Social Proof: Tori Dunlap talks about Developing a Personal brand Beyond the Person

src=”https://buffer.com/resources/content/images/2022/09/social-proof-tori-dunlap-blog.png” alt=”Social Proof: Tori Dunlap on Evolving a Personal Brand Beyond the Person”>

Social Proof’s latest edition features a new story. It asks “What if my personal branding grew beyond me?” Tori Dunlap’s journey to create a business that touches millions of lives. Her project to save $100,000 by the age of 25 was a success.

HerFirst100k, the multimillion-dollar brand founded by a woman named HerFirst100k, sat (zoomed?) Social Proof: What happens when a brand that relies on you becomes more prominent than you?

Tori is a fascinating departure from other remarkable personalities we have met. She has a four-million plus audience across social media platforms.

We talk about how to grow from the nine to five (even if you aren’t completely confident), the power and potential of social media to increase brand growth, as well as the exciting future for personal branding.

Q: Tori, it’s great to have your on Social Proof! What are your thoughts on personal branding? Are you intentional about creating your personal brand?

If you asked me two years ago whether HerFirst100k was a personal brand, my answer would be yes. It is much more than that. We are actually trying to make it a collective brand and not just a personal one. Although it is very closely tied to me, we now have 14 members and HerFirst100k has nearly four million users. It’s more of a company that I founded, and we are trying to make it not a personal branding.

Personal branding is how you present yourself in business or online. It can take many forms. One of the most important things people who build a personal brand learn is that it should not be all of them. It should also be a part of you that has something to share or offers value to others. However, this is not the same as your intrinsic worth as a human being.

Question: Would you consider what you have now as a personal brand?

If it’s not small, I call it an empire. If I call it something more realist, it’s an organisation far beyond my personal story and has for a while.

Q: Your visibility is very high in comparison to other Social Proof interviewees. How does it feel to be so closely linked to a huge brand like HerFirst100k.

It’s great 98% of the time. But it can be challenging for those 2 percent. What time do you spend on the business side of things? You might believe that someone runs a business can handle everything if you don’t know anything about it. This is especially true for businesses like mine, where I am so visible.

However, I cannot reply to every Instagram comment or answer every email. Because people believe that one person can run an entire company, I believe the creator world is still very veiled. It’s been very difficult to separate the personal and business sides of my life because I am so passionate about the business.

It’s like an inverted pyramid, where I have such an impact on the business that even if it happened tomorrow, HerFirst100k may not exist. This is something we have had to think about over the last year.

Other interesting facts are that I am making more money than ever and getting recognized on the streets. When I go out, it’s strange to wonder if anyone recognizes me. People are kind and we receive messages every five minutes from people telling us how our work has impacted lives. It’s the best part about our work.

There is also the need to be visible all the time. If my face isn’t on a TikTok it doesn’t work as well. There are also interesting expectations about the content we create and the speed at which it is produced. Unfortunately, I am still required to contribute content for the business’s success. These are all strategic issues that we are working to find a better solution for.

Q. Now, my favorite question. What three words would describe your/HerFirst100k’s brand?

Feminist and Educational. Unapologetic.

Although we are a financial education firm, ultimately, our company is a feminist business that uses money as its medium. This is something that I believe many people don’t understand. However, it’s something we as a team are laser-focused on. We are a feminist brand first and financial second.

Q: Was it because HerFirst100k needed a marketing vehicle? Did you start using social media to promote your business?

Because of my background in social media marketing, it was likely the latter. The financial education business was not in my plan. However, I knew that I wanted to become an entrepreneur. So I started a blog and built a social media presence to supplement my nine-to-five job.

After a few years of experimentation, I realized that I wanted to have discussions about money and share education. So, I felt like I had a good understanding of social media and how to use it.

However, I believe we didn’t see any growth in our business before our social media increased. I think they both fed each other. I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do in marketing, or I learned it along the way. It’s a vicious circle: Our mission with HerFirst100k helped our social media growth, which in turn fed back into our mission.

Q. When did you make the decision to quit your job in marketing and focus your efforts on your business?

From week two, I decided to quit my corporate job. My goal was to become an entrepreneur. Once my business was consistently making more money than my nine-to-5 job, I decided to quit. The strange thing is that I didn’t keep track of how much my business was earning.

Although I was able to see the general numbers, I couldn’t tell what they were month-over-month. It’s probably because I wouldn’t have known and would have to quit. We were making money and I could see the momentum. I deliberately didn’t do any numbers crunching because I wouldn’t have been able to keep my promise. It was very frightening to quit my job.

While on vacation, however, I received a call from Good Morning America. I returned to the office and completed the interview. Three weeks later, my job was over and I never looked back.

At 28 I am financially independent, we provide jobs for women and we are a multi-million-dollar company. It was 100% the right decision.

Q. How does it feel to see the shift in brand-creator relationships so soon after you leave a company to be a creator?

It is about the way work is changing and the impact of the internet on it. If you don’t want to change, you’ll be left behind. There are many exciting changes. If you don’t adapt or bring in diverse talent, your brand will suffer.

Question: What was the turning point in your business’s history before media attention from platforms like Good Morning America?

You found them overnight. Overnight success seems to only have occurred overnight. It’s amazing to me how many people I meet that appear to have just appeared out of the blue. The same is true for me. You didn’t hear much about me for many years, but I have been building for seven. There were two turning points that occurred before media attention and the apparent overnight success.

My business was rebranded in 2018 and that was the first major moment. Technically, my business is still called Victory Media. This is the umbrella that HerFirst100k operates under. While I love the name, it has nothing to do what the company does. No one, if I were to be quoted in an article about Victory Media’s company, would know what it does. The rebranding to HerFirst100k was very clear. It also clearly states who I appeal to in the title.

100 percent being on TikTok was the second major turning point. It happened in July 2020. The virality of a video we posted shortly after it was uploaded was something I have never witnessed before. Within a matter of weeks, we went from 2000 followers to around 200k or more. Another video went viral in 2021. It is our most-viewed video with seven million views. In just one week, 100,000 people signed up for our newsletter.

It was the perfect time, as everyone was on TikTok and bored at home at that time. The same thing happened to me, I consumed content for four months before I began creating it. That helped me understand the trends and what worked.

It has helped us reach 2.2 million people on Instagram, quadrupled our revenues, and is the driving force behind our podcast success. It has changed everything. These were the two major turning points for us: changing the business name at least publicly, and then starting Tik Tok and navigating the platform.

Q. What would you tell your younger Tori?

She is so proud of me and I speak to her often. I would tell her to relax first. Although my ambition is what has brought me to where I am today, it can also make me miserable at times. It’s interesting because I looked up and compared myself with people for a long period of time. Jenna Kutcher was an amazing woman who had a huge platform in 2016 and I came across her. And I clearly remember staring at her and thinking, “I can do that!”

I would either post on Instagram or send an email. But I wouldn’t see any growth. It would frustrate me. It’s the overnight success thing. I found her now and I want what she has. She had been so successful for so many years that I became impatient with not seeing the same success as she did. Although we are now friends, I can see that I had the same journey as everyone else to get to a certain point.

You may know that you are capable of doing something but it will not work out the way you expected if it isn’t the right time. To achieve the same success, you must make many mistakes and learn from them all. Future me would not have been able support Jenna Kutchner’s company if she had presented it to me. I didn’t have the knowledge, expertise, confidence or bandwidth to support this. I did not have the resources to accomplish that.

It takes patience to build this over time until you are able to build the business you desire. You have to be patient, persistent, and dedicated to achieve your goals. To my younger self, who was just as ambitious as I am now, I would tell her she is capable but that it will take some time to get there.

Q. What are the downsides to being a creator on such a large platform.

Because I care deeply about this, the lack of emotional separation is a problem for me. Both necessary feedback and criticism hurt more because they are directed at me, and not the company I lead. People are more inclined to offer criticisms because they believe I will see it, read it and then internalize it. They’re often right. I’ve seen it. Being vocal about issues is something I enjoy, and it opens me up for criticism. Because I can be vocal and others will also be vocal about me.

Recognizing yourself can be a beautiful thing, but it comes with its own set of challenges.

The biggest fear is that I will make mistakes. I am often afraid that people will not offer the grace I want, and there is very little forgiveness available online. But I hope people will have the grace to see that I will try my best to learn from my mistakes and make amends.

Q. Given the context of your life, what do you see for personal branding in the future?

People with strong personal brands like Oprah are a great example of this. However, Oprah is a large business with many people behind the scenes. Although Oprah’s bookclub, Oprah networking, and Oprah magazine are all part of the Oprah magazine, no one believes she is actually writing it. If you don’t pay attention, it is possible to think that only the big-name creators are doing all the work. This is not true.

Personal branding will become more business-like in the future. A personal brand is not as legit as a C Corp or LLC. This will change the way consumers view brands. It will be more common to understand that most people who you see online have a team supporting them in their creative endeavors, regardless of how relatable. People will also understand that it is difficult to grow at the same pace as your favorite creators without a team. It would reduce creator burnout and help you build your personal brand.

People can also connect with companies and have the opportunity to share their ideas, diversity, and build connections with others who are interested in the same mission. This is far better than having one person become a godlike figure. We all know that godlike figures are not a good idea.

Takeaways

As I mentioned in the intro, this interview was different from other Social Proof installments. Tori has turned her personal brand into an online business, giving her a unique perspective on growing an online reputation. These are my top takeaways from the conversation.

• Personal branding is going to look more like a business. Tori points out that even though someone is the face for a huge project, they often have a large support team. This could mean creating video content, paying someone to edit it or hiring a personal assistant. A great example of a personal brand-turned-business like Tori’s is Ali Abdaal’s growth from a team of one to a team of twenty-one (as of December 2021). Ali manages his content platforms like a business to scale them. We may see more of this, though on a smaller scale.
• It is important to be patient when you are trying to grow your personal brand. Tori’s business now has a nearly 4 million-person audience, but this didn’t happen overnight. HerFirst100k was built over years and with perseverance. To build your personal brand, it is important to be patient and persistent in publishing content and engaging people to make a lasting impact.
• You can share any niche project. Tori’s explanation of why she named the business HerFirst100k was a highlight of the interview. It is so specific because she shared content about it – saving $100,000 – but also because it clearly identifies who the business is. People of all ages could be looking to save more money or less. They might benefit from the content being shared but the business knows who their audience is. be specific, be open-minded and share what you find interesting. There’s an audience for everything.

Are you looking for ways to increase your brand’s effectiveness? Buffer is a consistent content scheduling tool.

Did you miss our previous article…
https://onlinemarketingagencies.net/?p=5575