observing a much larger shift amongst the marketplace. Um, I was having this conversation with a coach not too long ago, too, where there's a huge shift to where the sales market of how we've given people things for so long, it used, you know, flashy sales, cheap sales, things that were just almost guaranteed, but just fast. Um, what's the word, sticky, um, just all of those types of sales, they just don't work anymore. People want to trust you. And I think that you're absolutely in this in the sense of I want to be able to trust someone before I give them my product or pay them to like actually influence it or like bring it out to their market. Because right now it's just people are just want they want authenticity, they want real people. And I tell that to all my clients of who are stuck feeling like they want to create content and everything like that. It guys, it's just in the background of things, people want to see you, they want to know who you are, they want to trust you because we have been played for so long. And we talk about that in the marketing industry too. It's just when did marketing become scheme? When did everything become a play to get money?

Jennifer Ann Johnson:

Right.

Samantha McGinley:

When when did all of that happen? It it's just so many people have changed their direction of just wanting to build trust with someone else before they invest in something else. So I think, yeah, it's it's drastically changing in this sense that people are just absolutely craving authenticity from someone else. So before you offer a product or invest in something else, just be honest with the fact of okay, I might not get a return. It's the same thing with like what we say about giving other people money, right? I might not get that back, but I'm just gonna give it because I feel like it might be good, right? And you just kind of have to just put it out there. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. But at the end of the day, I think everyone's feeling that same way in marketing, in influencer levels, it's just everyone wants someone authentic and to just actually trust someone. So that's why building a personal brand and building a brand off of integrity and off of your personal values is really a game changer. Because if you do that, then people are gonna want or people are gonna gravitate towards that and people are gonna want to work with you and influence whatever you have in any way that you they can because they see the vision.

Jennifer Ann Johnson:

Does that make sense? That totally makes sense. Now, if you had three strategies, just three high-level strategies that you could give our audience on the importance, the important keys of building a personal brand. What would be three key takeaways that our audience could use to build their personal brand? Maybe a do and don't list or a do list.

Samantha McGinley:

Totally. I would I would say the first one be as raw and real as you feel like you can, because showing the journey and the process helps a lot more. I think even on my page, and I talk about this from so long ago of literally not even my brand has shifted a lot too. So, not even like maybe August of last year was I really just wanting to be faceless. Did I really want to like not show my face and like wanted to build my brand in that direction? But then really meeting people who are like, No, I need to see your face, like I want to trust you, right? So you have to show up, like, and I've watched some of my clients show up and just show on camera and be feel the uncomfortableness and just be honest about it. And they've attracted people because of that same thing. Because there's a lot of people who just don't want to be on camera and don't want to do the thing and don't want to get up and make content every day because we all feel like it sometimes. Yeah, so it's it's on at the end of the day, be real, be authentic. That would be my first one. The second one is find the things that you can bring in to almost your everyday life. So if you're going for personal brand kind of influencer model, if you have a skincare routine, if you have things that you just do every day that kind of allows people to bring it in, just bring them in. Like show them the things that you're doing, obviously within boundaries, like find the areas where you feel comfortable showing. But when you showcase a lot of the things, and you can obviously you can attract brand deals, you can attract the people that want to do the products or see the products that you're using and all the things like that. And that actually combines with travel and that combines with coaching and that combines with businesses because you can get brand deals with hotels, you can get brand deals with air like airlines, you can build out the things. So when you're thinking about your everyday, unpack it. Unpack your everyday and how you can bring in the things that are just natural to you because then it doesn't feel forced, it doesn't feel like you're becoming an influencer and it just feels natural. So it's like authentic, authentic energy all the way around. Bring in the brand deals that work with your everyday life, whether it's business, coaching, personal, whatever that may be. And then third, really, I cannot like say this enough of just know your audience, know who you want to talk to, and take the time to build a build an avatar. And I'll give this in the sense of I have it all over my Instagram too. The exercise that I start with my clients of just sit down and pen to paper, or if you like to type, type it out. What's their name? How old are they? What do they currently do? Why do they need you? How can you help them? What are they just struggling with? And how can you bring that messaging to life? How can you pull all of that information out of them in order to tell them exactly what they need to hear? And it's cool when you do this pen to paper, computer to keyboard, whatever it may be. If you put that information into Chat GPT and have it write a diary entry for you, like the diary entry really gets me. Like that's one where you can almost just pretend to be in the mind of another person. And so if you know your audience and you know who you're talking to, that's a game changer. It really is.

Jennifer Ann Johnson:

So three steps be real or three tips be real, incorporate everyday life. I loved your saying unpack your everyday, and then know your audience. Yep. Powerful but simple.

Samantha McGinley:

So simple. And that's where it's we were talking about yesterday. It's very funny that podcasting today with you, and I was with a group of people yesterday of an image consultant, a videographer, and just me. And we were talking about how much brand has changed, where it's like your visual representation and then your outward appearance, and then your online presentation is literally everything that you need to understand because that's how people are gonna know, like, and trust you. And at the end of the day, everybody wants to feel seen, heard, and appreciated. Everybody does. So when you know your audience, you're so super real, and you just bring in the things that attract your everyday life. Who is not gonna want to work with you? Because the people who really do, they're gonna find you. Right. They sometimes just showing up as yourself. And that's so much easier than having to feel like you have to pretend to be someone else.

Jennifer Ann Johnson:

Way easier, that much less energy, right? So much less energy. Samantha, it has been a pleasure having you on today. If our listeners would like to get a hold of you, how may they do so?

Samantha McGinley:

Yes, I'm on Instagram at Sam the Branding Coach. Super easy. Sam the Branding Coach is mostly all of my platforms sent shoot me and DM. I'm around. I always love to hop on um and do Instagram audits, like social media audits. So if you need one, just shoot me a message. Wonderful. Thank you so much again. Yeah, thanks for having me. Absolutely.

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