2.26.23

Ep. 211: Rock Your Brand

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Tune into this week’s episode of Money, I’m Home as Lynne is joined by brand expert and professional speaker Melanie Spring.

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0:00:06.9 Lynne Jarman-Johnson (LJJ): Money, I’m Home! Welcome in, I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson with Consumers Credit Union, from finance to fitness, you know that we have it all. And today, we have an exquisite guest. This is somebody who literally is going to rock your brand and rock your world. Melanie Spring, I’ve known you for years now.

0:00:27.1 Melanie Spring (MS): I know. [laughter]

0:00:28.3 LJJ: Because you came to our credit union to give us just a really special presentation about learning about our own brand. Tell me, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you’re doing.

0:00:37.5 MS: So, I’m Melanie Spring and I run a company called Confidancia, and we help brilliant rebels find their brilliant rebellion.

0:00:46.8 LJJ: Confidancia.

0:00:47.2 MS: Confidancia.

0:00:47.3 LJJ: How did you come up with that name?

0:00:49.1 MS: I actually got a little note from the universe. It was supposed to be. I know, it’s a little weird story that I don’t usually share, but I’ll share it with you. I was sitting in a restaurant in Denver and I had been thinking for about a year, like, “What do I want to call my company?” Instead of like, “I work for Melanie,” I’d rather say, “I work for a company,” and I’m growing it, so I don’t want to work for myself. And out of nowhere, I heard, “Confidancia,” and I was like, “Is that a word? Where did that come from?” And so I started putting the pieces together, and I used to stand at the end of Isla Mujeres in Mexico and say, “abundancia,” which is abundance in Spanish. And then I always teach people about confidence. Regardless of what I’m talking about, I’m always talking about confidence, and so confidence and abundancia became Confidancia.

0:01:31.6 LJJ: That is incredible.

0:01:34.3 MS: Right?

0:01:35.7 LJJ: Well, and you know what, you have taught me, and this is so true, I had a great experience just now, where I met an individual I hadn’t met before. And you said, “Go find someone in the audience,” and I did, and his name was Michael, and Michael and I connected on just an awesome experience about teaching each other what we want to do and what we want to become. And the thing that he spoke about, that you taught him in this one session, was you can shift your energy. This is critical to know.

0:02:08.2 MS: It is, but most people think about energy as something that’s woo-woo. I even thought about that for a long time. I was like, “Oh, it’s energy. So, it’s like a woo-woo manifesting kind of thing. Only people who are really spiritual can do this.” And it’s like, no, no, no, no, it’s a scientific thing. We’re energy bodies, and we cause energy to shift anytime we go anywhere, or if you think something, or if we feel a certain way. And so, when we notice that we are actually energy bodies and we can start realizing that we don’t have to have the energy that we have, we can shift it, things start changing.

0:02:39.8 LJJ: So, you do presentations obviously, but you also have where you’re training people to learn about this, not only shifting of energy, but to become a brand that they want to become. But a lot of times people will say, “Well, yeah, but your brand is just who you are.” Everybody already knows who you are and they talk about you, but that’s not your brand.

0:03:00.6 MS: Well, and that’s the thing, most people don’t believe they even have a brand. They’re like, “I don’t need a brand.” I’m like, “Okay, but my dad has a brand. He doesn’t need a brand.” My dad’s 64 years old and he rides motorcycles. He has t-shirts that say cars suck on them. He’s his own person. He wears the same shoes, the same jeans, the same style. He’s had the same haircut forever. When you meet my dad, you know what you’re getting. And that’s what a brand is. It’s a person who knows who they are and they always show up in the same way in every area of their life.

0:03:30.6 LJJ: And what’s interesting about that is that when you talk about company brands, I’m in marketing, so obviously, I always tell everybody especially on day one, “You are my team.” You are immediately on the marketing team because every single person does marketing, and every single person does sales, as you like to say. How is it though that you can get to the point where you feel great in your own skin? Because I think we’re always trying to put on a front sometimes, to be a different person than we really are.

0:04:05.2 MS: Well, I think of it as filters. Our whole lives, we’ve been adding filters to ourselves. So, when we’re kids, we’re the most unfiltered. Kids are just unfiltered. I saw a kid the other day at a brunch that I was at, and he was 4 years old, and he took all of these little, I think they were raspberries, and stuck them on the ends of his fingers and then laughed out loud, put his hand up and got everyone’s attention to let them know how smart he was. It was the cutest thing ever. But as adults, we have to learn how to put filters on to make sure other people can accept us, or like us, or want to be around us, or enjoy their time with us. The problem is, is we’re all filtering ourselves all the time, so how do we end up being ourselves if we have to be filtered everywhere?

0:04:45.2 LJJ: Well, and how then do you bring your authentic self?

0:04:47.8 MS: You can’t.

0:04:49.2 LJJ: Absolutely.

0:04:49.8 MS: Most people don’t even know who their authentic self is. So, as we’re talking about personal brand, if you decide, “Okay, I’ve decided I want to build my personal brand, I want to do something about it.” It doesn’t have to be that it’s a logo or a website, or colors or marketing materials. It doesn’t have to be that, but it’s owning who you are in every area of your life. So, you look at who am I at work, who am I at home? Who am I with my friends? And who am I in public? And then you throw in Vegas sometimes, but that’s a different story.

[laughter]

0:05:16.7 MS: So, being able to look at those four areas and think, “Okay, what’s the crossover in all of them that I am the same way?” So, some people are good at work and in public the same way. Some people are with their friends at home, and with… Their friends and their family are the same. But not everybody can cross over all four of those things. So Lynne, if I met you at the credit union and then I met you at the grocery store, I’m guessing, based on what I know about you, you’re going to be the same person.

0:05:38.0 LJJ: Pretty much.

[laughter]

0:05:41.0 LJJ: Not everyone’s like that though. Some people have like the, I put on the suits and I become a different person, or I put on my yoga pants and become a different person, or I leave my town and I become a different person. It’s hard to shift that energy all the time. It’s hard to shift into being a different person and having to be like, “Oh, I have to put my filters back on again.”

0:06:01.5 LJJ: One of the things that you talk about that I think is so energizing, and you call it brilliant rebellion. What does that mean?

[laughter]

0:06:11.1 MS: Well, it basically means that each of us has a rebel inside of us, and some people don’t want to be. Some people just want to do the thing that they’ve always done, and that’s okay, that’s who they are. But there are other people who are like, “Yeah, but there’s more for me. There’s something inside of me that knows, this thing I’m doing every day, isn’t the thing I’m here to do.” Like you have a job because you need to make money, fine, but what if you were to do something that actually allowed you to show up the way you know you can, and you can still make money doing it? That’s the rebellion.

0:06:38.5 LJJ: Well, I can tell you, I know this because I know two or three of credit union colleagues of mine who have gone through your class with your presentation booklet, which by the way, anybody listening, you can get this and I strongly encourage you to do it, and actually go through it with your teams, it’s amazing. But what is interesting is I have found them transformed, Melanie.

0:07:02.1 MS: Isn’t that amazing? But it’s the knowledge. It’s just noticing like, “Oh, do I really want to keep it this way, or can I do something different?” And it’s that permission sometimes to be unapologetically you.

0:07:13.7 LJJ: Love it. Well, thank you for being unapologetically you.

[laughter]

0:07:18.0 MS: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

0:07:20.6 LJJ: Really do appreciate the time. And hey, if you’ve got a topic that you would like, just send it our way. Hey, Melanie, quickly. How can we get in touch with you?

0:07:28.6 MS: You can look up Melanie Spring anywhere on the internet and find me.

[vocalization]

[laughter]

0:07:33.1 LJJ: See, she’s authentically Melanie. Well, thank you so much. And hey listen, if you do have a topic, just send it our way. And thank you Jake Esselink for your production skills. I hope everybody has a fabulous week out in credit union land or wherever you are today. I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson with Consumers Credit Union. Money, I’m Home!

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