KO Your Brand

Katrina Owens (00:01.646)
What's up guys, welcome back to another episode of KO Your Brand, pulling punches, micro episodes for fame ready entrepreneurs. And today, ooh, I hate to do this, but if you have a hotmail or a Gmail or an Outlook or a me.me email address,

I'm pulling a punch directly at you today because if you're building a personal brand, a highly profitable personal brand, and you're still using an email address like that to grow your business, you're basically telling people not to take you seriously. And we've got to stop. We've got to start acting like we are the professionals that we expect to be paid as. So in this quick little micro episode today,

I want to tell you exactly why this matters and

Katrina Owens (01:18.158)
So if you're tuning in today, I want to tell you exactly why this matters and why it's hurting your credibility and what you should be doing instead. So you can start growing a highly profitable personal brand too, okay? So, okay, let's get into it. So why does it matter? So if you're a coach, a consultant, speaker, content creator, you are the brand. I mean, if you're listening to this,

Obviously you're trying to feel famous for your work on some level, right? You want to start growing your personal brand using public relations. So why are you still not taking this one very important aspect seriously? Every time you send an email, content creators, I'm looking at you when you're pitching brands. If you're pitching a brand and, or, know, if you're pitching even a PR opportunity and you're landing in that inbox with

a Gmail or a Hotmail address, you're basically saying like, hi, I want you to pay me a lot of money, but I still am not investing money into my own brand. And that should send you directly into the absolutely not pile. A non-branded email address is the equivalent of showing up to a speaking gig in sweatpants. And let's be honest, if some of you kind of come to me and say, but

sweatpants are my brand. You're in the wrong place, babe. Because wearing sweatpants to a speaking gig, that's not going to give you the perceived value that you think it is. So the speaking gigs that I have my clients prepare for, you know, we're looking polished, we're looking presentable. So do not land into somebody's inbox like you're wearing sweatpants at a speaking gig.

And I want to talk about this today because I actually was featured in a business.com article recently that talks about this. So I just wanted to share a little bit of context. had shared that business.com feature as well as some of my insights on this on Instagram and on threads and people actually really loved it. So I felt like we should make it a little bit.

Katrina Owens (03:39.69)
of a micro episode and talk a little bit more about it. I know that there were some of you out there that as soon as you saw that feature, you went and upgraded your Google workspace or whatever it is. And I'm so proud of you. Dexter's barking. Sorry if you can hear that. Okay, shh. I know we're mad at the people. I know we're so mad at the people that are still using free email addresses, unbranded email addresses to send their emails, but it's okay.

Let's stop barking. Shh.

Katrina Owens (04:19.882)
Okay, shh, texture, stop. Shh.

Okay, I think he's done now. taking it back to what I had said inside the business.com article, if you haven't read it, I'll link it in the show notes. But I basically say, if you want to be recognized as a trusted, credible expert in your field, you need to have the brand assets to match. A branded email address, in addition to a website, by the way, are crucial elements for establishing an online presence and showing your audience that you take this work seriously.

We're going to get into the importance of a website on a different day. I actually think we need to dedicate a long form episode to that one. So stay tuned. I'm realizing just how many personal brands actually don't have websites and it's really hurting my heart a little bit. So that's a longer conversation for a different day. But this micro episode is perfect to inspire you to just go upgrade your freaking Google workspace already. So

A branded email address, it signals professionalism and makes you easier to remember. But from a very technical standpoint, it also helps you from landing in the spam or junk folder. Yes, really. If you're sending emails, especially a mass amount of emails from a Gmail address or a Hotmail address, your credibility is not as high and it just looks spammy. So...

other people's inboxes may recognize you as such. Now, this isn't to say that if you buy your own domain and get your email address set up and you don't do the proper backend stuff to make sure that your domain credibility for whatever domain you're purchasing and sending from, it's called domain authentication. If you don't do that part for your own domain, you're also fucked.

Katrina Owens (06:24.174)
But this is just all to say do things the right way, hire professional support when you need it, and just make sure you're getting the proper pieces in place for your business. Because sending your emails from like a Gmail or like a Hotmail address says to your audience, I'm not ready. This is a hobby. I'm not invested. You could be so amazing at what you do, but if your infrastructure doesn't match,

People second guess your authority. And this is what we're here for, right? This is what I teach you, how to grow your brand authority. And this is one of those pieces, you know, in one of the earlier episodes when I talk about how to use public relations to grow your business, I talk about brand awareness and brand authority. And I say there's only two ways to receive PR opportunities. And the first way is to have a press-ready personal brand. Having...

the infrastructure, the email address, professional email signature, all of those things, that's part of having a press-ready personal brand. I know it's not that sexy. I mean, having like a beautiful branded email signature to me is like pretty sexy, but some people might think it's boring, but it's so important to growing your brand. This is especially true if you're reaching out to press, to podcast hosts, to event coordinators, even to clients.

Like what does it say about you if you're sending your clients monthly invoices for thousands of dollars from a Gmail address?

Like to me that would say, okay, I'm charging you all this money, but I'm not making investments into my own business. Sorry. That's what it would say to me. So, okay, here's what to do instead. So if this is you, if I'm speaking directly to you right now and you're feeling a bit too seen, cause that's what happens, right? I'm hitting a nerve and now you're feeling really seen and exposed. It's so easy to rectify this, okay? First of all, buy a domain. If you have a website,

Katrina Owens (08:31.328)
a branded website for your business already, you already have one of these, so use it. So right now my email address is, should I be saying my email address on this podcast? I mean, it's super accessible anywhere else, but it's my name at knockoutdirective.com. But you know what? As my personal brand evolves and as Knockout Directive, my agency is no longer the front-facing piece of my brand.

My domain actually has to shift too. So I'm in the works of changing over my domain and my website and all of those things to.

Katrina Owens (09:12.142)
I'm just going to repeat that again, Heather, because it looked like maybe my internet got interrupted.

Let me go back to.

Katrina Owens (09:26.678)
So right now my email address is mynameatknockoutdirective.com. Knockout Directive is obviously my agency, but as I grow my personal brand to be more more visible and I leave my agency behind, because I no longer do that work, I know that there has to be a shift in my domain and my email address as well. So I'm actually working on all of that behind the scenes and slowly making that shift. Obviously I can't just deactivate.

my email address that I've been using in my business for the last two and a half years. So there needs to be a bit of crossover there. But I wanted to be transparent about that because that shows you the work that I continue to do in this space on my own brand too, because it doesn't just stop once you've got it dialed in, it's constantly evolving. So once you have your domain, you set up a Google workspace, a Zoho mail.

and Outlook, literally any email provider has a paid option where you can use your own branded domain and make sure that you're getting that domain authenticated too, just so your emails aren't landing in spam folders. Personally, I think your email address should be yournameatthebranddomain.com. This gets a little bit funny and it's actually what I'm dealing with right now.

Obviously the domain that I'm eventually going to switch to is katrinaowens.com. Katrina at katrinaowens.com doesn't really have a great ring to it. It feels a bit redundant. So I'm working out what that will look like. Yeah, stay tuned. We're navigating that one. Yeah, I'm not sure what that's gonna be. Obviously there's probably going to be a...

hello at katrinaowens.com. That will be my front end admin though. That'll be an email that I don't monitor that somebody else does. And then I'll have one that I use to communicate with clients and all of that. So I'm still figuring out what that looks like, but what's really cool for you is you get to be a part of that investigation and of that evolution with me. And once you have that email address set up, you need to have a signature. So

Katrina Owens (11:43.468)
I see a lot of people making their signatures on Canva. That's great, but that Canva email signature is an image. And that also means that you're likely ending up in the spam folder a bit too often too, especially if it's an email that you aren't typically like emailing that often. So highly recommend not...

using an actual image email signature. I actually spend like $10 a month to use Scribe, which is an email signature platform. Yes, it's paid. Another example of me investing in my professional personal brand, right? I pay for an email signature that looks professional and isn't a bulky image and it has clickable links and all of that stuff in it. there's that's just another example of

how I make these investments into my personal brand and you should too. Okay, so that just about wraps up this episode of Pulling Punches. Like I said, a branded email address is your line in the sand. It's you saying, I'm not just showing up, I'm showing up like the expert I am, which means I get to get paid like the expert that I am. So.

if you've been waiting to start showing up like the authority in your space, this is your sign. You need to act like the authority in your space. So start acting accordingly and upgrade that email inbox and upgrade your branded email address. So if you want to dive a little bit deeper into this topic, I will link my business.com article in the show notes. You can give it a read. There's also some great action items on

how you should be choosing your email provider and all of that. So highly recommend checking that out. If you liked this episode, please make sure to rate and review on Apple and on Spotify. If you're watching on YouTube, leave me a comment and subscribe. And you can follow me over at Katrina Owens PR on Instagram, follow the podcast, KO Your Brand on Instagram too. And I will see you next week.