Henry Kaminski Jr. on Why Branding is a Gut Feeling People Get About You | MP 74

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A photo of Henry Kaminski Jr is captured. He has spent the last 14 years helping entrepreneurs monetize their expertise and design their online presence. Henry speaks with Sam Carvalho on the Marketing A Practice Podcast about branding and why it's a gut feeling.

How does your story connect to your clients’ stories? Can this connection boost your conversion? What makes a good funnel for sales versus a bad one?

In this podcast episode, Sam Carvalho speaks with Henry Kaminski Jr. about why branding is a gut feeling people get about you.

A photo of Henry Kaminski Jr is captured. He has spent the last 14 years helping entrepreneurs monetize their expertise and design their online presence. Henry speaks with Sam Carvalho on the Marketing A Practice Podcast.Meet Henry Kaminski Jr.

Henry has spent the last 14 years helping entrepreneurs monetize their expertise and design their online presence

His clients call him the “Brand Doctor” because he’s got a specific, proven process for getting them the high-impact branding that lets them emerge as the “go-to” authority in their niche… and spark a movement that magnifies their impact on the world.

Visit his website. Connect on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Click HERE to access the step-by-step process Henry Kaminski Jr. uses to help his clients level up their branding + systematically attract high paying clients

In This Podcast

Summary

  • Great branding to encourage sales conversion
  • A good funnel versus a bad funnel
  • Personal brand to business brand

Great branding to encourage sales conversion

Branding is truly the gut feeling that people get about you … your audience is going to buy you before they buy your service. (Henry Kaminski Jr.)

What makes you different from the rest? The answer is you. Ask yourself:

  • What are you doing to understand your audience and the people that you want to serve better than anybody else?

When you can articulate this and place it into your branding, you can boost your business and will automatically be hired. Pay attention to:

  • What is your competition not doing that you could be doing to earn more of their clients?
  • Which higher mission are you on? Are you describing and articulating that future goal succinctly into your story?
  • How did you come to get into this business?

It is important for you to have your story straight and for it to be authentic and aligned to who you are and what your business is about, but ultimately it also needs to resonate with your client.

Everyone talks about being authentic and telling your story and that all makes sense and its all fine and dandy, but none of it matters if your story doesn’t help your clients tell their story. (Henry Kaminski Jr.)

A good funnel versus a bad funnel

A sales and marketing funnel is simply a series of steps that guide clients to a buying decision. This could be a series of website pages, emails, Instagram posts, or blog posts.

The key to a great funnel is that it:

  • Guides your audience to make a single decision.

Therefore, when you have a funnel that has multiple calls to action, you are confusing your potential purchaser.

I always say that quality design or quality branding will determine the quality of your clients. So, my question to you … is how do you want to be represented? How do you want to be perceived online? Because when they hit that page, you’ve got three seconds. (Henry Kaminski Jr.)

Combine having a strong call to action and a singular call to action in order to maximize the success of your sales funnel. What do you want to be known for?

Personal brand to business brand

At the beginning of starting your company, you are marketing yourself as the business. You are the face of the company, and you are building your practice from the ground up while it leans upon your expertise and experience.

As your business grows, the brand will switch from having been your personal brand to belonging more to the business itself.

Therefore, initially, you start by selling yourself and your time, energy, and expertise and then you switch to selling your business’s products and services.

Useful Links:

Meet Sam Carvalho

A photo of Samantha Carvalho is captured. She is the Chief Marketing Officer and Designer at Practice of the Practice. She is the host of the Marketing A Practice Podcast and helps therapists successfully market and brand their private practices.Sam Carvalho is a graphic designer living in Cape Town, South Africa, with over five years of experience in both design and marketing, with a special interest and experience in the start-up environment.

She has been working with Practice of the Practice since 2016 and has helped over 70 therapist entrepreneurs take their practices to the next level by enhancing their visual branding. She loves working with a variety of clients on design-intensive tasks and is always up for a challenge!

Follow Sam on Instagram to see some of her work. To work with Sam, head on over to www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding.

Thanks For Listening!

Feel free to leave a comment below or share this podcast on social media by clicking on one of the social media links below! Alternatively, leave a review on iTunes and subscribe!

Podcast Transcription

[SAM CARVALHO]
Welcome to the Marketing a Practice podcast with me, Sam Carvalho where you’ll discover everything you need to know about marketing and branding your business. To find out more about how I can help you brand new business visit www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding. And if you’d like to see some examples of my design work, be sure to follow me on Instagram at Samantha Carvalho Design.
[SAM]
Henry Kaminski Jr is the founder of Unique Designz, a full-service design branding and digital marketing agency that is dedicated to helping personality brands, coaches, consultants, influencers, speakers, and authors design and grow their brands, scale their profits, and increase their exposure online. He’s the host of the popular Brand Doctors podcast, where he talks about strategies that help entrepreneurs design a repeatable and profitable personal brand. As a self-taught graphic designer and brand consultant, he’s overcome all the odds to build a wildly successful multi-million dollar business over the past 12 years. He has worked with a diverse range of business owners and professionals, including celebrities like Jon Bon Jovi and Fabio, as well as internet marketing expert Russell Brunson, who has named Henry the million dollar brander. Recently, he has been inducted into the ClickFunnels Two Comma Club generating over a million dollars with one single sales funnel using the ClickFunnels software. Hi Henry. Thanks so much for joining us today.
[HENRY KAMINSKI]
Samantha, thanks for having me. I’m super excited to be here. How’s South Africa treating you today?
[SAM]
It’s good. It’s been quite a crazy week in South Africa, this side. Unfortunately, we’ve had some rioting in Jo’burg and Durbin, but aside from that, it’s been good.
[HENRY]
How’s the COVID situation?
[SAM]
Also not great. We’re in our third wave at the moment. So we’re actually currently in level lock down four, but we we’re certainly getting vaccines out there. So we’re getting there, so slowly but surely it’s getting better.
[HENRY]
Well, I’m wishing you the best, you and your family.
[SAM]
Thanks so much. How’s New Jersey?
[HENRY]
Oh man. It’s business as usual. It’s pretty crazy. We opened up everything 100% 4th of July weekend and it has been just booming since. So things are looking good over here. My family’s completely vaccinated, so we’re protecting ourselves and our extended family is as well. So things are going pretty well. Yes. The Delta variant is here and we’re navigating around it as best we can, but we are doing much better than last year, this time, which is great. So I’m wishing everybody out there to stay safe and for the best we’re going to get through this.
[SAM]
Yes, definitely. Well, we always look to the rest of the world to see what’s coming our way. So it’s nice to see that the rest of the world is certainly getting back on its feet. So we know we will in a few months as well.
[HENRY]
Absolutely.
[SAM]
Cool. So can you share a bit about your story? Obviously we touched on it a little bit in your bio there, but can you share a bit about your story and how you got to where you are now?
[HENRY]
Yes, sure. So I started, I graduated college when I was 22. I was one of the younger ones that graduated and got right into corporate. I graduated right when 9/11 happened and nobody was hiring in this area. The world was on lockdown if you will, and the world was at war. So it was a hard time to try to find a job. So I kept scratching my way to landing a nine to five and I used some of my connections to get into a local hospital, just at the bottom level. I was checking insurances. I was cleaning the coffee pots in the waiting room. Like I started at the bare bottom and worked my way up, eventually got my master’s degree in business management and got a decent job at the children’s hospital as a special events coordinator for sudden infant death syndrome.

So for those folks that don’t know what SIDS is, it’s when a baby dies under the age of one years old with no cause. So I had a rewarding position. It was a sad position, but it was very rewarding and I learned a lot. What I was responsible for was raising funds for the department, but also taking those funds and supporting families in the state of New Jersey that lost their babies to SIDS. So we would do family support events to bring them all together. And I had a great, great sponsor one year, Z-100, one of the biggest radio stations on the planet, sponsored one of my events. So I knew I needed marketing materials that really sold that event and raise as much money and awareness as we could. And my buddy was a graphic designer and offered to help me with the marketing.

So I sat next to him watching him design all the print collateral and I said, this is what graphic design is. This is like playing God. I mean, you can create anything you want with Photoshop. So the event was awesome. We raised a ton of money and that’s when I got bit by the design bug and got my boss to buy me the Photoshop program. I started doing all the in-house design for my events, but I also started up a little side hustle on the backend of things. I was working 20 hour days. I would come home from the hospital, work on the laptop. I didn’t even have a mouse. I used the mouse pad on the laptop and just studied the craft and practiced and practiced and practiced for actually 36 months before the hospital gave me an ultimatum, basically saying things are going pretty terribly in the economy right now, this is about 2008 and we’re going to absorb your position. So you could be somebody’s secretary at the beginning of the next year, or you could leave.

So I was at a crossroads and I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. I asked my father and my uncle who helped me get the job and my girlfriend at the time, who’s now my wife. I was petrified of taking the jump, but one thing happened in my life that I’ll never forget. So when I went to my uncle, who’s an extremely successful businessman, operates a $200 million plus construction company, they actually named the children’s hospital after him, and I went to him and I told him the situation and I said maybe I can fall back and work for you. And he said, “You’re a bright kid. This is heavy construction, but what would you do here?” I said, “I don’t know. I’ll work with your son, my cousin and do something with him perhaps.” He was looking at me like I was nuts because he was like, there is no place for you here, but I’m going to entertain you.

So you know what he said to me, he said, “Give me a couple of weeks. I’ll talk to my daughter and the VPs and see if we can do something for you. So week one goes by, week two goes by, week three goes by, no response. And now I’m getting nervous because I got to tell my boss an answer. So I finally got the answer and it wasn’t one. He never got back to me. And that was the universe telling me you got to go and do your thing. So I gave my boss my notice and when I started my side hustle as a full-time gig I treated it like a job. I treated it like a nine to five and my first year after a one man band grinding his butt off, I did $248,000 in revenue. Shortly after that, two years after that, I made my first million bucks and then from there it’s just been ups and downs to now we’re going on 14 years being in business. I’ve built out an agency, I have a 14-person team now, and it has been a wild ride. So I don’t know who your audience is, but I’m happy to discuss some of the pitfalls. I almost lost the business twice over the past 14 years due to poor decision making. So if you want to discuss what those were and how I was able to navigate over them I’m happy to dive in as deep as you’d like.
[SAM]
Well, thanks for that. So our audience is made up predominantly of people in private practice, mental health practitioners and things like that. And obviously we focus more on the marketing side of things. So I think we’re touched more on that, and then obviously if there’s time, we can always circle back. So one of the things that you kind of speak into a lot is how great branding will help with sales conversion. So can you share a bit about that?
[HENRY]
Yes. So branding, let’s define branding, so people know what it is. Some people think it’s websites and colors, and we have a little visor in the background, as you can see. Branding is truly the gut feeling that people get about you and, especially if your audience are solopreneurs or private practice folks. They’re going to buy, your audience is going to buy you before they buy your service. So one of the things that we really need to pay attention to is our X-Factor and our point of differentiation. When I ask people like, what makes you different from everybody else that does what you do, they tend to fumble on giving me the answer. And it’s not as hard as you think to answer that question. The answer is you. It’s you.

So my question to you and your audience is what are you doing to understand your audience and the people that you want to serve better than anybody else? Because when you can articulate the pains, the struggles, the problems, the wants, the needs of your patients or clients better than they can describe them to you, you’re automatically going to get hired. So a couple of things to pay attention to is what is your competition not doing that you could be doing to earn more of their clients? What higher mission are you on? Are you describing and articulating that to the best of your ability? What got you into this business in the first place? Everybody has a story and everybody talks about being authentic and telling your story. That all makes sense, and it’s all fine and dandy, but none of it matters if your story doesn’t help your clients tell their story.

So your story doesn’t matter to them if it doesn’t help them tell their story. So does your service help them tell their story in a way that makes them feel like they’re contributing to this world? So when you can define and answer some of those questions in deep detail, it’s going to help conversion because people are going to know like trust, you understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, and they’re going to connect that relevancy. And that’s, what’s going to really drive that conversion and make you stand out from everybody else. So those are some of the fundamentals of brand messaging that I would highly recommend you guys start to practice so that you start to talk to the right people. Because you can have a hundred thousand followers plus on all of your social media channels, but if it’s the wrong people, it doesn’t mean a thing.
[SAM]
Absolutely. That’s really good. And I think it’s applicable to our audience because, I always say that I think counseling is such a personal service and therefore counselors have such an opportunity to make their brand so personal. And obviously it can be scary and vulnerable to kind of put yourself out there, but I’ve actually had a few counselors on the podcast who have incorporated their personal stories into their branding. And it has made them stand out, as you say, and that’s kind of, what’s made them different from all other counseling practices. And it’s such a draw card because people are interested in their branding and they’ve often said that at the beginning of the counseling session, they’ll actually want to find out more about the counselor’s story before even getting into why they’re there. And that’s kind of the power of storytelling and the palette of branding. So it’s really cool that you touched on that. So can you kind of explain the difference between a good funnel versus a bad funnel?
[HENRY]
Yes. So let’s explain what a funnel is in case people don’t know what that is. So a funnel, a sales and marketing funnel is simply a series of steps that guide people to a buying decision. So it could be a series of landing pages on a website, it could be a series of videos, it could be a series of emails, it could be a series of YouTube videos or Instagram posts. So just so you understand what a funnel is, but the key to a great funnel is one, it guides your audience to making a single decision. So when I see funnels that have multiple calls to action, you’re confusing the person that you’re trying to guide. So a really effective funnel, like the one that I use to generate over seven figures is one step. It’s book this one-on-one brand assessment with me. This is the outcome that you’re going to get and then from there we can navigate the journey.

Don’t ask them to do anything else. Don’t follow me here, don’t opt in this, don’t book this call. The other thing is that we really have to pay attention. And this is where we can get into a statics. Funnels get a really bad reputation because there’s a lot of people using them to make a fast buck. So we’ve all been there, you know, somebody has got a pretty slick tongue, they’re a pretty sharp marketer, they get you to this landing page and this landing page looks like they did it themselves. And now you’re a little skeptical because you don’t know if this person’s legit or not. So when people ask me, like, does quality design matter? because these people are making tons of cash with these ugly looking funnels, these people are very fly by night.

I’ve been in 14 years. I’ve seen a lot of people come and go and I would highly, I would raise an eyebrow if you ever come to a landing page that looks cheap, amateur and unsafe before you. I don’t care how slick their marketing is. So I always say quality design or quality branding will determine the quality of your clients. So my question to your audience is, how do you want to be represented? How do you want to be perceived online? Because when they hit that page, you’ve got three seconds. They’re either going to say, “Whoa, this company looks legit. This person looks legit, or I’m not sticking my credit card 10 feet from this.” So that’s something that we really need to pay attention to. So strong call to action, and a singular call to action, pay attention to design.

And I’m not just saying this because this is what I do for a living. Your image online says a lot about you before you open your mouth. So pay attention, because especially in this field if you’re a counselor or you’re a coach or a psych psychologist or any of those, people are very skeptical these days on those things. And one of the biggest pains that I think people have, that are searching for someone like your audience is am I going to be able to trust this person with such precious information? So what are you doing to relieve that stress intention? And there’s tons of websites out there. I was looking at one point in my life for a therapist and the websites that they put their profiles on are great. I don’t know some of them off the top of my head, but pay attention.
[SAM]
Like Psychology Today.
[HENRY]
Yes. That’s one of them, that was one of them. Anywhere you can incorporate video, anywhere you can incorporate or they can actually get, now, obviously you can’t demonstrate your expertise because you can’t share your patient’s information, but I think if you can help people, if you can go online and help people with common issues, especially if you specialize, like, let’s one thing that I saw, like, “I specialize in depression, I specialize in child abuse. I specialize in substance abuse.” So that’s another thing that I want to highlight. You know what a great funnel does? It positions you as a specialist. Specialists get paid a hell of a lot more than generalists do. So paying attention to that is huge. And then the last question is like, what do you want to be known for? Because if I have a problem with depression, I want the best depression therapist that I can afford. So very, very important stuff when it comes to branding. Be known for one thing. And it sounds crazy because you’re like, oh, well I’m missing out on all the other opportunities. No, what you’re doing is you’re diluting your specialty.
[SAM]
So Joe Sanok, who is the chief executive of Practice of the Practice always says that if you have a headache or something, for example, or maybe something a bit more serious, you wouldn’t think twice about going to a specialist. Sorry, how does it go now?
[HENRY]
Be the painkiller, not the vitamin.
[SAM]
So if you have something, let’s say you have a broken wrist, you’re not going to go to a generalist for a broken wrist. You’re going to go to a specialist for a broken wrist, but the specialist is going to know about other things as well. Like they’re going to know how to treat headaches and they’re going to know how to treat all sorts of things, but they’re specializing in the wrist. So that’s kind of the thing is don’t present yourself as a generalist. It doesn’t mean you don’t know about other topics, but you’re specializing on something in particular. And that’s what you’re professing to be the expert. And that’s what people are going to respond to, like you say.
[HENRY]
Exactly. That’s why we’re having this conversation because I thought this was a great podcast to share some of my expertise because I specialize in personality brands, so personal brands. I love working with the coach, the consultant, the expert that has a specialty in something. I’ve branded big businesses before. You know, they’re fun. I’ve had a great, great run with branding businesses and restaurants and things like that in my past, but I have a passion to help people. I want to help people. So that’s why I chose this specialty, this vertical because I’ve been able to successfully do it.

I can speak to it with a lot of confidence and a lot of experience under my belt. And I’ve gotten beat up over the past 14 years, not from other people, but from my own stupid mistakes. I’m reading a book now called The Road Less Stupid and he calls mistakes dumb tax. When you make a dumb mistake, you’re going to pay a tax on that. It’s try to do your diligence prior to making that mistake so you don’t have to pay to dumb tax. That’s the whole point of me coming on shows like this, is to navigate around some of the common mistakes that people make.
[SAM]
So you touched now on, as you said, personal brands. So what would you say is the difference between a personal brand and a business brand and why would you recommend that people need both?
[HENRY]
So there’s a trend that I’ve seen over the years when I’m helping folks build a strong personal brand, but then that expertise into something bigger. And when they first start out, including myself, you are the brand. Look at Elon Musk, look at Jeff Bezos, look at Michael Jordan. It all started with them. They were the brand. And then as you build momentum, you get to a transition phase and that transition phase is when the business brand becomes an entity. And that’s when you have to start productizing your expertise, your IP. That’s when you can start to build coaching programs, whether it be a membership or a one-on-one elite or premium level. You can build courses. There’s tons of ways to productize your thinking. You have to find what your audience wants to do and give them that.

So it’s a lot of research here. So for example, I did a study, sort of a self-study post COVID in the United States. And one of the things that COVID showed me was there’s a reason why Home Depot and Lowe’s and these big box stores had record breaking months during COVID. Everybody shifted towards do it your self. Why? Because they had the time. So that prompted me to slow down on my done for you programs and focus on more of the, do it yourself programs like the Brand Doctors coaching program, which is a five week intensive program where essentially, I box out all the steps to building a strong personal brand. And you do that on your own. I’m here in the background to support you. If you have any questions, we have office hours, things like that.

But that’s what prompted me to build that kind of program, because I saw a trend. People were wanting to do it the DIY way. So I had to give them that. I had to provide something. So that’s how that product was formed and developed. I didn’t pull it out of a hat. I didn’t do it because I wanted to do it. I did it because that’s what they wanted. So your personal brand will transition into your business brand, but you’re now responsible to building out that business brand that reflects who you are as a person, so your values, the culture, your tone of voice, your position. Do you want to one of the masses, or do you want to be an exclusive brand? Do you only want to work with celebrities or do you want to work with first time moms?

So that’s why it’s so important to build your personal brand out first, because like in the beginning of this conversation, people are going to buy you first. Then you have to have the right products and services branded, positioning, messaging, experience. That’s a big one these days. What kind of experience are you giving to your audience, to your clients that makes it memorable, that makes them want to tell 10 people? So that’s why it’s extremely important to do both because if you just focus on one, you’re missing out on the other. And I see a lot of people go all in on personal brands, but then they only hit a certain level and they [inaudible 00:27:48]. When you build your business brand, you’re going to build something that becomes way bigger than you and there’s your opportunity to scale.
[SAM]
Yes. And I think it’s really good to keep that in mind, even from the beginning, like you say. So Henry, I hear that you have a free gift for our audience. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
[HENRY]
Yes. So over the years I’ve noticed that the top 5% of entrepreneurs have a much different mindset and they have a much different approach to building their businesses. And in this 21-minute masterclass, I keep it short and sweet and straight to the point, I’m going to explain to you what these top 5% of entrepreneurs are doing and not doing to help them scale to that seven figure plus mark. I’m going to share with you some examples of how I was able to do it, but I’m also going to highlight quite a few of my clients who’ve been able to do it as well. And these are all personality brands like yourselves that are trying to create that financial growth, create that freedom in their lives so that they can do what they love to do and make this world a better place by doing it. So you can hit that by going to uniquedesignz.net. So it’s Unique Designz with a Z at the end, not an S dot.net/levelupmybranding and that’ll get you access to the masterclass.
[SAM]
Awesome. Thank you so much for that. And for those of you who are on the move while listening to this, we’ll definitely have that link available in the show notes. Henry, if people want to get in touch with you, maybe to find out more about what you do, how you can help them, what’s the best way for them to do that?
[HENRY]
Yes. So I’ve created my website as sort of the home base of where you could get access to me. So if you just go to uniquedesignz.net, with a z.net, you’ll get access to my podcast, the Brand Doctor podcast. My Instagram, where I typically hang out the most @thebrandDr. And my YouTube channel, if you just YouTube The Brand Doctor, we do a live show every Monday and Wednesday at 2:00 PM Eastern and we would love to have you part of that. We are very interactive with the audience and it’s a lot of fun.
[SAM]
Awesome. So guys, be sure to check that out. And Henry we always end up every podcast with this question. So if every private practice owner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know?
[HENRY]
So one of the quotes that I live by is from one of my favorite movies of all time, it’s called A Bronx Tale, and the concept of the movie was this line here, “The saddest thing in life is wasted talent.” I think there’s a lot of people that go through life thinking that they’re promised tomorrow and we’re not. That’s why we have to live today like tomorrow may not come. Look at what COVID has done to the world. You know, people going in for sniffles and not coming out of the hospital. So that was a huge wake call for a lot of people. So one of the things that I would have your audience consider is what are you doing today to leave a legacy for tomorrow?
[SAM]
Awesome. Thank you so much, Henry for all the input that you’ve given and all the valuable information we’ve really enjoyed having you on the podcast.
[HENRY]
Thanks for having me.
[SAM]
Thanks for listening to the Marketing a Practice podcast. If you need help with branding your business, whether it be a new logo, rebrand, or you simply want some print flyer designed head on over to www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding. And if you’d like to see some examples of my design work, be sure to follow me on Instagram at Samantha Carvalho Design.

Finally, please subscribe, rate, and review this podcast on iTunes if you like what you’ve heard. Talk to you soon.

Marketing a Practice podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice podcast network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Beta Male Revolution, Empowered and Unapologetic, Imperfect Thriving, or Faith in Practice, go to practiceofthepractice.com/network.

This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.