Typically when we think of branding, what we think of is colors, logos, creating an Instagram feed, and other elements of visual/external branding. However, there’s another crucially important, and often overlooked component of building a successful personal brand that stands out, attracts your ideal clients, and ultimately leads to more sales – that is brand values. 

What are Brand Values?

Brand values are the beliefs that you, as a business, stand for and that guide your actions, behaviors, decision-making, and company culture.

These days, more than ever, your potential clients want to build relationships with brands they feel aligned and connected with. So if you're not sharing your brand values, you're missing an important opportunity to build the connection and trust potential clients need to join your programs, buy your products or hire you as their guide. 

I think it’s important to also note that sharing your values is not about diminishing other peoples’ values – it’s not about creating exclusivity. It’s about creating an aligned community and attracting ideal clients. 

How to Create Brand Values That Really Work

It’s important to understand that your brand values can change over time. I used to believe that your values stay with you forever, no matter what changes happen in your life or business. And while that may be true for the most part, it’s important to revisit these yearly to see if there are any adjustments you need to make in order to keep your brand values aligned with who you’ve evolved to be since the last time you wrote them.

Below are three key components to creating effective, meaningful brand values that hold up in your business.

Your values must match your actions. 

Brand values don’t mean a whole lot if they’re not consistently represented by what you do and say in your business. It’s important for us as business owners to speak up, speak out, and take action on the things that are important to us. This also means applying your brand values to the way you show up on social media, the way you treat your clients, which speakers you choose to bring into your programs, and any other way you, as a business, are interacting with the world around you. 

Your values must reflect your truth. 

It can be so tempting to pick a value because it sounds good, or because another successful brand you admire has that value. You may think that by saying this is something you value,  you’ll be able to connect with people more, or you feel it’s what you “should” value – however, this will only come back to bite you later. These types of values aren’t sustainable, because we can’t effectively communicate them through our marketing and our actions if they aren’t truly aligned with who we are and what we believe. 

If you’re basing your brand values off of what other people are saying, or what you think you “should” be saying, then you won’t be able to find the freedom that comes from attracting perfect-fit clients that are excited to work with you because of your shared values. 

Your values must be clearly defined. 

Let’s take the value of “freedom” as an example. This word is vague and can mean entirely different things to each of us. To me, "freedom" looks like being fully expressed, creating something in the world that didn't exist before and spending my time doing things that bring me joy. For someone else, "freedom" might look more like building a team and being a full-time nomad. While these are both perfectly valid definitions of “freedom,” if we don’t spell it out, our potential clients won’t know what we mean. 

Questions to Ask Yourself When Defining Your Brand Values

Our brand values are things that are already inside of us – that we already believe and embody. However, it’s not always easy to turn our beliefs into concise and clear values. So, here are some questions to consider when creating your brand values that may help clarify your thought process. 

1. What negative experience have you had with a brand in the past – how did it make you feel and what did it teach you about what's important for your own brand? 
2. What do you believe in so strongly that you’d fight for it, that you’d take a stand and speak up for? 
3. What makes you unbelievably angry? 
4. What actions, beliefs, or ideas will you absolutely not tolerate from your clients, the world, your company culture, etc. 

TIP: You can also refer to your Power Profile and/or Archetypes results for insight into your brand values. But keep in mind, just because you see a certain value listed in your results, doesn't mean it's your brand value. However, if it resonates, feel free to take it and make it your own!

Examples of my Brand Values

While there’s no magic number of brand values you need to have, I recommend starting with 5, and creating no more than 10.

A way to make your values unique is by giving them unique names that have special meaning to you – for example, rather than using “freedom” as your value, use “open road” or something else that represents freedom to you.

Here are some examples of my brand values:

Blaze Your Own Trail - Ditch expectations of how your business and life should look, and blaze your own, totally fulfilling (and sometimes freakin' scary) path to success.

Make an Impact - Leave the world a better place than you found it, build a business designed to make a positive difference in your city, state, country and world.

Be Daring - To be daring, means that we choose courage over comfort. We take daily action that stretches us out of our comfort zone and helps us grow into even greater humans and business leaders.

Hugs Over Handshakes - We're not into being formal; we're into being supportive, uplifting, friendly, warm and welcoming.

Community Over Competition - We believe there's room for us all at the top and get psyched about celebrating our sisters' successes! We have an abundance mindset!

Invest in Yourself - We know that investing in our biz and personal development is the greatest investment we can make to align our life with our purpose and make a greater impact in the world.

Be Real - At The Daring Fempreneur, we're not into shallow conversations and chit chat - we want to get to know the real you! Plus, we believe that the only way to be the memorable leader of a thriving business (yours!) is to show up so FULLY yourself that you are unforgettable!

Joy is in the Journey - Although we're driven, we remember to stop and smell the roses. There will always be something more to accomplish and if we don't enjoy the journey, life will slip by feeling empty and meaningless.

Keep it Simple - Complicated businesses lead to overwhelm and confusion. They're also so cluttered that there's no space for new ideas and creativity to unfold.

Freedom - At The Daring Fempreneur we value having the freedom to create impact in the world that aligns with our unique purpose on this planet. We value the freedom to be fully expressed and to build a lifestyle where we can spend our time in ways that fulfill our spirit.

If you haven’t already defined your brand values, save this post as a resource so you can build a brand that your potential clients trust, love, and feel connected with.

If you’re looking for more guidance identifying your brand values, as well as other facets of your brand and marketing strategy, join us in the Impact Tribe where you’ll get immediate access to an entire course library, a community full of fempreneurs on a similar path, and so much more! Click below to learn more and join us today!