How a Compelling Brand Story Led To A $50K Launch with Celinne Da Costa: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. and brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like the Gold Digger Podcast. Today, we're pulling a timeless EO Fire episode from the archives, so the giveaway may not be active, and we'll be breaking down how a compelling brand story led to a$50 ,000 launch. To drop these value bombs, I are brought Celine DaCosta into EO Fire Studios. Celine is a mindset coach and brand story strategist, helping high-profile entrepreneurs become confident leaders with captivating stories, influential brands, international media coverage, and thousands of raving fans.

0:40And today, Fire Nation, we'll talk about how a brand story is the cohesive narrative of the facts and emotions that are created by your brand. Emotions and storytelling are imperative to connect to your people, for your business to get to a deeper level, and so much more, Fire Nation. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Celine and our sponsors. Online Marketing Made Easy podcast, hosted by Amy Porterfield, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. the audio destination for business professionals with a focus on online business, including digital courses, list building content, and more.

1:12Online Marketing Made Easy breaks down big ideas and strategies into actionable step-by-step processes. A recent episode that will help you get more results with a whole lot less stress is on four ways to avoid burnout. Listen to Online Marketing Made Easy wherever you get your podcasts. Ever thought about giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world. And four-time TEDx speaker, Taylor Conroy, from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire to join Taylor's free training, where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions.

1:47Celine, say what's up to you, Fire Nation, and share something interesting about yourself that most people don't know. Ooh, I love that one. First of all, hello, everyone. And something that most people don't know, I'm known as a brand story strategist, But at my core, I am a healer. I studied a mix of energy healing, shamanic arts, Chinese medicine, and body work. And I'm a certified neuro-linguistic programming, hypnotherapist, and breathwork practitioner. And I use a vast array of these techniques, and I mix them up to create really deep transformations from the inside out for my clients. Wow.

2:24Well, that is an exciting, exciting little resume we got going on here on Fire Nation. As I told you in the introduction, we're going to be talking about how a compelling brand story led to a$50 ,000 launch. And we're going to be diving into a lot about what Celine just shared. And of course, those teasers that I had during the introduction. So let's just get right into it, Celine, because I'm personally curious on how somebody like you would define this. What is a brand story? So a brand story is the cohesive narrative of the facts and emotions that are created by your brand. And the key word there is emotions, as that is a piece that gets often left out when it comes to branding and putting yourself out there in your business.

3:09People really, really focus on information and facts and the how-to, the left-brain stuff. But what about the emotion? What about the feeling that your brand evokes? At the end of the day, business is people. you need people to connect you on a deeper level if you want them to remember you to trust you and yes of course to buy from you and when it comes to storytelling it's the most ancient and proven form of communication i mean we've been doing this since we were cave people you know and so if you're not telling a story through your business if there's no essence personality humanity to the business that you're creating and putting out there in the world you're going to have a hard time connecting to your tribe in the long run.

3:51So that's one question I want to ask you, Fire Nation, as you're listening to Celine break this down. How does your brand make you feel? What do you want other people to feel when they hear your brand, see your brand, are encountered by your brand, or when they're talking about your brand? Now, let's get real specific because our audience, Celine, they are entrepreneurs, they are small business owners. Why do we need a brand story? Well, we need a brand story primarily so we can create that connection with our audience that's true it's deep it's genuine so as i mentioned you know business is really all about people and when we're putting ourselves out there no matter what it is that we're selling we need an audience otherwise there's no business but i believe that especially in the direction where the world is going today where everything is getting just hyper uh automated and in digital the currency that's being left at the door is the currency of human connection which is priceless and no automated sequence can really replicate, although it can help us get that across.

4:51So when you create a brand story, well, there's a few things that are happening. Number one, you're getting really, really clear on who you are as an entrepreneur, what you truly stand for, what your values are and how you want to serve. So the first and foremost is that inner clarity within yourself of like, this is who I am. This is how I change people's lives. And this is how I show up in my business. And then there's the other piece of it, which is how do you show up your online presence when you're creating webinars, speaking, sales pages, whatever it is that you're putting out into the world, is it cohesive to your identity, to who you are?

5:23And is it connecting to your ideal client in a way that transforms them? And your brand story does all of that. It's the glue that ties together the strategies and your business plan and all the little pieces that come along with, you know, building a business. It just permeates through all of it. And it gives people a feeling of who you are and why they need to like why they love you and need to trust you essentially. The two words that just really jumped out to me, Fire Nation, I really want to circle back to is cohesive and connecting. Like are, is your brand doing those two things? Are you representing cohesiveness and are you connecting to not just anybody, but your ideal client, the ideal individual that you want in your world?

6:08And then of course, I love how you just really tied that together, Selene, by that statement, is your brand story the glue? Is it the glue to your business? Is it the glue to your vision, to your morals, to your code of ethics? Is it that glue? Now, one thing that we hear all the time is the importance of the right mindset. I mean, it's a phrase that we hear over and over again. You have to have the right mindset for this and for that, financial, relationships, everything. What is the relationship between the brand story, like our brand story and our mindset? Yes. So the short answer is that your inner world creates your outside world.

6:47And I will elaborate on that. But that's a part that, you know, a lot of us were looking at the outside. Oh, you know, even when I have clients coming to me initially, your brand story, okay, like, what do I write? And what colors do I do? And, and looking at essentially the things that live in the physical world. But the truth is that your brand story, the business you create, it all starts with your mind and what's going on inside of you. So if you're not in the driver's seat of your mindset, you're going to have a very hard time telling that cohesive, powerful, captivating, connective brand story that is aligned with and supports your vision, your why and your business goals.

7:21So one of the things that Tony Robbins always says that I completely agree with is that success is 80 % psychology and 20 % strategy. So when we dive into that 80%, what is really under the hood? Well, first, there's your life story, like the literal chronicle of events that you have gone through throughout your life. And as an entrepreneur, all of us have a life story that has events within it that essentially inspired us, provoked us, drove us to build what we've built. And within this life story that we have, there are, you know, there's going to be inevitably, because this is part of being human, inevitably, there are going to be unprocessed traumas that are affecting the way that you show up today.

8:09There's going to be patterns that weren't installed in you when you were a child, a lot of them before the age of seven, which a lot of people do not do the work on. Limiting beliefs that are building up either from childhood or recent history that may not have been cleared. There's been habits that you're engaging in, some that support you, some that sabotage you, addictions. And when I say addictions, I'm not just talking about drugs. I'm talking about work. I'm talking about social media. I'm talking about addictions to bad behaviors and certain behaviors that you engage in over and over again.

8:39And you're essentially going to continue engaging in these over and over again on a subconscious level until you actually do the mindset and embodiment work to go into the emotion and clear that so that you can stop acting in ways that are not hurting you. So the ways that you self-sabotage or make great decisions on autopilot are all caused by certain events that occurred in your life. So when it comes to, you know, your brand story, actually, let's just take out the word brand so that we can even get people listening out of the business mindset, because this really starts within, uh, you can tell yourself three different types of stories.

9:16You can tell yourself one, an empowering story, which is all about looking at your past through the lens of I went through certain hardships. I certain things that I happened to me happened so that I could become the entrepreneur and the business person I am today. You can look at it as realistic as in, oh, this happened to me, like whatever it is, what it is, which is not very helpful. Right. Or three, you can look at it in a disempowering way, which is, oh, well, I can't make the money that I want to make because, you know, I grew up in a bad situation. Can't have the relationships I have because my parents got divorced when I was young and so on.

9:48Excuse, excuse excuse excuse so the lens through which you see your own story um will absolutely determine how you view the world and make decisions in your life and yes in your business because that lens and the ways that you see yourself see your story and your story determines what your fears are the nature of your relationships what you believe is and isn't helping you your aversions and your desires and what your brand story is. If we really go dig in there, um, it's a reflection of the entrepreneur psyche. And I mean, think about it. If you have a business, especially in the service industry, there's a very good chance that you're doing what you're doing for other people.

10:30And part of that is what you wish was done for you or a problem that you couldn't solve for yourself that caused you pain in the past. So in the end, it's a big projection and that doesn't have to be a bad thing that's actually a really beautiful thing because the goal here is to get to know yourself really really well and understand what your vision is and how you want to transform other people's lives know yourself know your mindset and then you can craft a brand story that actually reflects and supports your vision and goals because now you know like here's how I want to transform people's lives here's why I'm the perfect person to do that because of everything I've been through and I've worked through and now I'm moving forward into the world with this business and I'm creating a change and impact from a place that's aligned with my higher self and isn't just like me projecting my unresolved issues all over the world.

11:20Fire Nation, so many value bonds were dropped there. The one that I really want to hone in on is that Tony Robbins quote that Celine started with, success is 80 % psychology, 20 % strategy. Because I have personally seen so many entrepreneurs with a killer strategy. I mean, a strategy that is on fire, but their mental game was so off. They literally, they just never had a chance. And it's so just painful to see because they work so hard on that 20 % strategy, but they just can't get going because their psychology is just not there. And Fire Nation, your brand story is a reflection of your psyche.

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15:02That's policygenius.com. So Celine, we're back and I'm speaking for myself and I'm speaking for Fire Nation as well. We want to learn from the master. So break it down for us. What is your personal brand story? Oh, I am happy to share. So it starts with me growing up as an immigrant in the U.S. And I know some people are like, wait, what? You speak English like an American. So a little fun fact, I was actually born and raised in Italy. I'm Italian. And I immigrated to the U.S. as a child and almost immediately sold the idea of the American dream. And, you know, the whole come into America and work really, really hard and you'll become work your way up the ladder and you'll become really successful.

15:47and make a lot of money and all that jazz. And my reality, you know, spoiler alert was nothing like what was advertised to me. So my childhood was littered with various traumas is pretty traumatic experience, and an extremely precarious financial and family situation. So from a young age, I developed an armor, which was this attitude of, you know, roll up my sleeves. And it was supported by by also the culture that I was growing in, which is just roll up my sleeves, shove away my emotions, get done and get the hell out of my current situation. So when I was a teenager, I was in a really low income situation.

16:28I was just like, get out, get out, get out, get out and make a name of myself constantly chasing that American dream. So I ended up going to an Ivy League university on full scholarship to work really, really hard to get those grades up and then continued to work my way through college up into a prestigious advertising job in corporate New York City. So, you know, fast forward 12 years and here I am. I go from this like really low income immigrant, just broken household situation. And I'm finally in this really fancy advertising job in New York City. And I'm like, cool. I did the American dream.

17:07Oh, my God, I did it. I worked, you know, over 10 years for this and I did it. And I was miserable, completely unfulfilled. And I know so many people relate to this, just this whole feeling of like, I worked so hard and now I got here and there's nothing here for me. I feel just as empty as I did before, except now I have some more nice things and it was never enough. It was never enough, no matter how much I worked and the degrees I got, the getting promotions, apartment upgrades, It's I it was never enough because I was in survival mode because I carried with me the same mentality. Speaking of mindset that I had when I was 14 years old, it was still carrying through.

17:47And so I kept just pushing a rock up a hill three years into corporate, just keep trying and trying and trying to fit in, trying to fit myself into this mold of the American dream that I was so like stuck on. And long story short, I broke down. I really had an absolute breakdown of if I live another day of my life in this way, I like my soul will start to die. And I remember just having this moment. It was a cascade of effects where I, you know, volunteered in commedia for two weeks and then my grandfather died and then I got broken up with on my birthday and then my apartment rent went up and I'm like, oh, my God, my life's falling apart and I need to let it.

18:29And so what I did is, to put it simply, I threw dynamite on my old identity and rebuilt myself. I quit my job in New York City, packed everything into storage, gave most of my stuff away, and I packed a carry-on bag. And I just challenged myself to do a social experiment that I invented in which I spent a year circumnavigating the globe by couch surfing using not the website, but my social network. So what does that mean? I was sleeping in the homes of mostly strangers, people who were connected to me somehow, friends, friends of friends, people I met on the road. And over the course of the year, I slept in the homes of over 100 people in over 20 countries.

19:15and just interviewed everyone. Yeah. I was just like, I'm leaving everything I ever know behind. I'm throwing myself into the world and I'm going to design the life of my dreams and interviewing everyone, telling their stories, sharing their stories on social media. And that journey taught me many things. But the main key takeaway I have from that journey is that everyone on the planet has a story to tell. And that story changes your reality. So when I was thinking about starting my own business shortly after I finished this trip because no way was I going back to corporate. One of my key insights was that entrepreneurs are not telling their story.

19:53And if they are, it's not an empowering story. It's usually disempowering them or it's not aligned with their business goals. So they're telling a story of throwing spaghetti at a wall in one hand. And on the other hand, they're like, oh, why is nothing selling in my business? So it's completely disconnected. And or it sounds like what everyone else is saying. It's just a circle jerk of everyone copying each other's voice. So I took that insight, started my business, scaled to six figures and beyond in less than nine months. And but that's not what's important here. It's that I actually truly began to design the life that I loved that I wanted, which was location independent, traveling the world full time, being, you know, the boss of my own schedule, working with clients who really inspired me.

20:37And everything was going great. I was like, Oh, my God, I'm building a business. I'm building the life that I want. Laptop lifestyle hashtag, right? Like amazing, perfect, everything I ever wanted. And then boom, I hit another block. And it was then that I realized I was still in survival mode. So just cause I tossed New York city out the window, I just came back and became a slave of my own business. Cause I was still hustling and grinding into what was now a growing multi six figure business because I still had unresolved patterns around my traumatic childhood, addiction to work to prove my self-worth blockages around money and so much more.

21:14So I'd actually created the physical life that I wanted using story, but my inner world did not fully match what I was creating on the outside. So I didn't feel worthy of it. And so this added another layer to my work. Um, and it came to a head when I had my most successful launch date today. And I was invited, invited to do a TEDx talk, which was like my dream for years. And I could not connect to the satisfaction of taking off every box that I ever wanted for the life of my dream. So that's when I started to dive deeper into the subconscious work that I do now, which is not just what is the outside brand story that you're telling, but really what's the story you're telling yourself and asking myself, you know, not only what's the story I'm telling myself, but what is the story I'm hiding from?

21:59What is hiding under the hood that needs to be brought to the surface, healed and processed. And the more I did that work of myself, the more I can help my clients go even deeper into their story and release old wounds and traumas that were keeping them from showing a fully in the beautiful brand story that they were creating on the outside. So when you can go back to the root cause of why you are how you are and why you're not feeling fully worthy or why you're feeling self-conscious about putting yourself out there, why you're feeling like you need validation from others for you to be worthy in your industry.

22:33So there's all these blockages that come up and you can build the success on the outside and have that laptop lifestyle and make all this money. But if you're not dissolving those inner blockages and limitations that you're holding inside around that, you're never really going to be living up to your full potential. But when you do, then you're able to truly tell a story that is not only in full alignment with your brilliance, but that heals you from the inside out. And as a result, you are just magnetizing and also radiating your transformation, which is going to in turn help other people. So Fire Nation, so many things that I want to talk about, but the two things I just want to repeat before we move on to what I think is going to be the most valuable part of this conversation is when Celine said, my life is falling apart and I need to let it.

23:17Like sometimes you just need to let go. Like stop being stuck in this sunk cost fallacy of because I went to one semester of law school, I must become a lawyer for the next 40 years. Or you know, I'm in this relationship that doesn't make me happy, but you know, we bought a couch together so we should stay, you know, in the same relationship. I mean, and you know, repeat that on so many different parts of your life. Sometimes you seem to let things go, let things just disintegrate, let things blow up in front of your face and hit that reset button. So few people ever hit a true reset button when they really need it.

23:49And then just something that made me chuckle, which was the circle jerk of everybody copying each other's voice, which is so true in this world, Fire Nation, which is why you always hear me say, how can you be different? How can you stand out? How can you be unique? So Celine, as the last thing we're going to talk about here today, and let's be concise about this launch, because I know there's so much depth you could go into, but we just want the highlights about this 50K launch you pulled off and then break down how Fire Nation can create this profitable, heartfelt story that can really grow their business via that story brand?

24:24Yes, of course. So with storytelling, it's a science. A lot of people think it's like this fluffy thing, but there's actually so much science, so much research around the power of storytelling that you can leverage into your business. So just to throw a few at you. Story is 22 times more memorable than facts. And when people are engaged in a story, it actually really releases feel good chemicals like dopamine and oxytocin, which as a result makes us more empathetic, more social and connected. So your story telling stories actually changes the way that your brain is activated and reacts to the deliverer of the story.

25:01So when it comes to growing my audience, especially for this launch, it was a very organic process. And the centerpiece of my strategy has always been storytelling. So specifically, you know, in terms of the launch, the, well, the first thing, it's not just about the small stories that I tell, but in my team meeting, when I'm mapping out the launch, we actually map out the story of the launch. That's one of the first things we do is what is the journey that I'm going to be taking my audience on from the teaser to maybe the challenge to the masterclass, to the launch, to open cart. What is the big journey that I'm taking them on?

25:35How is my audience going to feel? what will they experience engaging with me who will they become along the way and that's where my own brand story comes in it's how can i guide them through this it's actually weaving it in it's not just you know copying and pasting a brand story and pasting it into an email but rather how do i weave in the brand story that i just shared to guide my audience through the process of of establishing my authority establishing my credibility of telling them hey here's the ways that I can support you. Here's your pain points. Here's your desires. So really weaving in my own story into that and thinking to myself, one of the key questions is how does my story make me the perfect guide to take my heroes, AKA my audience through this journey of essentially buying my product.