Brilliant Ideas

#34: How to Use Vulnerability as a Branding Tool with Lisa Borin Miller

• Alyssa Bellisario • Season 1 • Episode 34

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How can you share your personal story in your business without oversharing? In this powerful conversation, brand strategist Lisa Borin Miller, founder of Intentional Brand School, shares how to use vulnerability safely to build a brand that truly connects.

If you’re a health or wellness practitioner who’s walked your healing journey, your personal story can be one of your most powerful brand assets—when used with intention. Lisa explains why clients don’t just want expertise; they want to know you’ve been where they are.

You’ll learn Lisa’s practical framework for deciding what to share, including:

  • How to identify the moments in your journey that align with your clients’ needs
  • The four essential questions to ask before you tell a personal story
  • Why safe vulnerability builds trust and attracts the right clients

Lisa also opens up about how her experience with loss reshaped her professional path, deepened her empathy, and helped her guide others through sensitive topics with care. She introduces the concept of post-traumatic growth and how transforming your hardest moments can naturally align you with the people who most need your help.

Take Lisa’s free Brand Magic Quiz at brandmagicquiz.com to discover how to integrate your story into your brand with authenticity and confidence.

Connect with Lisa:

Lisa Borin Miller Website

Lisa Borin Miller Instagram

Wonder Space Creative Website

Wonder Space Creative Instagram


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Lisa:

I think so too, and I think we often. When we're going through something, what we want more than anything isn't necessarily an expert who can talk to us about a topic. What we want more than anything is someone who's been there.

Alyssa:

Welcome to Brilliant Ideas, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes of some of the most inspiring digital products created by solopreneurs just like you. I'm your host, alyssa, a digital product strategist who helps subject matter experts grow their business with online courses, memberships, coaching programs and eBooks. If you're a solopreneur with dreams of packaging your expertise into a profitable digital product, then this is the podcast for you. Expect honest conversations of how they started, the obstacles they overcame, lessons learned the hard way and who faced the same fears, doubts and challenges you're experiencing, from unexpected surprises to breakthrough moments and everything in between. Tune in, get inspired and let's spark your next big, brilliant idea. What if your brand wasn't just a business asset but a mirror of who you've become?

Alyssa:

This week on Brilliant Ideas, I'm joined by Lisa Boren Miller, a brand strategist and founder of Intentional Brand School. Lisa helps entrepreneurs shape brands that don't just look good, they feel true. In this episode, we explore how identity, storytelling and even grief can shape the soul of your business. If you ever felt like branding is out of sync with your personal growth, or like you've outgrown the image you once built, this conversation will challenge you to reimagine branding as a deeply human and healing act, let's get into it. Welcome to the show.

Lisa:

Lisa, thank you for being here. Thanks so much for having me, alyssa. I've been looking forward to this.

Alyssa:

I am, and I'm excited to be here. You know, just a few weeks ago I was having a conversation with a client and she was concerned about how much she should be sharing her personal journey and I think this speaks to all entrepreneurs. But specifically, you know health and wellness practitioners as well who have experienced their own health struggles. Now, many of them struggle on where to draw the line between personal and professional stories they share on social media. I want your advice on this. What framework or guiding questions do you use to help them decide which personal stories to share without feeling like they're sharing too much?

Lisa:

This is such a great question and I love that you brought it up and that you're talking about it with your clients. So the first thing I would say is social media is a really tricky place, and what happens on social media is we can often be tempted to overshare because we're sharing on the fly. So there's a lot of pressure to be candid on social media and a lot of that can be just because we're responding to other people and we're wanting to share what's relevant for us. But I would say social media is probably the place that we're most at risk of oversharing. So the way that I would approach this with my clients is a little bit different, and so that's with brand development, and my passion is really about sharing identity, right.

Lisa:

So who people are, and who people are has a lot to do with what they've lived through. So one of the first things that happens when I meet with a client is we take a look at their story. So we end up sitting down and doing a strategy, call about where they have come from, and so often that starts out with education. You know it may start out earlier, like things in childhood sometimes, particularly wellness practitioners. They may have had really life-changing experiences early on that have led them down a certain educational path right. So often we think about people in a healing industry. As you mentioned, it comes from a personal experience of transformation they've had. So when we sit down, we listen to the story, we think about these key moments on their path that have led them to where they are, and so that would really be step one, and step two would be we think a little bit more about what is it that they want to do in the world now, because a lot of times when people are coming to me, it's because they have either grown through something or they're at a pivot point in their career where they want to do something new. So that's another aspect of the personal story that we're looking at.

Lisa:

But now we're looking at it through the lens of mission what are you aiming to accomplish? And then the third step of that and we can break these down I'm giving you kind of like an overview, but we can break these down in a lot more detail and then the third step of that would be who are they wanting to serve? And so, thinking about what are in order to serve a mission usually we're going to be working with other people and so thinking a lot more in depth about what are those people, what transformation are you offering to those people? And so that's really where it all comes together, because we find out the parts that are most relevant to our professional stories by looking at the moments of our personal stories that align with the needs of our clients and their transformation. So another way of saying that more simply would be you are often guiding your clients through a transformation that you've already been through, right, and so those key moments on your story, whether they were typically our transformative moments, are going to be through our lived experience, through our personal stories, the way that events in our life have unfolded and shaped us, and if a client is going to trust you to guide them through something, one of the ways that you can build trust is by letting them know hey, I've been there too.

Alyssa:

I love everything that you said here. You know that you work with your clients, with, and that's all that you share on social media. How do you kind of make that? Because if you give somebody a platform and you just go word vomit all over it, just it, it doesn't um, they don't know, kind of what the cap is or what they. They have all these stories, but like, I, I guess, walk me through like a, an example of like, so what I'm trying to say is that, like you know, if they have all these stories that you've worked with them on, are those the only stories that they show on social media? Or does that, or like, how does it work?

Lisa:

like I'm trying to think I love, I totally get what you're saying and I love that you're asking this because, um, is it okay if I answer?

Alyssa:

now, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, of course, because, like for for myself, like I'm more of like a logical person, so it's like I need guidance as to like what, how many stories? And do the stories they're, like they're aligned with my brand, and then, like, I'm trying, this is hard.

Lisa:

Yeah, yeah, I totally get what you're saying. Yeah, um, what I would say to that is I really like how I hear what you're asking for. I think what I hear you asking for is how do we make this really practical and easy on a day-to-day basis in terms of decision making, right when you're on the fly, and so, yes, so I think what I would say there is. I think it's so great you asked this because we started out with the big picture, like how do we decide what's relevant overall? So typically what we do with that step is we focus first on an about page. Now I know that might seem kind of like unrelated from social media, but I will connect it for you in terms of why it matters, because when we write that about page, it gives us a framework that's contained. So we're sort of like here's the story, start to finish, in terms of our purposes, for how we're going to present ourselves, to best connect with potential clients on website, but also to really honor yourself and your professional growth and your personal growth, to make your work meaningful for you. Sitting down and writing that story, kind of start to finish for one page, is a nice way of having something accomplished. So once that's done, we want to think about now how do we take this and break it into smaller marketing chunks, and so social media would be like one aspect of marketing and, as we talked about in the beginning, it tends to be the most personal. So what I would typically do with the client is we would make a bit of a social media plan. So we would say these are the needs of our clients, these are the types of clients we want to connect to what is going to be. To go back to the social media piece, we're working with these smaller marketing chunks and we need to decide who we're going to be speaking to. So then we can break it down into sort of like a point form list.

Lisa:

We may know everybody's story is unique. We may know we have five key aspects of our story that we really need to cover. It may be why did you choose your career path in the first place. It may be something personal that's happened to you that resulted in a lot of growth. It may be why did you have a change from what you were doing before to what you're doing now, and so what we would do is we would sort of, from a content planning perspective, break down a few key points that we could talk about with each of those, and we have to remember that we don't need to share the whole story every single time really big, complicated conversation about how do we plan content. But essentially, if I were working with a client, I would say these are our goals, these are our communication pillars, these are potential topics we have and I would say your best bet is to stick within that and that will help you feel that you've not overshared, that you're sticking within what's relevant. Now I'll take that one step further.

Lisa:

Sometimes it's useful to have a little checklist right, so we may, like yesterday I'll just use yesterday, yesterday, in terms of when we're filming. This was Mother's Day. Maybe we're going to go on social media and do something really candid for Mother's Day. I myself did that yesterday. I went on and I shared a post that was relatively personal yesterday. So in my mind, this is the checklist that I'm going to use for myself.

Lisa:

Am I sharing something that's healed or is this still an ongoing source of discomfort in my life?

Lisa:

Because if it is, I'm going to think twice.

Lisa:

Another thing I would think is do I feel completely safe or is there any part of me that feels exposed.

Lisa:

And if I feel overly exposed, I'm not going to hit publish, I'm going to dial it back.

Lisa:

Another one would be um, does it involve others? Like, is this my story to tell, or am I now sharing on behalf of someone else that may not be comfortable with it? And can I do so by keeping them anonymous or by not outing something overly personal for someone else? That would be a no-go for me. And another one would be like, let's just do one more recheck. Does this support my mission? Does this support my people? And if all those things are yes, like, or you know, if the ones that need to be yes, does it support your mission and your calling and your people? If that's a yes, then I think you know you're pretty good to go as long as you feel safe, as long as you don't feel overexposed. But if you ever feel like you're pretty good to go as long as you feel safe, as long as you don't feel overexposed, but if you ever feel like you're in that space of I feel overexposed, then I simply wouldn't do it.

Alyssa:

I love that, I like the idea of a social media plan and I like the idea of a checklist, because there could be a story that you want to share, but you're just unsure if it's appropriate for even the channel that you're working on, because I think, with Instagram is different than LinkedIn or YouTube or you know, and so they all, or TikTok, you know it's they're all very distinct and different, and so sharing might be different based on what marketing channel you're using.

Lisa:

Right, I agree, and I think also our clients are going to be so different. So if you're working with postpartum moms, the way that you speak to them, the way that you're, those types of stories you're going to be telling are going to be very different than if you're speaking to, you know, like corporate lawyers, going through a professional challenge or a conflict with a colleague or dealing with back pain, and so it's really about understanding as well and I think you touched on this in such a great way with thinking about the platform and also then who is on that platform, because I think that's sometimes what gets tricky. The thing with social media is that I think this is part of what can leave us exposed.

Lisa:

If we knew that only the specific clients that we want to hear our story will be reading it, we'd probably tend to feel pretty safe, but we may feel like, okay, and then there's that person I feel like I have a bit of tension with, or my, my uncle, bob, might also be reading this, and it's a bit of a place of like many, many people gathering, and so we can't always decide who gets to hear what we say. Right, in a context like social media, it's just everybody that's there can hear it. And that's, I think, the weird thing about that kind of communication. That leaves me feeling like the guidelines are useful, like would I be okay if my Uncle Bob read this? Or would I be okay if my neighbor down the street read this? Would that still leave me feeling safe? And I think those are questions that are really worth considering before we share.

Alyssa:

For sure I think, and just acknowledging that you know, for sure I think, and just acknowledging that you know there's those people who you know pass judgment and, can you know, can leave those really not so nice comments, and it just makes you, you know, that would question, even for me, that would make me question should I be sharing this, even if there's a possibility that someone could come across this and ruin what I just shared? So I mean and and this kind of goes back to this whole idea, that, or I guess the whole, not so much a problem, but if you're more of a private person and you want to share your story but you're not sure of how it's going to be perceived and like how I mentioned with the, the negative comments negative comments Can you walk me through like a specific example from your own work when you chose to share like a vulnerable moment, how has that shifted your relationship with your own clients?

Lisa:

Yeah, absolutely. I think this is a really important question. And the one other thing I would say just before I dive into my personal story, one other consideration that touches on maybe the first part of your question, which is like feeling overly exposed. Another thing that may be really important for your specific listeners in health and wellness is just, you know the professional guidelines that they're bound to work with it, and so sometimes that may mean that they can't share things like testimonials in the world of like psychologists, for example, and they can't obviously share client stories, and so there is a specific limit to what can and can't share. So, depending on the industry you're in, it may look a little different.

Lisa:

For me personally, um, I'm not governed by a body that says I can't share things, but obviously I keep client information confidential. I'm always really respectful of that, as I think all professionals tend to be when they're sharing. Never come across somebody that's not. But an example for me would be definitely one of the big pivot points in my life was um stillbirth, you know, the loss of my second daughter. Um, I had a a really horrendous um hemorrhage, at the same time a near-death experience, and it resulted in a very long physical recovery for me, as well as a very long mental recovery for me, a period of grief. That was really difficult and at the same time I was trying to run my business, raise a little girl, all the things, and then that led to also years of secondary infertility and things like that. So for me that was a life-changing thing that happened that obviously I needed to address with my clients and my community, because you can't just disappear, and I think it's really important for people to understand the things that we are facing. So for me personally, there's been the dealing with that. Like I said, is it healed? So what I shared initially looked different. Obviously, there's a part there that's just. I simply need to share that this is unfolding because this impacts my work hours and my ability to take on clients, things like that. But later on on my journey and I think this is what I see unfold for actually a lot of my clients it's now that I've lived through this I'm not thinking so much about how what I share is perceived Because, like to be honest with you, grief is a really tricky topic and lots of people don't necessarily want to hear on their social media feeds about things like stillbirth or grief and loss, like it's not a light topic, but what happened was that I started recognizing that this had this shift in my life, had also profoundly changed my professional trajectory.

Lisa:

It had also given me a whole bunch of new skills, interests, connections that made my career path look really different than it had before, and so for me that that became okay. I'm suddenly being asked to share tender stories, stories of other people's growth. I'm being asked to do projects, maybe for nonprofits, where we have to talk about trauma, we have to talk about grief, and they need somebody who can do it in a sensitive way, and so the fact that I'm sharing, that I have this experience is actually aligning me with the people who need what I can do now. It's moving me into a more meaningful place of work, but also a place that allows me to grow. And I read this.

Lisa:

I actually heard this really fascinating stat just this morning, which was that it was by Dr Dawson Church, and he said that for every person that lives through a traumatic experience that we would expect that they would develop post-traumatic stress disorder, ptsd Two out of three of those people actually don't develop PTSD. They develop post-traumatic growth, and so the majority of people who are facing big challenges. They want to grow from it, and even those that have PTSD, I would say, down the road there's always going to be that growth. So our careers are not immune from that. And I think that if we can allow ourselves to recognize, we can never control how others perceive us and we can never control who wants to hear our story, who doesn't, but we can control the meaningful ways that we share and we can control how we start aligning ourselves with the people who actually need what we are uniquely equipped to do now.

Lisa:

Aligning ourselves with the people who actually need what we are uniquely equipped to do now. And I think that that is where vulnerability becomes a really worthwhile trade-off, because now you're saying it's not about perception and it's not about fear. It's not about are they going to say something negative about me or how will they think about me. Because that really is kind of past stuff. That's sort of like how will people from my past perceive me? That really is kind of past stuff. That's sort of like how will people from my past perceive me? It's more about what am I aligning myself with now? That is right for the things that I can keep growing into and who are those people who want that story, need that story, can benefit from that story.

Alyssa:

I agree and I think that's beautiful. Thank you what you just said and I'm so sorry for your loss.

Lisa:

Thank you.

Alyssa:

It's really, really difficult and you know I totally agree with this. Like you know, I come from myself a traumatic childhood and I think I you know what that doctor had. That's a really good way. You know, I think I've, I think people who have traumatic lived experiences I I don't think I mean yes, I think there is some PTSD there, but there is a lot of growth I find that I am so much more resilient against.

Alyssa:

It makes me tough and I think if I didn't experience those things, it would have.

Alyssa:

I mean, I'll say that that's everyone's experience, but for me personally, I think it made me tough, it made me, uh, street smart.

Alyssa:

It made me more aware of myself and also thinking to myself like, as I grow and you know, am I becoming more like who do I want to be in this world and how do I want to treat other people?

Alyssa:

And so I think it just made me more self-aware, which is an essentially growth and maturing and realizing and underneath all of that, I think that aligns great with you know, my mission, my values, and I think I like what you said about your stories, become not just something to fear, to share, but it can help others heal as well, um, I mean for my, I think I would say for my business um, I don't, I don't see, I don't haven't really talked about the traumatic parts of, of, you know, my life and my lived experience, but I can see how that experiences could be. It could bring opportunity to connect with other people, because I haven't really explored that part yet. But I think for my listeners, who you know are health and wellness professionals they have experienced sometimes severe traumatic experiences that sharing could be the door that opens a lot of that opportunity with helping their clients right yeah, and so I think so too.

Lisa:

I think so too, and I think we often, when we're going through something, um, what we want more than anything isn't necessarily an expert who can talk to us about a topic. What we want more than anything is someone who's been there and and who we can trust, because we know that they have been there, they've gone through it and that gives them a deeper, a deeper level of understanding than somebody who has only read about something in the book.

Alyssa:

And it's funny because I have I mean, I know a lot of clients who say that you know their clients. I think, with health and wellness professionals, a lot of their clients go to you, know they go to doctors and the doctors just dismiss their feelings. But when they actually talk to the health and wellness like the holistic nutritionists or the dietitians, they finally get the answers that they're looking for, because they feel seen and heard.

Lisa:

Right. Yeah, I think that's a really valid point, absolutely.

Alyssa:

And so what would you say are the most common pitfalls you've seen kind of practitioners encounter when they try to be vulnerable, and how can they kind of avoid that, I would say, those pitfalls, while still trying to, while still feeling like they're speaking from an authentic experience?

Lisa:

Well, in terms of the work that I do with clients, I will say this whenever we launch I've never had anybody come back and say I wish I hadn't shared that. I've never had anybody say it came back to bite me or anything. I think that the people who do this work and use this process, they tend to come back and say things like I had a client that found me online today and they knew I was the right person for them. I'm thinking about a naturopath client of mine, for example. They looked at a whole bunch of sites and they knew right away that I was the right one for them. They kept coming back to my site and a lot of that is because of the story.

Lisa:

What I see outside of that in terms of people who maybe haven't done this work and who just start kind of sharing off the cuff and I only see this kind of this is just my own lens.

Lisa:

Being on social media.

Lisa:

I sometimes might see things that I feel like like if somebody over shares, it leaves me with the feeling that I'm uncomfortable.

Lisa:

You know, which I think is really interesting. I think that we can perceive um, when somebody has overshared because they're not fully grounded in the information and it may come across as overly raw, for lack of a better word, but when we use these guidelines and we sort of think about, is it healed, what's the purpose, why am I sharing this, then we actually are sharing for others rather than sharing for ourselves, and I think that's a key difference. Right Like when somebody goes on social media and shares something really raw, there can be an element of I'm sharing this for me and that's okay. I'm not criticizing people who do that, but from a professional perspective, that might be the difference where it's like am I sharing this for the benefit of others to grow from, and does it feel like it's coming from a grounded, centered place of me being a healing practitioner or an expert or whatever it is you need to be in your professional role, versus am I just sharing this?

Alyssa:

to vent. Wow, I love this because, from what I've learned from storytelling is that you should try to tie it back into what you're doing for others. You know, I've seen many clients, or even just like influencers, who are just talking about themselves but they're not tying it to what they do and it's completely random and I'm just thinking, well, okay, like that, but I don't see like the relevancy, and I and I liked that point that you said like they're sharing about themselves but not the purpose is for others. So that's a really great point there. And so, as we kind of conclude this interview, where can my listeners find you online and can you tell me more about your services and what you offer?

Lisa:

Absolutely yes, thanks for asking. So they can find me at two places Well, several places, but the two that would probably be easiest are wonderspacecreativecom, which is my client site. So I feature a lot of my client work there and all of my services related to branding, communications and design, and then my personal site, where I do share a little bit more. For example, if someone wanted to check out, like, how did she share her about page? That would be lisaboriemillercom. And then my about page is there and you can see, for example, there I do share unique aspects of my story and I touch on some of the grief and loss that I've been through, while kind of weaving it through a professional narrative. So even if someone's just curious about, I'm not saying I've done it perfectly at all, that's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying if after a conversation, someone is like, what does that even look like? That's how I approached it for myself and in terms of the services that I offer it for myself and in terms of the services that I offer, I do things like a really easy place to start. I have a couple of really easy places to start. Maybe I'll start there.

Lisa:

One would be this quiz that I have that's called the brand magic quizcom. It's a really fun quiz that helps you identify the why of your work, and so what I find is a lot of people that want to do brand development work or this brand story work. They come in thinking about what is it they do, and so that is really important. So you might say I'm a naturopath or I'm a therapist Great but a lot of times people have assumptions about the why that they do the work. And what I've learned from this quiz is I did it myself. I found myself really surprised because I've always, you know, centered my education on creativity. I've worked in the creative industry for a long time. I assumed I would be the creator, but what I realized was I'm actually the healer. So my own quiz surprised me, and it made so much sense for me when I think about this conversation that we're having today and the transformative aspect of storytelling, and I think that that's something. So it's just a two-minute quiz on my website. It's completely free If someone's curious. I've had therapists that actually wind up being innovators, and so it just gives you a little bit more information and then the results will walk you through. How can you specifically integrate those meaningful aspects of your story into your brand and it gives you examples of types of imagery you could use. So that's just a really free, easy place to start of types of imagery you could use. So that's just a really free, easy place to start. And then I do also do like an audit for people, if they simply have questions like hey, lisa, this is my site, do you have any feedback? That's like a $49 offer, super accessible for people, and then for larger offers.

Lisa:

I do branding for solopreneurs and we have a package set up for them to really understand and look at how do we build out your identity and do all the things we talked about today, and so that can be for solopreneurs. Or then we have custom packages for smaller businesses or organizations as well, and that's where we look at things like not just the language aspects of the story, but then how do we share those visually? How do we share those? Because branding, I think, is one of those areas that we tend to think about as 2D. We tend to think about it as like marketing, but branding is really who we are, and how do we share that across everything we share? How do we share that for client experience. How do we share that through our client-facing spaces? How do we share that? And so doing that work is something that I love to do, and those are a few of the doorways that people can find me and enter into that if they're interested.

Alyssa:

That's great, amazing. Well, thank you so much, lisa, for coming on to the show today. I will make sure so, if you look at the show notes of this episode, you're going to find all of the links to everything Lisa, so you can connect with her directly. And thank you so much, lisa, for sharing your strategies with us.

Lisa:

Thank you so much, lisa, for sharing your strategies with us. Thank you so much for having me.

Alyssa:

I really enjoyed speaking with you, alyssa yeah, for everyone listening. Thank you for tuning in. If you love this episode, please message me on Instagram my handle is Alyssa Bellisario OBM and share your thoughts on this conversation and how it landed for you. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you next time on another brilliant idea. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Brilliant Ideas. If you love the show, be sure to leave a review and follow me on Instagram for even more insider tips and inspiration. Ready to bring your next big, brilliant idea to life? Visit AlyssaVelsercom for resources, guidance and everything you need to start creating something amazing.