Creating your Brand Story with Candace Huntly #superentrepreneurs #shahiddurrani

[Music] welcome to super entrepreneurs podcast today today we have with us candice huntley how are you candace hello i'm great how are you doing i'm doing amazing thank you so much for coming on the show thanks for having me no problem so tell us more about you and what you do so i am the founding partner of songbird marketing communications um and i've been doing this since about 2013 i launched and basically i help small and medium-sized businesses to figure out exactly what story they should be telling who they are as a brand and then figure out how to tell it to their audience and connect in the best ways with the best times that's in a nutshell this is a nutshell so is this like is it copywriting as well i do copywriting as well so i do a lot of social media strategy and content i do a lot of content writing things like blogs and ghost writing articles and website copy things like that and then on the other side of things i also do a lot of media relations and influencer relations and all of that fun stuff so if you ever wanted your your name in the newspaper or to get a segment on a breakfast television that's kind of what i do as well oh cool so tell us more about that so does it does it work for anyone anybody in business or there's a criteria that you have to be a large-scale business or no not at all i think that's one of the most common misconceptions is people think that you have to be one of the big guys if you want if you wanted to kind of have a spotlight but i think that's really where i find the sweet spot is as i love helping smaller brands who don't think that they can have you know an influencer marketing campaign or a media campaign or things like that to really help them to connect and and get those opportunities because you can have it no matter how big or small that you are so you just have to have a good story to tell so then you pitch it to these outlets you know there's because there's a lot of paid stuff out there as well so this is something you do very organic it is yeah there definitely is a huge shift towards that paid stuff as you mentioned for sure um and if you can kind of add an element of that into it that's great but it's always nice when you can have an organic a media mention or an influencer who really just loves your product and they want or their service and they want to talk about it um it's really all about making people fall in love with you i think is what it's about and so it's about telling that story and painting that picture and and really working from there yeah because we think in pictures right exactly exactly it's all about visuals and involvable visuals yep so when it when when you work with a company do you have to kind of start with understanding their story to see if it's something that you can articulate yeah i think and i think that's one of the most the biggest frustrations i have with a lot of agencies not all of them um but i feel like a lot of people don't dive really deep enough into it so it's kind of i really like getting to know the client that i'm working with so as a brand i like getting to know the person who's going to be actually representing the brand i think it's really important to get into the nitty-gritty and not just to find out if there's any negative things that might come out sometimes that happens so you want to make sure that you mitigate those risks before you get started but it's really it's great just to kind of get that human touch and that personalized aspect behind the brand so that you can really just make it a unique pitch you know you can turn you can turn a pitch about a chocolate into something so much more special if you have a story behind it behind the brand and you can get you can extract that from people exactly yeah it's all about that conversation kind of like we're having now you know just really trying to figure out exactly who somebody is and and the best ways to approach things [Music] well definitely i think after the interview let's book a appointment i would like to talk to you and see yeah because i love i love i love i love working with people in my network and stuff so definitely i would like to see more detail but let's try to provide value to the audience at this point and see yeah absolutely so in this sense of of creating that story and extracting it do you kind of put together some sort of a document that they have to answer a whole bunch of questions or is it more like a one-on-one process that you find out the details i mean questions are always great um but i find that sometimes it ends up being more like a job interview or something where so if i have that list of questions i'm like oh maybe this isn't very organic so for me i as you know we've had this discussion i love to talk um and so i love hearing other people talk and i love hearing other people tell their story so for me it's all about that conversation and seeing where it will go and and um and then i have notes that i you know there are things that maybe i want to make sure that i ask about but i always like to see where the conversation goes because i think people they inherently know what's important about themselves and what's important about their brand but they've never really put it on paper and they've never really articulated it in a way that would make sense for their brand so this way it's kind of a fun way to really have that discussion and then and then they say well you know can you do anything with that and i'm like well yeah of course you just told me everything that's great about you so i think that it's a really great place to start if you really just think about it as a conversation that's a good point think of you should think of everything like a conversation right like even when i do these interviews and i got some coaching and and they're saying you know try to organize it in a form of a whole bunch of questions and then you know study those questions and ask them in that order and all that i said i don't know i don't know if i could do i don't know if i could do that like i need i need to be like i need to be just relaxed i need to kind of go with the flow i need to be like a conversation like two friends meeting and for coffee for example and then hopefully something comes out that adds value right but i don't want to put it together like that um so i do agree with that conversational aspect yeah i think i think one of the best interviewers that i've ever seen and um i had the pleasure of going to see him a few times at the cbc studios was george strombolopolis oh yes so strombo was amazing he honestly i was is the interviews it was so captivating to watch him and you know it's interesting now how things are so different because we're not face to face but yeah um just in watching his he was such a skilled interviewer he is such a skilled interviewer and i to this day i think that i mean that's always the bar for me and thinking about the conversations i have with people and getting to know people it's just pretty crazy yeah he's genuinely interested in other people yeah i love it that's that's the foundation that i'm actually working on as much i am very much interested but gen like really deep you know that deep interest when you're just executively focused on a person and you're just in tune vibrationally and just boom like you just know and it requires work right like everything yes you have to practice and get to get to that point i i do agree another thing i wanted to ask um what was i had a question in mind sorry i broke your train of thought no it's okay it's okay no these are all great conversations so for someone i find that entrepreneurs for example they have so many stories right they have so much situations they went through and and things that in their past and experiences and they want to articulate it around their brand to kind of explain what they're doing and how they got into it how it relates to their stories and they look for marketing companies they look for branding companies they explain their story and you know they just come back yeah we're gonna do email marketing or yeah we're gonna we're gonna do social posts for you or yep we're gonna do this but and from my own personal experience too i never got like say hey you know what you got a great story i want to do this this this this this with the story i want to put it all together because this is where it makes sense and this is where it doesn't make sense and articulate the brand and provide that picture right for right that visibility of what it will look like in public i never got that how do you relate to that in what you do yeah so i think that um one of the biggest challenges that that we come across with songbird is always budget um everyone has champagne taste but you have beer budget i'm sure you've heard that before um and so i think one of and you know we talk about super powers i feel like this might be one of my superpowers is really going to be my question but now it's good that you brought it up i've been thinking about this a lot and i have a few i feel like i have a few super powers i don't know i love it um but this might be one i i just feel like um it's our job as agency owners as you know agency representatives to really take what somebody says and say i think this is what you need and most often it needs to start with that that foundational brand work that messaging that really figuring out exactly what the important parts of someone's story are so i think it everything i don't care if it's if it's media i don't care if it's email social media whatever the tactic is that is being used i feel like it always needs to start with that and i always start out with a one-page document with key messages on it it doesn't matter what tactic i'm doing because i feel like that always brings it back to that those important things that we talked about you know in our in our first discovery session or kickoff whatever you want to call it um but i feel like even before we get to that point you know it's really up to somebody from an agency to listen to what somebody wants to do and listen to what their goals are listen to what their budget is and say this is what i think you should do and i think that it's it's also great if you can kind of give a tiered rollout strategy so you know once you start making more money then you can introduce this but it's okay to start with just this and so i think that having that bigger picture um is always really important because then you know where you're going i think that you know as agency owners and you know people again agency representatives will just say as marketing professionals whatever you want to call us um i think that we need to start looking at working with clients more as a partnership rather than just a client agency relationship and that is one of the big things that you know is the foundation that songbird is built on is that i didn't want to have an agency that was just built on that transaction it's really important to me that a client will even if they don't work with me long term it's important for me for a client to walk away saying okay we had a plan or we have a plan and we executed the plan and i'm happy with it or this is what didn't work so this is what we're gonna do next i think that there always needs to be that sense of moving forward and working with someone that's going to help you grow whoever that person is going to be [Music] so about the budget part so basically articulating that message and that overall picture of the brand depends on the budget so if someone comes in with a lower budget then you will take away like are you still going to analyze the business so i'm just trying to understand i do because the story is such an important that's what i'm saying it doesn't matter if you're doing right yeah it doesn't matter if we're doing something small with a small budget or something that's a huge splash with a lot with a larger budget it always starts with that foundation because it again you want to make sure that you maximize your dollars and you want to make sure that you maximize the dollars that your clients have and it's in my opinion it's important to always start with that so you always want to do that that i hate using the term deep dive but that's really what it is it's really kind of getting into the nitty-gritty with somebody else and figuring out exactly what makes them tick and what makes them unique and what makes their brand unique and what they feel is important about their brand what their customers feel is important about their brand and once you do that even if you have a small budget you can still have a larger impact with whatever strategy you go with and that was so funny cat is because when like for example for me um i have such um you know everybody has stories but i have such uh uh nuggets that i whoever i talk to they they find they find it very interesting like i've even heard them you know people say hey you should put that into a book blah blah blah right so but when i go to marketing companies like i've i've just i haven't gotten what you're talking about like this is unique to me i don't know if you experienced this in industry or not unless i was going to the wrong places i don't know but i'm just saying that is such an important component is to understand that brand to understand that clients story understand where they're coming from to put together especially for personal branding to put it all together to articulate what what kind of message are we are we launching with and what are we going to go next and i don't know is that is that the is that an issue in the market in your industry or is it standard what you're doing i mean it's the industry is pretty saturated it doesn't matter what city you're in there's there are a lot of us out there i'm not gonna lie um you know there's a lot of us out there there's a lot of there are a lot of businesses that marketing and branding so i think that there's probably an agency or a freelancer even for everybody and and i think it's important to try to find the right person so sometimes it even comes down to asking the right questions if you're a client looking for somebody um and sometimes it comes down to just do we mesh well you know and that doesn't obviously that's not an exact science there's nothing that you can say you know there's no question specifically that you can ask sometimes you just don't like somebody yeah yeah it's just you just don't connect yeah exactly you don't connect and you don't want to force it because it's not going to be good for either of you personally for me i prefer to enjoy working with people that i'm working with it's so important exactly you know and if if a client feels like i'm not the right fit for them or you know my team isn't the right fit then i would rather refer them to somebody else have you fired a client i have fired a class yeah same year yeah it's important you know again sometimes you know and as a as a young entrepreneur when i was just getting started we won't talk about how old i am um i'm young still but yeah getting started you know what i say as a young entrepreneur i was a baby entrepreneur when i got started and and i kind of jumped into things headfirst and i learned a lot in my first few years and you know sometimes you say yes to somebody and then you realize that it was the wrong thing to do because you ignored all the red flags or something comes up and you realize that it's really not the best fit um so i i have and i i've parted ways with clients um i think it's maybe been it's just a couple yeah it comes it comes with experience too right you could just you could just tell and then as vibrationally you can tell too if you connect with someone and how the experience is going to be uh majority i think fundamentally like everybody's a good person you know it's just the way that the experiences they had in their life kind of changes their conditioning and they they represent themselves differently than who they truly are i find that if they really go in and find that person who it is bring it out more the good stuff everybody has well and sometimes two people think that they need to be a specific type of person to to run the type of business they have and so they become something that they think that they should be rather than just being who they are and you know there's a lot of talk about authenticity and it's a word that's just thrown around now just without a care and i think that we need to just get back to actually putting some merit on that word because it's so important to really just be who you are nobody's perfect and you know you can embrace those imperfections and it's best to do that because then again you can find the right person to work with you for sure and candace i don't know if you ever did this with on your your free time but uh i have so if you google your top 10 wishes on a person's deathbed i know it's depressing i'm sorry to say that's right but if you do that i think that's number nine or number eight that says yeah i i i was trying to be someone else that's you know so it's theirs at the top dead unfortunately it's just the way we are conditionally and yeah until you start working on your inner self you will never bring that out you always be trying social media makes that really hard too because we all need to be so perfect on social media even sometimes when we talk about negative things on social media we have to be so perfect exactly exactly it's like oh you have to say the right things to evoke the right things and it's like how's your creativity on that point like do you are you able to kind of get that attention in a unique way in your posts and your articles well yeah i mean again when you start with what's unique about you i think that that really is a really great place to start and it's a good place to focus on and i think to social media if we're talking about that has changed so significantly especially for brands that i mean we have to really start getting away from these vanity metrics and looking at things like oh i have 20 000 followers okay well how many of them are buying from you you know that's the thing conversion yeah we get so stuck in that in that rut of of those vanity metrics that and again social media has become very it's a vain place sometimes and so you have to think of in in other terms and think about engaging and like we're having right now those conversations those can be had on social as well yeah and and and what was it gonna ask again see i keep forgetting things today what is it monday today or wednesday sorry i don't even know what the day it is yeah i think it's wednesday yeah um i was gonna ask about the the post that you create um like are you working towards creating posts that actually get people to kind of call to action type of posts or are they i know there's different types of posts right so do you mix it up like is that your process when you go out and you start marketing someone yeah it's definitely it's good to have a mix i think that you know if somebody is constantly just selling um normally at this point i'm like sell sell you know it's like you're really in everyone's face you got people in all caps yelling on social media it drives me insane um but i think that again we have to we have to think about putting the social back in social media and so i really like to think of it as a good mix people want to learn they want to be entertained um it's okay to have those call to actions for calls to action for for sales um but a healthy mix of of lifestyle content and social content um is even better because there's so much that that we don't know and there obviously if you started a business doing a specific thing you're probably an expert at it so why not have some fun in sharing what you know in fun ways and i always like to say you know share just enough that you're feeling a little bit uncomfortable that someone might just take it and run with it and do it themselves but you know if they want to hire someone then they know that you know what you're talking about so they'll come back to you eventually and do you do you also do email marketing as well yeah we do email as well okay the whole flow of it the whole flow yeah it's all about i think that again it's a bigger picture of what is going to work for your business um and what can we you know if you don't have the budget to do everything what can we pick and choose to have a big imp so you work with people yeah absolutely absolutely because you know what if we didn't work with people then no one would have marketing or they'd all be going to their cousin's son who's really great at social media yeah it's okay i had a 12 year old reach out to me on linkedin and uh yeah he says i have no idea he was saying like oh i could do this for you i could do that for you i was like wow like this guy is incredible i said let's set up a meeting so because i'm like that like anybody reaches out to me i always give them a chance i always say i just feel like what you put out you get that's i just live from a higher side and i don't shut anyone out you know unless i doesn't work it doesn't work right but so i met with him and everything and we're talking like oh man i'm thinking of this guy he's so young he looks so young asking me to ask him should i ask him how will he see what maybe he's going to think is rude and i'm like thinking all these thoughts while he's talking oh no focus focus so i'm trying to focus him too and it kept coming i get fourth in my mind and it just came up itself he said yeah i'm 12 years old and i've been doing it since i was nine and and it was it was like 2 500 bucks he wanted a month every month like it was just like uh instagram growth or something like that but i was just so watered because i have a 13 year old so i went to him i said hey listen you know i just had a meeting with a 12 year old that's going to grow my business what are you doing i didn't say it like that but you know what i mean like i brought it up to he's like oh yeah he's a box away um but yeah but in those situations sometimes um what i find is that a company can't our business can't necessarily afford to hire me to manage their social media but they can hire me to build a strategy which their intern can then actually execute you know so there's so many kids that are starting out in the industry and i'm going to call them kids you know they're getting started sometimes they're getting started as young as 12 is a little young but sometimes i know sometimes they're getting started like right in high school and they just want that experience and so they don't necessarily have the experience of building out that strategy but if they have someone who's going to build that and then guide them i mean why not it's got to start somewhere so how did you get into this um i have a bit of a different story i actually used to be a professional singer and actor um yeah i'm not on youtube it was it was really before social media became a big thing i'm not gonna lie on your website i'm not gonna i don't actually have a lot on my website um i've been meaning to actually post some more stuff so i used to do um improv professionally for a few years um i did a musical theater operetta i'm a classically trained singer um and then when i moved to toronto i see i said which means that i'm not from toronto originally um so when i moved here i was doing gigs around the city jazz and blues and stuff like that and i was also teaching high school i have my education degree as well so i was teaching english and music and theater and i was doing that for a couple of years working as a server as well it was exhausting so after two years um of doing that solid i was like you know what i don't think i can do this anymore i'm tired um i miss teaching every single day but i wanted to take the skills that i had and ball them up into something that i thought would work so i thought that pr would be a really great place for me to be and i didn't want to just go and get my pr certificate so i decided to get my mba because why not um so yeah so i went back i went back to school and i i got my mba and um it's you know it's great i was one of a very few creatives in the group and i did not have any sort of structured business training background or education or anything like that i'd never used excel before i started before i started my program and um yeah it was you know it was a great experience and i ended up working uh for a union for when i was doing my major term paper for the end of it and i loved that and um this is all about people and then i ended up getting into the agency world which is where i thought i would end up in the first place after a couple years i left my the second agency i worked with and made the decision to go out on my own amazing i love it i love it i'm out that's where i am today if you see see my stuff i'm always about like people leaving the nine to five or going on their own or you know starting their own stuff i'm a big advocate of that so that's great that you have done that and it looks like you're doing phenomenal um all the things that you're talking to me in my experience because every human being has their own awareness own experiences so far i've i've noticed that the skill set is definitely there what you're doing and and how you're articulating everything together for the business it sounds like it sounds great if anybody you know is listening that wants that guidance oh i wanted to ask you do you provide some kind of a free engagement initially to kind of talk to you like is there should they be feeling intimidated if oh i gotta call candice oh my god i don't know [Music] yeah no you could i mean i hopefully people find me approachable i don't know um we do free consult at the beginning i don't see a point in charging for that like again like i said we don't want to work with somebody unless it's a good fit because you know if neither of us are going to enjoy it then then why not and we want to be able to pull out your superpower so you know that's kind of one of our big things that's awesome that's awesome can you share your morning routine well i have a two-year-old so um honestly yeah my morning routine enough said yeah i mean she's potty training as well i do a lot of work on the bathroom floor i'm not gonna lie you have to be flexible you know i know everyone that everyone's at home right now with their kids um well a lot of people not everyone but um yeah aurora's been been working the business with us since she was born so she came early and um yeah so that's my morning routine is making sure that she has what she needs and working beautiful beautiful morning routine one of the best ones amazing well you know what i want to thank you candace for taking the time to come on the show it's been a pleasure talking to you um you know obviously you have the right energy and you're going to go places with your business i hope anyone who's listening will approach you and ask for your guidance you have the expertise you have the knowledge it's always always beneficial for people to get help from areas they don't know about you know i spent years um trying to figure things out on my own um and and i wasted thousands and i wasted time and it's just highly recommended to go to people that can help you because genuinely people that are in business are there to help if they're they're not they don't last long so just yeah i remember that yeah remember that they're out there if they're around that means they mean well so approach them take advantage um and also uh yeah thank you so much for coming on the show ken thanks for having me no problem have a great day [Music] super