In This Episode
Everyone has a superpower. Holly Chantal has mastered the art of uncovering her clients’ unique “magic” to create their brand. Through teaching others and displaying authenticity, Holly created a community of followers whose loyalty runs deep. It’s no surprise that her mission is for you to live your life and run your business with no regrets. Modern Ontrapreneur certainly had no regrets having Holly Chantal as our very special 50th episode guest.
Topic Timeline:
1:01 Coaches Need Coaches
For eight years, Holly has been helping coaches be better coaches, but she didn’t start off that way.
3:45 Holly’s Superpower: The Ability to Activate Powerful People
Bringing out the magic in each person
4:30 Be Authentic
Being yourself attracts the right crowds to build your tribe of super followers.
10:52 Facebook Live
As an introvert, it can be hard to really put yourself out there.
12:01 Don’t Live With Regrets; Focus on What’s Important to You
Holly’s mission is to ensure people live the life that they were meant to and not have any regrets when it’s all said and done.
– Holly Chantal
Show Transcript
LR: Welcome to Modern Ontrapreneur. I’m Landon Ray and today I have Holly Chantal who is the president of The Land of Brand where she’s branded over 200 coaches, from startups to seven figure industry leaders, and trained thousands more to create brands that people notice, fall madly in love with, and tell their friends about. Whether you know exactly what makes you stand out in your industry or ache for someone who gets you to reflect back what you can’t see yourself, Holly can help you with her gloriously simple method of uncovering the brand-worthy nuances at the heart of your work and accentuating them throughout your marketing. Whew. Thank you so much for-
HC: The bio wasn’t simple.
LR: Thanks for being here.
HC: Yeah, thank you for having me.
LR: You work with coaches specifically to help them create their own brand. Isn’t that funny that coaches need coaches?
HC: I know. You wouldn’t think that, but it’s anytime you’re building a business and needing to differentiate yourself, you’re going to need branding, so it works.
LR: How long have you been doing this?
HC: Eight years.
LR: Eight years. Let’s just zoom back to eight years ago, nine years ago. What piece of advice would you give yourself that would have made this whole thing easier?
HC: First of all, don’t make it so stinking hard on myself.
LR: Don’t be so hard on yourself or don’t make it so hard?
HC: Don’t make it so hard. When I started, I was right out of college. I felt like I had a lot to compensate for because I didn’t have all the years of experience and just having confidence that I did have value to offer and just not making it so hard and thinking that I had to do so many things to be official and really just getting myself out there definitely would’ve made a big different in the beginning.
LR: What were the things you did that you think were a waste of time?
HC: Not going after a market that I was really passionate about. I went for the low-hanging fruit or what I thought was the low-hanging fruit at first. Didn’t work out.
LR: That’s frustrating. You thought you were going after the safe school and you didn’t even get in.
HC: Exactly, because they didn’t see the value in the services. It was just, I felt like I had experience. The market I was going after before was direct sales, and that’s what I had experience in before. Apparently they’re not really into branding.
LR: Makes sense. What had you shift?
HC: I shifted when I started meeting more coaches. That was really who I’ve always wanted to work with because I just … the passion that they have and the drive that they have to make big changes in the world, I just wanted so much to be a part of that and the idea of building the business of your dreams. I feel like that is just “so there” for a coach. That’s always been what’s driven me.
Going to conferences and being in mentoring groups with other coaches, they were listening to my advice, and I realized that I really did have something to offer. When I shifted my marketing to coaches and again offering my services to them, literally within two months I was booked solid.
LR: It’s funny how that happens.
HC: Going from zero to booked solid in two months just from focusing on the people I was really passionate about.
LR: That’s really interesting. What is the unique skill or talent that you feel like you bring to this whole endeavor that helps you succeed?
HC: My superpower ‒ because I help my clients find their superpowers ‒ is that I activate powerful people. Being able to talk to someone and see on a very deep level what makes them so good at what they do. What is the magic that they have inside of them? And then how do we bring that out and communicate it so that their clients can see their magic. When you do that, it activates them. This light comes out within them. They get more confident. They are able to communicate their values so much easier, and that’s what I really do.
LR: And what’s working right now for you in your business that some of our viewers could maybe implement in theirs?
HC: I am really big on being authentic, obviously, so really sharing from an authentic place and just being yourself. That has really worked for me. I’ve built a very strong following of people that have fallen madly in love with The Land of Brand, and that has allowed me to take two year-long maternity leaves with my babes. And when I say year long, I don’t mean I sat on the couch for a year, but being able to work very minimally just to maintain the status quo. The only thing I would’ve been able to do that was through the following and the brand that I had already created because I wasn’t really out there marketing myself for those years. I wish everyone would do that because it would just make things so much easier.
LR: Yeah. It’s interesting. I’m trying to remember the guy’s name right now. I feel like it’s Nate something. He started CD Baby, which is a company. I don’t even know what’s happening with that company now, but they were very early in the independent distribution industry for musicians. They help musicians direct sell their stuff over the Internet. He talked about finding your tribe, and he said that any musician can make a living by finding 500 super fans. And it’s interesting because I’m doing a lot of these interviews, and it feels like, I don’t know, 30-40% of the people are sitting up here saying it’s all about being authentic. And it’s interesting because I’m not sure that the, for example social media, and this ability to communicate so widely and reach so many people, that that would’ve been true because it would’ve been hard to find those people. But now we have this reach. It’s possible for everybody to find 500 super fans it feels like. Do you think that’s true?
HC: To a point. I think a super fan is someone that … they get your work on a really deep level vs. just being an admirer, which I think is what happens on social media. And I think what happens because we’re really putting ourselves out there in all these different ways and we’re following all these formulas. We’re following what we’re learning from others, and sometimes that is fabricated because we’re following a formula, we’re following templates that we’re using from other people based on what worked in their business because that’s their personality.
LR: Yeah. Do you think you can teach everybody to be authentic on camera? Facebook Live is so hot right now, but I feel also like a lot of the people that come in here and talk about Facebook Live are the most charismatic people, and it’s like, yeah, no kidding.
HC: Yeah. I’m super introvert. But I’ve gotten better through practice.
LR: Do you think that it’s a tool for everybody?
HC: Yes. I think with practice it definitely is. It’s not natural for everyone. I used to be one of those people that would get really weird on camera just because I’m very shy and introverted. What I used to tell my clients is practice in the mirror with a British accent or just something that is … What happens when you do that, you’re distracted by the accent and you’re no longer thinking about…
LR: How weird you look.
HC: Yeah. And you begin to get comfortable. It’s almost like by intentionally being weird and watching yourself be weird, you start laughing at the accent instead of, “Oh gosh, my wrinkles or my hair.” You begin to realize that no one notices those things. You notice those things. It’s definitely something anyone can do, but it takes practice just like anything in your business.
LR: Yeah. That’s a good thing to remember particularly around video. This guy, a friend of mine, Brendon Burchard, is, I think, probably the best on camera and on stage that I’ve ever seen in terms of somebody who can just be present and wing it. He literally will flick the camera on and go for an hour, and it looks like it was unbelievably perfectly scripted and acted and must’ve been edited, and it’s not. He’s just got this gift on camera and on stage. It’s overwhelming how good he is. You’re like, “I could never.” But when you ask him, he’s like, “You can never because you never did. You don’t know about the three years I spent spending three hours in front of a camera every day getting used to this and talking.” So maybe you’re right. Maybe it is just a matter of practice, and you gotta realize that just being on camera is a skill that we can learn.
HC: Yeah, just like anything.
LR: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Just like anything. So, good. What are you working on then? What’s the skill you’re working on right now?
HC: Facebook Live is something that I …
LR: Oh, there you go. Sorry I just stole your thunder on that one …
HC: No, just really sharing more being introverted. I put a lot of my heart out there in my message, but I don’t always put myself out there a whole lot. That’s something that I’ve been working with ongoing. I think it’s important that we remember that there’s always gonna be self-development.
I remember someone saying, I don’t remember who it was, but “being an entrepreneur is like the fast track to self-growth.” You are gonna constantly come up against your own barriers. Something that I’ve been working on just recently was that particular barrier of … that people do want to hear about what’s going on with my kids or what I’m doing in my personal life and not just the advice that I have for them in their business.
LR: Yeah. Interesting. It’s like half business half entertainment anymore.
HC: know. It is. It definitely is.
LR: Yeah. Weird. So, what are you up to big picture here? What do you want your legacy to be? You’ve got, obviously, years to go, but do you have a sense of what it is that you’re building here in the big picture.
HC: Yes. There’s a TED talk, I wanna say it’s Matthew Riley if anyone wants to look it up. He’s an EMT in New York, and the TED talk is about him being there with people in their dying moments and how they all say the same three things. And all those three things tie to regret. My personal mission is that I don’t want people to die with those kinds of regrets. I want them to live their life to the fullest focusing on what was important to them. I don’t want them to miss their kids growing up because they were so focused on building their business. I don’t want them to not make the impact that they wanted to because they were too afraid. Just all of those things that flash before you in those final moments, I wanna make sure that they know that they lived the life that they were meant to.
That is my legacy, and my way of doing that is by helping these people build their businesses in a way that allows them to have everything. Myself, I have a three year-old and a one year-old, and I could have grown my business exponentially by now, but I chose to take things slow, maintain the status quo so that I didn’t miss those moments. And I will never regret that. I want to make to sure that, as we build our businesses, that we’re making sure that we’re focused on what’s important to us, and that’s one of my main focuses with my clients.
LR: Great. As a modern entrepreneur, someone who’s building a business in this moment in history, we have all sorts of unique opportunities that are available to us. What do you think those are, and also what do you think the responsibilities may be that come with those new opportunities?
HC: That’s a big question. With social media and technology, really the sky is the limit. We just have so many resources at our disposal. I think that our responsible is to make sure that, as we raise the next generation, we’re not getting too lost in the technology and that we’re still making those personal connections.
I’ve noticed on my decades on this earth, because obviously I’m very aged, is that growing up we’ve moved from being very close-knit communities to expanding to this online world, and now we’re contracting again to where things are becoming more and more personal. I think it’s just important that we maintain that and we make sure that our kids are protected in a way like we were when we were kids. I feel very responsible for that, I know, with my kids.
LR: Awesome, Holly. Thank you so much for being here. It’s been an absolute pleasure to have you.
HC: Thank you.
LR: Would you sign our wall?
HC: All right.
LR: Thank you.
Want more Modern Ontrapreneur Podcast?
Check out the previous episode featuring Amanda Bond of The Ad Strategist.
