Rebranding Yourself in Business as “Me, Inc.”
Whew! Branding yourself can be a LOT of work! Re-branding can be even more! Well, I figured if “ME, Inc.” was in my future, I may as well go all out and try my BEST to live up to my name! (You can see where that leaves me, right?)
Rebranding is a marketing strategy in which a new name, term, symbol, design, or combination thereof is created for an established brand with the intention of developing a new, differentiated identity in the minds of consumers, investors, and competitors. ~Wikipedia
Sooo…over the past few days I’ve been building my NEW BRAND…and I suppose here is as good as any a place to tell you why…
Sometimes size DOES matter…
Allow me to try and make a long story short, it all started with an email from a person in my life I had never met. He had an email account name that intrigued me and my wife. From that moment on it carried on through our own personal email account (with a little tweaking, of course), various domain names twists, website and business concepts, etc. and it has now taken on an image of its very own! I suppose bigger is better!
“Failure to Launch”?
Over the years, I had tried to develop several identities in the internet realm as far back as I can remember (at least pre-2000), ALL had failed, except one. I tried “fax-on-demand”, affiliate marketing, ebay, bulk emailing, blogging…basically everything under the sun when it came to “making it” in internet marketing. God forbid, I even tried a chain letter once! (bleh!),
But we all know what can be said about a “failure to launch”, right? So I just kept getting back up. Failure wasn’t going to get the BEST of me, that’s for sure. I’ve never been one to take failure lying down anyway.
“My dream was to get paid to draw…”
Throughout most of my life, I always told myself I’d get paid BIG money to draw…I had an artistic talent and a dream that kept my nose to the grind for 25 years as a Civil Engineering Designer. I loved the work and even created my own home-based business back in the 90’s that brought me a true six-figure income that allowed me to raise my family from home. Then in 2000, everything changed…
My life took a tumble down a slippery slope…
Since then, I have gone through two divorces, lost a $1/4 million home, and everything in my old life was turned upside-down. My ability to earn a consistent income was sent into a tailspin. Even working three jobs, including fighting fires and DJ’g wasn’t bringing me any kind of satisfaction financially, let alone personally. I had basically lost my family, some friends and worst of all the close relationships I once had with my three young children.
Happy Wife, Happy Life!
Fast-forward a few years to 2008, and things got much better. I met my current wife of six years. The pain of loss still rears it’s ugly head now and then, but I continue to carry on, knowing that someday life will do it’s “about-face” and I will someday find the dream job that everyone talks about…the one you don’t struggle to wake up to get going at every morning…if you know what I mean?
Moving Ahead…M.L.S.P.
Move ahead a couple years to December 2012, where I joined up with a group of folks that showed me what I had been doing wrong all this time in my internet businesses. I partnered with a business I had never heard mention of before. It was formed in 2008 and in that first four years of growth, had become a gigantic community of like-minded individuals seeking their passion and living out their life-long dreams through the internet marketing scene.
My Lead System Pro (MLSP) was there when I needed a place to dream again, a place to drive my passion on to bigger and better things. I invested over $1500 into the company’s Mastery Training program by joining into the 100 Day Biz Builder Challenge in Jan. 2013, at that time over 200 people signed up and some never looked back! The individuals that I traveled alongside were Bert Bledsoe, Patricia Sweeney, David DeMarco (The Emmy Dude), Kristen Usher and Julie Becker, to name but a few (that’s right, I dropped some names!). In the end, thanks to the training we received from Adam Chandler, Justice Eagan, Brian Fanale, Rob Fore, and countless others, we all felt like Rock Stars! Our new lives as internet marketers was beginning to take shape!
The Big Turn Over…with caramel sauce?
By September of that same year, however, I had to step away from just “being” an internet marketer for the fact that the income just wasn’t enough to sustain even our minimalist lifestyle. So I did what I had to do and took a J-O-B offer as a manager of an automotive detail shop here in our hometown. We stepped into a market that had an established base we were going to have to bargain against to gain any kind of foothold in the area. Thanks to many of the simple concepts that I learned at MLSP, along with hours of hard work, weeks of little or no work, employee turnovers, etc., we managed to build up a company that took the lead in all aspects of service that were expected from our customers.
In January 2014 we moved into a larger building, and in February we were given the opportunity to purchase the company outright for ourselves. We jumped at the chance to once again OWN a company and get away from having a BOSS. With a substantial investment (borrowed dough) on our part, we made it a reality!
We set a single goal of bringing in $100,000 in sales within the first year. The numbers looked like they could work, but it was going to require a dedicated team of individuals to pull it off. There was still the occasional “off” week or two, but it’s now November 2014 and we are experiencing sales volumes that can be expected to exceed $10k/month! We’ve done over $70,000 in sales and it looks like it will be no problem hitting our mark by Feb. 2015!!
BEST of all, this B2B (Belly to Belly, Body to Body, Brick & Mortar, or whatever you prefer?!) company has given us the CAPITAL we have so desperately needed to go back to the drawing board and find that PASSION that is required to have a working life that one ENJOYS! Thanks to that, I am once again able to focus my desires back onto things that I love and find satisfaction in…utilizing my talents in the ways they were meant to be used…helping others!
“Not in my wildest dreams…”
I never in my wildest dreams thought my wife and I would ever own a successful detail shop, it just wasn’t even on our radar. But, now that the ball is rolling again, the momentum can’t be stopped, nor would I want it to! Without it, there would be no chance at our real success.
Baby Steps…
My baby steps in internet marketing (all 20 years or so of them) may not have gotten me very far…but I can see that the next few steps are going to be the BEST ones of my life! I see big things coming ahead and this time I’m more than ready to meet ANY challenge head on with all the ferocity that it deserves.
As that man that stepped onto the moon once said, “One small step for man…one giant leap for mankind…”
Guess I’m just that “kind” of man, you might say…I’m certainly not the one I was almost 15 years ago, but now that my wife and I are reaching out for the prosperity we deserve, we’re able to see the man I want to become.
Maybe you think you’re not like us, maybe all you want to do is just reach for the moon Watch yourself…someday you might just find you’re becoming a star!
See you all on the inside…Meet you at the TOP!
Leland
