Taz Thornton reflects on 2022

Taz Thornton is a business visibility and personal empowerment coach, as well as a best selling author and speaker trainer. She has spoken on business stages across the UK and Europe, educating and motivating on topics ranging from personal brand and client creation to overcoming adversity and turning vulnerability into a superpower. She lives with her wife near Lincoln.

2022 has carried the usual mix of challenge and opportunity and I'm grateful to say it has been a year of growth for me.

Why is it, at the end of each year, we’re all so focused on the negatives instead of finding positives to celebrate? I choose to celebrate! Here are a few of my 'wins' this year:

• I have created and launched a new group coaching programme, trained another bunch of awesome motivational business speakers, celebrated a decade of running fully-booked spiritual empowerment programmes, spoken at a number of events (virtual and in-person), presented at my fourth TEDx event, this time as compere, taken on new 1:1 coaching clients and helped them to grow their businesses and brands.
• My revenue is up, I’ve enjoyed some brilliant media attention thanks to my PR, Fiona Scott of Scott Media and I’ve got new projects and speaking engagements in the pipeline for 2023. 
• On a personal note, my wife Asha and I are now planning our 25th anniversary celebrations for next year. We can feel a party coming on!

What’s important for business owners and solopreneurs to realise is that this level of success and brand awareness only comes with plenty of commitment and effort.

You’ll need to be clear about your message, your products and your audience - what’s the story behind your offering, what do you do and how does that benefit people?

And then? Well, it doesn’t matter how brilliant you and your services are if nobody knows you exist.

We’ve seen a big sea change towards short-form video as a personal brand and promotion tool this year, with TikTok growing in popularity, Facebook and Instagram prioritising video over imagery and YouTube launching YouTube shorts.

This does not mean long form and written content are dead or dying, but it does mean you’ll need to get comfortable with your face on camera and brush up on your presenting skills if you want to capitalise on all the new media opportunities arising. 

Though Clubhouse is still going strong, and we’ve seen LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook come up with their own audio offerings, I predict video will continue to be where it’s at in 2023. 

I also suspect we’ll see a return to the popularity of longer-form video… but longer form might mean 1-3 minutes, as opposed to 15-30 seconds.

And it won’t all be business messaging… people will want to see the lighter side of life from you as well, not to mention those hero journey tales of triumph over adversity and milestone life lessons. 

More and more, I believe consumers will want to prioritise investing in people they feel they like, know and trust, so if you’re one of those still dragging your heels and wanting to keep business all businessy, you might find yourself lagging behind more forward-thinking competitors.

People don’t want to buy from a brand - they want to buy into a story, a movement, a personality, so it’s time to strip away that starch and start showing the world who you are, what drives you and why you have such a passion to make a positive difference.

Think about the big brands people hold at front of mind… depending on your age, you might think Virgin, The Body Shop, BrewDog, GymShark, Apple or Microsoft, to name just a few. 

What do these all have in common? People aren’t just buying into a logo… they’re buying into the ethos and story of the human beings behind the brand. 

We need to stop being so obsessed with everything being B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer) and recognise that, in reality, everything is H2H - human to human.

That vibe, I believe, will only strengthen during the coming year. 

For more information visit Www.TazThornton.com