Podcast Episode 005 w/ Special Guest Jessica Zweig

Note: This is podcast 5 in an ongoing series. If you're just joining us, you can find the first four podcast articles here.

Don’t Act Like You’re Not Impressed

This week, we’re introducing you to Jessica Zweig Fisher, a Chicago-based Personal Branding Expert who originally pursued a career in acting, then went on to start an online magazine for women that was hugely successful. Now, she’s onto building out her third act, an agency called SimplyBe.

I first met Jessica via Twitter in early 2017. She took notice of my work with The Ascent and, before long, she was contributing pieces of her story to the community. Since then, we’ve had many interactions and discussions around the ideas of storytelling and building your Personal brand, and she and I have become fast friends.

I’m so excited to be sharing her story via The Ascent podcast.

Jessica’s journey starts off with her graduating from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a degree in acting.

Self-admittedly, she was a young, impressionable girl at the time and was “super insecure,” which ultimately led her to conclude that she wasn’t living the healthiest of lifestyles.

But, upon graduation, she lived the actress life for about 5 years.

Funny side note about me: I actually went to school for theater. I went to college and got a degree in acting. And I always joke that when I graduated I knew how to do 2 things really well: I knew how to wait tables and be dramatic.

Not much else.

What she didn’t realize, though, at the time was that she also was inadvertently prepping herself for her future career.

“I say that being an actor is one of the best preparations in being an entrepreneur because you are your own product, and you’re constantly auditioning and pitching yourself.”

Having always loved things like writing, entertainment, and media, by the time she was 26 years old she came up with the concept for an online magazine.

I got to the point where I would see my agent call on my phone and I would feel dread as opposed to excitement for an audition.

I started exploring the city of Chicago more with my friend, and we used the internet and online resources constantly to try and find different places to go.

One day we were just like ‘Why don’t WE create a resource? Why don’t we start a food blog or a fashion blog and make it all in one?’

Literally in 48 hours we made it happen and I knew I was never going back into acting. I knew nothing about marketing or business. I am a total classic case in faking it until you make it.

She had no experience in business or entrepreneurship at the time, but that didn’t stop her from raising a quarter of a million dollars in private equity. The magazine was called Cheeky and the site was CheekyChicago.com

“We were around for 7 years and we built it up to an audience of around 100,000 local readers. We worked with major brands as our clients for that whole time.”

When she left Cheeky to start SimplyBe., Jessica realized something else she had inadvertently created: a powerful personal brand.

Accidents: They Tend to Happen

When Jessica left Cheeky, that’s when her ‘aha!’ moment happened. It felt like everyone wanted to hire her because of what she had built.

Clients came out of the woodwork, and within a week, she already had a full book of business for her brand new agency, SimplyBe.

“I always say that I built my own personal brand, Jessica, very much by accident, and then by design.”

She realized then the power of building a personal brand, and having equity in your story and your name.

As a personal branding firm, this couldn’t exist even four or five years ago. These social tools are the most effective ways to advertise and target your consumers.

“You don’t build a personal brand on social media. Social media is a conduit — it’s your microphone. But you have to really understand what your message is.”

When potential clients approach Jessica from a place of “I want to be Instagram famous,” she replies in kind with “I’m not your agency.”

Yes, this can have an impact on your bottom line, but we really want to help them impact the people around them — their culture, their industry, or the future generation. The people I work with have that mentality and that’s why we’re successful.

Jessica’s goal for her company is to be a business without borders. She wants to be doing business globally with people while traveling around the world, and diversifying her company’s products is how they plan to get there.

We had a killer, KILLER 2017, but to be frank, we’re setup like a traditional agency. While I love it and think client work is necessary and keeps you sharp, it’s not what I want to hang my hat on.

In the coming months, they’ll be pivoting their website and productizing a lot of what they do, opening things up as digital tools with inexpensive pricing.

“That’s why it’s called SimplyBe. It’s not easy but it is simple.”

We at The Ascent wish her all the best.

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Interested in documenting your journey? Sign up for my personal branding course and I’ll help make you a better storyteller (launching soon):