Okay, so a couple years ago, more than a couple years ago now, I can remember first starting to really speak on the topic of building a personal, authentic connection with your customers.

Building a personal, authentic connection with your customers. Let me say that again. When I first started to talk about this several years ago,

we were still kind of in this phase of marketing and retail

where we felt like we had to hide behind a brand name, right?

It was the time of the rise of the pink lily and the red dress and the blue door

and all of these boutiques who we knew the name

at the time but we really didn't know the person behind them yet right some of them have changed

and evolved and so when I first started to talk about that people were like oh gosh I would rather

like build my boutique's name versus my personal name but the statistics were showing the more

your customers could really get to know and trust and

resonate with you as an individual, the more they were really resonating with your brand.

And so in today's throwback episode, I had this conversation with Erica Kelly, the founder

of Whiskey Darling Boutique, because this is something she's done really well.

She's built a tremendous personal brand with her

boutique. She has brought in other faces. So she's brought in other models. She's brought in her

brother who's part of the business. And she's been able to tell this cool story and build this

connection and this community and this group of like-minded people along with having a very

specific like brand identity

for Whiskey Darling and what that brand identity really means. So I wanted to bring this episode

to you because it's still so relevant today on how do you really elevate the voice behind your brand,

whether it's yours or whether you're going to bring in other supporting voices. But the fact is,

people want to do business with people. People, people want to do business with people.

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