We spoke to Debbie, of Debbiedooodah, about her inspiring coaching business, unique brand and distinctive voice. Debbiedooodah helps people to build their dream businesses with clarity and confidence.
Hi Debbie, tell us about you and how Debbiedooodah started.
I’m a marketing and mindset business coach and I support entrepreneurs to build businesses they love. I help business owners define their own version success, create business goals and then work through any blocks they may have.
I’m a part time lecturer on digital marketing at Nottingham Trent University, so I also help my clients with the social media and digital skills they need to get their business seen and to feel confident building relationships with their customers online.
Aside from this I co-host the Women Who Create podcast and am about to launch another Business Funsize Podcast. I co-founded the Blue Stockings Society, a network for female entrepreneurs with 1.8k members. And I recently started a new social enterprise ‘The My Way Project’ following the success of the award-winning entrepreneurial toolkit I co-authored with Dr. Isobel O’Neil from Nottingham University and Alexandra Hardwick from Line and Dot Creative.
I started my business in 2013. I’d just spent 2 years starting up a new social enterprise in Nottingham and I knew I wanted to do something of my own. Prior to this I’d spent 5 years on income support as a single mum with cancer. I knew life is short and precious and I wanted a quality of life I didn’t feel I could get working for others. Plus, I wanted to choose when I could stop working so I had more time to spend with my daughter Robin. Children get 13 weeks off from school a year!
You have a really distinctive brand. Why and how did you chose the branding and brand personality that you have?
Well for me I need to have a brand that fits my personality as Debbie Clarke. Debbiedooodah is really an extension of me. I wanted to create something fun and playful. A brand that would inspire others and make them think that they could do anything.
I wanted people to discover me online and visit my website and that to mirror the experience they would have if they met me in real life or if they got to work with me.
My brand is recognisable for 2 main elements, the name debbiedooodah which people say they will never forget. And for the use of the colour yellow throughout everything I create, even down to the clothes I wear every day.
I’ve had people tell me they put a yellow scarf on in the morning and remembered they had to call me. It’s amazing that I’m in their heads, in their bedrooms when they’re not even looking at the world wide web.
I think a good brand starts with values, a strong mission question, a golden nugget of why you stand out, an understanding of why people should care about you and some recognisable elements that makes the brand memorable.
And then there’s the authenticity and consistency that ties everything together.
When I first entered the world of self-employment I started a business called Heard Media. It sounded clever, it played with the word heard and had cows in the logo, but it wasn’t me. I still felt like I was working for someone else – so I scrapped it 2 years in and started again with debbiedooodah.
Which brands do you look to for inspiration?
I love John Lewis. I love the experience and how they make each of their employees part of the company. To me John Lewis is a middle-aged woman, who always has what I need, is always pleased to see me and doesn’t mind if I change my mind. She also looks after the planet and the people she employs to look after me.
I love Hiut Denim. I love the reason they exist, the way they call their staff the Grandmasters, the promise they make to reduce the impact of denim on the environment. I love that it’s all part of the Do Lectures and they want to change the way we think about the world and the way we interact with each other.
Do you have a clearly defined set of brand values?
Yes, this is something I bang on about all the time and part of the work I do with my clients is to help them elicit their values and then work out how they integrate them into everything they do.
If we’re doing stuff contrary to our values we’re never happy. So understanding what they are is key to running a happy business.
My top 3 values are Expertise, Fun & Friendships
And this underpins everything I do. I chose them because they are important to me, each one supports the other, but without Expertise I wouldn’t be able to have fun in my business and create those relationships and friendships that have been so important to me building my business.
How are these values reflected in how your brand speaks?
Well I do try and share my expertise with my audience and clients as much as possible. I write a weekly blog, record regular podcasts and go live on my social media. I try and support my audience to grow their businesses and inspire them as much as I can.
I also make sure that I’m having fun in everything I do, life is too short not to have fun. And I aim to make my coaching fun. My brand is pretty playful and fun, my name debbiedooodah is certainly not serious, the images I share are sometimes verging on the silly and the pop of yellow underlines that I’m not taking my self too seriously!
As for friendships, I co-created a network for women in business called Blue Stockings and the reason behind that is to create a community of women who can support each other. I really want to create lasting relationships in this business world. And honestly all of the exciting projects I get involved in are because of the relationships that I’ve developed over the years.
All of my clients get access to a private community and we have fortnightly group coaching calls – so much benefit comes out of bringing people together.
Did you work on developing a tone of voice for your brand at the outset or did it develop gradually?
It’s definitely developed gradually. I think most things do. You test things out, you try them on for size, you see what people’s response is. As business owners we should always be adapting to what’s happening ‘out there’, we never want to be stuck in what we think we know.
For me it’s ever-evolving. Although I think I’m going to be wearing yellow until I die, and I expect everyone at my funeral to wear yellow, so that’s a pretty stuck piece of branding there!
Can you sum up your brand voice in 3-5 words?
Well – 2 of those words are already my values! So Friendly, Funny, generous and inspirational – well I hope to be!
Is that tone inspired by anyone or anything in particular?
It’s just inspired by me really. And giving myself permission to explore that part of my personality and being brave enough to put it out there as a brand.
I am inspired by Dolly Parton and David Bowie though, they are/were both uncompromisingly themselves, while always adapting and are/were both very good at business
Who is your audience?
My audience are solo entrepreneurs around 3+ years in business. They’re looking to expand and develop their business and want to explore what is possible for them, what success could look like and a wanting a strategy to get them there.
How do you communicate with them?
Ohh, literally everywhere! LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Facebook groups, Instagram (and all it’s various elements), Pinterest, Medium, email marketing, networking, speaking at and attending conferences.
Do you have a strategy for your comms and social media?
Yes, I have mapped out the main themes that I want to talk about. And then there are elements that I do every single week.
Every week I repurpose content on a Monday. Every Thursday I write a blog post, that is shared everywhere and becomes an email newsletter. Every Friday morning I go live on Facebook and LinkedIn with Bertie Cord for 10 minutes, which also gets published to Instagram. I also have a weekly podcast with Amy Phipps called Women Who Create (although we’re taking a little break as she’s had a baby).
I share repurposed content and new content on Twitter using Buffer, about 2/3 times a day.
That’s my staple bread and butter.
And then if I have something to say and feel like it will add value I might post inbetween that schedule.
I call it ‘Think like Vogue’. In that Vogue magazine isn’t running around wondering what to post each month. That have a set plan and schedule that they fill. The more we can nail this stuff down, the more space we have to think creatively. Because the basic stuff has been taken care of.
Do you have a specific target customer in mind when you are writing your comms?
Yes. I’m writing to a woman, mid 40’s who is running her own business, and has a few self-limiting beliefs that are holding her back. She is super able to run her business but can’t get over those self-doubts. She knows she wants more, and that’s not necessarily about money, but a sense of freedom and choice in her life.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve got for other businesses communicating with customers?
Get to know your customers. Understand what they want. Dig around a little and find out about their lives. Work out how your product helps them. Talk to your customers. Spend time with them. Be curious. Find out where they are. What makes them click. Don’t be frightened to try things out. Find out what success looks like for them and how you and your products can get them there and sell them that. And add value to the conversations that are already out there. Listen as much as talk.
