It all feels overwhelming, doesn’t it?
You want to build a luxury brand.
You’ve even done all of the foundational work. You know what your core philosophies are and how you’ll build an offer around them. And you know that you can change the lives of anybody lucky enough to work with you.
But there’s just something in the way…
It’s a fear that starts eating away inside you.
You’re scared because you feel like your ideal clients won’t take you seriously. And that fear can paralyze even the greatest minds in the world.
The fact is that you have every right to dream big.
You’re creating something new, bold, and brilliant.
Inside you lives a unique talent for creating transformation. You don’t have to struggle along at the low-end of the scale…
You can build your luxury brand and become an icon.
There are just three things that you need to know about luxury brands before you do.
#1 – Luxury Brands Build Legacy Relationships
What’s the biggest difference between a luxury brand and a mainstream business?
With a luxury brand, you build relationships that last a lifetime. There’s nothing short-term about what you’re doing here. The quick sell is the domain of mainstream businesses. Legacy relationships are the key to a luxury brand.
You can see this with any luxury brand that you look at.
If you’re a Rolls Royce owner, you will probably always be a Rolls Royce owner. Moreover, Rolls Royce will invest a significant amount of time and energy into keeping you in their community.
They make you feel euphoric.
They make you feel proud about being part of such an exclusive club.
As a result, you stay with them. Whenever you need a new car, you’re going to spend your money with Rolls Royce because you feel like you’re a part of something special.
A luxury brand aims to hold that euphoria for a lifetime. It aims to make clients feel like they’re part of a community. That they’re part of the brand, the message, and the core philosophical beliefs that underpin everything.
The client becomes so involved in the brand that they become deep advocates for it. They evangelize the message and make a broader audience feel like they want what your client has.
Luxury brands operate on a different level to mainstream brands – they focus on that sense of community.
They build the idea that any client they take on is a client for life. That concept permeates every level of the organization, from systems through to the customer service model.
When building your luxury brand, you have a lot of questions to answer.
How will you build a sense of community?
How do you extend the euphoria and build legacy relationships?
How can you surprise and delight your clients so much that they’ll never want to leave you?
It may take some time to come up with the right answers to those questions for your brand. However, you can use this as an opportunity to get creative. To think bigger. To dream up a brand that turns your clients into the biggest evangelists that you could ever hope for.
Creating and looking after your community is an essential part of building a luxury brand.
#2 – You Have NO Competition
Nobody else can compete with you.
That’s the realization that Andrea Albright, a client of mine, came to. The founder and CEO of Global Publishing Powerhouse, Andrea was originally going to do what everyone else does. She planned to release a webinar and charge between $2,000 and $5,000 for the content.
That’s an approach that creates competition!
There are so many entrepreneurs out there working at that level. But Andrea is a cut above the rest because she had so much more to offer.
Today, she’s selling $100K+ offers consistently, partially because she’s operating at a level where there’s no competition.
The lesson? A luxury brand has no competition.
Think back to the Rolls Royce example I shared earlier. Do you think that brand cares about what other car manufacturers do?
They don’t.
Rolls Royce operates on a completely different level to anybody else in that niche. They’re not competing with the mainstream manufacturers. Instead, they’re blazing a new path that nobody else has ever traveled before.
Rolls Royce innovates, while the rest compare and copy one another.
When you’re building a luxury brand, you stop thinking about what x or y does. You stop looking at how other people do things because it’s simply not relevant to you. They’re not your competition because they’re not offering a luxury service.
You are.
Instead of looking behind or sideways all of the time, put your blinkers on. Shield yourself from what’s going on everywhere else and focus on moving forward.
But this doesn’t mean you’ll never look at other luxury brands.
By all means, examine what they create, how they market, and how they build their communities. Just don’t go too deeply into the rabbit hole.
Don’t get to the point where you’re checking out everybody in your niche. That’s how you get caught up in the idea of doing things the same way as everybody else.
Remember…
You’re an innovator.
You’re a trend-setter.
You’re a disruptive force in your market.
And there isn’t a single person in the world who can do what you do as well as you do it.
Maintain that belief and you’ll build a powerful luxury brand.
#3 – You Are the Pied Piper for Your Clients
Part of building a luxury brand involves leveraging yourself as the figurehead of the enterprise.
You’re the icon to your clients.
Or more accurately, you’re the Pied Piper who will lead them into a world they could never reach without you.
The big concept to understand here is that building a luxury brand is about leading, not teaching. In a lot of ways, this is similar to the idea of you having no competition.
As the Pied Piper, you put your blinkers on and lead the way.
You don’t worry about teaching the people behind you. Instead, you focus on creating the philosophies that underpin your brand.
You create a myth.
You create a legend.
And, building from your core philosophies, you make yourself iconic.
The Pied Piper doesn’t care about the direction that others want to go in. Instead, the Pied Piper focuses on the artistry and creativity behind what they’re doing. And through that, the Pied Piper establishes themself as a leader that others will follow.
I know that this is an uncomfortable concept to a lot of coaches and consultants.
You’re a natural teacher. It’s why you entered this industry in the first place.
And if that’s what you want to be, that isn’t a problem. Teachers can still leverage a premium model and do amazing things. But if you dream of building a luxury brand, teaching isn’t the priority anymore – your team can handle the teaching side of things.
You focus on working with the select few clients who work at the highest level of your market. You put the blinkers on and forge ahead. Only a few will follow you. But those few are the luxury clients who open the door to a brand-new world of business.
You’re the innovator.
You’re the icon.
So, where others focus on teaching, you keep moving forward. Get into the innovation space and your brand will flourish at the luxury level.
A Life of Luxury
There are different levels of business.
At the mainstream level, you serve the masses. You appeal to as many people as possible with a product that’s inexpensive and easily consumed.
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
If you’re willing to put the work in to succeed at that level, you deserve every good thing that you get.
Just know that luxury brands do things differently.
At the highest level of business, it’s not about appealing to the mainstream market. It’s about becoming the icon that a few select people will follow to the ends of the Earth.
Luxury brands create powerful relationships that last forever. They lead the pack in everything that they do and they have no time to worry about what the competition does.
You can build a luxury brand.
You’re an innovator and an icon in your market. There’s no other person around who can create the transformation that you can for your clients. You’re so good at what you do that you deserve to have the number one brand in your space.
With these three things, you can make that happen.
And with Iconic Influencers, you can create a luxury brand even faster.
I’ve talked about how luxury brands do things differently in this article. But if you’re ready to get really practical, I’m waiting to talk to you.
