Sabrina Carpenter & Her Bombshell Branding for a Glow-Up to Stardom

In this episode of Her First Podcast, we dive into Sabrina Carpenter's incredible career and the evolution of her personal brand. From her Disney Channel beginnings to becoming a global sensation, Sabrina’s journey is full of lessons for anyone building their brand. We break down her strategies, like crafting a signature style, collaborating with top artists, and sharing just enough of her personal life to keep her audience hooked so you can learn from her stardom ways.

Time Stamps:

01:13 Sabrina Carpenter's Early Career and Breakthrough

03:27 The Importance of Star Quality and Personal Branding

05:37 Sabrina Carpenter's Musical Journey and Broadway Debut

08:30 Mainstream Success and Signature Look

24:11 Collaborations and Personal Life in Music

32:26 Creating a Personal Brand and Storytelling

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Transcript

Episode 076: Sabrina Carpenter
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Michelle Pualani: [00:00:00] the more that you are being politically correct or just trying to be even keel, the less successful you'll be because it's really hard to stand out when you're just being. Bland 



Joanna Newton: Hi, and welcome back to the Her First Podcast. Today we are talking all about Sabrina Carpenter and why branding matters. If you have or haven't been following Sabrina Carpenter's career, this is going to be a really interesting episode where we dive in what kind of things you can change about your brand to move yourself forward. Now, if you didn't know, Sabrina Carpenter has been in show business for over a decade. a decade, but she's really just starting to see very global, very mainstream success. And today we're going to look at her career and talk about what she shifted, or at least from my observation and Michelle's observation, what she shifted to see that type of [00:01:00] success.

Michelle Pualani: We chose Sabrina Carpenter because she kind of has this almost like overnight persona that we've seen develop. Now that isn't the case and we'll talk about and get, so we'll talk about and get into how she's developed over time and how it's important to continue to move forward, but what are some of the tweaks you can possibly make in your personal brand that's going to help you stand out and actually get in front of more people.

Sabrina Carpenter put out a holiday special and I was watching it texted Joanna and she had already seen it. We both love what Sabrina Carpenter has been doing. She's established a very unique brand in the space and also a little bit edgy. a lot of times when we're creating content, we want to try to be more politically correct.

We want to stay within the lines. We want to not piss anybody off, I think Sabrina Carpenter does a really good job of demonstrating how it's Pushing the envelope and being a little bit more edgy can actually help draw people to you and create a more magnetic brand So [00:02:00] excited to dive into what she has to offer and how we can all learn from her experience

Joanna Newton: And I've been as a Brandon Carpenter fan for an absurdly long amount of time and have been watching her career all along the way. I was a big Boy Meets World fan, like back in the day, and it was really, really cool. like watched it all the time, like had the DVD set and really liked it and, rebooted Boy Meets World and made Girl Meets World, In like, uh, 2014. And I watched the whole series. Now, the thing with Girl Meets World is it was actually really bad. it was not good. And I just kept watching it, like waiting for it to get good. And I watched every season, every episode and ever got good. I remember watching that show and one, two, three episodes in, I was like Cause Sabrina Carpenter's on that show. That girl, Sabrina Carpenter, like she's going to be huge one day. Like I watched it and I knew she had a presence. And [00:03:00] Attitude, you saw her on that screen compared to everyone else. And like, I knew she was going to go somewhere someday. I didn't know what I didn't know what she was going to do, but I was like, this isn't it for her. the funny thing about that is because of that, like, wow, I had like, she has star quality. This is a thing. I watched her whole career and the whole time was like, how come this didn't take off? How come this didn't take off? She's so good. How come this didn't take off? this year when she's finally seen that mainstream success, I kind of feel like a proud mother having watched her along the way. But it's also kind of interesting to see, which we'll dive into some of the things she did to really. Me. Get herself there.

Michelle Pualani: There is a certain star quality, I think, that people possess and it can be honed and it can be worked on. There's actually an influencer and coach in the space that I follow, Whitney Uland, who actually coaches the celebrity status. She does it more from like a celebrity perspective. Subconscious reprogramming status and opening yourself up to being a celebrity because a lot [00:04:00] of the self limiting beliefs, subconscious thoughts that we have about ourselves inhibit us from magnetizing people to our energy, the work that we do, what it is that we're saying that can show up in our voice.

It can show up how we present on video. It can show up in the content that we're putting out into the world. So she has some really interesting approaches and, and thoughts on it and ways to help People find that kind of like celebrity within themselves, but I do think that there are people from childhood, you know, they're in the space, but They are just made to be on stage.

They're made to be in front of the camera. They're made to sing, whatever it is, like something in their Dharma or their destiny has put them in that place. And I did not pay attention to Sabrina Carpenter from the early stages. I did not watch Girl Meets World, although I had to Google it really quickly to see I have seen Sabrina Carpenter in the past couple of years, you know, as everyone has raised to this place of like stardom and obsession. I mean, she got her own holiday special on Netflix and [00:05:00] that's the kind of clout and pull that she has at this level. So she is famous. She is a worldwide celebrity now.

And I think there's something about her that I. I know that I'm drawn to, and that I think people are just drawn to, like Joanna's saying, something that pulls you in. The attitude, the way that she talks, her sense of humor. And I think developing personality, and sometimes that takes time for a person, and that could be part of Sabrina Carpenter's story as well, along with the things that we're going to share with you.

But just tuning into your own personality, paying attention to how you show up, and how that can differentiate yourself. As an influencer, as a coach, as a content creator in the digital space and how you're kind of creating your personal brand in this way.

Joanna Newton: So we're going to take a few minutes and dive into a little bit of her history so that we can talk about where she is today and how she got there. she started in this [00:06:00] business when she placed third and Miley Cyrus is the next Miley Cyrus project. It was a singing contest that was hosted by the Ellen DeGeneres show. So she run, won this before she had done any sort of professional acting or singing or anything like that. after that in 2014, she was cast in My Heart as we were talking about in Disney Channel's uh, Girl Meets World. So she was in that series and that was her first kind of real, real big gig. After that, she did release, um, her first album.

So in 2015 to 2017, she actually released two different albums and had her first headlining tour. So that was, you know, about. 10 years ago, she started her music career. even though right now she's just started sort of seeing that big radio success. after that, from 2018 to 2019, she started taking on some more dramatic acting roles, and she also released two more albums. this one makes me really sad. In 2020, she made her Broadway [00:07:00] debut, so she was on Broadway as Catty Heron in Mean Girls the musical. I am also a musical fan, so this made my heart so happy and I wanted to see Sabrina Carpenter like make her fame on Broadway, but I think she only did two shows because she started in that show right before the COVID shutdown and sort of lost that opportunity. This little piece her history is so interesting because I'm sure she was like, excited. She was going to be, on Broadway. She was starring opposite Renee Rapp, who is also a big star now, now a pop star. Like it was a big deal and she didn't, you know, really get to do it. Two shows is nothing, and Broadway. So she didn't get to do that opportunity, but really kept going, right? Didn't let the fact that COVID took away her Broadway musical career so fast. She kept going. I do hope she goes back one day. We'll see. Um, maybe her and Ariana Grande can be on Broadway together. That would be Oh, my gosh, I would go to New York for that.

I would pay a [00:08:00] lot of money for that. then in 2021, she actually got a new, um, she signed with a new record company, um, and she released her fifth album, Emails I Can't Send. Now, this album got a little bit more, I don't know if, uh, it got more attention than her previous albums. a lot of the songs were used on TikTok. Um, and actually a lot of the songs towards the, like the end of, before releasing this album started getting more attention, but it took some time to get that. That album was a little more grown up, a bit more personal. I think she really started developing like her own style as an artist on this album, a little outside some of her other music now.

So at this point in her career, know, Serena Carpenter had done a lot like she released five albums, but was not a household name, had very little radio play time. But now we look at. So her 2024 album short and sweet debuted at number one. [00:09:00] she's in the middle of a sold out stadium tour, which is a huge feat.

It's really hard to fill stadiums. several singles from that album, are all over the charts, all over the radio. And she. for like five Grammys. One of them is Best New Artist, which is when you think like she's nominated for the Best New Artist Grammy and this is her sixth studio album, 

Michelle Pualani: This is such a great learning lesson for us. So often I'm not as tuned into popular culture, so Joanna's more like she's watching people and paying attention from an earlier start. For me, I'm like the person that's like, oh, Sabrina Carpenter, she's this brand new artist. and she's fantastic, but sometimes I'll look up the history of their work and what they've been able to do.

And if you've seen some of Sabrina Carpenter's early YouTube videos, I watched this one that she did on a subway. It's very low budget, very early stages of her musical career. And it was over 10 years ago. You realize the amount of. time that [00:10:00] someone has been doing what they're doing in order to get to where they are.

So it's that classic example of, yeah, my overnight success took 10 years in the making. And so often we forget that. We put the content out and we're like, why aren't we going viral? Why don't we have the 100, 000 speaking gig yet? How come we're not selling out our programs? Well, it's probably because you just got started and you're getting into it thinking that you are going to have this.

bang in business and amazing presence and you're going to become an influencer within a short period of time. And realistically you have the wrong expectation because a lot of times the people that you're seeing who are at the forefront of our industry have been doing this for 10, 15 plus years. Now, do you have to say I have to wait 10 years in order to be successful?

Absolutely not. There are different levels of success to look at. You can still make money in the industry. You can still participate in certain events that are maybe a little bit, you know, More entry level, but I think that so [00:11:00] often we see people in the digital space and we say, Oh, I can do that and I can replicate that.

And then I'm going to do it for a month and I don't see results. And so now I'm either going to quit or be frustrated with myself because I'm doing something wrong. You're not doing something wrong. You're probably just not in it for long enough in order to make the kind of impact that you want to have.

So changing the expectation as far as the approach that you're taking for. So if you say, Jay Shetty, Mel Robbins, Tony Robbins, talk to people. So I'm big in the personal development space. So if you say, Jay Shetty, Mel Robbins, Tony Robbins, Brendan Burchard, like, those are names that I know, and I know a lot about, and I've likely read their books, been to their in person live events, done a lot around understanding them.

But I'll say Jay Shetty, and someone won't know the name. And that always surprises me, because I'm like, oh my gosh, this person is so huge, but they don't know them. They might have 20 million followers online, but this person that I'm talking to doesn't know [00:12:00] them. And you kind of have to think of things similarly.

with you are presence is like people don't know you and you need to establish yourself as a content creator, as an influencer, as a personal brand. You have to put in the work and that might take time. It might take extra energy. It might take resources. But it's all part of the process. So looking at Sabrina Carpenter as an example is knowing that she did a lot of different things.

She put in a lot of time and now she's at the level that she is because of what she's put in. But she didn't stop. She didn't quit. She didn't go off and say, Oh, I think I'll become a doctor now. Or I think I'll get into accounting. No, she stayed on the path of this celebrity actor, singer, persona, and she's cultivated that over time.

Joanna Newton: Yeah. And something to, to keep in mind with her, right? Like she's had this long career with varying levels of success. Like she was still a. a working actor, a working artist. She was making money. People were listening to her music. They were going to her concerts. She just wasn't at that Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, [00:13:00] Rihanna, like level of fame and artistry, right?

She was in a different place. And You know, you never really know what's happening behind closed doors with someone's mindset, but at least publicly, she just always seemed so grateful for what she was getting to do, so excited about the work that she was doing. Like she wasn't sitting there saying like, Oh, this album, it didn't chart.

I didn't get radio play time. I'm guessing she was just grateful. I have fans that listen to my music. I have fans that come to my concert and just kept leveling up, you know what I mean? And getting more and more success. When you look at like Taylor Swift's career, like she did come out of the gate, like with a lot of, a lot of fame right from like day one with her like first big album with her first debut album. But she still wasn't a, Worldwide name that she is today. She worked. I think she was grateful for all of the success she had on the way and kept going. So if you're out in the world and you're getting a hundred people to view your videos. You should [00:14:00] celebrate that and say like, this is awesome. A hundred people are watching my videos and I think a lot of people go into it.

Uh, only a hundred people are watching my videos. And so to really be grateful for the people who are listening to you, interacting with you, buying your products, programs, or services, I think is a really good lesson. Cause I think that the. you know, if we're like, if we're responsible and good with 100 followers, then we're worthy of having 300 followers.

And if we're like doing the right thing for 300 followers, then we can get 1000 followers and we can grow in that way by really caring for the people in our own circles. So I want to take some time to talk about. Um, some of the things that I saw Sabrina Carpenter to do to make that shift, right? To go from that smaller celebrity with a small following to a worldwide sensation. And one of the things that I think she really did was really create a very signature look. before today, Sabrina [00:15:00] Carpenter had a very, Sort of nondescript look, like she was very fashionable and had nice clothes, but she looked like a fashionable person in your town, a girl next door, like jeans, t shirts, like a more sort of typical, trendy look. With her new album, she's really made this shift of her look to kind of feel like this, like, Marilyn Monroe pinup esque look. the dark red lip, the very blonde hair, she wears lots of, like, lingerie, like, old school, not like, you know, Victoria's Secret Model lingerie, but like old school lingerie dressing gown type style.

Think Marilyn Monroe. Think original Barbie dolls, right? She's got this very unique sort of vintage retro look that she clearly made a shift to at some point. And, and That shift kind of matched when she started [00:16:00] getting her fame. That signature look really set her apart from some other artists and other people in this space.

Michelle Pualani: And going down the Instagram or TikTok rabbit hole on Sabrina Carpenter, you can't help but really see what she's done for her image. And it's all very intentional. I think that so much of it is bred out of personality. What is she naturally drawn to, but At some point, you have to realize that these images are curated in a very specific, special way.

And then she has all of these Easter eggs built into what she does at her shows, and the way in which she shows up with her lingerie sets, or what's on her tights. I saw this thing where she changes What's written on her tights and stockings, and so people are looking for those things. That's something that Taylor Swift does really, really well, is seeding things into songs or content that people start to pay attention to.

And if you are a book lover, I have been really [00:17:00] into like, spicy romance series in the past six months, like, I swear to God, you get One book and then it just takes you down this whole rabbit hole. So I've listened to a lot of books now. I'm an audiobook fan and there's something in books, right? In storytelling called foreshadowing and so they'll drop hints.

And then if you're reading a series, let's say it's a nine book series. There may be something in the six book that was referred to from the second book, and there's these things that you want to pay attention to and how they relate to each other. From a personal branding perspective and a content creation perspective, a lot of the times they'll say you have to leave the loop open.

When you're telling something, you never want to close the loop entirely because you want people to continue to open your emails. You want people to continue watching your content. And how do you do that? You seed something so that they are going to come back and look for either the answer, the follow up, the end of the story in a future video or in a future piece of content.

And I think Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter do that [00:18:00] really well, where they're opening up storylines in some way, and then closing them at a future date so that they keep people interested, and they keep people paying attention to what it is that they're doing, obviously. All of the other things from a female perspective, she's totally feeding into selling sex.

Like, if you look at a lot of her Instagram, a lot of her TikTok, and a lot of her shows, and how she shows up in the lingerie, the pinup, this like blonde bombshell look that Joanna talked about, it is very enticing. It's very pleasing to the eye. And that is her methodology and her path. Now there's a lot of different ways that you can present yourself that is different, that appeals to people, but knowing that there is an identity that she's creating and she's feeding into that.

owning that too, in a really, really confident way. So whatever your path you choose is owning it, you know, show up within your personality, within your brand, create your image and own that. And then there's one other example, because we've talked so much about, you know, Sabrina Carpenter is [00:19:00] a female blonde bombshell pinup, sexy.

There's a content creator in the Tik TOK community who is really big on bodybuilding. Books. He owns a bookstore and he talks about all of these really unique, interesting books that he has in his place. He's an older gentleman, but he has a look and a persona that he's developed in the TikTok space.

So he has glasses, he wears a sweater vest, and he's always in the environment of his bookshop. So it doesn't have to be sex. It can be whatever identifies you as the person that you are so that when people see your content, they know that it's you. who you are without having to look any closer in that first instantaneous moment.

They recognize you because you've created that brand persona. How can you do that?

Joanna Newton: And it's almost like you're creating a character, the persona you are on camera is, is a character. And I know, I know, I hear if you listen to this podcast, you're like, but Joanna, you said you're supposed to be authentic. You're supposed to be authentic. I'm saying create an authentic character, right? Sabrina Carpenter [00:20:00] probably likes a lot of that style. My guess is she enjoys old movies, like I don't know this for a fact, but old movies and music, because when she comes out, it feels very authentic and natural for her that she probably. Loves that style and she took that part of her and turn that into a character and you can do the same thing with your content, there's someone who I watch these, a tick tock person who has, She does these like food tutorials, and what's funny is I watch them all, I will tell you, I would never cook one of her meals, her style of cooking would not meet my dietary goals, healthy fresh food, I will say that, but her whole shtick is that does like aggressive cooking tutorials, so she like, Yells, she's like you put the meat in the pan. have to show you how to do it it's easy like she just has this like aggressive Attitude the whole time and it's just so entertaining again I would never cook any of her recipes she like [00:21:00] cooks for her family and it's a lot of like mixing of like frozen stuff and sauces I mean just I don't for my diet But I watch them all if they come across my screen I watch it all Do you think that she's aggressive and yelling all of the time? No, I can't imagine you could be like that 24 seven, but she probably is like that sometimes. So she took that piece of her personality and turned it into a character that she plays on the internet. And she doesn't have to be like that 24 7 and it's still authentic.

Michelle Pualani: It's really about magnifying aspects of your personality, you know, and the authenticity is yes, it's true to you and a piece of you, but it's almost like You know, okay, there's two sides to this and I'll explain both is that when you're on camera, it's usually like you have, they've always said you have to be like 10 times.

Emotional in order for it to be conveyed because you're just translating through a different setting, right, where little intonations can be helpful in an in person setting, but people might not pick up [00:22:00] on that from a video perspective. And then there are aspects of, like, communicating in a way that Reduces the amount of show that you're putting on like you're not trying to be someone else.

You're not trying to step into anybody else's shoes. You really are trying to reflect yourself, but in a slightly magnified way so that it translates and it can be something that people identify and relate with. We talk a lot about polarizing and polarizing is so important here. The aggressive, I've seen aggressive tutorials and aggressive like cleaning and aggressive things like that.

That's not going to be for everybody because some people that's just going to be too much and that's okay. the super soft ASMR style videos where people are tapping on things and doing that. That's not going to be for everybody. The type of personality that you're pulling out that you're going to magnify, it's not going to be for everybody, but that's okay.

It's actually a good thing. the more that you are being politically correct or just trying to be even keel, the less successful [00:23:00] you'll be because it's really hard to stand out when you're just being. Bland or ho hum or oh, I just I just want to show up and and do my thing and not establish a persona The other thing I'll point out is that things have really shifted 10 years ago in the digital space that might have been totally okay and people got started in a way that was simple and that was bland, but now, in order to capture attention, things have shifted so that the amplification of personality and persona.

Is important and it's something to take note of because things evolve and we can't always hang on to how they used to be and just bank on the fact that like, oh, this person got started with zero effort. I can do the same thing now. Times change, software technology changes, algorithms change, and what people are looking for changes.

So we kind of have to rise to the occasion to meet that.

Joanna Newton: Yeah, and I'll say if you're sitting here listening to this thinking about how it could apply to you and you're like, well, I'm not that interesting. What could I do that [00:24:00] is really exciting and different? One, you probably are. Like you probably are interesting, but you could likely make your lack of excitement interesting. by magnifying it. that could be your thing. Like that you're, you're super simple. You don't have crazy backgrounds. You're not doing that. You could do it to an extreme that it is interesting. So I think you can get creative about how you take the things about yourself and really make them part of your brand and who you and big thing that Sabrina Carpenter did that clearly played a huge role in her success was by collaborating with other artists. So before this new album came out, she had an opportunity to open on the era store, which is a huge stage for her to be on and be able to launch another a whole new phase of her career. the heiress tour is a huge tour, obviously with that, with working really closely with Taylor [00:25:00] Swift. And one of the things that she did really differently than some of the other artists that have opened for her. And she actually like had her own like set pieces and dancers. So she put on like a whole show and really use that as an opportunity to get like brand new people who are there to see Taylor Swift to fall in love with her. And the minute I now I used to think that I was like, well, because I used to be like really religious. I used to think I had to get from God that I could like. Be prophetic and like see the future and God gave that to me. I know super weird thing to share, but that's true I think I'm just really good at pattern recognition and like can can put pieces together and see what's gonna happen but the minute I Saw that Sabrina Carpenter was going to be on that tour. I said to my husband I said she is gonna get Taylor Swift's producer to work with her on her next album and that album is going to be Huge and that is exactly what she did. So, you [00:26:00] know, she Collaborated with Taylor Swift gets on this tour in that process must have connected with the person who was helping Taylor Swift produce her album, who's Jack Antonoff, who's Taylor's been working for, for a long time. Jack helped her with this album and this new album short and sweet has just gone crazy, People have really loved it. It has had its own stadium tour and did that. So she used this collaboration to launch something new to a bigger group of people. And this is something that is so important. If you're trying to grow a brand, a lot of times we are intimidated by other people in our space.

We are jealous of other people doing what we're doing. We are fearful that that they're going to do something before we do and then mess with what we want to do. But we have to collaborate, way to kind of jumpstart if you're stuck is to, you know, audience [00:27:00] borrow and work with another creator.

To connect and find a new audience.

Michelle Pualani: I love this as an example because you know, it's funny because I'm thinking of the word ego. And when you think of these people who are like in the public eye, like, oh, they must have so much ego with all of this. all the attention and fame that they get. But the fact that Sabrina Carpenter would look at something like opening for Taylor Swift with the Eras tour as an opportunity is a really good way to look at letting go of your ego.

Now, a couple of things. Is that before the ear is tour? Yes, Taylor Swift was popular. Yes, her brand was huge. Yes, she had worldwide recognition, but the ear is tour brought her to over a billion dollar asset, basically. It almost doubled her reach, impact, footprint as an artist in the length of career that she had up until that point, that Ira's tour literally exponentially grew what [00:28:00] it is that she created for herself.

So if you think back to that time, even still, yes, you would see that and be like, yes, that's a great opportunity. But for some artists, they could also see it as, well, I'm nobody's opening act. They could have either turned down the opportunity or been okay with like, Oh, I'll just come on stage. I'll just do my thing instead, leveraging the opportunity to have your own backup dancers, create your own props and set, have it be something that you're creating a mini experience and performance within the larger performance is really taking advantage of the opportunity, letting go of your ego and being okay with that.

you know, part of what launched and took Sabrina Carpenter's career to the next level. I think it was Prince, this is a total aside, but it's coming up in my mind, is that Prince opened for the Rolling Stones once. And apparently he was booed off stage, I don't have all the details, but he got off stage and was like, I'm never opening for anyone ever again.

And that sentiment could be, [00:29:00] yes, of course, Prince went on to have this amazing career, I think it's about finding the right opportunities, right? Like the Rolling Stones, perhaps were not the right audience. Sabrina Carpenter's audience and Taylor Swift's audience is so very aligned. So when you're thinking about your collaborations, it's important to act in accordance with your brand, the persona that you're creating and collaborate with people who are going to draw in that same or similar audience.

Being really mindful of that is if you've seized an opportunity and you're like, well, that didn't get me anywhere. That was really frustrating. I'm never doing that again. It could have been the wrong collaboration. It could have been the wrong opportunity. It could have been the thing that just wasn't meant for your brand, your persona, and it didn't align.

So keeping that in mind as well is that it has to be the right collaboration and opportunity. And by right, I mean, aligned. 

Joanna Newton: you know, I think this comes back full circle to be able to have that alignment in your collaborations. You have to understand [00:30:00] your brand identity, who it is you are, what is it you're talking about? So that when you, when you have those conversations, you, know who to say yes to and who to say no to.

You also know who to reach out to, if you're the kind of person who's like trying to collaborate and it's not working, you're either not, maybe you're not picking people that are aligned or you're not showing those people how aligned you are, in that method. Yeses are easier in some ways when you know who you are, you know what you're putting out in the world, you know what's right for you and not. right for you because you go after the things that are right for you from the start. So collaborating is a huge way that you can really grow and push your brand forward, very quickly, um, and can have those big changing, um, milestones of where your business is. Another thing that Sabrina Carpenter does in her music that I think really sets her apart and has helped grow her brand, and she did do this a little bit in her early stages, but definitely did [00:31:00] this deeply in her latest album, is keeping it very personal. Michelle, you were talking earlier about like the Easter eggs and getting people talking and engaged. You can also do that by incorporating some of your personal life into your music because it gets people talking about like, Oh, who's this song about? Do they have a song about the same story that we can compare and try to figure out what's going on?

Now, the reality is all of this might not actually be true. but it's true enough that it gets people talking. So, her song, Taste, which was one of the singles off of her album, is theoretically about this sort of love triangle between her, Shawn Mendes, and Camila And so then, of course, that song comes out, and everybody's looking for, they're also probably helped both Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello songs because people were looking at their songs to see what connections could be between that song and taste and the music video and all of the things and everybody's talking about it, which then gets more people to listen to it [00:32:00] because they're trying to analyze and like, Figure it out. also had her boyfriend in one of her music videos. Now, Serena Carpenter is not with this boy anymore, which makes people talk about it again more. She brought him into it because again, that gets people talking. Oh my gosh, her boyfriend's in her music video. what does this mean? Like all of that, right?

So she's bringing her bits of her personal life. I'm sure not all of it, right? I'm sure she's not just like bearing everything for the world, but she's bringing in bits of her personal life to her music so that people are really talking about it regularly, um, and listening more.

Michelle Pualani: Absolutely. And whereas on your feed, perhaps you're not necessarily talking about your personal life because you don't want your content pillars to be all over the place, You have a strategy, you're talking about certain aspects of what you do. It's more around education, it's more around support, it's more around making aware of the problem.

But in your stories, you're sharing the aspects of your personal life that other people can relate to. You can [00:33:00] usually pick two or three qualities, right? I'm a spicy book romance reader. So maybe that's something I share about in my stories if I feel comfortable putting that out into the world. I will say over the past six months I haven't really talked about it because it's kind of been my like literal dirty little secret.

But I think I'm feeling more comfortable about talking about it now.

Joanna Newton: it's in the podcast now, so it's somewhere.

Michelle Pualani: It's official now, so it's out in the world. So, and then other things would be like my obsession with fitness and health. So, talking about those things, even though I coach around personal branding, marketing, and business, talking about those things because people are able to relate to you at that level.

The thing that I've heard about Taylor Swift, especially, and I think Sabrina Carpenter does this really well, Well, right in her content is that she's taking you behind the scenes. You feel like a personal friend when you're watching content from them in their stories or posted on Snapchat is the platform.

I'm not on Snapchat, but people who are on Snapchat, it's a little bit more intimate. It's like you're seeing into their personal [00:34:00] lives and you feel like you get to know them. And so then you're more invested in what it is that that they're doing. Also, if you think about. In your own personal life, if you have a friend who you stay in touch with, they're keeping you updated, they tell you stories about their life, that you know about their boyfriend, you know about their, sister who they have a problem with, like you know about their horse that they just got, all of these things, versus the friend that you maybe hear from a couple times a year, it's usually technical, uh, it's just kind of whatever they would put on Facebook, it's not very intimate.

Who are you going to be more invested in and who are you going to want to support more? Probably the friend that you stay in touch with who keeps you abreast of their life. keeping that in mind from a personal brand perspective, no, you don't have to share everything. No, you don't have to talk about your kids.

If you don't feel comfortable talking about your kids, no, you don't have to share intimate things about your partnership or your relationship, but just choosing little aspects of your life that you can share. Feel comfortable kind of magnifying in the digital space to talk about that kind of [00:35:00] draw people into you get them to trust Engage with and embody your brand and in our next episode we're gonna talk all about what it means to create a personal brand So we're gonna be diving into some of these things a little bit more deeper So make sure you hit subscribe and tune in to the next episode for that

Joanna Newton: And I think there's a lot of ways as a creator, you can really bring people in and, and tell a story. sometimes that can be by sort of. Almost manufacturing it in a way, there is a creator. We actually have another episode about her specifically about Tori Dunlop of her first 100k. One of the things I think she really does really well is she created enemy for herself that she talks a lot about, that's in Dave Ramsey. So Dave Ramsey is a, like another sort of financial person that is, has books. He's on, think he's on like Fox news business and he has like a system for helping people save and make money. And a lot of people really like his work and follow his ethos. Tori [00:36:00] Dunlop kind of made him her enemy, kind of the anti her in terms of the way they talk.

So she talks a lot. She kind of talks bad about him a lot by, by like making fun of him and in an appropriate, funny way, somewhat appropriate, but she kind of has poised herself as this like opposite Dave Ramsey. So she has this conflict that she's talking about. So if you follow her and she brings up this conflict that she actually doesn't have with Dave Ramsey, but she's makes kind of have with Dave Ramsey. There's that connection. You're, feeling like you're getting this like insider information and that made me think of, I was like, how could I do this for me? And I'm probably not going to do this, but, you know, there are a lot of like marketing gurus in this space. And I actually don't agree with a lot of the topics that they talk about. and don't think that those are like paths to success. and I could make myself like. The anti guru, I'm the opposite of this guru and create a [00:37:00] facade of a conflict between us to help people see my brand, right? If someone goes, Oh, this is the anti somebody, they're going to immediately kind of get that. What I am because they know what that person is. So they think I'm the opposite. They're going to learn a lot about me really quickly. So if you're not in a position where sharing your personal life makes sense, we're sharing your relationships, your husband, you're all of those things. You can do that by pointing to other big people in the space or other concepts in the space.

People understand and relate to those.

Michelle Pualani: It's also the idea of creating a villain. In so many stories, there is the antithesis of the hero is the villain, and if you are the hero, or if your ideal client is the hero in your story, your content can center around what is the villain. Is it an industry? Is it a person? Is it a type of person? Is it something that we've been taught?

Is it a myth? And so you're creating again that juxtaposition and so much of what you're doing is storytelling. So much of what you're doing is drawing people into [00:38:00] your narrative and getting them to agree to what it is that you're teaching, practicing, preaching, and then selling them into your programs in which you continue to do the same thing.

finding that point of opposition, that point of contention is a good thing. Polarizing, something that is going to draw someone in or push them away and finding that because it's, it's a natural tendency, it's a human psychology to want to feed into those things. So the more that you can in your brand, the better you will be at growing, the better you will be at creating that identity that someone's going to really be invested in because you're the hero.

Or again, you are creating your ideal client to be the hero.

Joanna Newton: Well, thank you so much for tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed this conversation, looking at Sabrina Carpenter's career and some of the things that she did to take herself from, you know, being an artist, being an actor to being a literal worldwide. I think we can take a lot of things into this, into our content, into [00:39:00] our business and how we see the world. If you liked this episode, please subscribe, share it with a friend, leave a review. We would love to stay connected.