Brand Yourself with self-hype queen Lucy Werner

Hype Yourself by Lucy Werner is a book I always recommend to small business owners (as well as Atomic Habits by James Clear).

I’m a bit of a Lucy fangirl, because she is not just supremely knowledgeable but genuinely no-nonsense, so generous with her knowledge, and a good egg to boot (check out when I spoke to her on IGTV about Christmas PR).

So when I heard that Lucy has a new book coming out, I obviously pre-ordered it without a second thought. Brand Yourself, co-written with her husband Hadrien Chatelet, is out on 7 September,

Lucy and Hadrien have over 30 years of industry experience between them and have taught thousands of entrepreneurs how to stand out using the DIY model to create a business brand.

In Brand Yourself they share everything you need to know about creating a business brand without an agency budget. From brand strategy to picking out fonts, building your personal brand, and affordable creative tips to make an impact with your business, it’s all here, minus the smoke and mirrors.

As if I couldn’t love everything about this project more, Lucy and Hadrien are donating 50% of all profits to their Great Ormond Street Fund. Lucy finished her first book as their second child was in and out of cardiac intensive care. Just five days after the Hype Yourself launch, she returned for his fourth round of open heart surgery.

I caught up with Lucy to chat about branding for small businesses ahead of the big day.

Lucy, why is branding so important to small businesses? Isn't branding just for people with big budgets?

It all starts with a story. Whether we are talking about branding or PR, the story that underpins your business is really powerful.

Often small business owners thinking branding is about a logo. It isn’t just about your colours and fonts though. Take Hadrien for example. He wears colourful clothes but that doesn’t define his personality. If we were to take the clothes away, brand Hadrien still exists (albeit slightly chillier).

We want to help teach our audience that it’s so much more than looks. It what your audience feels about your product, service or company. And mainly it’s what they remember about you. A beautiful brand is amazing but a meaningful one is better.

What big wins have you had thanks to your DIY branding/hype hacks?

I think one of the reasons small business owners don’t invest in brand and PR is it’s always harder to track direct results.

We see incremental success when people use PR and brand effectively in their business in growing their audience, building a better emotional connection, become more memorable and the go-to person or brand.

Focusing on our PR and brand has been a gradual and consistent process. We are now paid to speak, host workshops and lecture at some of the top creative and business schools and accelerators. And we have now split our business into two, so we have The Wern for the consultancy side and HypeYourself.com as our passion project / DIY platform for PR & branding.

All of these were never overnight wins. I think some of the pinch-me moments for me were teaching for Courier magazine and writing a guest article for them, being invited on to both the Creative Rebels and Power Hour podcast with Adrienne. Even the support we are receiving right now from the small business community for our next book.

We are really trying to be the underdog that manages to scrape their way onto the Sunday Times business bestseller list. They take data from Nielsen book scan on the most amount of sales in one week. When they count your launch week it also includes pre-sales, so this really is our one opportunity to have that bite of the cherry and everyone is really rallying around to support us. [KW: Pre-order here to help Lucy and Hadrien become bestselling authors!]

Without building up our audience with PR & brand we definitely wouldn’t have that. Hopefully, in September I can report back that this was one of our biggest wins!

Give us some examples of small businesses who really nail their branding/marketing/PR on a tiny budget

In terms of just being an amazing brand guardian, I have to take my hat off to Vicky Simms of Mean Mail. You really get a sense of the brand tone of voice, palette and who would be the right brand partners from any interaction you have with the brand. It’s a really distinctive and powerful brand, not just from what it looks like but the messaging and ethos that underpins it.

For conveying brand personality, I love Vanessa Belleau of High Fifteen. She has such a strong sense of self, who she is about, her values and how she wants to communicate. Even from the backdrop in her office which is decorated in her artwork which bleeds through into her branding on her social media accounts. There is such a strong brand Vanessa thread that runs through it all. Despite tackling serious issues, she injects her humour and charisma.

What's your one top branding tip for small businesses?

Hadrien would say mood boards. If you struggle with confidence in the visuals like how to choose your colours and your best style, working on mood boards can help give you clarity.

But even the most amazing creative designers don’t just pluck ideas out of thin air. They get inspired, they think, try things and look around. More often than not it’s our surroundings that can inspire us.

And the same is true for you: you can’t create anything from thin air, nobody can! You can get inspired by your surroundings.

A really key way to do this, and something that we have seen used by many strong and powerful brands is to create a mood board. Today this is super simple to do on platforms such as Pinterest. Check out some inspiration on Hadrien’s account for how he groups his inspiration together.

If you were given £10,000 to spend on your marketing, how would you spend it?

A blend of Facebook/Pinterest/Insta/Google ads to see what performs the best.

An experiential billboard site near where lots of freelancers and small businesses work and potentially strap myself to it in some format for the day whilst phoning in the picture story of me on said billboard for a really meta-micro PR sell-in.

A content editor to help me take all the Big Yellow Storage size large unit of content ideas out of my head and into the world.

What would you do if you were magically given 3 hours extra a day?

Batch cook better food. I know that seems counter intuitive to do business but actually I work quite short days around my mini people. Having time to make proper healthy breakfasts, lunches and dinners I think would have a knock-on productivity effect.

I'm all about doing marketing that feels good. What bits of marketing make you feel good?

I LOVE making reels. Instagram in general is a bit of my alter ego. I really enjoying being creative and coming up with different ways to share our expertise. The bit about social media is that I don’t feel the pressure. I take it like a bunch of marathons.

At the moment I am very active in the run-up to promoting my next book, but within that period I also have two holidays so I will come completely off for a week. It is definitely about being consistent but that doesn’t mean you can’t take a break.

A lot of the time I post content for me that I love such as The Wern weekly news where I do a round-up of stories I like in the media – it isn’t my most popular content but for me it keeps me accountable to my craft and I enjoy it.

I care less about the likes and engagement and more about being true to who I am. When I make silly reels there is definitely an element of dance like no-one is watching vibe to it.

Quickfire questions

Recommend a business book: Brand Yourself: a no-nonsense brand toolkit for small businesses

Recommend a podcast: Flow State by Bobby Lyte

Inspire us with a quote: “Put yourself where you don’t belong.” – Lucy Werner (It’s a mantra I live by for PR-ing myself or others. You can’t stand out if you are where everyone else is).

What one thing does the world of business need more of? Fun

What's on your desk right now? x3 note books, box of 52 PR tips, cold cup of tea, headphones, manuscript for the book

What device are you using to type your answers? iMac

If you weren't a small business owner, what would you be? I wanted to be a backing dancer

Name 3 dream dinner guests (dead or alive): My creative director and the two children we co-founded. Super grateful as it wasn’t always a guarantee we would be able to sit down altogether.

What superpower would you love to have? Eternal happiness

Early bird or night owl? Early bird

Worst job you've ever had: Workaholism runs through my family so all jobs are a bit like meditation.

Where do you get your best ideas? Anywhere but my desk