EP 324 - How To Build a Coaching Brand That Makes You Look Like a Pro in 2026
You only have a split second to make a first impression.
When someone lands on your Instagram, your website, or your Zoom screen, they instantly decide whether you look like a professional coach or someone who’s just getting started.
Debbie Shadid has helped over 10,000 women build profitable businesses, and one of the biggest shifts she sees happens when a coach finally creates a brand she truly loves.
Her confidence goes up.
People take her seriously.
And her coaching business finally starts to feel real.
In this episode, Debbie breaks down exactly what branding really means for coaches over 50 and how to create a brand that builds confidence, authority, and trust.
In this episode you’ll learn:
Why branding goes much deeper than logos, fonts, and colors
How a professional brand can boost your confidence before you feel ready
What “business curb appeal” means and why it matters
The vision board exercise that helps you discover your perfect brand colors
Simple ways to elevate your Zoom presence, headshots, social media, and email signature
Why building your brand around your name is almost always the right move
How to start showing up as the brand of your business immediately
You don’t need to be fancy.
You just need to be consistent.
Once you build a brand that truly reflects who you are, you’ll never want to change it.
Start building a coaching business you’re proud of: https://www.debbieshadid.com/schedule
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Website: https://www.debbieshadid.com
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Transcript
You've heard it said before, you have one chance to make a first impression. If you are not getting any clients, if people are not paying attention to your brand, chances are the impression you're making is not that impressive. Why would somebody buy from you? Let's be honest. Would you buy from yourself? Today's episode is about something I am so passionate about. It is all about branding. My name is Debbie Shadid I have helped over 10,000 coaches not only build, but grow successful, profitable coaching businesses. So when we think about a brand, you might be thinking about colors and logos and fonts, but I can tell you it goes much deeper than that. This is about the brand that you build. That you can actually borrow confidence from. I know what the brand that supports you is showing up before you feel ready, let me explain. The brand is actually the curb appeal to your business. If you think about a business or a house that has a beautiful front door and flower pots overflowing with flowers, you have an impression instantly before you ever walk in the door. This is what I wanna talk to you about. This is the curb appeal to your business. And a brand really helps you set up that identity, that will actually help people really see you as a successful coach before you actually have the proof. So let's talk about this. A brand is the first impression that your business makes and that first impression, it happens in a split second. Y'all think about it. When you're on your phone, you have a split second to get somebody's attention when they are scrolling by on Facebook or on Instagram. If you think about a Louis Vuitton bag, and I don't know how many of you guys have 'em. I don't actually have one, but what I do know is that when you see Louis Vuitton. The actual gold and brown, the brown leather with a gold LV on it, you instantly associate it with a high-end, expensive, exclusive brand. That is the impression that happens before you've actually ever even touched the product. So I want your coaching business to be that way too. Whether someone lands on your Instagram or your Zoom screen or your website, I want them to really be able to size you up. Based on what they see, and here's the truth, they're gonna do it anyway. if you want people to trust you and respect you and see you as a professional, you have to look like one. So let's talk about branding and how you can feel more confident, because I see this every time with our clients So many coaches when they first start, they don't have that internal confidence that they want to have. They're ready to be a coach. They feel good about their coaching, but putting themselves out there is a different deal. Can you guys relate? It's always what they say. I don't wanna put myself out there. I feel uncomfortable about that. But what I want you to know is that when you create a brand that you love, that is polished, that is beautiful, It will make you feel more legitimate. It will instantly raise your confidence. And I have seen it time and time again with our clients. So when we think about a brand, we're talking about your branding, your graphics, even what your emails say, and the way that you show up, the way that you speak, and the way that you basically hold space. Even your coaching style says so much about you. And you know what happens when you get those things right. You start to feel better and people trust you. Building this know, like, and trust, this is a big deal in a brand and you have to create that and you have seconds, seconds to be able to create that impression. if you want to show up with more ease and more confidence, it starts with a brand. So let's talk about the mindset behind branding. Branding is not about vanity or thinking about how you wanna show up. as good looking, you don't have to be any certain look to be effective in your brand. In fact, we could name all kinds of brands where people are not dressed up and they're almost sloppy, although I don't encourage that and they have their own brand identity anyway. You don't have to be flashy, you don't have to be faking it. I want it to be so you just like your niche where it's really an extension of you. The trouble is most people don't actually know what their brand should be because they haven't taken the time to do that identity work. This is one of the fun things about being over 50 is you're like, you know what? I'm gonna take the time to get it right. this is your time to say. Who am I? What is the vision for my next phase in my life? How do I wanna show up in my business? What do I want my reputation to be? You actually get to decide intentionally what you want your reputation to be. When I worked on getting my business set up online and becoming a well-known coach, I was like, what do I want people to say about me? And that is part of building your reputation. And once I decided what I wanted people to say about me, I started acting that way with my coaching. I started saying that in my marketing, and I'll tell you what, people say that in our testimonials. So that's part of crafting a brand. When you work on your identity With intention, you can build an incredibly powerful brand for clients to experience. You choose the reputation you get to represent yourself in a way that you will feel most proud and a consistent message. We'll speak louder than anything else. what branding looks like in your day to day? Let's talk about it practically. Branding for a new coach. Well, it's your Zoom background. it's what people see. It's what people notice that you're wearing. It's your Instagram graphics, it's your website. It is the tone of your voice. It's the, all the gestures that you make. How do you wanna be perceived? Even your headshots, which by the way, all of this can be done in Canva. You can even take your own headshot with your iPhone. We actually have a guide for creating professional images and how to go about doing it with your own phone, and nearly all the pictures that I take these days. Are actually pictures that I took of myself with my own phone with a stand. So even that makes a difference. That email signature that people see that consistent brand and look everywhere. We want it to look like you have a professional designer on your team that has their hand in everything you do. Aside from your visuals, it's also your energy. It's how you carry yourself. It's how you make people feel when they interact with you. One of the most exciting things about being over 50 again is you get to choose all of this and it's like a total reinvention of yourself. Not only have you kind of reinvented yourself through coaching, and I know you have because You get to doing that personal development work, you really become somebody different. You also get to choose how you want to move from maybe that place where you've been stuck. You get to choose. From being that outdated person to now being really somebody that is exactly who you want it to be, and you get to pick this identity and just almost like step into it. So it's your time to decide. I'm calling you out. What kind of businesswoman do you want to be? How do you want to be seen? What kind of energy do you want your brand to carry? I have some coaches that work with us, who are so gentle and so loving and so like you just. Literally want them to give you a hug that is part of their brand. I have some coaches that are more teachers, more strong. Obviously I'm on the strong end. How do you wanna be seen? Do you wanna be happy? Do you wanna be serious? Do you want to be wise, full of wisdom? You get to be anything you want. Even if you're still not ready to step into that identity fully, like that future successful self identity, the brand will help carry you until your belief meets the brand. Are you guys with me? Again, it's like having the front of your house painted beautifully and all the flower pots you feel good. You're like, oh yeah, look at my house. It looks good, doesn't it? It changes how you feel and that's what a brand will do for you. What many coaches tell me after they have selected their brand and their brand colors is that I really feel like a business owner. I actually wanna share my website. People are taking me more seriously and even getting noticed. I'll tell you a quick tip about deciding on your brand. One thing you can do is create a vision board for your life. You're kind of at this crossroads where you're deciding how you want to intentionally live and create this vision board for your life. You can take a picture of that. You can put that picture into Canva. And Canva will pick the colors for you. Out of that picture, there's a little eyedropper that you can go around and select colors. In fact, you can design something that is really reflective of you when you have that vision board and you have a variety of things that you love, not only like style, let's say, and office style and home style, and maybe your travel style and. Even food that you enjoy and all kinds of experiences that you have when you put those all together as your life vision. There'll be a theme to it, and you can put that in Canva, and Canva will pick out the colors. It's pretty incredible. you'll see who you are by looking at that. So I highly recommend that you do that. It's a great starting point to be able to look at your color palette and know what to take. But that is just the basics of your branding. Let's talk about a few other things that you would do. Logos, practically speaking, you're gonna have a main logo and I actually recommend that you build your coaching business with your name. I know chances are you've been working a long time to pick a business name that is clever and that nobody else is using, but really people are hiring you. Yeah. Once I get coaches in my space that have already picked another name, they're like, you know what? You're right. And so I always say let's not redo what you've already done, but it would be great if you got your first and last name, or your first and last name with coach on it. If you have a popular name in a domain.com, so that when somebody meets you. You can also say, Hey, you can find me everywhere at Debbie Shadid. That's what I do. find me anywhere at Debbie Shadid. People are like, oh, okay, because they know you. They just met you. So that's your kind of next step. But think about your logos. You're gonna have a main logo and you're gonna have. Two or three sub logos. I want you to think about one main logo and then some kind of sub mark. it might be a little flower. That's what I have. Some people have a geometric shape. Some people just have initials of their name. It depends on your coaching brand. That's really personal. And in our coaching, we actually go through a whole process to decide those things. It is so much fun actually, branding and this whole identity piece is probably one of the most impactful, empowering things that our coaches do, and it's really because they're defining their new identity. Then I want you to think about your Zoom presence. I wanna tell you that one of the things that really helps is lighting. So if you happen to be watching me on YouTube, my room is very, very well lit, and by design I have very bright lights. I can even tell you the kind of lights that I have, all of that and a camera that helps bring in more light. And light creates trust you can have any kind of background, but the cleaner, the background, the better. One thing I'll point out to you is that even the books that are on my shelf, if you could read what those titles are, it's distracting. So I would make sure that your background doesn't have too much in it. That would actually distract people because you want people paying attention to you. You want people focused on you. we're all distracted enough as it is. So do everything you can to create a calm environment so that people will pay attention to you. And remember, you don't need to be fancy. All you have to be is consistent. If you wear warmups all the time because you help people with weight loss or with health and you go to the gym, then fantastic. That is your consistent look all the time. If I showed up in, warmups and shorts and gym clothes, you guys could be wondering what's wrong with me, because that is not the way that I live my life day in and day out. I am a fancy person If you see me and you know me, you know I probably am gonna have on a scarf and a few times that I don't have on a scarf. Sometimes people will say, is anything wrong? You don't have a scarf on, like they expect it. That is brand identity. we want to know what your brand identity is gonna be. Then you get to pick it. And one last thing I'll just mention about that, it makes shopping so fun. If you are not a shopper and you don't care a thing about shopping, I can tell you that once you have a brand that you really love, that you feel like reflects you, you actually will enjoy shopping, even if it's at Target or at. Or on Amazon. This is something universal that my clients tell me. They're like, I had so much fun like picking out a rose colored blouse that matched my brand, and it is fun. You deserve to be seen as a pro, and that will change your identity. I wanna remind you, you're not just getting started. There's a high chance that you've told yourself, I am working on my business, and I always correct our clients and say, no, you're not working on your business. You have a business from the moment that you decided I am going to have a business. Was the day that you became a coach with a business. Start thinking about yourself as a professional. Do not let that thought of, well, I have no clients. I need to practice some more. All that's just nonsense. You actually do have an established business, and if you start treating it that way, this will be a really big mindset shift. And one thing I know about you is that you are a hundred percent capable of showing up as a woman. Who is in charge and who can do anything. So I have a challenge for you this week. I want you to create that vision board. I want you to think about how do I want to be seen? How do I want to look? What do I want people to say about me? How do I want to represent my brand? And then please, I'm asking you start showing up as that person tomorrow, Get dressed tomorrow as a coach who has a company and show up as the brand of your business. Doesn't mean you have to go shopping. This is just an identity inside of you. You show up as a coach. Who is successful, even if the dollars in the bank don't show it, and then get to work on your brand once you create your brand, This is a brand for your life. We're not gonna change your brand. We're not gonna change it on a whim. Don't pick colors that are trendy or the most popular pick things that are really you. Once you do that, you establish your brand. You start creating the logos and the various things inside of Canva. you will begin to build a library of assets over the years of your business. And remember, we're talking about a lifetime business. You'll have all assets that all match. Then everything you create, there will be this organization and professionalism about your business because it all goes together. If I was able to show you my Canva right now and I scrolled through it. Over the last five years, she would be like, wow, okay. it's all the same colors, all the same fonts. It's been several years since I've changed my website, and nobody knows that because it looks fresh, it looks original, and it matches everything else that I have. so this week, make that vision board. Think about what you want. Think about the colors you love. Then create your business brand, get some colors, get some fonts. It is so, so much fun. Put together your brand board. I don't want you to wait. I want you to get started because this will be the visual anchor of your business. Okay, so final word, the brand's, not your logo. It is a statement. It is you saying, I'm taking my business seriously. You better take me seriously, and I am more ready than ever to do this. So let your brand give you the confidence that you need day in and day out. And trust me when you have a beautiful brand and beautiful graphics. People will engage with you in a different way. It will look like, Hey, wait, she's not just playing. She really has a business. even friends, family members, coworkers, they will all treat you differently. Your kids, it will look to them like you also have a business because you do. Thank you so much for being here. I cannot wait to hear about the brand that you create. So until next time, have a beautiful day and show up as a coach who has a coaching company. Alright, bye bye.
