Building a Powerful Personal Brand to Propel Your Business Forward – Michelle Taylor Willis

The importance of building a powerful personal brand cannot be overstated. On this week’s episode of The Playbook, host Mark Collier, business consultant for the UGA Small Business Development Center, is joined by Michelle Taylor Willis, founder of Gagnant Media which is headquartered right here in Atlanta. Willis is also one of the Top 25 Most Powerful Women in Atlanta and Top Extraordinary Atlantans.

Transcription: 

Mark Collier:
Welcome into The Playbook and ASBN Michelle.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
Thank you for having me Mark. I appreciate you inviting me to your show.

Mark Collier:
Absolutely. Personal branding is got to be front and center for many entrepreneurs. We’re going to get more into that, but first I want to know a little bit more about you. You wear many hats. You are a media executive, personality, media personality, serial entrepreneur, speaker, master strategist, and author. Did I get all those right?

Michelle Taylor Willis:
I think, you know, yeah. I mean, mom is probably, I probably shouldn’t have that first, right? Wife and mom.

Mark Collier:
Fantastic. Now prior to all that, you started your career in sales. Kind of share with me your journey and kind of what led you up to the media mogul that you are today.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
Well, I appreciate you. Every time someone says that I’m like, keep talking, speak it into existence. I don’t know, do we have like 30 to 40 minutes, I’m going to give you my journey? I’m just joking. I started in sales, first I graduated in advertising. I thought I was going to end up going and doing some cool internship and job in Chicago or New York until I realized how much they paid advertising right out of college. I was like, yeah, sales is where it’s going to be for me. I started off in B2B sales and I wanted to be in medical devices. I felt like that’s where I was going to land before I ended up completely going into the entrepreneurial space. What I found out is that you had to get B2B experience in order to get a medical, to get pharma or medical device.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
I started my path and in that, knowing that I wanted to end up as a device rep. I worked for a couple of, I worked for a plumbing wholesaler which was the largest one. Can’t remember if it was nationally or internationally. Then I went to telecom sales before the bubble burst. It was crazy. The money was insane when I was in sales for that. Then after that is when I landed my very first job in pharma sales. Which was awesome. Then I eventually got a job in device sales. Now the whole way Mark, I was kind of dabbling obviously in the side gig thing, right? I had a resume writing company. I had a business teaching people how to get into pharmaceutical sales. I knew that eventually I would transition completely out.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
My last corporate job as a medical device rep is when we started, by we I mean my husband and I, partnered with a couple other people and we started an HR consulting company. Which grew into medical practice management and medical consulting. Really started in the HR space but we were dealing with so many doctors because I knew so many doctors. Then we got into this medical consulting and then medical distributorship. We created this internal referral network for our companies. Then one day, one of my business partners in the consulting world who did a lot of the marketing for my medical clients was like, “Hey, somebody approached me about a magazine. Would you be interested in potentially buying it?”

Michelle Taylor Willis:
I was like, no, I’m in medical. What are you talking about? I don’t know anything about media or magazine. Until he sent me the numbers and I was like, Oh, you can actually make some money doing this. I think I’m a serial entrepreneur at this point. We partnered, we bought the magazine, which is only a one month old. People know this as South Fulton Lifestyle magazine or SoFu Lifestyle magazine.

Mark Collier:
I’ve heard of it.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
Of course you have. Yes. You love it. Isn’t it beautiful?

Mark Collier:
It’s a great magazine.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
I bought that and then we kind of expanded into radio. Was interviewed on a radio show and the owner of the station was like, “You should have your own show. You can sell ads on the show.” I was like, oh wow, okay. Then we expanded into that. Then a friend of mine was like, “You should wrap billboards in to what you do, right? You’re doing advertising sales.” We did that. Then somebody approached me about a TV show in the smack middle of quarantine last year and taught me the ropes about build content and then sell ads against that. We did that. That’s how we ended up with this media empire of creating content and selling ads on the mediums that we own either partially or wholly for small businesses.

Mark Collier:
Well, sales is a great foundation for any type of entrepreneurs because you have to sell whatever you’re doing. Even if you’re selling yourself.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
Everybody is in sales.

Mark Collier:
All right. Your media company, Gagnant Media. Kind of tell me a little bit what they focus on and what market you serve and what your future plans are for Gagnant.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
Gagnant is how it’s spelled. How it sounds phonetically it’s actually gagnante and it’s French. It means the winner in French. I speak relatively fluent French. What we do is basically sell advertising options or make advertising affordable for small businesses. For small business for us is not necessarily what the government might say is a small business. It’s not less than 300 employees. It’s kind of like that $350,000 to $6-7,000,000 gross rev.

Mark Collier:
That’s smart to have a target market. If you don’t have a target market, you just be all over the place.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
That’s exactly right. That’s kind of our niche. That doesn’t mean when Coke comes calling, Coca-Cola bottling companies is one of our sponsors, doesn’t mean we say, no, no, you’re not our target. We will take anybody’s money. Let me just tell you that. That’s our focus, right? Most small businesses don’t know how to advertise. Don’t know how to budget for advertising. Don’t know where to spend the money. What effective advertising and marketing looks like, right? We help with that. You don’t have to spend, have a $30-50,000 campaign to advertise across several different mediums if you want kind of this multifaceted approach to advertising. We make it affordable for small businesses.

Mark Collier:
All right. That’s a perfect segue into my next question. I’m a small business owner and I know nothing about advertising. Just say most of them don’t. Kind of map out a strategy. How do I go about setting up an advertising budget for my company?

Michelle Taylor Willis:
Yeah, that’s a great question. One of the things, when I did entrepreneurial coaching, and I mentioned earlier I was kind of in medical consulting. What I did there is basically build models for physicians to have profitable practices, right? I say that because one of the things that I would teach people is there has to be this line item in your budget for marketing and or advertising. It just has to be there, right? If you build it, they will come is…

Mark Collier:
That’s a failed model.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
That’s a failed model, right. I’m not saying that word of mouth isn’t effective and it doesn’t work. Absolutely it does. When you really want to be intentional about growing and scaling than advertising a market…

Mark Collier:
You have to have a strategy built around it. I think that’s what you help. I think that’s kind of your niche. You actually help small businesses craft those strategies so their advertising dollars and get the highest ROI.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
Kind of, yes and no. We’re actually expanding in. Traditionally we don’t do the marketing strategy piece. We are kind of growing into that by default because people come to us and say, right? What happened, our biggest space I would say is that people who want to advertise, they’re like, listen, I want to run commercials. I want to run. I want to have billboards. I want to be in your magazine but we don’t know what’s the best thing. Where should we put our money? How much should we spend? We hope really on that front, we’re kind of moving into the complete marketing strategies space, but right now we’ve focused mainly on, okay, what’s the best option for your business from a strictly advertising point of view.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
Somebody might say listen, I want to advertise in the magazine. Based on that business, we might say, Hey, it’s a little bit out of your budget or you might not get the return you want to see out of magazine, right? If you want this to happen, this is probably the best approach, right? There’s an education that happens in what medium makes the most sense.

Mark Collier:
That’s good. I mean, consulting and educating your clients will certainly serve you well because you add value to what they’re doing.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
That’s right. A lot of times too Mark, and I live my life this way and I encourage my clients to do the same thing, is to live with the end in mind. Target audience. They’ll say, I want to do this. I was like who are we talking to? Most people don’t know who that avatar is. Who their real target market is. I know who my audience is. So first we got to figure out who are we talking to? To whom are we speaking. What do we want to tell them? Do we just want to tell them we’re here? Do we want to tell them you need to pick up the phone and call me right now? Do you need to tell them.

Mark Collier:
Call to action.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
Exactly. Once we know what the goals are, what the end game is, then we can kind of reverse engineer and back our way into what makes the most sense. Does that make sense?

Mark Collier:
That makes perfect sense to me. It makes sense for small businesses too, because they have to have a strategy. If you’re just scattershot, just throwing ideas up against the wall, it’s not going to be as effective as having a comprehensive strategy.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
Absolutely. Yeah. It’s got to be an intention around who you’re talking to, why you’re talking to them, and what you want them to do.

Mark Collier:
No, you’re right about that. All right. Next question. Is there a best or worst time to advertise, especially given our current times that we’re in.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
That’s actually a great question. Yes and no. Here’s the question I asked people. How long do you go without seeing a McDonald’s commercial?

Mark Collier:
Not very often.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
I mean Burger King, Coke, Pepsi. Right? Now granted their marketing budgets are in the millions of dollars, right? That is a thing. Cashflow is a thing. Having the money to actually do that. I tell people you should never stop advertising. You should never stop finding a way to be in front of your customer or your target. That doesn’t mean you always have to spend money on it. Especially now with social media. You can be in front of your target customer all the time without spending a dime. I tell people all the time. LinkedIn, if you own a business as a business owner, even if the business isn’t on LinkedIn, but as a business owner, if you’re not on LinkedIn, you are missing money every single day because LinkedIn is a great way to get out in front of other business owners who likely are a part of your target that can spend money with you and you don’t have to spend a dime, right?

Mark Collier:
You’re absolutely right. Two reasons I tell people LinkedIn’s impactful. You can build your brand and it also increases or enhances your subject matter expertise in that area you are competing in.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
That’s exactly right. Once people realize that you are the best at what you do, then they’re going to want to come to you to figure out how they can be the best at what they do. Platforms like that actually give people a really good way to prove that they are who they say they are. You should always advertise. Always stay in front.

Mark Collier:
As you mentioned, those leading brands, McDonald’s, Pepsi, Coke. Even though they are well-known brands, they still advertise.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
The competition’s stiff. We’re talking very small points of percentages that separate the great from the good. You’ve got to stay in front of it.

Mark Collier:
Stay relevant.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
Yeah. Quarantine was a great time to advertise because everybody’s sitting at home, right? I stuck with some of my customers who were having a hard time through the magazine that couldn’t really, that might not have been able to afford it. I was like, listen, let’s ride this out. We need to keep your ads in because everybody’s at home reading magazines.

Mark Collier:
Stay relevant. All right. I’d like to switch gears now and talk about personal-

Michelle Taylor Willis:
I guess that means I answered all your questions.

Mark Collier:
Sufficiently. Absolutely. More than sufficiently. Personal branding. Again, as I said in my lead in, your subject matter expert at it.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
Which is so funny, I don’t think so.

Mark Collier:
Perception’s reality sometimes. It’s crucial. I mean, it’s crucial in advertising. I mean, you are your own brand, Michelle Teller Willis and you’re well-known here in Atlanta. Kind of share more about how you built that brand and kind of some of the key strategies for how others can go about building their personal brand. Hopefully as powerful as you have done yours.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
Thank you, that’s very kind of you. I think the first thing is, and again, I say this over and over again. You have to know what the end looks like.

Mark Collier:
Begin with the end in mind.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
Begin with the end in mine. I reverse engineer just about everything. I believe in that tactic. I know it works because I use it for myself and I use it for people with whom I engage. If you know what the legacy and what the living legacy is for you, for your business, then you can craft everything else against it. If you don’t know what you’re playing for. If you don’t know what you stand for, if you don’t know what that is, how do you know what to put out there, right? I know that my legacy, dead or alive, is empowering people to empower people. That’s what I do.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
Every single thing that is out there about me should at some point back to that, right? Whether I’m growing a media company. Whether I’m talking about, whether I’m on TV interviewing someone. Whether I’m speaking to a group of young girls that I did last week. It all should come back to this empowerment. Whether I’m talking about Sofu, the brand I created for the eight cities in South Fulton County. Everything points back to empowerment and empowering people to empower people. People have to know whatever it is they stand for. Once you know that, then you craft messages against that brand.

Mark Collier:
That makes perfect sense. If your core messages is empowerment, that can have a cascading effect.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
On just about, it could be any, I could be doing gymnastics. I was a gymnast, that’s why I used that example. Anything I do, I can roll right back up to this empowerment umbrella. That’s what people just need to do. You got to know what you stand for. What your playing for. What’s in the playbook. Then you craft messages to that and here’s the trick I tell people, because I do this myself. I ask people, when you see me on LinkedIn or Instagram or Facebook or out and about, wherever you see me, what do you think about me? What am I telling you? What are my messages telling you?

Michelle Taylor Willis:
When they say, it looks like you were empowering young people. It looks like you empower women. It looks like you empower business owners. It looks like you’re helping people. It looks like you’re… Then I’m like, boom, I know the messages. I’ve nailed it. That’s how I encourage people. Ask people who follow you. Ask people who engage with you. For what do you stand? For what do you think I stand? If someone tells me Michelle, it looks like you love good food. I’m like, all right, that’s too many food pics. I’m overdoing it in the kitchen. That’s how you kind of know. That’s how you continue to build this message and to build the brand. We have the power to create our own messages. We can craft our own narratives. If we don’t, somebody else to do it for us. Why would we want to give somebody that much power?

Mark Collier:
No, you’re absolutely right and that makes perfect sense. You are making all these moves and you still found time to write a book. Tell me a little bit more about your upcoming book. What’s it going to cover and who is your target market, back to that again.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
The target for that is parents. Parents who want to be intentional about raising intentional kids, right? The title of the book is called Raising Significance.

Mark Collier:
I like that.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
So significance is part of my brand because significance is empowerment, right? Empowering people to empower people. The premise of the book basically is a few things you can do in raising your children that will give them a significance mindset as opposed to life happening to them, right? Life happening for us so that we can do things for others as opposed to life happening to us.

Mark Collier:
That makes perfect sense. I mean significance to me, it’s one of the mantras I am impart on, about to my own son. You know have a commitment to excellence. That commitment to excellence will result in significance as you so aptly said, so I’m all on board. Can’t wait to comes out, I’m going to read it.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
It’s out. We launched it in December I think. I actually launched the ebook during the quarantine because I saw some challenges that parents were having obviously staying at home. The hard copy came out in December. We’re doing book signings. I got a book signing Sunday. We’ve had probably four or five book signings this year and it’s great. I write like I talk, so it’s an easy read. It’s 80 pages, a book is a stretch. It’s like a guide book.

Mark Collier:
Well, fantastic. Michelle Taylor Willis. Personal brand strategist, media mogul, author, and so many other suffixes. I want to thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to come in.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
You can find me at Michelle Taylor Willis on just about everything. You can visit Gagnant Media, G-A-G-N-A-N-T media.com.

Mark Collier:
Thank you so much for coming.

Michelle Taylor Willis:
You too. I will. Thanks again, Mark. I really appreciate it.

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