Welcome to The Business of Luxury. Where we decode what makes luxury brands desirable and valuable, and apply those principles to your founder-led brand.
This week: if you’ve levelled up but your brand hasn’t caught up (or your brand has stalled and you want to get it moving again), this one’s for you.
Brand Trust starts with You (sorry, not sorry)
Trust is a buzzword at the moment, and every brand conversation ends up at trust eventually. How to build it, how to keep it, and how brands are leaking it with their latest faux pas (ahem, Skims).
It’s showing up in conversations, reels and even in boardrooms.
But what is trust when it comes to a brand, and how the hell do you create it?
At the heart of it, trust is safety.
By the time someone is deciding whether to buy from you, they’ve already decided you’re good (that should be obvious). So what else could trust be?
Spoiler alert: it’s a question that’s never actually asked consciously.
Is this safe?
- Will she be the same woman next month?
- Will the thing I’m paying for still stand for what it stood for the day I said yes?
- Are you a safe person?
- Are you a safe brand?
- Can I trust you?
And this is the bit that might sting a little…
Trust with your customers starts with trust in yourself: knowing your values, your standards and who you actually are, then acting on them on purpose. People feel it before they can name it. (And I hate to say the “A word”.) Authenticity is just the word we use for the signal.
How chasing trends kills Brand Trust
You open your phone, have a quick scroll, and you see something going viral. “I could do that… and even better.” So you get to work…
Jumping on a trend looks harmless. A new format, a new hook, the sound everyone is using this week.
What it actually says is this: I trust that thing out there more than I trust what I stand for.
Your audience reads that too (they’re cleverer than the algorithm gives them credit for).
Look at the luxury houses that last a hundred years. Their collections change every season. The house doesn’t. You know what it stands for when their latest collection comes out, and that’s why you trust it with your hard-earned cash.
If a brand goes too wild and steps outside the fine line of what you expect (looking at you, Jaguar and Ferrari), then you’re going to feel cheated.
All that brand goodwill and trust have eroded.
The brand has lost connection to itself.
How you lose trust with Your Audience (mostly with your thumb)
So how do you lose the connection to yourself, and subsequently your brand, in the first place? Sneakily, and mostly with your thumb.
Your phone. Your scrolling. Reading and consuming other people’s ideas until they sound more important than your own.
Every hour spent immersed in someone else’s thinking is an hour you’re not spending in yours.
And it isn’t only what you consume.
Your mental and emotional state steers the connection too. Tired, frazzled, running on fumes? You’ll grab whatever’s nearest to hand, and it’s usually someone else’s idea.
Psst, the psychology is that your body is looking for safety and your brain is looking for familiarity to give you safety. I know, it’s an a-hole, but it’s doing its job. Often too well.
Yourself is the first connection you need to make. Then you need to trust it. Everything else (your messaging, your offers, your brand) comes downstream of that.
Who the hell are you? Building a Luxury Personal Brand on Purpose
“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”
– Dolly Parton
Trust doesn’t normally get broken overnight. It’s more of a slow creep, and it happens while you’ve got your head down, slightly zoned out and still ploughing on with building your brand.
Then suddenly, you’re off course, and it comes in two delightful flavours.
There are two moments when you’re most likely to be looking the other way.
One
You’ve stalled, business has stalled, sales have stalled. Nothing’s broken, but nothing’s moving either. Cue spinning wheels and frustration.
You want to level up, and this time you want to do it on purpose. You want to take deliberate action.
Two
You’ve already levelled up internally. You know you have, you’re choosing differently, you’ve expanded. But your brand (and your bank balance, and the way people think about you) hasn’t caught up yet.
Both have the same characteristic. There’s a gap between who you’re being and who you really are, and your brand is broadcasting the wrong one.
When I receive “I want to hire you” DMs, this is the issue behind the message. There’s a gap I help you close.
How I built The Business of Luxury
Solid, trusted, and connected to me, my values and my standards.
That’s what resonates with my audience, and it’s why I grew a brand fast.
I knew who I was.
Not a perfect version. Not a performing or proving version. The real one. And I’m always evolving.
So here’s my question to you…
If I cut you in half, what would it say? That’s the “stick of rock” test.
… And are you brave enough for that to be your brand?
You can’t journal your way to the answer with affirmation cards and a Diptyque candle. Tried that, wasted my energy, got nowhere.
Instead, you need to witness yourself. And you need the right questions to draw it out of you. Unless you’ve done a shed load of inner work, it’s likely that you’ve not asked yourself this. Ever!
When you work with a business coach, you don’t get asked that. You get asked what your niche is. (kill me now!)
So what are the questions, and what do you do with the answers? From someone constantly levelling up, building a luxury brand and expanding faster than her reality.
Thousand To One
If you’re already nodding and saying “OMG, that’s me”, Thousand To One opens in late November. Four places. Application only.
Join the waitlist →Want the 18 questions first?
They’re waiting for you on The Business of Luxury on Substack, with my own answers, unedited.
Head over and sign up →