S5 E18: Being SEEN with Hannah Spence
Celebration time, friends: with this week’s Hannah Spence interview, we’ve now had the entire Higher⚡️Voltage speaker lineup on “Let’s Talk About Brand”!
Former teacher Hannah actually has THREE brands (which we of course talk about): her tutoring business Prep4Prospects, her multiple-award-winning social media agency Clockflower Solutions, and her own emerging personal creator brand, Miss Be Seen, where Hannah takes the lessons she’s learned about visibility, puts them into action, and teaches you how to do the same.
How did Hannah leave the literal glitter of primary school, for the virtual glitter of the social media business, for the once-again-sometimes-actual glitter of seeing and being seen? Well, you’ll just have to listen to this week’s episode!
(And if you’d like to Be Seen yourself, come listen to Hannah’s talk on visibility at my Higher⚡️Voltage event for solopreneurs at Battersea Power Station in London on January 22, 2026!)
In this episode:
Clockflower Solutions (business brand) vs. Miss Be Seen (personal brand)
“The minute HMRC said, this is a business, I thought, wow, I have a business!”
Prep4Prospects to Clockflower Solutions
Showing up in new spaces, and in different ways
Putting on her own events
Finding her different audiences
Putting your energy towards events that matter–and making them worth it
Hannah’s SEEN framework
What Hannah brings to her clients (and events…and life!)
The penny drop
Hannah’s hidden talents (and mine!)
Higher Voltage’s opening number?
Find Hannah:
❤️
Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand
S5 E17: Getting VISIBLE with Sapna Pieroux
We’re continuing the Higher⚡️Voltage speaker party with today’s guest, my good friend Sapna Pieroux!
Sapna Pieroux is a brand consultant at InnerVisions ID, the bestselling author of “Let's Get Visible!”, and creator of the VISION branding method. She guides us through all of that today, as well as how she built her own personal brand, what she was doing before, and what's coming next on Sapna’s own brand journey (hint, it's going to become much, much easier for you to work with her!).
Sapna will be speaking at my Higher⚡️Voltage event for solopreneurs at Battersea Power Station in London on January 22, 2026! She’ll talk about building your business brand alongside your personal brand–which is something you can also hear more about on today’s episode.
In this episode:
The differences between a personal brand and business brand when someone is their business
Should I lead with my personal brand or should I lead with my business brand?
What Sapna was doing before and how it led to her current business, InnerVisions ID
Motherhood, depression, and retraining to be an interior designer
“I did his branding and…he came back with seven business cards”
Publishing “Let's Get Visible!” in 2020
The campaign and award that got Sapna’s book noticed
Sapna’s VISION methodology
BrandVisions.AI
How to approach creating a business brand vs. a personal brand
What Sapna will teach you at Higher Voltage
What Sapna ultimately delivers to clients on a deeper level
What lights Sapna up in her work
What Sapna won’t include in her personal brand
What Sapna would do if she were guaranteed to succeed
How Christine and Sapna initially bonded
Find Sapna:
Join the BrandVisions.AI beta
Come party with The NotWorkers
❤️
Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand
S5 E16: The “coach-shaped” Janine Coombes!
I took a little bit of an unplanned hiatus from Let's Talk About Brand, but now I'm getting back into it!
Today’s guest, Janine Coombes, is one of the incredible speakers at my Higher⚡️Voltage event for solopreneurs, happening at Battersea Power Station in London on January 22, 2026 (Dani, Sophie, and Teresa are all speaking too, and I’ll be having Sapna and Hannah on in coming weeks!).
(Janine’s been on before, but the show was a slightly different format then, so it felt like time for a new episode!)
Janine also happens to be someone I actually work with—she’s helped me detangle a lot about my offerings and how I present them! I am one of the "coach shaped people" she helps, and in this interview we get into what that means, how she helps, and how her first book, "The Easy Yes," came about.
We also talk about Janine’s personal talents, what lights her up about doing the work that she does, how she came to do the work that she does, and also how she became known for it. Because it's great if you're brilliant, but if nobody knows who you are or what you do, that's not gonna do you a whole lot of good.
In this episode:
What are "coach shaped people"?
Why does Janine enjoy working with “coach shaped people” most?
The turning point that led Janine to working for herself
“What I missed for an embarrassingly long time was actually having something solid that people could actually buy!”
Gaining visibility…but without offers
“Perhaps wear a set of pearls…”
“The Easy Yes” offer matrix
“At the ready point, what does it look like?...create content that calls to that and then you can work back”
What's next for Janine
What Janine hopes to leave the Higher Voltage audience with in January
What Janine truly delivers
What gives Janine a real sense of satisfaction in her work
“The C word” (it’s not cancer…or c**t)
What she’d do if she were guaranteed to succeed at it (I love this one! -C)
Find Janine:
❤️
Come see Janine speak at Higher Voltage!
Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand
Check out Janine’s 2023 episode:
S5 E15: The ATOMIC-ally awesome partnership of Andrew and Pete!
Andrew and Pete became best friends 15 years ago at uni, and have never held a job beyond running their own business together. How did they quickly build to the point where, in under a decade, they’d spoken on huge international stages, amassed a community of thousands, and created one of the largest conferences in the UK?
Well, you'll hear it from them, but a huge part of it is sheer gumption. They talk about how they made big asks, swung for the fences, and leveraged other people's kindness in the best possible ways. And of course, the way they received that kindness was by showing up with value first.
We’ll also hear about how they went from highly-paid speaking events and growing their global community to now hosting one of the UK's largest conferences for small businesses, ATOMICON.
(ATOMICON25 has now passed, but you can grab your early-bird ticket NOW for ATOMICON26! Use my affiliate link and I’ll buy you a drink in Newcastle…)
In this episode:
“...that very first moment where I walked into the kitchen and Andrew is putting away his Crunchy Nut Cornflakes in the cupboard…”
First business (motivational texts!)
Branding agency
“We'd throw chocolate across the room and we'd do little fun presentations and poems and wraps, and we'd do like, you know, some silly things to get attention.”
From local networking meetings to speaking at Social Media Marketing World in San Diego.
Big Domino Theory
“We stalked those 10 people religiously for about two or three weeks..”
Organizing their first big conference (online)
“We were just gutsy. We had nothing to lose when we were 24 of putting ourselves out there.”
Growing the Atomic community
Focusing on doing one thing really remarkably at a time
Launching Atomicon…with an expectation of 80 people
Being really deliberate about putting on the best event possible, and never getting complacent
Their current growth plan for the foreseeable future
What lights Andrew up
What lights Pete up
What people get out of Atomicon beyond what’s on the tin
Moving from a personal brand to a brand-brand
Find Andrew and Pete:
ATOMICON26 (affiliate link)
❤️
Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand
Subscribe to theLet's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!
Check out Andrew and Pete’s 2017 appearance on my livestream, Social!
S5 E14: Mari Smith’s Human Design
When one hears the name “Mari Smith,” the natural word association is usually “Facebook.” But after this interview, it may well be something different. Perhaps “relationships,” “connection,” or “Human Design.” Because as you’ll see, there’s so much more to Mari than just Meta mastery.
Anytime there's an update to Facebook (or even a rumored feature!), thousands hightail it to Mari Smith's profiles to see what she has to say about it.
But how did Mari establish such authority in the world of Meta marketing? How did she build her name professionally to become “the” Facebook guru? Why was Facebook the platform she chose to build her career on?
What did she do before Facebook—and what might she do after?
As with all good, aligned personal brands, the same motivating forces have guided Mari throughout her journey. Primary among those forces is her fascination with human relationships.
Relationships got her to the United States to begin with. Relationships enabled her to explore a variety of career paths. Relationships have always been the core of her interest in Facebook; she does love tech, but the thing that has always fascinated her most about Facebook is its power as a connection tool.
But as you'll hear, Mari's also looking more at the impact of social media on mental health, relationships, and society—for better and for worse.
This is definitely an interview that you have not heard Mari give before. We delve into her personal story, her varied professional background, and her unfiltered takes on Meta, marketing, and what’s next.
In this episode:
Leaving Scotland for San Diego (with no money or job)
Saved by the Cake!
Bartering for legal help
“From cakes to lawyers to a mobile disc jockey…”
SEO Master
“My love and my tech”
“Mari, you can't be Miss Email Marketing, technology, internet and relationships—you gotta pick a lane!”
Discovering Facebook
Her first Facebook Marketing for Professionals course
The power of early Facebook networking (and the DMs!)
“I just love to teach and to explain!”
Human Design and 10-year cycles
“I'm going all in with this.”
Mike Stelzner and Social Media Marketing World
Why Mari has remained focus on organic social media
Facebook vs. other platforms
Mari’s current career transition
“Mental wellness, mental health, and specifically, ironically, social media's impact and isolation and loneliness and depression…”
“I just know how to market!”
What has driven Mari in all phases of her life and career
Why people trust her
The public, the personal, and the private
Find Mari:
❤️
Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand
Subscribe to theLet's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!
S5 E13: The Electrifying Sophie Lee
A chat about storytelling and empowerment (as well as using those powers for social good!) with fellow disco-ball-loving, collaboration-not-competition, sparkly badass Sophie Lee of Electric Peach! ❤️
Today I'm talking to a fellow personal branding person (which means so many different things to so many different people!): Sophie Lee, founder of Electric Peach!
Sophie doesn't just want to help people who are interested in making money. She’s putting the powerful brand storytelling tools she’s learned how to leverage over her career into the hands of people who are trying to change the world for the better: mission-driven, impact-driven businesses and female founders with something to say.
(She is also a fellow disco-ball-loving, collaboration-not-competition, sparkly badass; you can see why we get along!) ❤️
One of the themes we discuss over and over in this episode is about what it means to use one's voice. Sophie is all about empowerment of people's voices, specifically people who want to make positive changes in the world, and helping them harness the power of communication to do just that. Hearing Sophie’s journey makes it clear not only that she really knows her stuff, but also that she’s finely honed her personal values, her sense of self, and her own commitment to using these tools for good.
In this episode:
Teaching English to the Czech government
Joining the Disney “cult” in Shanghai
“Journalism” in China
The UK press’s misery machine
Accidentally becoming a marketer
The entrepreneurial bug
A toxic relationship, and a new business partnership
Becoming known for UGC (user-generated content)
Building The Joyful for actual purpose-driven businesses
Becoming Sophie Lee and Electric Peach
Communication instead of polarization
Empowering people to communicate their messages with passion and clarity
What Sophie shares
Find Sophie:
❤️
Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand
Subscribe to theLet's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!
S5 EP12: The Persistent Amanda Webb
Amanda Webb isn’t a pushy person—unless she absolutely needs to be, in which case she’ll keep showing up until she gets what she wants! We go through Amanda’s backstory, from film crew, to hamper-maker, to her current career as a data and analytics consultant, to parse out the strategic moves that helped Amanda to get known.
I’ve known Amanda Webb of Spider Working for years. While she started as a digital marketing generalist, Amanda has really built her name for data and analytics in recent years, especially Google Analytics (for which she is a certified trainer with Enterprise Nation)
But, like many of us, Amanda didn’t start out in marketing, and she shares how her time in the film industry and a small business owner helped her build the tenacity and skills that eventually helped her launch her own successful consulting and speaking business, becoming globally known as an expert on how to make sense of analytics and succeed with data-driven marketing strategies.
Of course, we also discuss what lights Amanda up, what she truly delivers beyond just marketing insights, and what cats have to do with any of it (spoiler alert: not much, and she likes it that way!).
In this episode:
“That's me: I am going to be the next Mike Lee!”
Hustling to get those union tickets signed (including in the pubs)
The importance of persistence
“Let's face it…I'm never going to be the female Mike Lee.”
“I know! I'll start a business!”
Death of a Saleswoman
“You’re not coming up on Google…”
Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging
An opportunity in recession
“I was everywhere”
Getting more widely known via video
Irish Blog Awards
Agorapulse, Social Media Marketing World, Meta and Google (via Enterprise Nation)
Helping people feel clever
Cats, knitting, film, and boundaries
Find Amanda:
❤️
Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand
Subscribe to theLet's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!
S5 EP11: Flying Anyway with "The Queen Bee" Dani Wallace
Dani Wallace defines herself by the feelings of empowerment, joy, and safety she brings to her community—not by her rough upbringing in Preston’s council estates, or her bouts with domestic violence and homelessness. Like the humble bee, she “flies anyway,” and helps countless others to do the same through her event, The Big Festoon, and her work as a speaking coach.
Today's guest is The Queen Bee herself, Ms. Dani Wallace!
Dani is a speaking coach who runs the I Am The Queen Bee community and The Big Festoon event.
She delivers confidence. She delivers encouragement. She delivers badassery. But what she truly delivers, at the root of all she does, is to deliver the message that success can feel safe.
Her event, The Big Festoon, certainly does that. Her community does that. She's even got a documentary film, “The Festoon Effect,” about what she does and the message she's spreading.
Dani definitely comes across as someone who is fully confident in the value of her own message and in her own authority to do what she's doing out here–but, as you'll hear, she's just like the rest of us deep down. She experiences self-doubt and energetic crashes. But she also recognizes the importance of the message she’s here on this earth to deliver, and the empowerment the sense of community she creates brings to others.
In this episode:
The council estates of Preston
Traveling the world as a performer
Call center training
Domestic abuse and homelessness with two children under the age of two
“Life is either going to continue happening to me or I'm going to happen to life.“
Gigging singer to early live-streamer (and mascara seller!)
“Show up, wise up, rise up”
Safety in success
Sharing her learnings
An “overnight success” 10 years in the making
Overcoming daily self-doubt
Creating what she needed most via The Big Festoon
“I’m really famous…”
Fly Anyway Foundation
Collaborations
Releasing her own film
Smashing the patriarchy
Telling your story while bringing actual value to the world
Creating that “joy space” that helps cement actual learning
Owning her origin story without leaning on it
The one thing about Dani’s energy you’d never guess!
❤️
Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand
Subscribe to theLet's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!
S5 E10: How I Built My Own Personal Brand
I’m back with a solo episode, giving you the details on how I built my own personal brand visibility from roughly 2016 through the present! From journalist to social media manager to personal branding expert to US-to-UK ex-pat, I’m sharing everything I can recall that helped me to get my name and brand out there!
I started the season back in September with a solo episode–and I realized I didn't really give you as much of the goods as I really should have. I did tell my professional story, I went through all of that history, and I even answered my own “searching” personal branding questions about my “why.”
What I didn't do is really get into the nitty-gritty of how I built my professional presence.
So we're going to take a walk down memory lane as to how I grew my own personal brand visibility, and hopefully some of these tactics can help you build yours as well.
In this episode:
The beginning of Christine Gritmon Inc. in May 2016
“Be visible doing the thing that you want to be known for doing”
“Say yes to opportunities!”
How I pivoted my personal brand
“People who knew, liked and trusted me were up for coming along on this new journey because I focused on transferable skills and transferable values.”
Deciding who I was going to learn from
Networking before, during, and after events
“Don't think that speakers are these untouchable people who are on this whole other plane of existence from yourself. Go talk to them!”
“A slightly outdated tactic: I live-Tweeted events…”
Becoming a conduit to information.
Put yourself in the conversation and connect with others who are also part of that conversation
Rebranding (again!) to personal branding
“Take a look periodically at making sure everything is aligned” the things that you're offering, the audience you're offering it to, the audience you have, the things that you are doing. Make sure that it's all pointing in the same direction.”
“What worked in the US isn't going to work here…”
“Don't be afraid to realign, but make sure that you have something built on the fundamentals, the foundations that people have come to know you and trust you for, those transferable skills.”
“Don't be afraid to show up.”
❤️
Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand
Subscribe to theLet's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!
S5 E9: Keeping It Real with Teresa Heath-Wareing
Online business building coach Teresa Heath-Wareing brings her joyful authenticity to the pod as she discusses her growth from teaching mums at a play barn to taking some of the world’s largest stages, what she’s learned along the way, how she draws her (generous!) boundaries, and what truly inspires her.
The word “empowerment” comes up a lot in this interview with online business-building coach Teresa Heath-Wareing! Teresa is all about empowering people, including herself, to live the lives they want to lead via building their online businesses.
I've known Teresa for a long time, and her messaging has been remarkably consistent over the years. We discuss how she built her business up to the level of reputation and success she enjoys now, how she chooses where to place her energy, and her constant commitment to bringing excellence to everyone she encounters. We also discuss her decision to release a more personal podcast earlier this year and how she decides what she does and doesn’t share as part of both her personal and business lives.
In this episode:
Teresa’s first personal brand as an employee
“I basically started from fear and having my back up against the wall and knowing I need to make money…”
“They sort of borderline stalked you!”
What made people buy in to Teresa in the early days
Learning from the experts
Getting clients from speaking…then not getting clients from speaking
Saying yes to opportunities
“...doing the small stuff and working your way up to it”
Hustling: gift bags, selfies, and flying 5,000 miles for coffee
Choosing what opportunities to say yes or no to
Why marketing?
Delivering empowerment
Her sobriety journey and “Losing Parts Of Myself” podcast
What she will and won’t share
Find Teresa:
Instagram
LinkedIn
teresaheathwareing.com
Your Dream Business podcast
❤️
Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand
Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!
As mentioned in the podcast, check out Teresa’s appearance on “Social” back in 2019:
S5 E8: Ophira Edut's Star is Bright!
From hand-hewn street fashion as a teen in Detroit, to the glossy NYC magazine industry, to her present career as half of the AstroTwins astrology duo, Ophira Edut's personal brand has lived through many different incarnations (most of them in tandem with her identical twin sister, Tali). We go through Ophira's many professional adventures and identify some key threads that have always guided her, as well as attracted the notice of others.
You know I love having a chance to speak with non-marketers!
(Then again, is there truly such a thing in the world of personal branding?)
Ophira Edut has held many titles: teenage streetwear creator, artist, writer, graphic designer, web developer, magazine editor, feminist anthologist, author, and globally-acclaimed astrologer, just to name a few. We discuss her organic journey between all of these worlds, her motivations, key moments of recognition, and of course the companionship of her identical twin sister, Tali, with whom Ophira shared almost all of these adventures.
The biggest message of Ophira's story is: do what you do, put your creativity out there into the world–and if opportunities arise from it, say YES to them!
Hear about:
Growing up an identical twin in a Middle Eastern family in the Midwest
Winning allllllllll the contests
Denim Rebellion and Double Vision
(and Urban Outfitters and Raven-Symoné)
Getting “Sassy” in NYC
Hues Magazine
Back to NY & getting online
Astrology as personal insight…
…and personal brand…
…and science.
Gloria Steinem!
Ms. Magazine
“Adios, Barbie”
Teen Vogue and the birth of the AstroTwins brand
“Astro Style”
Astrology as a conduit for connection
AstroStyle.com
Syndication
Elle Magazine
Why Beyonce and Jay Z are still together (it was in the stars!)
Bringing individual skills to a joint brand
Tapping into commonalities
Providing hope and guidance
Find Ophira:
Astrostyle.com
“The Astrology Advantage”
Instagram
TikTok
❤️
Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand
Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!
S5 E7: The fabulous Fab Giovanetti!
The vibrant Fab Giovanetti leads us through her beginnings “hiding behind” a health and wellness community, to taking center stage as a marketing podcaster, expanding beyond herself to create Alt Marketing School, and heading up brands as a fractional CMO—all while retaining her trademark sense of fun!
Fab Giovanetti bounds onto any stage she’s invited to “excited and excitable as a Labrador every single day”⏤and it’s highly contagious!
On this episode we discuss how Fab transitioned from hiding behind a community she’d built for health and wellness professionals (and being one herself!), to stepping into more of a general marketing and small business leadership spotlight: first as a podcast host, then as the founder of the Alt Marketing School online learning academy. Now she’s taking it a step further as a fractional CMO.
Fab’s had several touch points over the years where she’s had to rebalance the boundaries and overlaps of her different positions: as a marketer, as a community leader, as an educator, and as her own vibrant self. Through it all, she’s forged a career all about helping people via stronger systems, more effective marketing, and, above all, a sense of fun!
Listen for:
“Big Labrador energy”
Fab’s start as a business and marketing coach for health and wellness entrepreneurs at Health Bloggers Community (later Creative Impact)
Becoming known via community events
“I was kind of hiding behind the company because it was more about community, about others…”
Alt Marketing School Podcast
“I'm going to say the P word: ‘pandemic’”
Sharing her journey as a founder and learning in public
Becoming the go-to for marketing business support
“Helping making marketing better for marketers”
Working out the Fab, the person, and the personal brand, and the expert would play within Creative Impact? And how did you work out the differences and or similarities of how Fab, the person, would factor into Alt Marketing School?
“I'm clear about my mission I'm clear about what I want to do and I'm clear about what I enjoy doing within that as well”
“The energy that I bring in is so essential to the school…I embody it by being an absolute doofhead.”
Why systems are so essential
Showing up
The boundaries and overlaps between Fab and Alt Marketing School
Becoming a fractional Chief Marketing Officer, and adding that to the mix
The drive to help others
What Fab truly delivers to people via Alt Marketing School
How long ago were the 80s?
Her husband’s fans
Find Fab:
LinkedIn
Instagram
fabgiovanetti.com
altmarketingschool.com
Fab’s Books!
❤️
Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand
Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!
Fab’s 2022 appearance on “Let’s Talk About Brand”:
My appearance on Fab’s “Alt Marketing School” podcast:
S5 EP2: Making Magic!
An inspiring conversation with Mario Marchese, aka Mario the Maker Magician, about his journey from teacher, to birthday party magician to the stars, to selling out theatres across the globe⏤all while growing ever more true to his inspirations, his motivations, and the message he has inside.
One of the really interesting things about doing hundreds and hundreds of interviews, as I have done, is that you can always find something else to hit with them. You never have the same interview twice. And so today we have on my friend Mario Marchese, aka Mario the Maker Magician. (See previous interviews⏤some with him, some with his amazing wife Katie⏤at the end of this post!)
When I first got to know Mario Marchese, aka Mario the Maker Magician, nearly a decade ago, he had already achieved some success as a children's birthday party magician (including performing for many NYC celebrities). Mario now has a full stage show, selling out theatres and festivals in NYC, London, Edinburgh, and Adelaide. He's won awards from the Magic Castle and has appeared on Sesame Street, Blue Peter, and The Tonight Show.
Here’s a bit of what we cover in today’s entertaining, inspiring conversation between friends:
How Mario went from teaching elementary school, to performing as a weekend magician, to running his own business (alongside his brilliant, visionary wife, Katie Marchese);
Learning how to bring more of his genuine self (and his personal style) to his shows;
An overheard comment that changed his life;
Building his own show, quite literally;
The celebrity moment that helped his dad finally understand;
Shifting gears from living rooms to theatres (and learning how to fill them!);
The four minutes of every show that make it all worthwhile
What it all means to Mario (and, hopefully, to his audiences)
Why less is sometimes more
Find Mario at:
https://www.mariothemagician
https://www.instagram.com/mariothemagician
Books:
The Maker Magician's Handbook: A Beginner's Guide to Magic + Making
Robot Magic: Beginner Robotics for the Maker and Magician
❤️
Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand
Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!
Past interviews with the magical Marcheses:
S4 Ep12: Let’s Talk About A Personal Brand Journey with Michael Stelzner
Some brand journeys are worth taking a look at to see what we can take away from them to build our own brands. And no one is a better example of that than this week’s guest, Michael Stelzner. In today’s episode, Mike is going to walk us through his brand journey from being the white paper guy to the social media guy and into his newest mission. So many great lessons to be learned!
Some brand journeys are worth taking a look at to see what we can take away from them to build our own brands. And no one is a better example of that than this week’s guest, Michael Stelzner.
He is the reason that many people have gotten into social media marketing as he is the ringleader behind all of the education that Social Media Examiner brings! However, his personal brand started well before he stepped into the social media industry.
In today’s episode, Mike is going to walk us through his brand journey from being “the white paper guy” to “the social media guy” and into his newest mission. So many great lessons to be learned!
Tune in as we talk about:
[00:00] Welcome Michael Stelzner
[04:28] How white papers launched Mike Stelzner's personal brand
[10:25] How did Mike pivot from being "the white paper guy" to social media?
[14:30] How did Mike build up his contacts in an industry he was relatively new to?
[16:45] How did Social Media Examiner Start?
[18:47] How did Mike move people from online content to an in-person conference?
[22:42] How does Mike balance three brands?
[25:37] How does Mike find up-and-coming industry voices?
[29:33] What should you do if you are asked to be on stage?
[30:25] What characteristic does Mike think makes someone successful?
[32:00] What is Mike's current mission?
[34:11] How to connect with Mike
Contact Michael Stelzner
Website: Social Media Examiner
Twitter/X: Michael Stelzner
Facebook: Michael Stelzner
Linkedin: Michael Stelzner
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Christine Gritmon:
Hello, I'm Christine Gritmon, and this is Let's Talk About Brand, my weekly show where I interview a guest expert every single week about a different element of personal branding. Please make sure that you subscribe on your podcast player of choice and leave a review if you like it and come back every single week where we'll be interviewing fantastic guest experts.
Today's guest expert is actually someone whose work really got me into the social media industry. Mike Stelzner is the founder and CEO of Social Media Examiner, which also runs the Social Media Marketing World event.
And so really when I first started getting into social media, it was very self taught, you couldn't study social media in school when I went to school. It didn't exist. So when I got into it, I really said, you know what? I want to geek out on this. I want to learn all that I can, and I want to find out who the right people are to learn from.
So Social Media Examiner was there for that purpose. They get the best experts to provide the best information on the best topics. Lots and lots of friends of mine now have written for Social Media Examiner. Of course, I didn't know them yet. And when I went to social media marketing world for the first time in 2017, it just blew my mind wide open.
I still use things every single day in my work that I learned at that very first event and a lot of the most valuable relationships. that I have in my industry, a lot of which have turned into very close friendships, can be traced back to people I met at Social Media Marketing World. So I'm very excited for today's conversation.
Mike Stelzner himself, he's very clearly the man running the show. He hosts his own podcast, the Social Media Marketing Podcast, of course, which informs Social Media Examiner content. He always opens up the Social Media Marketing World event. He's very, very actively present in his business.
So today we're going to talk about how he became the Mike Stelzner. It's not the way you might think. There's actually a pre story that he's going to get into. So his own personal brand, how he leveraged that to build Social Media Examiner and Social Media Marketing World. And the building of those properties also were helped out by leveraging the personal brands of experts in the social media marketing field. So we'll talk about that.
And a lot of people's careers have greatly been like launched or accelerated as personal brands by appearing on Social Media Examiner and at Social Media Marketing World. So we're also going to hear from Mike, a man who has seen a lot of personal brands grow over the years about some tips for growing your personal brand.
What's going to do it for you, how to make the most of opportunities that you get, and really what goes into a strong personal brand.
All right. So without any further ado, let's bring him on. Mike Stelzner, come on down.
Michael Stelzner:
Hey, I wasn't expecting that applause. Great to be on the show.
Christine Gritmon:
We like making our guest stars feel like rock stars here on Let's Talk About Brand. And you know all about that because actually one of the big things about Social Media Examiner and especially social media marketing world, both brands that you have created and that your personal brand has almost become synonymous with at this point.
One thing they're great at doing is really creating a great experience and making even first time attendees or readers feel like they can be rock stars too. So today we're going to dig into how that came to be. So just to start things off you don't get to start an industry juggernaut, like Social Media Examiner, out of nowhere.
And you actually had built a personal brand before. All of that. So I'd love it if you could kind of guide us through your, I know about one of your earlier personal brands, perhaps there are more, I don't know, but I'd love to hear your experience. The first time you really knew, oh, what I have here, even if you didn't use the words personal brand, you knew you were you had something going.
[04:28] How white papers launched Mike Stelzner's personal brand
Michael Stelzner:
First of all, thank you for having me on the show. I'm super excited to be here and talk about this topic. I had an agency, a creative agency in the early two thousands, I was helping tech companies with all things related to logo design, corporate branding, trade show, displays, white papers product materials themes, messaging, research, all that kind of stuff.
So I was kind of a full service creative agency in the early 2000s. And then I wrote this little thing called how to write white papers, a white paper on white papers, and it was mostly a lead generation mechanism. And it was a 10 page PDF. I had the first couple of pages available, and then you could fill out a form and get the rest of the PDF email to you.
And in that document, I outlined all the things to think about. And who to look for and when looking for someone to hire and so on and so forth, turns out that that little thing was downloaded 75,000 times. And as a result, writing that resource that ranked in Google search, number one on how to write white papers, I ended up ultimately crafting a book called writing white papers.
Christine Gritmon:
You see what works and you blow it up. You follow what's working.
Michael Stelzner:
And that book got me a lot of notoriety. I was already speaking at events and stuff, but the moment that that book came out, all of a sudden, everybody wanted to interview me on their shows. Eventually I started securing spots one, two, three, four, five, six, eight, nine, and 10 on Google search for white paper.
I own, you know, I had people from overseas thinking I sold white paper, like rims of white paper. Cause they didn't know, obviously things, but I grew my brand pretty rapidly. And before you knew it, I was working with some of the largest businesses in the world, like Hewlett Packard, Motorola, Dow Jones, Microsoft, Qualcomm, and.
Just tons of huge companies, FedEx, and I was known as the guy and and then eventually I ended up experimenting with social media and I started writing about it, and I grew a newsletter, 20, 000 people, by the way, and I started.
Christine Gritmon:
Was this newsletter about white papers?
Michael Stelzner:
It was, yeah, and I started a website called white paper source and I curated people in the industry. It was all about bringing together. And then started talking about social media from the lens of how it could be utilized. In the 2007, 2008 time range
Christine Gritmon:
Very early days.
Michael Stelzner:
To help marketers get exposure for these things that they created called white papers.
And all of a sudden it just blew up and then, the rest of this history, I started a social media examiner. I wrote a book called launch. Which was my second book. and there was a whole bunch of principles that I'll potentially talk about and go on a little bit today. But yeah, I was really well known as a writer and then I went into the social world and I was not known at all.
And everybody knew my brand because this time around, I didn't want it to be all about me. I want it to be about something I created. And eventually when I went to my publisher and said, I wanted to write this book called launch with Wiley, they said, who are you, we don't know who you are. And I said well, I self published my first book and sold 10, 000 copies on my own.
And that's pretty impressive. And I have this website over here and I got all this. Hundreds of thousands of email subscribers. And eventually they said, okay, we'll do it. But it was an interesting journey.
Christine Gritmon:
Yeah, I'd love to dig back and and just so that white paper on white papers was downloaded just so many times how did people find out about that to begin with because you just had a small agency you were probably known, you know within Certain industry clients whatever industry you worked with. What did you do to even get that white paper to make that kind of impact to begin with? Was it your personal brand?
[08:22] How did the white paper get so much traction?
Michael Stelzner:
Because I was a writer, I knew how to write good, things if you will. Like I know how to write good stuff. But I knew I needed to start dominating search. So I went to Google pay per click back in the day is what it was called. And I, I paid the top amount of money to have my white paper be the thing that everyone clicked on.
And then eventually what ended up happening back then. Is there was a lot of bloggers out there and they started referencing it and linking to it. And before you know it, it ranked number one in Google search for how to write a white paper. And there was a lot of people looking to write white papers because in the early two thousands. Prior to the two thousands, there were big media companies that controlled all the eyeballs, right?
And this was an era when you could self publish information, and it was disintermediated media companies and a lot of big tech companies back then had to go pay magazines while they were seeking to learn how to create these things called white papers, which were like informative and persuasive.
And it was a hot thing and it was growing. And I just happened to be the only guy talking about it. And then eventually I became the lead guy talking about it. I mean, there were other people talking about it, but what they didn't understand was the value of creating something free and valuable so that ultimately, you could separate yourself from the pack.
Christine Gritmon:
So now, as a marketer, we draw lines and connections between things for a living, in a sense. It's a big part of the job. White paper. It's very corporate background, all of that. And it makes sense to me. how getting your white paper seen involved leveraging social media.
And as you said, a white paper is ultimately a valuable piece of free content, which is also how you could describe some good social media content. So the line is clear to me, but I imagine your audience maybe didn't see the line as clearly necessarily. So you have this strong personal brand, you're a white paper guy, now all of a sudden you're talking about social media.
So how did you communicate that switch? And how was it taken by people who followed you as the white paper guy? Like how, how would you describe, you know, what some people who came along on your journey perhaps didn't in terms of making that brand pivot?
[10:25] How did Mike pivot from being "The white paper guy" to social media?
Michael Stelzner:
First of all, part of the story is that there were thousands of out of work journalists who were looking to get into corporate business writing that were amongst my followers. And this is an important part of the story. I helped a lot of journalists figure out a new career because they were losing their, their business because traditional magazines and newspapers were going out of business.
So a lot of them had pivoted into writing white papers and they were followers of me, right? And they were listening to all the things that I was talking about in my newsletter that went out every week to 20,000 people. As I started noticing social media was emerging. I started putting more content into that newsletter and more and more people started to be curious about it.
And then I launched an online event. And I recruited this relatively unknown guy who headed up this thing called wine library TV, and his name was Gary Vaynerchuk to be my opening keynote.
Christine Gritmon:
Oh, wow.
Michael Stelzner:
And, and I also had Mari Smith and a number of other people that were emerging stars in the world of social media. And we did an online event. And I charged for it. And this was before I started social media examiner and it blew up. It was a huge success. I interviewed Gary and and it was just early days of social media.
And I started to see the opportunities and I should mention, I launched social media examiner in 2009, but I did this event in 2008 ish, 2009 during the great recession. This was a time when there was a lot of people out of work. They were looking for the next big thing. And social media was it, right?
So I was there, I was early. And I think the key thing that I did in the world of social, that was the connection point that allowed everything to pop in the white paper world. I not only wrote a book, but I released an annual study called the white paper industry report, something along those lines.
So I decided to launch the social media marketing industry report. And I launched the very first one, and you may be familiar with it.
Christine Gritmon:
Yeah, that was not a thing back then. It's hard for a lot of us to remember just how recent ubiquity of social media is. There was not a social media report back then. How did you even make that happen?
Michael Stelzner:
There wasn't even industry, there wasn't even an industry. I called it an industry. So I called it the social media marketing industry report. And first of all, it went nuts. Cause I already knew if you talk about social on social, everybody's going to share it, right? That was the thing. So I knew how to do research, right?
Cause I had done that in my agency and I had done it for my white paper industry stuff. And a lot of people in the industry for white papers wanted to know what was the going rates? What were people doing? They wanted to know what the trends were. So I took that very same thing, published this free resource called the industry report.
And it was, it went nuts. It trended everywhere. Back in the day, there was these things called dig and all these other things, and it trended there and it, it got massive exposure and it helped me grow, a pretty big reputation right out of the gate. So that got the interest of the social media industry.
And then all of a sudden I'm speaking at events, I'm invited to speak at events that I've never been considered to speak at. Before, because I'm the guy that writes the white papers, I'm the, I'm a reputable source in the writing world that writes white papers, which are perceived to be these reputable things.
And here I am coming out with this industry study. And that was the catalyst that connected the dots.
Christine Gritmon:
that's huge. So first you did the social media industry report. Then you did the online event. And then you wound up launching Social Media Examiner. Is that the correct order?
Michael Stelzner: Correct.
Christine Gritmon:
For this event, you had some big names there. Gary Vaynerchuk maybe wasn't as big a name then as he is now, but you had him, you had Mari Smith, you had a whole bunch of great people.
Two fold question here regarding those people's personal brands. First of all, how did you find them? Because I think one of your great skills that most people would recognize is that you are good at identifying talent. How did you Find these people who are in this industry that you are fairly new to, who you knew would be valuable to your audience.
And then the other thing is, how'd you get them?
[14:30] How did Mike build up his contacts in an industry her was relatively new to?
Michael Stelzner:
Okay. So in my second book launch, which I launched specifically to rebrand myself as not just the white paper guy, I introduced a concept called the elevation principle. And this principle is what I employed to get what we were about to talk about. The principle is great content plus other people minus marketing equals growth. OkaY. So what I was doing is it was already publishing great content and it was well recognized by some of these people. And I was already known as a content creator that had a reputable reputation. The other people side of it was really important. In the world of writing white papers and in the blogging world, I was already known.
Cause I was writing on big blogs, like copy blogger, Brian Clark's blog. And I, I was well known in the pro blogger community, which is Darren Rouse's and a lot of these people. So I had people in my network who were active on social before I was. And I went to those people. Jason falls as someone else also who was, who, who was following me in the white paper world and was early into the social world.
And I started talking to them and it was easy because they were within my network. They already knew who I was. And I, and I started befriending them and I started asking them, who do I need to know? And Denise Wakeman said, you need to know Mari Smith, Mari Smith. I went to an event in San Diego. I sat close. I talked to her afterwards. I offered to interview her because I was doing these little interviews before I had a podcast, which were cheesy little video interviews that I did with a portable like camera thing. And then we just became friends. And the idea here was for me to provide value to them first, right?
Which is to give them exposure to the audience that I already had. And Mari introduced me to Gary V. And that's how that happened. So it was really all about really developing key strategic relationships with people that are passionate on the rise and really excited about what's about to happen and bringing something to the table that they maybe don't have, like a bunch of people collaboratively working together to create a cool experience.
And that's that's how I did it in the beginning.
Christine Gritmon:
So then, being a writer, you of course moved this to a content creation platform, to Social Media Examiner.
[16:45] Starting social media examiner
Michael Stelzner:
When I started this social media examiner, I started as a multi author blog, which is a concept back in the day where I wrote once a week and I recruited five or six other people to write once a month. So what was happening is I was publishing a lion's share of the content in the beginning.
And because I had a really good network of people like a gal named Casey Hubbard, who wrote the book on case studies and I had helped her a lot. She agreed to write case studies for free for the first year. So she was doing case studies and we just created a movement. I called it a movement.
We all did it for free. Nobody was paid. It was just going to be like, we're going to come together. We're more powerful together than we are apart and we're going to create something that's going to be big. And you all are going to get benefits from it. And I made it clear, they're going to get exposure, which will lead to opportunities and so on and so on and so on.
Eventually it got to the point where I had so many inbound inquiries that people wanted to write that I didn't have to write anymore.
Christine Gritmon:
Now, I love that you came, you showed up in this new industry with an audience already, which is really huge. And, and you mentioned that journalists I really love that part because I'm one of the many people who came to social media through journalism. It's, it's absolutely highly relevant. It's all about communications.
So your audience came with you because it was still relevant. You brought the value of your audience with you so that those people could get the exposure, get all of that going. Now, you had the website, then the event was born.
You had already done an event, but I'm, I'm curious as to how social media marketing world itself was born. Social media marketing world, by the way, is unquestionably the main source for my connections in the social media industry. It is how I have met the most valuable people who have introduced me to the most valuable people.
It is a juggernaut, but obviously I came into it once it already was a huge amazing thing. So I'd love to hear sort of how that grew and why that grew. Why, why you decided to make it an event? In addition to your blog.
[18:47] How did Mike move people from online content to an in-person conference?
Michael Stelzner:
I had already been doing online events for years. I started social media examiner monetizing it by having the social media success summit, which was the name of the event that I had alluded to earlier. And I had a Facebook success summit and a blogging success summit and just all sorts of summits, it was all online. And I was traveling to Cleveland cause I was keynoting with Brian Clark on the stage together for Joe Polizzi's very first content marketing world. And it was at that event that I looked around and I'm like, there's 600 people there and Joe was really calm.
And I'm like, wow. I never really, I've spoken at a lot of events, but I've never seen the founders calm. And I'm like, why are you so calm, Joe? And he said well, there's people you can hire that can handle all the operational stuff. And I'm like, ching, button went off in my head, started taking pictures, started imagining what I was going to do.
And eventually really the idea was born to experiment with having an an in person conference. Now, in order for me to move people from a big newsletter and a blog to physically showing up at a conference was not going to be an easy task. So I knew that I needed to a Sharpen up my personal brand and be come up with a creative way to get people to actually be willing to travel from all over the world to come to this event.
So the first thing I did was I started my very first podcast called the social media marketing podcast. And I started that now, almost 11 years ago, I'm almost 600 episodes in. And what I strategically did was I'd already developed great relationships with people and I decided to bring them on the show and start interviewing them.
And you know this because you're a writer, but good writers are good interviewers. That's the key, right? You have to know how to get the right information out of your guest. So I started that show, that show popped. It turned out to be one of the top three business shows. I was right up there with Dave Ramsey for years in all the business category.
And the show was called, the podcast was called social media marketing. The conference is called social media marketing. So I was recruiting people on the show that I knew was going to speak at social media marketing world. And the idea here was to introduce them to my audience in this new medium called podcasting for me, at least.
And then eventually these people that were listening to this podcast would love these people and want to meet them in person. So that was the hypothesis. And we ended up having 1100 people at our very first event in a hotel in San Diego. And the rest is history.
Christine Gritmon:
Oh my goodness. You've got three brands at this point in the story. You have the Social Media Examiner blog. And I'd actually put the podcast in with that as well. The Social Media Examiner content family. You've got the event, Social Media Marketing World. And you've got you, Mike Stelzner. So first of all, am I, am I correct that the white paper guy has totally ceased to be something that you're growing, maintaining at this point in the, in the story, where we're
Michael Stelzner:
I, I. I delete about two years into the social media examiner journey. I deleted all the websites, which I was nuts. I still get messages every once in a while from people that bought that first book saying, Hey, still helpful for writing. I will know. But I deleted everything. It was cathartic. It was amazing.
I just abandoned that brand. I have copies of it here, but it doesn't exist on the internet anymore. And and I went all in. So yeah, that's true. I am definitely that that brand is gone.
Christine Gritmon:
That's incredible. Oh my goodness. And that's something that's terrifying for people when they pivot. So on the one hand, you did it two years in. On the other hand, you waited two years to do it. So I think that's smart too. You saw that this new horse you were back and really had legs there. So you've got three brands that are all really cooking now.
You've got the Content brand, you've got the event brand, and you've got you. How did you, and how do you, sort that out? How have you decided to arrange these three brands, and was it tricky? Did you struggle to figure out how to do it at the beginning? Is it constantly evolving? How do you manage the three?
[22:42] How does Mike balance having three different brands?
Michael Stelzner:
Yeah. So first of all, obviously I wrote the book to bring my personal brand back into the equation, the book launch. And that really catapulted my personal brand. And that was about two years into the social media examiner journey. Everything happened with that. You know what I mean? It blew up everybody expected that I was a social media expert and I never really was right. The book launches really more about how to use content to launch anything. Realized that I didn't want to be famous. Despite the fact that I got calls from every news station, you can imagine every time something happened.
Wall street journal, new york times, all that stuff. I turned it all down. Some of it, I said, okay, too, but I just didn't want to get involved with that side of it. So I was careful about how to leverage the personal brand. My personal feeling is I only use the personal brand specifically if it benefits the business brand.
The big side of my personal brand is obviously my podcast. There are people that know my voice, but don't know my face. And it's funny and funny stories happen all the time, but I'm very much an operator of my business. So I'm very much an in the trench kind of person making everything work much less about the guy has to be super famous and everybody has to bow down to me.
That's not how I roll. So I leverage my personal brand to strategically get people on my podcast and I strategically get people on my podcast because our relationships with people. Cause that's strategic to the business. And I want to lift up the next generation, if you will, or the up and comers that are about to be the next Gary Vaynerchuk's and the next Mari Smith's.
So I use it very strategically to accomplish a larger business objective. Every once in a while, I come out and I try to leverage my personal brand to launch a course and I realize it's dangerous distraction for me because then it takes me away from my true mission, which is to run this company that I own.
So it is, it is one of those kind of things where we know that I am very well known. And we know that a lot of people want to listen to me. I always open my conference. I'm always the opening keynote that is very strategic. It's always research based. That is very strategic. But but really, I am first and foremost a CEO of a media company and secondly of a personal brand.
Christine Gritmon:
Love that. Yeah, it sounds pretty well sorted. And certainly, wherever the Mike Stelzner name goes, the Social Media Examiner name goes as well.
You mentioned how you also uplift other people's brands, and that is absolutely something that you're known for as well. I'd love to hear a bit from you without, without naming names or getting too specific, first of all, how do you identify those people who seem to really have the goods to uplift?
And then what have you seen from their perspective? Once you give them the opportunity, What have you seen that sort of commonality is between those who take the opportunity and are able to build something with it? They're able to use that elevation Versus those who maybe don't as much and don't really hit.
[25:37] How does Mike find up and coming industry voices?
Michael Stelzner:
In the early days, and this might've been before Christine, you attended social media marketing world. We used to have actually sessions there at social media marketing world, specifically training, teaching people what we're looking for in speakers at our conference. So we would teach them like, Hey, this is how we roll.
This is what we look for. Cause everybody is a hundred percent recruited. There's no application process. And, and that was during the heyday when we would have 10 or 12 different tracks and there was just so much content. It was nuts. Over time I began to get to the point where this is how I roll today.
I take research. We do two studies a year. One, we publish when we don't, and we survey our audience, thousands of marketers, and we know what it is they're interested in. We actually asked them, what do you want to learn more about? What do you plan to increase in the next 12 months? Then we use that data and we look at our network, if you will, of experts.
And we say, Hey AI is hot right now. Who do we have in our network that is really, really strong on AI? Okay. Obvious choices. Paul Roetzer are a marketing AI Institute. There's obviously other people that we need, right? So then we look at who's our audience and then we begin the process of looking for talent specifically to fill that hole, right?
And that's where, for example, I'll find someone like Matt Wolf. Who's blown up on YouTube, who I recently had on the show to talk about AI tools, and now Matt's going to be speaking at our conference. It's really all about using data to inform the things we're going to write about, talk about, and speak about at our event, and then carefully finding talent that fits the criteria typically because we are an audience of mostly women, we're definitely looking for female talent. And that's one thing you'll notice at our events is we have a lot of women speakers because our audience is mostly women. And also because we want to give diversity to our audience for sure.
But we also want people who Have demonstrated publicly that they are experts. It's one thing to know you're an expert and to say you're an expert, but it's another thing for someone to go out there and see that you have launched a YouTube channel and committed to creating content around this, or you've launched a podcast or you have a blog or you've written a book.
The key to the whole thing is like people that have done those hard things like YouTube channels, podcasts, and books, they have looked at. This whatever topic from a thousand different angles, they might have students who they've taught and they've dialed in their message quite a bit. Those are the kind of people that I like to get on my show.
And those are like the kind of people that I like to bring to my audience. So it's very much a audience first approach. Our audience tells us what they want based on the research. We try to find talent. I nurture relationships with those people by getting them on my show or on our other shows, because we've got multiple shows.
We've got three different shows. And then out of that, we can assess whether or not they really know their stuff. And then we can consider them for other possible opportunities inside of social media examiner. I know you had another question in there and I probably lost it, but
Christine Gritmon:
No, absolutely. And that actually Saved me another question, which is later I was gonna ask you about the types of content that are best for building a personal brand But that is that so that's a really valuable chunk right there to know how people can get attention. You've given people, you've had someone on your podcast who's an expert, you've had them speak at your conference, that's an incredible boost to their personal brand.
But as we all know, sometimes people take those opportunities and it just really blows up after. And sometimes people, fall down on it. It falls flat after they've had that opportunity. They're not sure how to leverage it properly. to work for their brand. Again, without getting specific or personal, what are some commonalities you've seen for those who were able to really make it work for them versus those where it doesn't really go anywhere?
[29:33] What should you do if you are asked to be on stage?
Michael Stelzner:
First and foremost, general tips for everybody listening. When you get an opportunity to be on any kind of big stage metaphorically or physically take it seriously, ask the host, what can I do to best prepare actually prepare, don't. Wing it, prepare, because this is your one chance really.
And if you do a really good job, you're going to, you're going to have a lot of people ringing your bell metaphorically later saying they want to work with you. That's the first thing. The second thing is to is to. Not just reach out to all the big shows, right? But start with the little shows and refine your message a little bit.
Sometimes you'd be surprised that the people that host the big shows, listen to the little shows. And that's partly where they find talent. Just know it's not easy. It's a long haul. It's a refinement thing. You have to not want. Fame necessarily, like ideally you're in it because you have a, you want to make a difference, right?
[30:25] What characteristic does Mike think makes someone successful?
Michael Stelzner:
I find that those are real, those that are really successful. Don't hold back. They give all the gems and the wisdom and they don't say here's three and the other five are available. If you. You hire me, right? That's not, that's not what we talk about with the elevation principle, right? It's great content plus other people minus marketing messages.
So us marketers have to throw out the marketing message and just say, look, I want to give this away free to the world because there's so much more out there, right? You could write a book. And you know that there's 10 more books inside of you, the book is your ideas are always evolving.
So the people that are most successful kind of have this service mentality, this servant mentality, they just want to give and they want to give. And they know that they don't need that many people to become customers for them to be exceptionally successful. And those are the kind of people that tend to get asked back.
Over and over again on lots of other people's shows and speak on lots of other people's stages. It is work. It is never easy. You can't say because you spoke on this stage or because you're on this podcast, you made it and then you stop. It is something that you have to continue to do over and over and over again.
Christine Gritmon:
Love it. Of course, one key principle of being a personal brand is being the such and such person. You are the white paper person. Mike Stelzner. What do you currently see yourself as the such and such person? And I don't know if that's what you want to continue being, or if there's a future I want to be the such and such person moving forward.
I'm not sure what you're, what you're geeking out on right now. But Mike Stelzner, the what person.
[32:00] What is Mike's current mission?
Michael Stelzner
I I'm currently writing every week on all the social platforms about marketing topics. Entrepreneurship and also for creators. So the things that I'm excited to write about, for example, today, I just wrote about how sometimes we have to acknowledge that we don't know how to do something right.
And what do you do when you don't know how to do something right. You do this and you do that. And how I've come to the realization that sometimes you can't figure it all out and you need to. You need to, you need to bring in professional help, right? These are the kinds of things I write about. Sometimes I'll write about trends that are going on in the industry, but in the end, everything that I do right now has very much to do with marketing.
And really that is what I want people to think of me as, as a marketer, first and foremost, a marketer that helps other marketers. Other content creators, podcasters, bloggers, video creators, and entrepreneurs, right? Which could be agency owners, consultants authors dot, dot, dot helps them wrap their head around what, how, how to embrace this changing world.
That's it. I'm really, I feel like my mission is to help people wrap their head around change and wrap their head around mindset challenges and how to how to think differently to survive and thrive in a changing world, because the truth of the matter is Christine, this world is rapidly changing, changing faster than any of us have ever seen.
And you can be overwhelmed like most of my audience is, or you can actually run to the fire, if you will embrace the change. And be open to the fact that, that you could be an early adopter and there's incredible opportunities that are out there. And that's what I'm trying to help people with today is really just to wrap their head around how to embrace change so they can be a better marketer, a better person dot, dot, dot.
Christine Gritmon:
Perfect, and sounds absolutely aligned with that servant mentality. And, of course, with that elevate principle. All right, Mike, thank you so much. This has been incredible. Thank you very much for practicing what you preach and not holding back so many valuable nuggets of wisdom in here that can elevate other people's personal brands.
[34:11] How to connect with Mike
Christine Gritmon:
So tell everyone at home where they can find you, why they should find you, and what they'll find there.
Michael Stelzner:
Social media examiner has everything. So if you go to social media, examiner. com, you can find all three of our shows. You can find our conference. if You want to follow me I am active on Twitter slash X LinkedIn. And Facebook, so you can just search for my name there and you can see all the stuff that I'm publishing exclusively on those platforms.
The reason you might want to follow me is you're in marketing and you're confused and you want some access to some great stuff and you should know that it's social media examiner. We put out an incredibly rich newsletter that contains literally up to the day information about trends that are happening in our industry.
And it's content that you will not find anywhere else except in our email newsletter. And that's recently been completely revamped and people are loving it. So check it out. Social media, examiner. com.
Christine Gritmon:
Fantastic. Thank you so much for being here.
Michael Stelzner:
My pleasure.
Christine Gritmon:
And thank you for being here, whether you are listening to the Let's Talk About Brand podcast on your podcast player of choice, or if you're watching the video podcast here on YouTube. Either way, please do subscribe so you don't miss a single weekly episode of Let's Talk About Brand.
We are taking a holiday break for a couple of weeks. So please do join us in January 2024 for the back half of season four. And in the meantime, again, this is season four. We've got a whole lot of episodes that you can go back and still learn from.
One of the great things about personal branding tends to be a bit evergreen. So lots of episodes there for you to dig into. I highly encourage and hope that you will spend part of your holiday break learning about personal branding right here with Let's Talk About Brand. See you next year. Bye!
S4 Ep11: Let’s Talk About Branding for Creatives with Liz Mosley
Today I’m talking to fellow brand designer, Liz Mosely! We dive deep into what it means to develop a brand for creatives, how Liz transitioned her brand from a creative to a service provider and how her podcast Building Your Brand has played into her growth!
This week I’m excited to talk to fellow brand designer, Liz Mosley!
Liz was originally a stationary designer before recognizing her knack for branding creatives. We’re going to talk about how she first became an entrepreneur with her stationary business and how she ultimately transitioned into brand design. She’s going to share with us important considerations when branding for creatives because it is a bit different from other types of personal branding.
We are also going to talk about the evolution of Liz's own personal brand, and we’re going to get to the things that she has learned from her own podcast, Building Your Brand.
Tune in as we talk about:
[00:00] Welcome Liz Mosley!
[02:26] How did Liz come to focus on branding?
[07:09] What has it been like for Liz to brand herself?
[09:06] How did you brand Liz Mosley Designs when it was a stationary company
[15:30] How it's different working with a fellow creative on the creative elements of their brand?
[18:42] What are the elements that creatives need to have in their branding?
[23:04] The story of Liz's brand transition
[27:30] How has Liz's podcast fit into her brand?
[31:20] Connect with Liz Mosley
Contact Liz Mosley
Podcast: Building Your Brand - https://www.lizmosley.net/podcast
Website: Liz Mosley Design - https://www.lizmosley.net/
Social Media: at LizMMosley
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Christine Gritmon:
Hello and welcome to Let's Talk About Brand. I'm your host, Christine Gritmon, and I'm coming at you every single week on both the podcast and the video podcast on YouTube, talking to a different guest expert every single week about personal branding. This week's guest, Liz Mosley, actually does the same thing.
I was on her podcast, Building Your Brand, a few weeks back. We were originally going to do like a joint episode, but I'm really glad we didn't because this meant that we got two amazing conversations that went in slightly different directions, which is always gold. So I'm so happy I got another opportunity to chat with Liz.
Liz is, of course, a graphic designer. Liz mostly designs. And she originally, was a stationary designer before recognizing, or rather before other creatives, really, recognized her knack for branding. And they needed her to help her brand them. So Liz designs for all sorts of brands, but she especially has heart for designing for fellow creatives.
And we're going to dig into that, how she got there. What's important in branding for creatives because it is a bit different from branding, like a consumer brand, like Coke or Nike or something. Branding as an artist, as a creative, as a maker is a very specific thing, and it's something that Liz understands really well, which helps her in her work.
So we're going to talk about how she came to that, all the stuff that goes into branding a creative, how it's different from working with other people. We're going to talk about the evolution of Liz's own personal brand, of course. And then we're, of course, going to get to the things that she has learned from her own podcast, Building Your Brand.
All right, so without any further ado, let's talk about brand with the host of Building Your brand builder Liz Mosley. Come on down.
Liz Mosley:
Love it. Thanks for having me.
Christine Gritmon:
Thanks for being here. Now, I was on your podcast recently, and so now you're on mine, and we've been at the same events and all of that. And of course. One word in particular attracted me, obviously, brand! Yay, brand! Love branding people. So I would love to hear just a little bit of kind of background from you as to how you got into branding.
How branding became your brand. How that really became your thing to focus on.
[00:02:26] How did Liz come to focus on branding?
Liz Mosley:
Yeah, sure. I guess I come to it from a bit more of the design perspective than you do, but basically I studied graphic design at university, it's always been my thing, I've absolutely loved it. I'm probably one of the rare people who are actually working in the field that they studied in because I feel like amongst my friends and my peers now that is becoming, like we all have a lot more varied and interesting careers, I think, where people move around a bit.
But yeah, so I've been working in design for over 15 years. And basically, I spent a long time working in house at a university. And while I was there, I really loved working there, but obviously was working for the same brand all the time, design wise, and
Christine Gritmon:
just to clarify, do you mean like literally doing design for the university?
Liz Mosley:
yeah, exactly, they had, so their communications team had a whole design department, so I was part of the design department, so it was Yeah, it was really varied, which I really loved, but it was always working for the same brand. And so basically I set up my own stationery business, a bit of a hobby business where I could design whatever I wanted that wasn't for a client.
And if people liked it, then they would buy it. And that catapulted me into I guess the world of creative small businesses, creative makers, and I used to go and do markets in London at the weekend and it was an amazing community to be part of and eventually when I had kids I decided I wouldn't go back to my full time job and I would set up on my own and I actually started doing my freelance work before kids because small businesses started asking me if I could do branding for them.
And I got a real taste for it really loved it loved that sort of community in that group of people. And yeah started designing branding. So I almost have two arms to my own business now, which was designing branding for small businesses and then also designing my own stationery and selling that. And after my second child was born I got to the point where I was like, I, if I want to make either of these businesses a success, I need to go all in.
So I either needed to go all in on like wholesale with the stationery business, or I needed to go all in on the branding for small businesses. And that is what the route I decided to go down. So I shut my stationery business, went all in on the services side of my business. And I'm so glad I did. It was definitely the best decision.
I absolutely love it. I've been focusing on the branding, like the designing, branding small businesses for about seven years now and Yeah it's my true love. I love it.
Christine Gritmon:
I love that we've been on parallel paths. I also left a day job to do something more creative after having my first child and actually started my own business properly after my second child. It's really funny how they make you prioritize. They make you realize if I'm going to be putting my energy towards something besides them. It should be something that's really worth it.
Liz Mosley:
I think that's so true and I think it's interesting hearing other people because sometimes I feel like I've done my career a bit backwards and I feel like having kids actually made me Become more ambitious and want to build my own thing, but I think like you say that's such a that's such a good way of explaining it Is that actually if i'm going to spend my time and energy on something aside from my kids?
I want it to be something, you know I want to build something for me and something that's going to benefit them as well. And yeah, I mean I would really struggle, I think, to go back to working for someone else now because I've really got a taste for the self employed life which always makes me laugh because that was never a goal of mine.
A lot of my friends when we came out of art college and finished university had, dreams of setting up their own agencies or working for themselves and that was never an aspiration of mine. But yeah, having kids really changed that for me.
Christine Gritmon:
Absolutely. And a lot of times these things and these places you're meant to be, they find you when you're open to it, which is really lovely. So to back up a little into your story, so you had a stationary business. And I'm going to make a leap here and guess that the reason other creative businesses wanted you to help with your branding is because your own branding was on point.
I'd like to hear about how you built that brand. I know it's not something you're working on anymore but I'd imagine that was a moment for you in terms of your branding journey for helping brand others. So tell me about the process of branding your stationary brand. What was it called? First of all?
[00:07:09] What has it been like for Liz to brand herself?
Liz Mosley:
It all came under my name. So I have always built my brand as a personal brand. So it was called Liz Mosley Design, which is what my business still is called now. So I've always kept it under the same thing. And actually, I think, I am, I'm super critical of my own brand. And I think often There's a lot of, do as I say, not as I do, because I think there's a lot of areas in my personal brand that I could improve.
But I think one of the interesting things for me when it's come to branding myself, and I think this is something that is quite unique to creatives is I think often I've worked with like lots of illustrators, especially like through my courses and things like that illustrators, artists who want to think more about their branding.
And I think one of the struggles is like knowing whether to put your business under your name or whether to give it a different name. And I think that for creatives often coming under their name can work really well because what they're selling is their unique style and their work. And how their like creative work looks is such a big part of their brand.
So it's always been under my name. which I think when I look back, I'm like that was maybe that was a bit boring, but actually I think it's worked really well for me now. Because the personal brand has always been there. So it's been easier to grow on that as my business has changed.
Christine Gritmon:
And I'm sure it also helped with the pivot, because now you've run two businesses under the same name, essentially. And we will get to the pivot in a bit, because I am curious about how you navigated that. But let's talk about how you branded Liz Mosley Designs when it was straight up a stationary company, and then how others came to you from there.
[00:09:06] How did you brand Liz Mosley Designs when it was a stationary company
Liz Mosley:
Yeah one of, so one of the things I think is quite interesting is I think if you are a designer or an illustrator or a painter, I actually think there's different challenges for you with your visual branding because I think often your work needs to take centre stage and your, visual branding then needs to almost take a bit of a step back and be there to enhance and support it, but not distract from it.
And I think this is something that like a lot of creatives struggle with because I think often when you see businesses, rebranding or launching like rebranding new branding, there's a real story with the actual how the brand looks and there's a concept and there's all of this stuff that goes around it. But I think for creatives often that isn't necessarily the route that they should go down because I think their work needs to take center stage I think it's a really tricky balance.
And so I feel like for mine actually, it was more about the products that I was selling than how the brand looked so I have always gone for, I mean a big influence of my work has always been hand drawn elements and almost a bit of a, not lo fi because it was never lo fi, but I've always loved the experimentation of making marks by hand, scanning them in, using those elements in design.
And so my personal brand always had that sort of style, that hand drawn style, which was also reflected in the products that I was designing as well. And so I think in that sense, those things have always tied together and then that visual has flowed through to my brand now, even though it's a bit slicker and it's a bit cleaner now, I would say.
There's still that nod to the hand drawn. So my logo is basically pretty much my signature, it's like a handwritten version of my name. And it's not going to win any awards and it's not got any sort of magical secret concept behind it, but at the same time, it's very personal, it's, I think it's like warm and welcoming and friendly, and yeah, that's the sort of route that I've gone down.
Christine Gritmon:
I love your point about how for creatives, the brand needs to not be so structured. That it's the thing before the creations and the art, because the art needs to be able to have, you know, different collections and go in different directions. It needs to be flexible. So that is, is certainly a really good point.
Being on brand should not stifle your creativity in a creative brand. But to that end, I've worked with creatives before and, artists and makers and things like that. One thing I've seen some of them struggle with is the idea of being a brand, simply because it's from a passion and it's so personal and even if they have made a business out of it, there's often even a bit of conflict there about ...
Liz Mosley:
Yeah, I think that's such a good point, and I think I've definitely noticed that teaching workshops and teaching about branding, that has been a huge barrier for a lot of creatives. And I definitely used to feel this as well, like early on in my career. Like I think there's almost this negative connotation around brand.
And I think a lot of creatives see it as something really corporate and something, that is exclusively for huge corporations. Like the sort of businesses that they wouldn't want to identify with, or they wouldn't want to put themselves in the same class with, and I do think that is a real mental block for a lot of creatives and such an interesting point.
But I think it's one of those things that it's so important that we work through mentally and we get through that barrier because actually I think it's really hard to take your business seriously and to make it what it could be, you know, like to turn it into something really successful that's going to work for you, unless you shift your mindset and start thinking of it as a business and as a brand and thinking Of yourself as a personal brand and I think that has got easier now that we talk about personal brands because I think the idea of Having a personal brand as a creative is more palatable than the idea of having say a corporate or a you know like more business focused brand. So I think that sort of has been a helpful mental shift for creatives for sure But I do think that there is a lot of like mindset stuff that needs to happen to move past that point of hobby business or I think there's still leftovers, you know of this narrative that creatives tell themselves that you know That they can't make good money and that they're a struggling artist, I think a lot of damage has been done with that kind of like narrative that has gone through in the past and it's definitely changing and I think one of the things that I love about social media is that We now get to see and watch creative businesses one person, creative businesses, personal brands, like really grow and flourish and become extremely successful.
And I think it's really important that we can see that so that people know what's possible. But yeah, I think that's such a good point because there is a mindset shift that needs to happen so that we can make strategic decisions and we can make good decisions based on how we are going to grow our brands, whether that's a personal one or not.
Christine Gritmon:
Now to that end about creatives growing their brands as you said before, for a creative, their brand, it is very personal and they are a creative person. So for a creative person to hire an outside creative to help them with their creativity I imagine that's a very specific way of working and that working with creatives is probably a little bit different from people working with clients who are more businessy focused as opposed to creative person, first person. So I'd love to hear from you, Liz, how it's different working with a fellow creative on the creative elements of their brand. Do they tend to have more input? Do they tend to be more worried? Like how does that work? And how does it differ?
[00:15:30] How it's different working with a fellow creative on the creative elements of their brand?
Liz Mosley:
Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I think there are some differences and I think there are some pros and cons. I think one of the good things about working with creatives is that they are often able to express an idea and a vision Like a creative vision that they have because they are used to using that language and they are used to explaining themselves creatively.
So I think that is a plus point. I've definitely worked with clients in the past that have known that something is not exactly how they want it to be, but haven't been able to I guess analyze or assess why and then be able to verbalize that and so I think something You know a lot of creatives if especially if they've been to art college, you know that you get trained you get given those tools like how do you explain your work?
How do you break it down? How do you analyze it? So that's helpful I think one of the things that is particularly difficult for creatives is obviously They have a lot of creative skill and ability. They can imagine something in their mind and then they can turn that into something. That doesn't necessarily mean that they have the tools that they need to create branding. But it does mean that I think for them It's a bit scary the thought of giving that to someone else to do.
There's a couple of ways that I've tackled this. One is that my process as a branding designer is very collaborative. So I make sure that there's a lot of rounds of feedback and there's lots of options. The way I create and present work allows for them to analyze and compare things and give me feedback and we. Work together then to get the design to what they want it to be But also that is a big part of why I created a course which is basically called design your own branding
And there was like a few motivations for doing this. I think Probably some people in the design industry Would frown on this as an idea, but I do think that there are a lot of creative practitioners who don't want to lose the sort of control of that creative process and they want to create their own branding.
They just don't necessarily have the process or the tools that they need to do it. And so then I can guide them through that process and be there to support them and help them and give them advice and give them technical advice as well. If they maybe don't know how to use the tools, but they're still then in control of the creative process.
So I've gone down two different routes. Refined my process to make it work well for other creatives, but also taught courses so that they can actually retain control of that creative process.
Christine Gritmon:
What are some of the elements that creatives in particular really need to have in their branding? And does it differ from how another brand might? I mean, to your point earlier, with creatives, the work has to come first. The brand can't really be the thing that's in the front there. So what are considerations when coming up with branding for a creative?
[00:18:42] What are the elements that creatives need to have in their branding?
Liz Mosley:
So I think they really need to think of how the visuals of their brand are going to work alongside their actual work. And I think a big part where we see this, like one of the first things that we notice about brands, just because of how our brains work as humans, one of the first things we notice is the color.
And it's very subconscious. And I think One of the challenges for creative businesses is often their work has a lot of color in it. And so they need branding that is going to be flexible enough to like exactly how you mentioned earlier, like it needs to be something that's going to work with different collections.
It's going to work as their, as their sort of creative practice and their work evolves and changes over time. And so I think that is something. to consider.
And I often think that branding for creatives needs to be on the simpler side rather than the sort of more complex side. And I've seen, there's lots of different examples and there's never one size fits all, but like I've seen some instances where, you'll have an illustrator who has really bright, vibrant, creative work, and actually the best option for them from a branding perspective is to actually keep their Brand like and how it looks almost like monochrome and simple so that it is a nice contrast to then their bright vibrant work and then it's not clashing with the colors and like their work then take center stage.
And so I think that's what always needs to be thought about is how can the branding support and elevate the work. Instead of distract from the work. And I think if you start to get into having quite a complex color palette and then, maybe the tones don't go with the sort of illustrative style or the products or, whatever it is that you're selling.
I think that's where, you can get into trouble and I think one of the important things is creating visual branding that is going to grow with your business because I think another struggle that creators can particularly have and I definitely feel this so keenly as a designer is I love all different types of style of design I enjoy different trends.
I enjoy different Like feels of designs and so the temptation can be to want to change my branding all the time You know as I see a new really beautiful font and I'm like, oh I wish that was part of my branding or there's you know I want to add in a new color and that's not to say that your brand can't change over time.
It absolutely can But there is definitely a breakdown of trust if you are rebranding and changing the look of your brand all of the time. And so I think when it comes to creatives, having something that's on the simpler side, but that allows room for your creative practice to grow without you having to change the look and feel of your brand all the time is really important.
But as well, I think like the question that I always come back to, and I'm sure that this is similar for the work that you do with brands is Really thinking about how they want people to feel when they interact with their branding because I think so much of design is expressing a feeling through the way something looks.
And I think that's definitely the case for branding is, how do you get across that feeling and how do you use visuals to help people feel a particular way? And I think coming back to that question as you think about how you want your brand to look is really helpful.
Christine Gritmon:
So to that end, you took your brand, Liz Mosley Designs, as a stationary designer, and you had a brand transition into being a designer for brands, a designer of brands, a brand designer. So how did you navigate that transition, and how did your brand change, if at all, and how did you express the change?
I love stories of brand transitions, because that's, to me, One of the best things about a personal brand is that you can change what it means and what it does and what it stands for because it's still you.
So what did you change? What did you keep the same? And how did you get the message out there that you were now something else?
[00:23:04] The story of Liz's brand transition
Liz Mosley:
Yeah, it's interesting because, I think and this is actually something that we chatted about when you were on my podcast which I think was really a really helpful point, which is that if your brand values remain the same which they usually do because especially as you know If you're a one person business your brand values are often very closely tied to your personal values But it just means that your brand and your business can pivot and change, but those values underpin everything that you do and they stay the same.
And so I think those aspects of my business have really stayed consistent. Despite my business changing. It was like a slow transition, I would say. I think I started talking more about branding in general, and obviously, stopped talking so much about the products.
And I think I just took people along on that journey with me, particularly through social media. I think there will definitely be people who are following me and were more interested in the product sides of my business than the services side. And I think we get so worried about people not, like unfollowing us or not being interested in our business anymore.
And I actually think that having the attitude of, actually it's fine for you to move on because my brand isn't right for you anymore or isn't of interest to you anymore. And To just have a sort of spirit of like happily sending those people off on their journey and, it being okay that they're not into my business anymore.
I think one of the things that I've been talking a lot about recently, and I know you've heard me talk about this at a conference, is this idea of rejection. And that actually we need certain people to reject us because our brand isn't the right fit for them. And so I think, being okay with that.
And being okay with people moving on and then attracting the right people for my business definitely helped as I transitioned.
And I think just over time and this has definitely been like a work in progress and a journey for me. It's just getting clearer on my message and clearer on my sort of content pillars and what I talk about and what I communicate about as my brand and it's so interesting to me because seven years ago You know I was talking I just launched my best selling project for my, product based business.
And now, most people that follow me don't even know that I had a stationary business. So over time, that really has changed. I think one of the things that made it easier for me is that I have ne And this isn't necessarily good advice, but I have never really niched down my content on Instagram. Because I wanted to be able to just talk about my creativity and my practice in general.
And I think actually when it came to pivoting, my brand and what I was doing that actually made things easier for me because people were already used to me talking about, yeah, my products, but also just creativity in general and what I was working on and what I was enjoying. And so that made actually meant that there wasn't so big a change.
Yes. I stopped talking about the products as much, but I was still talking about similar concepts like there was similar. content themes that had always been running through my content and that made things easier for me. And I think probably, that comes back to what we've talked about before is having those sort of brand values fairly like clear in my mind.
And so those threads remained consistent even when the look and feel of my brand changed.
Christine Gritmon:
To that end, as you mentioned, you have always talked about branding in your content. It's always been a focus. And you've brought people along with you as you go. And that brings us to a great example of that, which is your podcast, building your brand. So how did that come about and what have been some of your key learnings in the process of doing the podcast?
Because I know for me doing Let's Talk About Brand, the best part has been that I get to learn amazing things from great people and make content out of it. So Liz, I'd love to hear your experience with the branding podcast.
How did you start building your brand and why did you start it and what's the journey been like?
[00:27:30] How has Liz's podcast fit into her brand?
Liz Mosley:
So one of my values is definitely generosity. And I think it fit that. Starting a podcast really fitted in with that, as I mentioned, my target audience is small businesses and often, one of the things I've always been really aware of is that often people who are like running a business by themselves don't necessarily have the budget to spend thousands of pounds on their visual branding early on in their business and, maybe that's something that comes further down the line.
But I always felt really passionately about supporting those businesses, even if they weren't in a position to pay me to do their branding for them. So the podcast was a big part of that and how I could support that particular group of people, because I knew that I could create this sort of free content, but that genuinely had like helpful tips and advice that they could implement. I was quite reluctant about starting a podcast mainly because I started just over two and a half years ago now, so it was in the midst of the pandemic and it really felt like everybody was starting a podcast and I'm a bit petty I think sometimes where I'm like if everyone else is doing something then it makes me not want to do it but I was chatting to a friend of mine who's a podcast editor and she was like I really think that you would enjoy it, I think you should give it a go and we actually did a skill swap and so she needed branding and was my ideal kind of Client and I really wanted to give podcasting a go and so we did a skill swap and I did her branding and she edited My podcast for me and that's how I got started and It's honestly been one of the best things that i've done for my business, but it's been the One of the best things that I could have done for growing my brand and my sort of reputation as a branding designer. And I think yeah similarly to you I Get to learn so much from the people that I interview which is amazing that one of the sort of side effects that I hadn't really consider is how it's grown my network and we Like I was gonna sit here and chat for I don't know 30 minutes to an hour and actually you get to know people Really well when you talk to them in that kind of way And so I have built up friendships and relationships with the people that have been on my podcast I've kept in touch with them.
I've met them in person, you know all these different things and yeah, it's really grown, it's grown my network in a way that I hadn't really imagined. And it's just got me on the radar of people that I wouldn't have expected to. I would credit my podcast with my work with Adobe. I've had an ongoing relationship doing work for them for the last sort of nearly two years now which has been amazing and again really fits in with my brand values and Supporting small businesses and so I feel like I've got all these different strands the podcast of which is one That really support my values for my brand But also, it's great for Raising my profile as well.
And yeah, it's just been such an incredible experience and I think has genuinely helped the target audience that I want to help because I have, yeah I'm really fortunate. I get lovely messages from listeners, who are like, Oh, I've just starting out my business and your podcast has been so helpful.
And, this episode really helped me with X, Y, Z. And. That's just an amazing feeling that I can create this free resource that helps the exact sort of target audience that I want to support.
Christine Gritmon:
And there goes that. Generosity is brand value. You have certainly been very generous with us here today, Liz. Thank you so much for this conversation. Please let the people at home know where they can find you, why they should find you, and what they will find there.
[00:31:20] Connect with Liz Mosley
Liz Mosley:
Sure. You can definitely come and check out my, if, if you're listening to this podcast, let's talk about brand. And I think you will enjoy mine as well called building your brand. And it's all about branding and marketing. You can find me on social media at Liz M Mosley, where I share lots of tips and Ideas and thoughts about branding and how you can improve your branding.
And you can also find me on my website, which is Liz Mosley design, where you can find out about the services that I offer and yeah the sort of different packages that I have available. If you're interested in working with me.
Christine Gritmon:
Awesome. Thank you so much for being here, Liz.
Liz Mosley:
Oh, thanks for having me. It's really fun chatting to you.
Christine Gritmon:
And thank you for being here for Let's Talk About Brand. Whether you are listening to it on your podcast player of choice, or you're here on YouTube joining us for the video podcast, either way, please be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single weekly episode.
And I will be back next week with another very smart guest expert talking about another eleme
S4 Ep10: Let’s Talk About a Personal Brand Coaching Session with Sarah Scott
This episode is going to be a little bit different. Today, I’m going to give you a little taste of what I do with clients in my personal branding work. This is not nearly as thorough or as specific as I would do with an actual client, but I wanted to give you an episode that hopefully you could take some of this discussion back to yourself and use it to figure out some more of your own personal brand.
While a personal brand is … well…personal. It isn’t something you should work on defining on your own.
But have you ever thought about working with personal brand coach? Do you wonder what it would be like? What would you talk about? What conclusions would you walk away with?
This episode is going to be a little bit different. In this episode, I’m going to give you a little taste of what I do with clients in my personal branding work.
It's not like a whole session, but my brilliant podcast editor, Sarah Scott of Sarah Scott Studios, has said to me, “I think it might be interesting to see you do your thing on an episode.”
And so I've turned that right back around on her and said, “how about I do it with you?”
She of course agreed!
So I'm very excited for today's conversation with Sarah about her personal brand.
This is not nearly as thorough or as specific as I would do with an actual client, but I wanted to give you an episode that hopefully you could take some of this discussion back to yourself and use it to figure out some more of your own personal brand.
Tune in as we talk about:
[00:00] Welcome! This episode will be a little different!
[01:31] Introducing the Guest: Sarah Scott
[02:49] Sarah's Journey from Healthcare Consulting to Podcast Management
[06:41] The Importance of Niching in Business
[09:41] How Your Experiences Can Lead to Building Your Personal Branding
[12:50] The Power of the Personal Brand Coaching Pre-Work
[14:21] Digging into Past Experience for Your Personal Brand
[23:30] Blending Skills to Define Your Personal Brand
[29:00] Building a Personal Brand
[32:33] One way Christine built her brand
[33:14] Choosing a platform for your brand
[35:49] Benefits of Establishing Your Brand
[38:34] The Power of Networking to Build Your Brand
[47:30] Defining Your Brand: The Struggle of Self-Representation
[51:42] Generous Curiosity: The Key to Successful Branding
[58:26] Where to Find Me: Connecting with Sarah Scott
[59:18] Wrapping Up: The Journey of Personal Branding
Contact Sarah Scott:
Website: Sarah Scott Studios
Linkedin: Sarah Scott
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[00:00:03] Welcome! This episode will be a little different!
Christine Gritmon: Hello, and welcome to Let's Talk About Brands. I am your host, Christine Gritmon, and I'm normally coming at you every single week interviewing someone, a professional of some sort, ideally someone in marketing or branding, about different elements of branding, especially personal branding. This episode is going to be a little bit different.
I'm really excited about this. This episode is actually going to give you a little taste of what I do with clients in my personal branding work. It's not like a whole session or anything, but my brilliant podcast editor, Sarah Scott of Sarah Scott Studios, she has said to me, I think it might be interesting to see you do your thing on an episode.
And so I've turned that right back around on her and said, how about I do it with you? So I'm very excited for today's conversation with Sarah about her personal brand. Again, this is not nearly as thorough or as specific as I would do with an actual client, but I did want to give you a taste in a way that could be helpful to you as well.
So with a real client, it would go much more in depth. It would be a lot more dealing with specifics, but I wanted to give you guys an episode that hopefully you could take some of this work, take some of these questions, take some of these discussions back to yourself and use yourself to do, to figure out some more of your own personal brand. All right, so without any further ado, let's bring her on.
[00:01:31] Introducing the Guest: Sarah Scott
Christine Gritmon: Sarah Scott, come on down.
Sarah Scott: Yay. I got my own applause.
Christine Gritmon: Yeah, it's funny because a lot of times guests are surprised by the applause, pleasantly, hopefully, but you hear it every week.
Sarah Scott: I do. I do, but I
Christine Gritmon: right?
Sarah Scott: Yes,
Christine Gritmon: feels good.
Sarah Scott: does.
Christine Gritmon: All right, Sarah, since you're our star this week, I of course know you and what you do, but let's start out by telling the good folks at home.
Who are you and what do you do?
Sarah Scott: All right. So my name is Sarah Scott. Hello, everybody. I am a podcast manager. So what I do is I have a portfolio of podcasts that I help to manage. So that comes down to things like editing and helping with distribution and content. also that the podcast host can have a lot of fun just. Recording their episodes, meeting with the people they want to meet with, and then not having to worry about all the follow up that comes from that.
So that's in a nutshell what we do.
Christine Gritmon: And that is so huge. most podcast producers, most anyone who creates content of any sort wishes there were more of them to split up some of that work because repurposing is everything, but repurposing is. tricky to get to. All right.
[00:02:49] Sarah's Journey from Healthcare Consulting to Podcast Management
Christine Gritmon: So I assume that you did not start your career as a podcast manager.
I think, we're similar in ages. They didn't exist when we started our careers. So I'd love to hear how, you got into this line of work. How did you start being a podcast manager? And also how recent. Is that that's how you're, primarily defining yourself professionally?
Sarah Scott: Okay. so yeah, no, not where we started and not. Where I expected to go at any point in time. So my background, I came from healthcare, actually healthcare consulting in the technology space. that was my bread and butter. I was a trainer. I love training software. Software is my, bread and butter, my very favorite thing in the entire world, I love geeking out over software because.
It's, I don't know, I find technology fun, not overwhelming.
Christine Gritmon: just to cla just to clarify, when you say healthcare consulting, you were specifically a tech consultant in the healthcare space, is that correct?
Sarah Scott: and yeah, that's probably the easiest way to define it. So I worked on a proprietary software that was installed in hospitals. And so I spent most of my career traveling the country, teaching people how to install and use our software. on the one hand, it was a fantastic career. I love traveling. I got to go all over the country.
got to see all kinds of things, meet all sorts of interesting people. I love being in front of people. So the idea of being in front of a classroom all the time was a lot of fun. but eventually that career came to an end and I, about five years ago, started my own business working as a social media consultant, and really that.
Was born out of the work I did as a healthcare consultant. not at the time, not knowing the phrase digital marketing, but I spent a lot of time trying to engage our client base by doing monthly webinars or having a newsletter or, trying to figure out like, how do we repurpose this for sales content?
And so I was doing a lot of the work without defining it the way that the market defines it. And so once I realized like this was actually a thing that people did in real life, I started working in that space. And so I started taking on some local clients, doing some social media stuff and things along those lines, but it never really stuck as a, I just wasn't gaining clients.
I wasn't differentiating myself enough. And then one day, one of my clients, some of your podcast or some of your listeners might know her, Andrea of all, she came to me one day and says, you know what? I want to try a new thing. Have you ever done anything with podcasting? And I said, no, not besides listening.
No, nothing. And she says, let's try this thing together. And I said, all right, let's go for it. And Just over a year ago, she launched the Late Starters Club and that became an obsession for me around really loving the process of creating these podcasts and hearing these conversations and helping people get their voice and their messages and their stories out there more.
And it snowballed from there, went from Andrea to a mom podcast to you, to several others now that I've been bringing on board. And it's just been a lot of fun.
Christine Gritmon: And it's catching on much better than, the social media thing did, which is interesting because it's part of what you do. When you were describing your career in social media, it sounded like One of the things that you enjoyed was the re was the content repurposing and how can we spin this out and all of that, and that's so much of what you do now.
It's interesting that it caught on with podcasts specifically, like it needed that extra ingredient.
Sarah Scott: Yeah.
[00:06:41] The Importance of Niching in Business
Sarah Scott: I heard somebody used the term the other day, double niching. she's I'm double niched and that's why it works so well. And it was funny cause I'm like, that's a really weird term, but technically I think that's what I've done too, is I've double niched. I've niched down to.
Social like in a lot, in a sense, it's social media or content repurposing in the podcast space. And I think the reason it's caught on so is because podcasters understand the work that's being done. I think where I struggled with social media was. that when you would pitch social media creation, content management to a small business, they didn't understand the impact it would actually have to their business.
They, it didn't make a lot of sense to them. How was it going to affect their bottom line? Oh, they never really saw anything happen before. So the investment was a lot harder for them to make with podcasters. They understand the investment, they know that there's more they wanted to do with this content that they aren't getting around to, that they want to be able to do bigger things and have that space to be able to do that.
So the investment makes sense for them because they can see where that's going to go.
Christine Gritmon: That's a really good point. That's actually pretty similar to my own journey, because I was doing social media for small businesses who didn't get social media. So they didn't understand it, they didn't work in it, they were like, Look, just, I'm at your mercy. But they didn't understand the investment as much as someone who maybe does social media or maybe works in digital marketing but has trouble marketing themselves.
They understand that a little bit better. Speaking of marketing, oneself. So you have double niche down. So you are, so what are the two niches? Just to clarify. So podcasting and,
Sarah Scott: guess you would say content creation.
Christine Gritmon: alright,
Sarah Scott: it's, more than just, it's not necessarily just social media though. That's a big portion of it. but it's also looking at like email content or looking at opt ins. Like I look at it all in a broader scope with a lot of my clients. It's this is the cornerstone pieces, this podcast, but then what else can we do with it? Can we create a blog post? Can we create that social content? Is that going to be a reel? Is that going to be a, is it going to be a carousel post? What else can we do? Where else can we share this? How else can we use this?
So that the hour or so that you spent recording this content is then giving you so much more than you thought you could get from it.
Christine Gritmon: Absolutely. So it's clear to hear that this lights you up, that you love that creative challenge of figuring out. And as you said, one of the things you love about podcasts is hearing the interviews and helping people get their voices out there. So that's clearly part of what lights you up about this work.
[00:09:41] How Your Experiences Can Lead to Building Your Personal Branding
Christine Gritmon: One thing that was very interesting to me that I didn't know before this conversation right here is in your previous career when you were talking about being a tech trainer for health care, two things you mentioned really loving that don't seem like they play into this career, which is that you loved traveling and that you loved being on stage.
So I'd love to dig into that a little bit more, what you loved about those things. And if you've thought about making room for them in this career, or if that's just keeping it separate. Because you've heard me talk about this before. There's task based skills. So there's task based things like, I like repurposing content.
But then there's the skills behind them, the stuff that you keep that's yours that you bring to the task, and that stuff is innately you and can be applied to numerous tasks. So in that case, that would be, you like amplifying other's stories, which is something that we share. So there's a difference between the task of Repurposing content versus the skill of amplifying people's stories, which is what really lights you up.
two of those things that lit you up in the past job that aren't part of the current one, the travel and the getting up in front of people. Let's dive into that a little bit, because those don't seem like they're part of your current gig.
Sarah Scott: So that's really interesting. So no travel is intentionally not part of this gig because of my family. So unlike you, I'm not nearly as brave to travel with my family. so the travel portion was taken out because of them. So young kids, crazy schedules. And so I've. Intentionally taken that out. I'm hoping it will come back in at some point.
I'm not sure how at this moment in time, but I am hoping it will come back in some way, shape or form. And as for the 2nd piece, the stage piece. That is something I am hoping will come back in. I am, part of me is still working on the idea that I'm going to be launching my own podcast, hopefully in the new year.
So that will give me, while it is not physical stage presence will still give me the practice of presenting. And I am hoping to start getting on stages again, as soon as I can find the right message. I think right now I'm still struggling with. What is that message that I want to be able to bring to a stage that can be used?
Not just this whole general, Oh, Hey, use podcasts in your business. That seems to be a very broad message that a lot of people have shared over time that I've seen. I'd like to be able to change that into something a little bit different that I could bring. And I really have no idea what that's going to be, but it's.
Definitely something a little bit more than that I think is where I want it to go. But I am hoping to be on stages again.
Christine Gritmon: Absolutely. It seems like the question to answer there preemptively in the minds of people who are receiving your message is going to be, but why a podcast? And so that's something that makes sense to be trying to get to the bottom of.
[00:12:50] The Power of the Personal Brand Coaching Pre-Work
Christine Gritmon: All right, so I'm going to roll it back a little bit. I had given you some pre work and just so people are aware, when I work with clients, I give them very specific pre work.
I really do, chunk it down to be very specific to their situation. But I gave you the super ultra mega version, the generic version, which, which you wonderful listeners can download for yourself. You can get that at Gritmon. com. Gritmon. com, G R I T M O N dot com slash P R E W O R K, Gritmon.
com slash Prework. It's huge. this is not something that you need to feel the need to answer every question at all. Answer the ones that resonate with you. And I always say, the ones that are the trickiest to get into, sometimes that's where the gold is. So I'd love to hear from you, Sarah, as someone who looked through all these bajillion questions, what were some of the questions, if you can think of any, that really unlocked a particular, pathway of thinking that maybe you hadn't given thought to, or maybe not from that direction.
Are there any in particular where you're just like, Oh, hold up. did you have any of those moments with particular questions at all?
[00:14:21] Digging into Past Experience for Your Personal Brand
Sarah Scott: Yeah. I love them with some of the ones that you had that were really reflective of me as a whole person, not just me as my business. So there were a few that you would ask around, like what are some of the things that you've. done or have done that have nothing to do with your business that you enjoy doing.
And I, it was interesting. I, so I did it in two phases. I actually read it through the first day you gave it to me. I read through all of the questions, kind of high level, just to let them marinate a little bit and see what I thought about them. And then I sat down and then tried actually answering as many of them as I could. And so some of that stuff did stick with me around, what are the other things in my life that I've either ignored or I haven't done as much or lit me up in the past? And the
Christine Gritmon: Or thought weren't relevant. I think that's the biggest thing, too. We're like, okay, I did, for me, I've talked about this before, my singing. I used to sing all the time, and I haven't incorporated that into things at all. And you sing, too. there's things like that where we think, yeah, but that has nothing to do with what I do for work.
But anyway, it's an interesting pathway. sorry to interrupt. I'd love to hear a little bit more about your thoughts on that and where you went with it.
Sarah Scott: and actually it's exactly where I was going with it was that, I was a singer for the longest time. I was professionally trained as an opera singer when I was a kid and. my poor mother investing all this money in my singing career that never became a career, not that she wanted it to be.
But, and I don't do it anymore. I don't sing as much anymore besides like sing in the shower and, there's that, kind of went by. But with that also came a few other things that I didn't think about before that I have done over time as well, which were. I've been part of singing groups, choirs, theater, almost my whole life.
the idea of being on stage or being part of productions has always been a light for me. Whether I was on stage or behind stage, I've been, I've been on the stage as an actor and a performer. I've been behind the scenes as a stage manager, director and things on those lines as well.
And they always lit me up. being in those environments in that teamwork there, there is, if you've never worked in theater, there is something. Special about the group of people that come together and work on a production. And I miss that in a lot of ways. And that sort of answering those questions reminded me of that.
But what it also reminded me of was that I have spent a lot of time in my life, coaching people unknowingly. Like I wouldn't say it was like a professional coaching thing, but it was. it comes down to, I've spent so much time teaching and speaking in front of people that I have worked with other people to make them better speakers, make them better trainers, make them better singers, sharing tips and tricks and helping them get over things.
And I don't do that as much as I used to do. And I really used to love that a lot about some of my past and some of the things that I do. And it was interesting to go through that and realize Hey, between. My love of technology and my used to piece of being, a trainer and being on stages.
I don't do as much of that anymore. And now I'm wondering why.
Christine Gritmon: And the thing that's really interesting to hear you say that, so first of all, that connects back to what you said before lit you up when you were in healthcare tech. You loved training people. You loved being on stage and training people. And in my own work with you, as your client, you don't just repurpose my material.
You constantly have strategic ideas to make it better. You are a podcast coach.
Sarah Scott: that's interesting. Hadn't thought of that before.
Christine Gritmon: Yeah! You're a podcast coach! Like, where could we go with that? Where would you feel like going with that? Because it's, really fascinating to me how those two pieces, what lit you up in your previous career, and where that went with things that you bring to the table that weren't work related. So where could you possibly see going with that?
Let's explore that now, live. laughs
Sarah Scott: Alright, so I started exploring this. And not even that long ago, so this is a really weird moment, in terms of where things are going. So my husband and I were going out to dinner this past weekend and we were talking about a variety of different things. And I said, I have in my mind when I start my podcast, and, the reason I haven't started, cause I struggle with what it's going to be about.
But one of the things I had said is I have a guest I'd really like to interview. And I said, it's like a dream guest, like no way in. probably a hundred lifetimes I'd ever get this person on a podcast, but, and he asked me who, and I said, I would love to get Jimmy Fallon on. And my husband says, why him?
And I said, for my podcasters, like one of the biggest things they have to focus on is storytelling, whether they're telling their own story or interviewing to somebody and pulling that story out of the interview. And I think it's an area that a lot of people could use more. Practice. They could use more tips on how do you do this?
Cause you know, a lot of the podcasters I work with are interview based podcasters, a lot like you. And sometimes the interviews are great and they work easy and it's a fabulous story from start to finish, but other times it's really a pull to. Find the story and to keep control of the, interview. And I said, Jimmy Fallon does this every night.
Now granted, I know he has got a team of people, but he still pulls it off in such a way where he sits there and he can pull this off and show what the world, Highlight the guest still makes himself funny and really demonstrates who he is through all of that. So there is a direction I think that I would love to be able to take at some point, which is really, as you put words to it, a podcast coach where I want to be able to coach.
My podcasters, not just on how to reuse the content, but how do you become a better podcaster? How do you tell better stories? How do you become a better interviewer? your previous career was
Christine Gritmon: I was a journalist. A lot of
Sarah Scott: journalism,
Christine Gritmon: from journalism.
I'd love to, I'd love to point out one thing. You said how to tell a better story, but really, the skill with interviewing is how to get someone else to tell a better
Sarah Scott: Right. And I don't, and we don't always think about that as a skill. I don't think, one of the things with podcasting, and there's a lot of areas of the digital space where it's like, Hey, of course, writing is another one. Hey, you can just slap together this thing and you can run off with it and make a million dollars and podcasting's got that same.
Marketing verbiage that says, Oh, it's so super easy. Just turn on your camera or just turn on your mic and off you run. And yeah, you can start there, but just like with everything else, we've got to get better at it. We have to get better at telling our stories. We have to get. better at listening to what there is.
and so many people go the interview route because interviews are perceived as being easier. You're not the one that has to carry the whole conversation. Or if you are doing a video, you're not staring at yourself on video, for 20 or 30 minutes or whatever that happens to be. And. So while in a sense, yes, it's a lot easier.
I also see where it is also much more difficult because it does require a skill from the host of being able to do that level of interviewing. And I just don't know that it's something that they focus on as much is how do I improve that skill? How do I get better at pulling that out or helping that interviewee tell that tale?
And one of the things I hear most often too is I don't get a lot of soundbites. And, it can be true depending on who you're interviewing. There may not be a lot of soundbites, but you also have to guide your guests to those soundbites. And again, I think it's all just a skill that needs to be developed, but it's not focused on in that way when I'm looking at like the podcast industry as a whole.
Christine Gritmon: So that's interesting. I'm going to point out. One thing you said there that connects to something we identified earlier about you that lights you up, and also something that lights me up, so I'm bringing myself into this too. I would say create, creating a good interview, in addition to figuring out how to, inspire someone to tell a better story themselves, which has to do with tapping into their passions.
My thing, My special sauce that I bring to everything is my enthusiasm for finding the magic in things. I do that, every day when I see a pretty leaf on the street, but I also, that's why I'm, that's why I'm able to bring stories out of people, because I'm fascinated by them. I think that everyone has that gold in there.
[00:23:30] Blending Skills to Define Your Personal Brand
Christine Gritmon: With you, I'd point out that doing an interview is creating live content. And having those moments in there where, you get those sound bites, that's almost, live creating the future repurposing. if you're creating the rich content with an eye towards the many micro content moments within, I think that could be a special skill for you.
I think that, okay, so I want to talk to you about the podcast that you are going to start, but then I have a big audacious idea for you that I would love to see. But I'm not going to start there because I could be totally off track. So let's talk about this podcast that you intend to start. And by the way, you've been talking about this for a long time. So I, I absolutely know what that's like. those of us who are passionate about things, but at the same time we want it to be right, it can lead to a delay in starting. Of course, when you care, you delay. Even though you know from watching other people that the way to do it is to start. Be imperfect and get better.
But, tell me about your podcast idea and the podcast that you plan to start at the moment. Podcast
Sarah Scott: Okay. So at the moment, and I think I'm finally landing on the idea. Just the name hasn't stuck yet. So it's, so I got talked into doing the, being the podcaster who talks about podcasts to podcasters and. but the twist I want to do on it a little bit is a, I want to talk to podcasters specifically.
I would like to spend more time talking with women because I don't feel like there's enough female voices in the mix of all of the chaos that is out there. I still feel like so much of what is done out there is a male dominated voice. Not that's the worst thing in the world. There's a lot of great men.
but
Christine Gritmon: PodcastBros are a thing. It's a cliche for a reason.
Sarah Scott: I know, right? Like marketing bros and everything else. It's it's, guys, we love you, but women, we got to step it up and we don't, and it's scary. And I am a terrible and probably the perfect example of why we're not stepping it up. it's, I want to share the stories of women that I know that are in podcasting about their journey as podcasters.
Why are they doing it? What are they doing? What are they? What have they found that was great? What have they tripped over? What, has it brought to them to be a podcaster? And I'm hoping that in the one sense, those stories will inspire more people to want to take to the stage because, one of the things with me, I understand, again, as a digital marketer.
I've spent a lot of time understanding content and how important it is to our businesses and what we need to do. But I am not a writer, I am a talker. I have been a talker my whole life. And so podcasting offers this great ability to take my words, my spoken words that I'm far more comfortable with sharing and moving that into written word and into other pieces.
So I want to be able to encourage other. Other women to do the same thing to get their voices heard to raise them to not sit behind and have all these amazing thoughts that nobody ever hears because we think other people are already doing it. So I want to be able to demonstrate that to. Everyone through all the amazing women I know that do it, and even the amazing women I have yet to meet that are doing it.
And then the other side of that really is beyond just the guests. I want to be able to educate. I want to be able to show people how do I do the things that I do. I want to talk about, I want to take a very Pat Flynn approach to a lot of this as well in terms of The whole, I'm going to be be like in the weeds doing it myself and sharing that experience of, Hey, I tried this thing and this is what happened.
Or, Hey, I want you to try this technique on your next interview. Try to do this a little bit differently or try to do that. So similar to some of the, content or things I would share with you guys as my podcast clients, I want to be able to share that more generically as well with other people who are interested in working with their own podcasts.
Christine Gritmon: I didn't realize the female focus, of your plan and I love that. Of course, you've got a few great guests to start with.
Sarah Scott: I have a lot of great guests to start with. And actually my, I have one exception, but for the exception of one and. No, he, see, I didn't say necessarily I would limit all my guests, but, and he would be on the educational side, not necessarily like the, learning, the, highlighting the podcast side.
but I do all of my clients at the moment, all of my active clients, I'll say it that way, are all female. Every one of them is a female podcaster and it hasn't necessarily been. Entirely the intention going into it, but now that it is here and it is what I've been doing, I am so in for it. these women are all absolutely amazing.
They have the best things to say and they need to be elevated and they need to be seen. And if I can be a small part of that for them. That's amazing.
Christine Gritmon: You're triple niching, girl. I love it.
Sarah Scott: See, I don't really, I guess I didn't think of the woman part as tripled as a part of a niche, but I suppose it is right. Cause
Christine Gritmon: I love
Sarah Scott: further defines.
[00:29:00] Building the Brand
Christine Gritmon: I have an idea for you. And it's, gonna sound like, oh my God, that's a lot of work, but I think it actually plays really well to the type of work you do well. I want you to think about creating three things at once.
Sarah Scott: Oh, what do you want me to create?
Christine Gritmon: because it's the doing of the thing, but it's not actually creating things at, three things at once.
It's creating one big thing. And spinning off three separate things out of that. So the rich work is what it is, but then it's, so you ready? Here's, what I see for you.
Sarah Scott: Okay. I know. Yeah.
Christine Gritmon: the podcast, obviously. And we've talked about this before, you mentioned you're a Friends fan, and I love the idea of Ugly Naked Podcast, because it's about the true bare bones, here's how it is podcast.
But I, know it's not, I even designed a logo for you.
Sarah Scott: You did, but do you know what my absolute, I have an absolute fear with that name of what I am going to attract
Christine Gritmon: naked's
Sarah Scott: you are not a Friends fan.
Christine Gritmon: Yeah, okay, that's fair. Okay, so you have, forget the name, that's not my department, that's not the type of branding I do, that's all you. although, I'll, brainstorm with you anytime. first of all, there's the podcast. So it sounds like the podcast is going to be you interviewing female podcasters about podcasting and that's fantastic.
I think that's a great thing. So that is what it is.
Sarah Scott: Yep.
Christine Gritmon: Then I want you to do two other things on the side. I would love for you to create content out of creating that content because this is your first podcast. You have said straight up that it's going to require practice, that, you're gonna, no matter how much you know about it from an academic standpoint or from, a being behind the scenes and help producing it pot standpoint, doing it is so different.
So I think you sharing those experiences would be epic.
Sarah Scott: Yeah.
Christine Gritmon: along on the journey, maybe after you record a podcast. You could be like, all right, here's how I feel about what I just did.
the good, the bad, and the ugly, what you think you did well, what you could improve next time, just going into it. Even when you're like starting to, even the preamble of trying to figure out what to call it, trying to book guests. just really, cause, the thing is you're building the plane while flying it.
And, any, content creator does that, but especially if they're creating a type of content they haven't created before. So I think that, one example is, I don't know if you saw this, but Social Media Examiner, a few years ago, Mike Stelzner created a mini series on YouTube called The Journey.
And it was
Sarah Scott: Oh, I did.
Christine Gritmon: yeah, and it was behind the scenes, and it was all about how they were trying to hit a certain goal for that following year's social media marketing world. So, that was, again, behind the scenes of here's what the not totally smooth elements of this look like. And it's really humanizing and in your case it would be really educational because a huge part of what you want to do with it is to educate.
So what better way to educate than to take people along as you learn yourself.
[00:32:33] One way Christine built her brand
Christine Gritmon: Part of how I built my personal brand was I live tweeted the crap out of conferences because I was going there to learn. the way that I learned any of this stuff, was originally just by geeking out on it and learning from other people, and so I decided to share that learning.
I was like, why on earth would I hoard it? And that actually got me recognition as someone who was a source of this great information that actually came from other people, but I was sharing it. So I think that speaks really well to your desire to educate, but it also might be a nice way to take the edge off the wanting it to be perfect.
Sarah Scott: Yeah. I hadn't thought of that way. That's a good point.
[00:33:14] Choosing a platform for your brand
Christine Gritmon: it would be a different format. Don't do a podcast about creating a podcast about creating
Sarah Scott: Creating a podcast for podcasters.
Christine Gritmon: Yeah, I don't know what type of format you'd feel better doing it in. I don't know.
Sarah Scott: Maybe it's LinkedIn con or I'm mostly on LinkedIn, but it could be Instagram content as opposed as well.
Christine Gritmon: it would have to be something that you would want to do, and I don't consider you a huge Instagram gal.
Sarah Scott: I'm not a huge Instagram. I'm not a huge social media gal and that's. That's a big, weird, that's a big weirdness for me,
Christine Gritmon: your mind went to LinkedIn first, so you could create a LinkedIn newsletter, perhaps?
Sarah Scott: Ooh,
Christine Gritmon: you've said that you're not a writer, you're a talker, but as you are someone who's very good with Descript, so you could always speak your article. first of all, there's audio on LinkedIn. LinkedIn audio is a thing.
you can
Sarah Scott: use it anymore?
Christine Gritmon: I don't know, but it exists. You can be a pioneer, Sarah.
Sarah Scott: I'll be, I'll reinvent it.
Christine Gritmon: Yeah. Also, it could be a privately embedded podcast, so you're not actually recording a whole other podcast, but you are embedding that audio in the or, again, you could just, transcript it. I think that's the way to go.
If you're comfortable with LinkedIn, it should be some sort of LinkedIn content series, maybe, is a thought. it, you shouldn't force yourself to be vulnerable in a space that you're not comfortable in.
And I would say don't go make a TikTok series out of this. But wait. But wait, there's more. you've got the podcast. You've got the content about your learning process of putting this podcast together, which should actually debut before the podcast.
Sarah Scott: It should. Yeah, that, that makes sense. What's
Christine Gritmon: third part's gonna sound a little nutty.
Sarah Scott: Let's go with Nutty.
Christine Gritmon: I would, while you are creating that side content about what you're learning during this process, start cobbling together the skeleton of a course,
Sarah Scott: know, I thought about that.
Christine Gritmon: what better time to understand the learning process than when you yourself are going through the learning process?
Sarah Scott: It's very true. I know. Yeah. I hadn't cons, I hadn't actually considered that piece. That's,
[00:35:49] Benefits of Establishing Your Brand
Christine Gritmon: Yeah, because what better way To establish, so here's what that does. Triple establishment for you eventually getting into being more of a podcast trainer.
Sarah Scott: Yeah.
Christine Gritmon: is how I could see you. I could see you being a podcast coach, podcast trainer, whatever you want to call it. so you're triply, establishing credibility and establishing your brand as, yeah, of course I already do this, um, which is, first of all, there's the people who want to see the polished product.
They don't want to learn podcasting from someone who's not a podcaster. Okay. You're a podcaster, so you've got that part sorted. Then there's the fact that the people who are following along for your journey and learning as you learn, that develop, that develops trust. I have to shout out Bob Berg every second of my life.
Know, trust. You got to develop, you got to have people knowing you, liking you, and trusting you. The knowing you is just by being visible. The liking you. is because they're able to latch on to something because you're showing your personality, but the trust, that's where the vulner that's where the vulnerability is a superpower.
Sarah Scott: Yeah.
Christine Gritmon: trust because they see you admit when you don't know something. So then when you share that you do know something, they're like, clearly she does know that something because if she didn't, she would tell us. And we know that because when she hasn't, she has told us. And it also establishes you as someone who is curious to figure out the right way to do something.
And eager to share that lesson with others because you're literally doing that. So that means when it's time to actually launch a course, you have that trust. You'll probably have people actually asking you for one before you've made it.
Sarah Scott: Wouldn't that be nice?
Christine Gritmon: Oh god, I have weird light pattern things happening on my face. Alright,
Sarah Scott: was going to say, look, it's one of those rare days that the sun is out in the UK.
Christine Gritmon: the sun will come out when I'm recording. Alright, I should have closed that shade, but that's okay. Alright, we'll cut this out of the audio podcast.
Sarah Scott: And we can always make it a blooper reel and the rest of it.
Christine Gritmon: Video exclusive. Exclusively on YouTube.
I would definitely, I think, that this is a thought because, again, I, I think that even though the podcast, the Shiny Actual podcast, feels like the main thing, I think you'd be surprised at how much you sharing your journey becomes the thing that actually gets you stages.
Sarah Scott: And that's, that would be really interesting.
[00:38:34] The Power of Networking to Build Your Brand
Christine Gritmon: Although, the people you interview on your podcast are also an incredible way to build a network of people in the podcasting community. I can see you, again, I know travel is not super on your radar right now,
Sarah Scott: will be.
Christine Gritmon: but there are in person and online stages. There are online summits, there are things like this, especially now.
since 2020,
Sarah Scott: Thank God they're coming back.
Christine Gritmon: yeah, lots of online things, that you could get started there and once you've built up that reputation speaking on the online speaker circuit, your kids will be a little older, and you might feel a little more comfortable getting out there. Though at the same time, you're not going nowhere.
We met at a conference.
Sarah Scott: Oh yeah. I'm going to conferences and things, which is, has been amazing. there is such a click over energy. I don't know any other way to describe it. Like I feel more in my own being when I'm at those conferences and I'm around other professionals and it's just Oh yeah, this was what it was like to be a professional
Christine Gritmon: What elements of that light you up? When you've been to events and you're feeling It clicking in and you're feeling that electricity of being in your zone. What elements tend to be the moments where that happens? Is it in sessions? Is it in between sessions meeting people? Is it totally outside at dinner?
Is it like meeting in real life the people who you've been listening to or reading forever? What does it for ya?
Sarah Scott: it's a big combination. I think of all of that. So like social media marketing world was amazing when I went there for the first time this past year. And I was meeting people who I've been following for years. And that was just like, I was sitting to dinner with these people and I felt and it wasn't like this huge dinner.
it was a table of maybe 15 people, but it was still like, Whoa, I am. And I don't think any of these people would think of themselves the way that I think of them, or how I even think of you these are names, these are people, if you were in these spaces and in these industries, they, people know who you are, and it's here I am having a conversation with you, and I'm having dinner with you, there was this feeling of feeling important or feeling recognized from some of those conversations, which I know is probably super shallow to say, but,
Christine Gritmon: No, I have that too. And, I have to say, You, again, being involved in my own podcasting career, When I got to interview Pat Flynn,
Sarah Scott: hello, right?
Christine Gritmon: And then when Pat Flynn interviewed me, I felt important. Like People geek out on that stuff, and even when you reach a certain level of success, there's people who still geek out on that stuff.
Sarah Scott: glad to hear that.
Christine Gritmon: yeah, we're both friends with Andrew and Pete, that's who introduced us. They geek out on people, of course they do, but they're Andrew and Pete!
Sarah Scott: right. And that's but they're Andrew and Pete, don't they know everybody, everybody knows them. And it's still yeah, they still,
Christine Gritmon: They get excited still, they get starstruck.
Sarah Scott: yeah. Like when they had Chris Doe last year at Atomicon, like you, if you watch them make that announcement, like they were star struck at the fact that he was even coming.
So it's all right. That does, that's a good point. And that does make me feel a little less. Bad about it, but that's probably one of the big things for me. Like I, because I'm an educator too, I'm always big on the sessions. I like getting in and. Going to the sessions, learning as we go. like you said, like I'm not a tweeter.
I'm not very much in the social media. I'm terrible. I'm not in the social media space, but
Christine Gritmon: I don't tweet things anymore either because
Sarah Scott: nobody does.
Christine Gritmon: It's X now and X is a different product. Sorry, rant over, continue.
Sarah Scott: No, that's a fair rant, such a fair rant. but, but I'm that same way. Like I like to hear what I hear and then share that. Because, when they're really good sessions, like I really love, really, good meaty sessions. one of my favorites that I still go back to from, social media marketing world, Judy Fox gave an amazing talk on LinkedIn and it was just like, I couldn't stop taking notes.
those are my, that really lights me up to get that kind of content. directly from these people on the stages, like not just following their stuff online or watching it there. so there's a light there too, but I think ultimately the last thing that truly gets me is one, it's this mindset of, I feel like I'm, Sarah.
And this is, I don't know how to define this really well, so I'm hoping you can maybe pull it out. But I'm not mom and I'm not a wife. I'm not all the other roles that I play when I'm at these conferences. yes, I still, of course, they're all still part of who I am. And anybody who saw me in the social media marketing world, like I snuck off at the end of most days, like around four o'clock or so, because I was reading a book to my kids.
And so I. video them and I was reading to them as they were going to bed. but like for the most part, I just got to feel like myself. I didn't have all these other things I had to think about and all these other places. So I felt like I showed up very differently while I was at the conference than I do in my everyday life most of the time.
because I just got to be me.
Christine Gritmon: You had your superhero cape on. I, describe, that professional version of myself as Christine effing Gritman.
Sarah Scott: Yeah. Yeah.
Christine Gritmon: and sitting around the house, before I came on this recording today, I was not Christine F. Ingritman. I was on the couch, eating reheated pizza.
I was not Christine F. Ingritman, and then I put on the red lipstick and prepared to sit here as Christine F. Ingritman, and I'm in that right now. I feel like a different person. And then, when I pick my kids up in the afternoon, I'm not Christine Effing - Gritmon, I'm just like random tired mom. So I totally understand that.
One thing that I want to point out, so you're fairly new to, the conference scene in this industry, but one really great thing that going to those events and speaking to people does, and especially something that you'll find interviewing these people does, is it humanizes them and it helps you realize There's no reason you can't be one of those also.
And that, I think, is something that's going to be incredibly valuable for you. And you have the right connections to be able to get serious people on. first of all, Andrea Ball, to begin with. That's a serious get. I'm looking forward to getting her. that's a serious get. you've got lots of people.
You mentioned Judy Fox. I can literally text my friend Judy from my phone for you right now if you want her on your podcast. Because, oh, she'd do it.
Sarah Scott: Envy. So much envy.
Christine Gritmon: you don't have to envy because you can, you have access to these wonderful people. And, I know Judy won't be like, don't go volunteering me for stuff.
Judy is so generous with her knowledge. That's
Sarah Scott: She's amazing. I got to meet her last year to that social media marketing world too. She's such a gem. Oh,
Christine Gritmon: that's the other thing you'll learn when you spend more time talking to these people. You'll learn which people are super genuine, down to earth people, like Judy, and then which people are more hype than substance and are less generous.
And, if your goal is to educate people, to educate yourself and to educate others along with you, you'll learn what people, are aligned with that goal and what people are not. And again, the best way to do it is to do it. I can think of someone, I'm not going to name them, and they'd never guess that this was them.
But years ago, I interviewed someone who I was very excited to interview and who's very supportive online, very rah and very personally And I interviewed them, and they were really clearly of the mindset of I'll give you my thoughts on this, but you can't really find out any of my special sauce without paying.
And that's not who I have on my show. You know that.
Sarah Scott: no,
Christine Gritmon: So I think, but I think you're going to have a great time. I think the people who you interview are going to have a great time because you're interviewing them. about not what they're always interviewed about. They're always interviewed about their area of expertise, or they're interviewing other people more of the time.
There's probably some people who you'll have on where their whole thing is being an interviewer, and they don't get interviewed a lot, but you're interviewing them about something very specific that isn't something that they get to talk about a lot. So that's going to be very cool. Okay, so I want to make sure that we do round this up eventually.
So twofer here, one thing is what are you still trying to answer for yourself about your personal brand, your messaging, your who am I business?
[00:47:30] Defining Your Brand: The Struggle of Self-Representation
Christine Gritmon: what are you still what's that nagging? unclosed loop. Cause I feel like we all have them. I'm a personal brand strategist and I certainly have them.
So, what's your thing that you feel like maybe it's not connecting either in your own head or it's connected in your head. It's just not connecting once it reaches the outside world.
Sarah Scott: Oh, that's a tougher question. You, that, last part is the tougher question actually, because I'm so funny because I tell people this all the time that I am terrible on paper and I am like a totally different person when you meet me, I feel like, and I could be completely wrong, but, I feel like that's always been like, Hey, my resume, like on paper, like.
but once people meet me and they actually get to know me, I think that I've always shined it. Like it's a very different opinion, Oh, you do all these things and you have all these skills and it just looks so different. And I think I still struggle with that even today in terms of like, how do I make sure, I guess it's a twofold thing that I think about struggling with.
One is how do I make sure that brand who I am or what that is comes across no matter how? I'm presenting it, whether it's in writing or it's on a podcast or it's on, a social media post, whatever it happens to be, but I think the deeper problem I have there, as well as one of the questions or several of the questions, a series of your questions that I struggled with was how.
What is it? And how is it that I want to show up in the world? What is it? The, you had things like, what are the words that you want your brand to express? And I have no idea. And a lot of ways I feel like I really struggle with what that is. And I look at folks like you and there's a few others that I look at that I think have really strong brand messaging and it comes across really clear to me, your personality and who you are and what I would expect if I was to meet you, which, again, I knew all that before I met you and I met you and it was 100 percent on everything. Like you were as on in person as you were in everything else that I had ever seen.
Christine Gritmon: love hearing that, especially now at this point, you're someone who's seen me in so many situations.
Sarah Scott: Yeah, but and, the truth, yes, and I've seen you in a lot of different situations, but you're still always you, I can't think of a time that I've seen you so off from anything. And when I do see you off, I know why you're off and it's usually an energy thing. And it's normally, like I said, I'll see it sometimes in conversations that you're having with guests where the energy doesn't match, but it's not that you're not 100 percent you.
It's just that it's still we all need that energy feed of the right people to pull us
Christine Gritmon: contain multitudes.
Sarah Scott: We do, especially as women, don't we contain so many multitudes?
Christine Gritmon: So
Sarah Scott: so I think that's the biggest thing I struggle with is how do I make sure that, A, how do I define that? what other guidance do you give around really defining that feeling around your brand or what it is people would expect from me?
and what do I want them to expect from me? Cause I know this isn't a lot different from who you are cause then you're fighting your brand messaging. and then how do I make sure it just shows up that way everywhere that I'm going, like regardless of whether or not it's the way that I properly communicate.
I think one of the biggest things I did recently was change the name of. I'm still in the process, but changing the name of the company from what I was, because I hated my old name of my company, which was elite media strategies, it meant nothing to me. It was so ostentatious and like pomp.
I felt like it was pompous, but it was something my husband and I came up with like in the middle of the night one night and it was like, Oh, this is really generic. And yeah, it was really generic. so by turning the name over to a studio name and it was a personal name, but it's the studio. I know I felt a lot more like I could step into that brand.
And into that message because of that. But I still don't know what that feeling is.
Christine Gritmon: Makes total sense.
[00:51:42] Generous Curiosity: The Key to Successful Branding
Christine Gritmon: I would say, just to volunteer some words that I associate with you, and especially after this conversation, I would say the words that are coming to me are, you come from a place of generous curiosity. And what I mean by generous curiosity is it's generous on both the front end and the back end, so it's generous curiosity insofar as you're genuinely curious in a generous way of I actually care what you have to say, I'm, you're generous with your giving of Hoot.
So you're generous in that way, and you really want to listen, but then you're generous on the back end, too, which is that once you have learned from that person, and once you have gotten their message, and once you've connected with that, and, done, gotten your own curiosity satisfied on some level, that it'll never be satisfied because you're a curious person.
You are generous with sharing that. as well. Not only do you want to share what you've learned, but you want to share that person's message. You said at the beginning, you really love helping people get their stories out there and amplify that. So I would say that you come at things from a place of generous curiosity.
I know that you are a very open and caring person. Here's the interesting thing. I feel like you absolutely don't need anyone else to be perfect. I feel like that's a very big thing. I feel like you are not a judgmental person. You have a point of view. But you're not judgmental. Like it's, a really cool balance, but I think that you are having an expectation of yourself.
And again, I think that putting yourself out there with a, mindset of, I don't have to know what I'm doing, because part of what I'm putting myself out there as is someone who is learning. I think that's gonna be really key for you. I think that's a really key direction. I think that loosening Those bounds of needing it to be right, and I understand wanting to be an expert, and that's huge, and I think you're gonna be, and I think you are on some levels already, because you have a really good instinct for this stuff, and everything, every time you do it, you're learning more, and you're retaining that, and you're using it, but I think that the, learner mindset and the teacher mindset go hand in hand.
I think that you don't have to be an expert to teach. People disagree. I think
Sarah Scott: It's going to be one step ahead of the person you're teaching.
Christine Gritmon: Exactly.
Sarah Scott: Honestly.
Christine Gritmon: I think you just need to be honest and open and Hey, I'm Sarah. I know some stuff. I want to know more stuff. If you want to know this stuff too, come along for the journey.
Sarah Scott: Yeah,
Christine Gritmon: Again, I think generous curiosity is really, do those
Sarah Scott: heard anybody say that. I don't know too many people that have, see, and every time you say something like that, the first person that comes to mind is Pat Flynn, because I know that's how he, when he first started everything, that was his kind of approach was, Hey, I don't know this stuff.
I'm learning this stuff.
Christine Gritmon: Serve first.
Sarah Scott: to learn it with me.
Christine Gritmon: Serve first is this whole
Sarah Scott: Yeah, and I, and it's really interesting because I think that when I do think back over the times and the things that always make me feel really good about myself is when I can't help somebody else. When somebody comes to me and says, Hey, I don't know, and this happened the other day and I was I was actually flattered that this person came and asked me a question and they're like, Hey, I know you use DSS script.
I'm having a problem with it. Can you help me figure this thing out? And I'm like, yeah, here's what I do. And here's what happens. And what, let me know, is it working? And, and I gave all my tips and my thoughts around what I thought it would do or how I would have approached the problem. And then, like two days later, I followed back up and I was like, Hey, by the way, did you fix the problem?
She's I'm just, she was, thank you for following back up with me. She's I didn't realize she was, I just, she wasn't expecting me to follow back up, it felt really good. And I'm like, if I don't know the answer, like here's, I'm going to look for it. I'm going to help you look for it because it's just, I want to know the answer to on how to fix something like that, but, and.
For me, that's just always been my modem. And what I hated, what I literally hated about that is that I had to take a step back and feel like as an entrepreneur, I had to caveat it somehow and say, Oh, don't worry about it. There's no cost to this. I'll help you get this fixed if I can, because I'd offered to like even bring the file into my own Descript for if it would help, if our versions were different or something.
And I'm like, I just do it as a friend just to help, and maybe that's not the right approach, but at the same time, she was stuck in a bind and she's a friend. but that's my approach to everything is Hey, if it makes me feel really good when people ask me like, Hey, do you know how to fix this thing?
Regardless of I actually know how to fix it or not,
Christine Gritmon: I love that she knew to ask you and you just illustrated generous curiosity. My goodness, you wanted to figure it out
Sarah Scott: it's all I wanted to do.
Christine Gritmon: you wanted to help her.
Sarah Scott: Yeah.
Christine Gritmon: Because you're generous. But you want to figure it out, because you're curious. Ah!
Sarah Scott: because eventually it's going to be my problem too. I guess it's a part of the way I always look at it is if somebody has this problem, then more than likely, if I haven't bumped into it yet, I'm probably going to bump into it.
Christine Gritmon: in this together. Rising tide lifts all boats,
Sarah Scott: boats, right?
Christine Gritmon: an educator wants to educate freely. An educator doesn't want to hoard their knowledge. An educator and someone who's actually interested in helping others do well, and helping others get their messages out there,
Sarah Scott: Yeah. not everything has sales pitch.
Christine Gritmon: Yeah. Oh my goodness.
I could talk about this with you all day.
Sarah Scott: And luckily enough, other people can,
Christine Gritmon: Yes. so again, I want everyone at home to know that you can get you can download for free, my huge Mondo version of some of the guiding questions that I start my clients on. You don't have to answer all of them, this is just for you, I promise. So do what feels right, don't do what doesn't, unless it doesn't because it's hard, in which case maybe do press on.
and, yeah, so you can get that at Gritman. com slash pre work. And Sarah. Wonderful Sarah Scott podcast person extraordinaire. Tell the good folks at home where they can find you, why they should find you, and what they will find there.
Sarah Scott: let me see.
[00:58:26] Where to Find Me: Connecting with Sarah Scott
Sarah Scott: You can find me on LinkedIn as Sarah Scott or Sarah Hutchins Scott. I think it's under all three names there. that's where I'm most often going to be found. You can also take a look at my website at Sarah Scott studios and you'll find me there as well. And I think the reasons why you might want to follow me, I think Christine laid those all out in the episode.
we're going to start. I'm sure that you will be finding I share a lot of stuff about creating podcasts, the podcasters I work with. and I also share a bit about my journey as an adjunct professor for university and some of the other quirky weird things that go on in life.
Christine Gritmon: We didn't even talk about the fact that you're an adjunct professor at a university. What? Okay,
Sarah Scott: Yeah,
so many facets.
Christine Gritmon: two. Maybe there's a part two coming up in 2024. You'll have to see.
[00:59:18] Wrapping Up: The Journey of Personal Branding
Sarah Scott: And just so you're listening to that free guide, we'll have that in the show notes. so if you're on your player, if you're watching on YouTube, just look in the description, the link will be right there for you. So you don't have to go too far to grab it.
Christine Gritmon: And Sarah's the one who put it there because Sarah's amazing. Thank you so much, Sarah. This has been awesome.
Sarah Scott: You're welcome. It's been so much fun.
Christine Gritmon: And thank you so much for being here. Whether you're listening to Let's Talk About Brand on your podcast player of choice or watching the video podcast on YouTube, either way, please subscribe and leave a message and or rating if you like it.
Again, this was not what one of my sessions really looks like. This was just a little test, a little taster of what some of that work and what some of those methodologies, tend to be like, I call it like the therapy bit is how I start with my personal branding clients. So please do reach out if you are interested in seeing what it really, looks like.
And regardless, either way, I do hope you'll join us next week for Let's Talk About Brand when it will be a normal episode where I'm interviewing another smart guest about another element of personal branding. Thanks. Bye.
S4 Ep09: Let’s Talk About Branding as an Agency Founder with Kaitlyn Barclay
Kaitlyn Barclay is the CEO and co-founder of Scout Lab. We discuss developing a personal brand by developing your reputation. She talks about how storytelling is a large part of building a brand. And finally, we're going to hear from her about how she put together her personal brand, how that is influenced by being a co-founder and the things that she personally struggled with.
Today I'm really excited because I'm so happy to have finally had this conversation with Kaitlyn Barclay.
Kaitlyn Barclay is the CEO and co-founder of Scout Lab, which is an agency that helps startups with their branding, communications, and marketing. The focus of her work is on founders in addition to being one herself.
Kaitlyn and Scout Lab especially work with founders who have a mission behind their work, whether it's planetary health or actual health. She works with and advises founders who stand out in their fields. Many of whom are women, people of color, and part of the LGBT+ community.
So today, Kaitlyn and I are going to discuss the development of her personal brand, which really started with developing her reputation in the market by doing the work and absorbing as much as she could from other startup founders. She talks about what influenced her to become an entrepreneur and how storytelling is such a large part of building a brand.
And finally, we're going to hear from her about how she put together her personal brand, how that is influenced by being a co-founder and the things that she personally struggled with.
Tune in as we talk about:
[00:00] Welcome Kaitlyn Barclay!
[03:37] Where did your career start, and how did it get to that point?
[07:09] Why did Kaitlyn decide to work with other companies first, rather than starting her own company? And how did that help you later?
[10:41] How did Kaitlyn's reputation get her into FitMob?
[13:21] Why is it that Kaitlyn decided to focus on building brands for startups? What is the focus of Scout Lab?
[15:50] How did Kaitlyn's personal brand change when she made the shift from consultant to agency founder?
[19:05] How does a two-founder brand work when it comes to those personal brands and how do those personal brands serve the agency?
[23:03] How does Kaitlyn help founders tell their stories?
[25:59] How does Kaitlyn help founders find the balance between professional and personal stories while highlighting their differences?
[28:22] Does a founder's personal brand help them build trust for investors and partners?
[31:00] What do you personally as Kaitlyn struggle with or have you struggled with the most in the past when it comes to your own personal brand?
[34:06] How to connect with Kaitlyn Barclay
Contact Kaitlyn Barclay:
Website: Scout Labs
Email: Kaitlyn@scoutlab.com
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Hello, welcome to Let's Talk About Brand. I am your host, Christine Gritmon and I am coming at you every single week on Let's Talk About Brand, talking to different guest experts every single week about different elements of branding, especially personal branding. If you're listening to us on your podcast player of choice, please do hit subscribe and leave a review if you like it. If you're joining us for the video podcast on YouTube, same deal. Subscribe. Let us know what you think in the comments. And of course, you can find me anywhere on social media as Christine Gritmon.
So today I'm really excited because I've actually had to reschedule this one a bunch of times.
I'm so happy we've finally had this conversation. Kaitlyn Barclay. Kaitlyn Barclay is the CEO and co-founder of Scout Lab, which is an agency that helps startups with their branding, their communications, their marketing, all that jazz. So she works with a ton of founders in addition to being one herself. But as you'll hear today, Kaitlyn also came up through the startup world.
Kaitlyn and Scout Lab especially work with founders that have some sort of mission behind their work, whether it's planetary health or actual health health. She also works with and advises lots of founders who are women, who are people of color, who are parts of the LGBT plus community. She really helps founders get out there, get their great work and big ideas out there and also get themselves and their stories out there too.
So today, Kaitlyn and I are going to discuss her journey which as you'll hear, really started with just doing the work, absorbing as much as she could, developing that reputation. before she started worrying about her brand. And then we're also going to hear from her a lot about what goes into that brand and that personal brand, especially for founders the position that a founder's personal brand takes in a startup.
And finally, we're going to hear from her a bit about how she put together her own personal brand and the things that she personally struggled with, which may be things that you need to hear about as well.
Christine Gritmon: so this founder right here is certainly interested to get into today's discussion about branding for founders. So without any further ado, Kaitlyn Barclay, come on down!
Kaitlyn Barclay: It's so nice to be here. Thanks for having me, Christine.
Christine Gritmon: Thank you so much for being on, and can I just say also thank you so much for your patience. We have had to reschedule this thing so many times, mostly because of me and my crazy transatlantic move.
Kaitlyn Barclay: I love that. Congratulations again. That's huge.
Christine Gritmon: Thank you, and thanks for taking good care of New York for me in my absence.
All right, so Kaitlyn, let's dive right in. I would love to hear your story. Not just what you're doing now, but how you got there and how you have built your personal brand to get to the point you are now where, You're an agency founder, you work with a whole bunch of other people to get their brand and marketing and messaging straight.
You're an advisor for female entrepreneurs. You do all of this stuff. So clearly the Kaitlyn brand is a strong one. Can you take us through the history of how you built your brand along the way as you were developing each of these steps of your career? Not, no pressure. That's a big one.
[00:03:37] Where did your career start, and how did it get to that point?
Christine Gritmon: I can chunk it down if you'd like. Let's go from the start, actually. Let's go to the start of kind of the building of the Kaitlyn brand, because it's very different from where you are now. When did you first start feeling that, okay, this has got to be on my own steam now? Where did your career start, and how did it get to that point?
Kaitlyn Barclay: Yeah, I think it, it starts much farther back than when I entered the professional world. My mom was an entrepreneur. She actually, when she divorced my dad when I was five she'd previously been in finance and when she had me and my sister was a stay at home mom and. So when they got divorced, she really had to figure out what she wanted to do next.
And what she ended up doing was taking up interior design consultancy. So she started just, designing for her friends. She said I'm passionate about this, I'm good at it, and it's driving me forward. And so she built this consultancy that grew into a really reputable interior design firm in my small town I grew up in, outside of Portland, Oregon. And she had one employee and I watched her navigate, client issues. And I knew what an invoice was at an early age. And I just watched this woman really come into her own as a small business owner. And I think that gave me the the reference point of which I molded my entrepreneurialism or the path that I wanted to take, I think. Really early on, I knew that I was interested in running my own business because I saw my mom do it. And when I graduated from college, I knew I wanted to go immediately into tech. So, I'd like done some internships in Silicon Valley worked at a number of different startups before I even graduated.
And yeah. I moved to Silicon Valley quickly after that, and I think I got some really informative experiences working in tech, you know, working at startups that failed. I was on the founding team of a company that was able to grow and get acquired by ClassPass in 2015. I led, database marketing and customer acquisition at Levi Strauss and the e-commerce team, which was like a startup within a billion dollar organization.
So I had all of these cool opportunities very early on in my career where I was building. And so by the time I was entering my thirties, I was ready to start something again. And that's really where I met Willow, my co-founder and we started Scout Lab.
Christine Gritmon: I love that. So I want to back up a little bit. First of all, as a mother, it definitely makes me feel good to hear that you saw your mother do it, and it made you want to do it, too, instead of saying, My God. And she clearly was in an industry where she was the product, it sounds like. You know, her skills, a service based company.
So that's very good to know. But also, it's interesting that you worked for all these startups because, as you said, you were always eager to start your own business, but I'm sure that working for those startups got your feet wet and helped you build your skills. I'd love to hear a bit about why you started via that path instead of just trying to start your own thing from the get go.
And also The unique differences between working for a startup where you're there with the founder usually Versus working for a large corporation like Levi Strauss. So first, let's dive into the first part, which is Deciding to work for startups and in other big companies rather than doing your own thing right out of the gate.
[00:07:09] Why did Kaitlyn decide to work with other companies first, rather than starting her own company? And how did that help you later?
Christine Gritmon: How did that decision come to be and how did that help you later?
Kaitlyn Barclay: Yeah, I, I was at a dinner last night where one of my friends sitting next to me, it was like 19 years old when he like started a very successful startup. So like it is, age can be just a number. I will say, generally speaking, experience is really important and learning from people who've done it has been incredibly informative to my career.
And I would really recommend any young person interested in entrepreneurialism to Get a blueprint for it, like find mentors, find entrepreneurs that you respect and admire, like work for people doing it. If you're not ready to do it yourself, it's like a massive amount of risk. And I think without operational acumen or understanding of how to run a business, it.
It can also be a really inefficient process if you don't have experience. So the reason why, you know, in my early twenties I opted for startup experiences is because I think that's as close as you can get to founding a startup without founding it. And so my first boss was the head of marketing at Facebook and started this social commerce platform, Jonathan Ehrlich.
And he was just such an incredible mentor and champion for me very early on in my career and gave me like massive responsibility for a 22 year old that just, graduated from college, but I was able to learn a tremendous amount and drive a lot of impact for the organization. And, you know, when I then went to my next thing, like I was working alongside, an ex GP at Mayfield.
Which is these folks with storied careers, really being able to learn from them, juice all they know, and then apply my spin on how I want to show up as a leader. was great to experiment with in my 20s. And I certainly think, having been on the founding team when I was like 23, 24 was like a, an incredible opportunity.
And I think I knew that after. In my next my next foray, I wanted experience in bureaucracy and process because I knew that was a huge gap of mine, which is why I went from, the company FitMob, that was acquired by ClassPass. I went to Levi Strauss because I wanted to fill in that gap.
And I realized very quickly like, Understood the blueprint understood the way that process exists at this scale and then, moved to New York and was ready to start my own thing again. I can't understate how important mentorship is. I think early on in your career mentorship of more experienced people is crucial. I think as you go along in your career, peer-to-peer mentorship becomes more important. And so that was really informative and instrumentive to, where I am today and certainly how I've been able to mold myself, given the feedback of the people around me, which has really been, amazing.
Christine Gritmon: I love that I would love to hear a little bit more about how you came to be part of Fitmob. It sounds like that was your first hands on entrepreneurial experience. So I'd love to hear how that came to be. And also, did you have to leverage your personal brand in a different way as someone who was really part of that founding team versus when you were just working for startups?
Or was it, the same, this was just another opportunity that it helps open for you? What part did your personal brand play in entrepreneurship in that first venture FitMob? And we'll get to your current venture in a bit, because I'm sure it's a slightly different situation.
[00:10:41] How did Kaitlyn's reputation get her into FitMob?
Kaitlyn Barclay: So I think what many people call personal branding now is also what you would call reputation. And I think many people want a personal brand, but I think far fewer than those who know how important reputation is writ large. Your reputation is how someone refers you to like a job or invites you to a dinner party because they heard through the grapevine that you're a great person.
And so I got the opportunity to go to Fitmob because of the previous mentor I had my boss at Copious which was like a marketplace in the social commerce industry referred me in and was like, Hey this person has been instrumental to the growth of this marketplace fitmob was a multi sided marketplace.
And so when I met with the CEO who had this idea, but it wasn't really, it was still being whiteboarded. We like picked up the marker together and really made something special as an initial. kind of thesis and we're able to build that together. So that's how I got referred in. But I will say like reputation is just so incredibly important.
And I think people want a personal brand and they think about that as like the externalization of self. Am I on podcasts or like large speaking opportunities? Am I like writing and being published? But I think that's just like a multiple of reputation and everyone should, not everyone perhaps needs a personal brand, but everyone needs to think very critically and seriously about their reputation. And so I think that early on, like I was just building reputation and it wasn't until later on when I started my own thing. And certainly that was like a part of FitMob, but then expanded much more when I started Scout Lab or personal brand.
Was a little bit more important because I needed people to find me just not through my network, but through other like public domains. And so there's like nuance there, but yeah, early on, I was really fixated on building things and being known for my work ethic and my impact at startups. And I think, throughout the course of my early career, that was how I got exposure to these incredible opportunities because I was just known as this doer.
If you have Whatever budget, whatever resource constraints, whatever insane OKRs, I'll just get it done. And I think that's the type of builder you need at early-stage startups.
Christine Gritmon: Absolutely. So just doing the work, building that reputation before you worry about brand which can be more external facing. Now, brand is something that you actually currently, and also in the past, help other people with. So after going to Levi Strauss for a little bit. You, or actually during overlapping with that time I know that you were brand and growth consultant before founding your agency focusing on helping startups.
[00:13:21] Why is it that Kaitlyn decided to focus on building brands for startups? What is the focus of Scout Lab?
Christine Gritmon: Now you've done a bunch of things with startups. What made you focus in on that brand consulting element? What lit you up about it? And what did you learn maybe working on the other side of it helping other startups to do it.
Kaitlyn Barclay: Yeah, it's such a good question. And I think that, whether we're talking about brand building with respect to an organization or brand building with respect to a person or an executive, you're thinking about similar pillars, let's say. And so in 2016, a few things were happening. One, I had just moved to New York and met my co founder.
And we were both really lit up about the same things. It was just after the 2016 election where I think a lot of marketers were really galvanized to use their superpowers for good. And we saw like reputation at scale, take a turn for the worst. And I think some really like violent storytelling that we weren't proud to see propagate at the scale it was. And so when we, when Willow and I, my co founder got together we said one, like storytelling is so important, right? Even just even money capitalizes the stories we hear and ingest in our culture. So how might we be able to be a part of uplifting stories that we're really proud of?
And that means the stories of executives that are really like walking the walk. And so that was really the blueprint for Scout Lab because brand also is this very ephemeral thing. Everyone wants one, but no one knows what it is. And my co founder and I having, having built several brands at that point in our career, she was early on at Airbnb. I just went through the. Rebrand for Levi Strauss launched their women's line. So we had like very differing scales of which we've reinvented brand. We said we want to do this, but for organizations that are really trying to create access where it hasn't historically existed, like tap into communities at the margin that have been ignored by industry.
That is really important. Like healthcare, like FinTech, like planetary health. And that was really the blueprint of which we started Scout Lab, making very digestible deliverables associated with brand building and delivering it for high growth startups and the executives that work for them.
Christine Gritmon: Now, how did you shift your personal brand, if at all, between being a consultant and being an agency founder? Because a lot of the function you're performing might be similar, maybe not. But I imagine when you made the decision to say, you know what, I'm no longer a consultant.
[00:15:50] How did Kaitlyn's personal brand change when she made the shift from consultant to agency founder?
Christine Gritmon: We are founding an agency. That's a shift there. So I'd love to hear a bit behind that shift when you decided to change the way you're doing business and also how you changed the way you present yourself and your personal brand as a consultant versus as an agency founder.
Kaitlyn Barclay: Totally. It's a really good question. I think, I was 27 when I started Scout Lab and up until then, I really didn't think of my pitch or like my personal brand. I just really considered, am I doing cool work that is impactful and driving value for the organization that I was, consulting for or working for and that was it.
And I think that's really important. Folks earlier on in their career should really just be thinking about am I doing cool shit? And is it driving impact, intended impact? And so when I started Scout Lab, I was again, 27. So I was finally able to curate a story around my impact, like what I had done, right?
I started and sold a company. I had consulted for some really cool organizations. I had worked in Silicon Valley. Like I had fundraised. I had done all of these things that I could speak to in service of my reputation. I had people that could vouch for me. And so when I started Scout Lab, it was really like, again, codifying our differentiated point of view, developing this agile methodology connected to brand building.
So It spoke directly to the venture-backed founder that we were trying to sell to. And it took off really quickly. And I think from there, I started to refine the pitch of ScoutLab, started to refine the pitch of myself. There was a lot of storytelling and trying to figure out how to pull my narrative through. I think every person has peaks in their career that they can speak to moments of glory that can allude to or provide examples of what they're capable of. And so putting that story together, starting from, when I entered Silicon Valley fundraising. Going through a startup cycle that wasn't successful, going through an exit, like going through leading a small team in a billion dollar organization, I was able to tell the story of my my impact, which cascaded into my personal brand.
And then from there I was able to externalize like what I thought from that foundation of credibility. So began publishing work on my point of view on emerging technology or social issues. And I think that exercise as a writer again, collating my experience and applying it to relevant topics was really when like this idea of.
Reputational personal brand or the externalization of self took off for me.
Christine Gritmon: Now you have a co-founder with you at Scout Lab. You are not the sole entrepreneur behind this venture, not the sole agency owner. How would you Perhaps, I know this is a tricky one, but how would you perhaps describe how your personal brand and her personal brand differ or are the same or work together to inspire confidence?
[00:19:05] How does a two-founder brand work when it comes to those personal brands and how do those personal brands serve the agency?
Christine Gritmon: how does a two founder brand work when it comes to those personal brands and how do those personal brands serve the agency?
Kaitlyn Barclay: Oh, that's such a good question. So Willow my co founder is incredible. the co founder relationship is such an interesting one and the most valuable relationship you will have as a business owner when it works. And and it often doesn't work right. It requires a lot of self-awareness and like high self-monitoring and a commitment to growth.
And through that growth with Willow, we were very committed to one, what we were building, but two being better people, leaders and people in service of taking care of our co-founder relationship. It's like any other relationship. If you don't grow together, you grow apart. And a part of that exercise was championing each other to tell their own personal narrative.
So being vulnerable, I've shared a lot of first-person narrative that is highly vulnerable. for me, but was like great for externalizing what I care about, what I value. And that was always championed by my co founder. She always encouraged me to be like myself squared. And I think I did the same for her back.
And it's funny because I think even that relationship dynamic that we have as co founders. We then externalize to our clients. So a lot of what we talk about with personal branding with the executives we work with is it authentic? Is it honest? And is it relevant? And if all of those things remain to be true, like it should give you a green light that perhaps that is something that is, worthwhile sharing with the world.
And I, and certainly that exercise we started. Willow and myself with each other, and now is something that we do for, these amazing entrepreneurs that we work with that are trying to, be be impactful with certainly what they're building, but oftentimes these are female founders, BIPOC founders that are radical and just existing in these spaces that have historically been deeply homogenous and so sharing their stories is a pretty radical act and a very important one.
Because like I said with my mom, like I had this really unique experience of seeing a female entrepreneur growing up, which not a lot of my friends did. And that I think limits your scope of what you think is possible. And so with The founders that we work with and they're building their personal brand.
It's are you telling someone perhaps like a smaller version of yourself that it's okay to exist as a powerful founder and certainly, is it also signaling to the space that you're in, that you're here and you have opinions like all of that, I think. is a part of building your personal brand and making your mark on the world that I think, can be very profound if you want it to be.
Christine Gritmon: Founders telling their stories with their work is just so huge and such a great way to make sure the impact goes beyond just their clients and really enters their whole industry as a whole. To that end, you do a lot of mentorship and giving back. I see that you're involved with a lot of organizations as, a mentor, as an advisor, as an investor, all of that.
I would love to hear more about that because that's certainly part of your story. Part of your personal brand is someone who does want to elevate all these voices of a variety of founders. What sort of things do you help them out with? And what do you see in these, in some of these founders who maybe aren't they're not straight white men, let's be frank.
what additional hurdles do you see them having to cermount? And what do you help them out with personally as well?
[00:23:03] How does Kaitlyn help founders tell their stories?
Kaitlyn Barclay: We always start with, and it really depends on the experience of the founder, but we always start with the professional stories. So what are you pitching? Cause I often, It needs to be like, the shared lexicon that we build, much more decorative storytelling on top of and that can be challenging, even for the most seasoned orators.
Like, how do you talk about yourself, which can be such a clarifying and helpful and existential exercise? So once we do that, then it, Then we start to talk about what do you want to exist for? Like, why is the work you're doing important? Who do you want to unlock a door for? Who would you like to close a door on?
And from there, we create a list of topics, themes, issues, that we then can weave into the story of the professional journey, right? If that is the skeleton, then we start to put color on top of it. And I think that's where it gets really interesting where, I work with debut venture fund manager and she has an incredible career.
But she also, she also has some things to say outside of venture or intersectionally to the venture community that I think are really compelling. So like, how can she be. Radical for existing in a space that is very male dominant very white as a woman of color. And how can we, have her tell stories that can advance rather the venture community that can advance the field of finance.
And I think that's that's really interesting. So I think first it's really understanding the story, like your professional pitch and then weaving in personal anecdotes or thematic concepts that you can speak to that make that professional journey even more rich.
Christine Gritmon: And this brings us back to something you said pretty early on, which was about, it's about the reputation first, it's about the work first and doing the work and figuring out what kind of worker you are and developing that reputation for it. And then I love what you just said about adding in the color and that personal pull that really makes a difference and helps it stand out.
So how do you find that balance is one of the questions that I'm sure a lot of people have because people think of personal branding sometimes as, the sort of surface level thing when, of course, if it's done properly, it is more than that. And especially as someone who, as you pointed out, is doing this bold thing by even, putting their stamp on this space, , which is not where someone who looks like them typically is.
How do you strike that right balance? Because I'm sure there are some people who are a little afraid to lean on the identity element of it because they want to make sure that they're taken seriously as themselves and not as a token. But at the same time, you gotta shout out and own and, recognize the strength of your difference.
So how do you recommend figuring out that balance as it were?
[00:25:59] How does Kaitlyn help founders find the balance between professional and personal stories while highlighting their differences?
Kaitlyn Barclay: Yeah. I really believe it's up to the individual to know what intuitively feels right or important. I think. There are many different ways to build personal brand. You can build from your professional perspective. So not weaving in your identity at all. You can lean into your personal anecdotes, perhaps being different in your space.
I think the most compelling storytelling is when there's as extreme narrative friction as possible. So that tends to be like how a person is different in the world that they're surrounded by or what unique experience makes what they've gone through different than what other people have gone through.
I would never recommend an executive like go, tell a first person narrative if they just want to build credibility in the space of artificial intelligence. So they're like, I just want to be great at cybersecurity. I'm like, fantastic. There's a path for you there. So I think it's really up to you to figure out where and how do you want to be known? What is important for you as an individual and a person existing in a professional environment to build your point of focus or like what you, what your reputation is about. Then from there you can, create content buckets for you to, produce interesting pieces, whether it's like short form or long form or podcasts or whatever it might be. So I think it's really up to the individual to know their comfort level. And then from there, like developing what they, they want to externalize into the world.
Christine Gritmon: Now, when it comes to founders and personal brands I, of course, I'm highly biased because I'm a personal branding person. So I would imagine that the personal brand plays a large role in founders being able to get the trust of the investors that they need of other partnerships that they need. I could be wrong.
That might not be as huge a part of it, but I'd love to hear from you, someone who's been in that space so much on multiple sides of it how the personal brand can be leveraged, should be leveraged all of that. As a founder specifically, what can it do for you? Yeah. And what if someone is someone who would love to just hide behind the work. Maybe that works in some spaces. I'd just like to hear from you your picture of the personal brand in the founder space in terms of people looking to gain that trust from investors and others.
[00:28:22] Does a founder’s personal brand help them build trust for investors and partners?
Kaitlyn Barclay: Totally. Yeah. The founder story to company connection cannot be understated. I think it's always more provocative when the founder has experienced the problem that they're trying to fix. And then from that point, being very vocal about how they intend to fix the problem, their perspective on what that problem or solution looks like in the future, as a communications specialist, like I love.
Usually people want to listen to humans versus brands. So when we talk about like launching a company, I am looking to the founder to be that human representative that can create the story, the emotional appeal to an audience that hasn't heard about this organization yet as the Trojan horse to what the company is doing.
People like people, they don't like to be sold by brands. And so I often find and encourage that founders be open and frank about what they're trying to build and why. Now that can be again, like a whole host of strategies forward, right? We work with founders who have deeply emotional and vulnerable stories and share them very openly.
We also founders that just have like professional expertise in a subject matter and that is what enabled them to start their organization, which is also a version of personal brand that is totally appropriate. It really just depends on what you're doing and your level of comfort externalizing who you are. I always encourage founders to share their story, to share their point of view, to be differentiated in market as their communications partner.
It makes my job. a lot easier. And as a person existing in the world that is looking for the doers and the change makers and the people trying to fix some of the hardest problems on planet earth, I want those voices and stories to be heard. So yeah, I think it's ideal to have a founder startup or like founder journey connection to whatever solution you're solving for.
And best practice is generally when, the founder is like open about sharing that and I find that's certainly supports fundraising that supports partnerships that supports earned media, kind of everything,
Christine Gritmon: I love what you said about the personal brand sort of being the Trojan horse. It gets you in the door and then you can present what you're selling ultimately when it comes down to it. All right. So Kaitlyn, final question. And this one's a, again, a bit of a more personal one, but what you've been in this personal branding game for a while, you have built your own over time.
[00:31:00] What do you personally as Kaitlyn struggle with or have you struggled with the most in the past when it has come to your own personal brand?
Christine Gritmon: You've helped others build theirs. What do you personally as Kaitlyn struggle with or have you struggled with the most in the past when it has come to your own personal brand.
Kaitlyn Barclay: This is such a good question. I just gave a talk on like personal storytelling using my own and it is being ready to tell some of the stories that you have in your life. And I am very much an open book. I think some of the most, profound moments of my life. Are the struggle are the hard moments that have a lot of shame around them.
I think if anyone looks at the valleys in their life, there is some sort of shame around them. The shame of failure, the shame of loss, the shame of violence or abuse or oppression. And. I hope to exist as someone who shines a light and remove shame on those valleys, because usually shame is reserved for those that are victimized or being oppressed.
And so when I think about my own story and telling my own story I think it's really important to be. It has been really important for me to exercise vulnerability as much as possible. I've talked about my own sexual abuse. I've talked very openly, the process of building organizations that have and have not worked.
I've talked about being a lesbian. I've talked about being a woman in technology, like these things that make me different and these things that make me, I think, brilliant and more vibrant in the world. Have historically made me stand out for better or for worse. And so when I think about externalizing my story, I think about needing to have gone through the story myself, complete the narrative for me so that I can share in a grounded way in a thoughtful way.
And with insights at the end the story itself so that it says instructive and informative of removing stigma or being representative or removing shame as humanly possible, because that's what I think storytelling is the most profound. That's when it's the most important and that's when it's the best received when it doesn't feel like you're still traumatized by what's happened to you, whether that's, a professional endeavor or a personal explosion that led to some sort of silver lining, you need to have gone through the full story yourself and know what you learned, come out the hero and then tell the story.
I think that's, from my own journey, that's been my philosophy and I would encourage others to do the same.
Christine Gritmon: Wise words to end on. Thank you so much, Kaitlyn, for being so open with your thoughts on all of this, your experiences. I'm sure this is It's going to help a lot of people, especially founders, as they pull their personal brands together. So let's tell the good folks at home, Kaitlyn, where can they find you?
Why should they find you? And what will they find there?
Kaitlyn Barclay: Yeah, you can always find me at scoutlab.com. Kaitlyn@scoutlab.com is my email. I would say if you're, someone looking to do something big, if you are someone who's doing something big, always open to have a conversation and see if I can support you in any way, shape or form. It's like my passion, my driving force.
And yeah, that's, I exist to, to support radical founders doing cool stuff.
Christine Gritmon: Thank you so much for being on today, Kaitlyn.
And thank you for being here listening to Let's Talk About Brand. Whether you are joining us on the podcast or if you're watching the video podcast over on YouTube, either way, please do subscribe, leave a comment if you liked it, and don't forget to join us next week when I'll be back with another smart guest expert talking about another element of branding.
Bye bye.
S4 Ep08: Let’s Talk About Building Your Brand Messaging with Kate DiLeo
This week I am excited to talk with a new friend, Kate DiLeo the owner of Brand Trifecta, a software that helps you build your brand and refine your brand messaging. In this episode we're talking about how to approach building your brand message and how that may differ for a personal brand versus a B2B brand versus a B2C brand. Then we dig into all the parts of branding to understand what you really need to express your brand.
This week I am excited to talk with a new friend, Kate DiLeo the owner of Brand Trifecta, which, fascinatingly enough, is a software that helps you build your brand and refine your brand messaging.
So that is, of course, what we are talking about today.
We're talking about how to approach building your brand message and how that may differ for a personal brand versus a B2B brand versus a B2C brand. Then we dig into all the parts of branding to understand what you really need to express your brand.
Tune in as we talk about:
[00:00] Welcome Kate DiLeo!
[02:10] How do you define brand?
[04:16] How did Kate start to build a SaaS (software as a service) brand technology?
[06:28] Are there differences in the approach to building a personal brand vs a company brand?
[08:00] What about B2B or B2C, is there a difference in the brand messaging there?
[09:50] How does a brand get the consumer to ask "Who am I?"
[12:05] Where does brand messaging fit in with your overall marketing content?
[14:44] What do brands need to have in order to have a strong brand message
[17:03] When did brands shift from being aspirational to being real and relatable?
[20:10] Let's talk about becoming a personal brand inside of an organization
[22:55] How did Kate start her personal brand?
[28:05] What is the most effective way to get your brand message out there?
[30:18] Catch up with Kate DiLeo
Contact Kate DiLeo:
Website: https://katedileo.com/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katedileo/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katedileo/
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[00:00:00] Welcome Kate DiLeo!
[00:00:00] Christine Gritmon: Hello, and welcome to Let's Talk About Brand. I am your host, Christine Gritmon. Please make sure to subscribe to Let's Talk About Brand on your podcast player of choice and leave a review if you like it.
I always love to hear from people. You can reach out to me anywhere, really. I always love to hear feedback on this show and have chats on personal branding in general.
One person who I had some great conversations about branding with recently is my new friend Kate DiLeo. Kate and I met. At an event at which we were both speaking, of course, we're both talking about brand.
It is what we do. Kate owns Brand Trifecta, which, fascinatingly enough, is actually a software that helps you build your brand and refine your brand messaging. So that is, of course, what we are talking about today.
We're talking about... How to even approach building your brand and how that may differ for a personal brand versus a B2B brand versus a B2C brand.
We dig into all the types of branding, what you really need to know in order to get that brand solid and how to express it. We even go into Kate's own personal branding story a little bit, which I always love doing with my guests, because of course they all have personal brands. That's why they're here on Let's Talk About Brand after all.
So, really looking forward to today's conversation.
[00:01:20] Host - Christine Gritmon: So without any further ado, Kate DiLeo, come on down.
[00:01:30] Guest - Kate DiLeo: Thank you so much for having me, Christine. I'm so excited to be here.
[00:01:34] Host - Christine Gritmon: I'm excited too. So now you and I met a couple months ago at the Marketing Profs B2B forum? Summit? What was it? It
[00:01:42] Guest - Kate DiLeo: The Forum. Yes. In Boston.
[00:01:44] Host - Christine Gritmon: We both spoke and we immediately were just like, Oh, we're vibing. Especially since we are both Brand Girlies, you with your company Brand Trifecta. So we're here to talk about brand.
I was like, I have to have a conversation with you. So let's actually dive in with a question that I ask a lot of my guests, not quite all of them, but a lot of them. How would you define brand?
[00:02:10] How do you define brand?
[00:02:10] Guest - Kate DiLeo: Oh my gosh, where do we start? So really, I define brand as The promise of who you are and the value that you deliver in the world. Specifically, what that looks like is a message. Brand is really the message of who you say and what you do, how you solve somebody's problem and how you're different and better than the rest.
And it's ultimately this message, Christine, that compels our target audiences and our partners and our customers to want to take the next step with us.
[00:02:46] Host - Christine Gritmon: I love that. That is a fabulous description of brand. What is your brand promise, Kate? And what is brand promise of Brand Trifecta? And are they the same promise?
[00:02:57] Guest - Kate DiLeo: Well, I actually do have two brands. I have a personal brand and then a corporate brand. For many years, I just had my personal brand of katedelio. com. As a consultant and speaker and author that is really about helping organizations build brands that win more work. Now for my product brand, the brand trifecta that whole promise is around building messaging that delivers revenue results, both of them tied together.
And it's really around my thesis and around my whole philosophy that your brand is your path of least resistance to revenue, period. yet the messaging is slightly nuanced for both.
[00:03:39] Host - Christine Gritmon: I love that. I love that whole concept. And the really fascinating thing to me when I found out about you and about brand trifecta is that it's a SAS product. It's software as a service. And it's really fascinating to me because when I work with clients on their personal branding, it's so like manual and personal and all of that.
So I am fascinated By how you were able to translate branding into a SaaS product. Could you tell us just a little bit just about how that process even occurred to you? Like, Hey, why aren't people doing this and how you even, made that a thing.
[00:04:16] How did Kate start to build a SaaS (software as a service) brand technology?
[00:04:16] Guest - Kate DiLeo: Yeah. It's first of all, I don't think that anybody gets into business to say I'm going to build a tech product. Oh my gosh, I'm so tired. No, I'm kidding. But For me, it actually was a few part process. So if we rewind a number of years, I was consulting, building brands, I've worked with about 350 companies as a consultant to take them through my proprietary branding approach, which is called the brand trifecta.
And about two and a half years ago, I decided to write down my method in book format. Because I had a lot of people asking, Hey, can you give me kind of the one, two, three Kate of how I can do this on my own? I may not need you as a consultant, but I'd love to give it a shot. What's the playbook, Kate?
So I wrote that down in a book format of really a tactical method to build your brand. And that was the impetus for then building a technology platform that allowed people to go through that same process. But without me in the room, and so I created a platform that is extremely interactive. It's very intuitive. It uses a lot of interactive content and videos and exercises to take marketers and leaders Through that brand building process that I've done for more than a decade But do it in a way where you're going through that iterative writing process and brand building process and only a matter of weeks That was the goal is to get you through the hard knocks of how I write this How do I actually write brand?
[00:05:39] Host - Christine Gritmon: And that is so important because of course, if you can't convey it, if you can't express it in a way that other people can receive and understand and process, you don't really have a brand.
[00:05:50] Guest - Kate DiLeo: that's right.
[00:05:52] Host - Christine Gritmon: So, so of course, I would imagine a lot of the companies that are using the brand Trifecta software are probably more like bigger brands, like either B2B or consumer brands.
So I'd like to hear from you as someone who's also built a personal brand, what some of the differences are between how you approach building a personal brand versus how you might approach building a company brand. So, first, so, I mean, we can talk about similarities as well, but I'd like to start with the differences in how you would approach those two puzzles.
[00:06:28] Are there differences in the approach to building a personal brand vs a company brand?
[00:06:28] Guest - Kate DiLeo: So I think the number one thing that we need to remember for the personal branding side is that it's not so much about products and services, right? So as a corporate brand, you often need to think through the how and the what. How am I delivering a particular product or service? Do I have a proprietary approach?
Do we deliver a streamlined technology abc on the personal writing side? The biggest difference is really getting rooted in who you are as an individual first and foremost authentically with your tone of voice and personality But then understanding Out of all the things that I've done as a human, what is my zone of excellence, my expertise, and how do I build a brand around that promise of whether I am showing up in my career, I decide I want to do freelancing on the side, I'm building my own business in a few years, I'm writing a book, I want to speak, whatever it may be, what's your zone of excellence, and how do you write a message around that for you as a human?
Whereas for a corporate brand, it is more around the promise of how the company's products and services can solve a consumer's problem.
[00:07:38] Host - Christine Gritmon: That makes sense in terms of that focus. Now, gonna go to another level there, which is, let's say you're talking about a consumer brand. B2B vs. B2C. Are there any sort of differences in either approach or even the ingredients that go in between those two types of brands in your professional opinion?
[00:08:00] What about B2B or B2C, is there a difference in the brand messaging there?
[00:08:00] Guest - Kate DiLeo: Okay, so I teach that the method is still the same in terms of, based on biopsychology, your target audiences still need to know three components in your brand message before they're compelled to want to take the next step and convert, whether that is contact you, click to watch the explainer video, go to your products or services page, whatever it may be, whatever the conversion moment is, whatever action you want them to take.
And those three things are the brand trifecta, which is one, a tagline that tells somebody what you do, followed by two, a value proposition statement that says, here's how I solve somebody's problem. And three, a set of differentiator statements. Here's the one, two, three, or four ways that I'm different than others.
Okay, so psychologically, that's what somebody needs to understand for them to go. Oh my gosh, that makes sense. Now tell me more. Now, here's the difference between B2B and B2C. One of the biggest differences is that the first line of defense of what a business wants to know is what do you do?
And so that means that the type of language you use speaks very quickly to having, for example, a tagline that speaks to we do blank for these businesses. We deliver IT services. We are a tax consulting firm. Whereas if you sell to consumers, the first logical question that a consumer has is not what do you do?
But who am I and what experience can I expect to have when I have your product in my hands?
[00:09:34] Host - Christine Gritmon: Ooh, who am
[00:09:35] Guest - Kate DiLeo: that
[00:09:36] Host - Christine Gritmon: I love that ingredient. Wow, dive into that a little more, please. I want to know how you can... As a brand, kind of get into that headspace of what's going to have that consumer asking who am I in relation to your brand.
[00:09:50] How does a brand get the consumer to ask "Who am I?"
[00:09:50] Guest - Kate DiLeo: Yes, so Where this comes into play is your tagline your response when somebody asks you Oh, it's so nice to meet you. Let's say you're at a networking event. Oh, it's so nice to meet you They ask you well, what do you do? What do you say in those first five or six words consumer brands often have taglines that can feel very Nebulous and kind of out there.
It's very like fluffy. Just do it. You're worth it You know things of that nature. Well, why is that because for again for the consumer brands it is about having somebody understand when I have this product I Live differently. I think differently. I become somebody slightly different. And that is ultimately what a consumer brand cares about is because product purchasing comes from a place of heart and tension around who I become and what experience I can have.
Whereas a business needs to deeply understand. What do you do? Get to the nuts and bolts as quickly as possible. What do you do for companies? Two very different things. I would say, by the way, personal branding often falls kind of in the middle. You do need to speak to what somebody else can experience with you, certainly.
But you also can't get so convoluted that you've lost sight of clearly articulating. What you do as a human, as an individual with your personal brand.
[00:11:10] Host - Christine Gritmon: And that can certainly get tricky for any kind of brand, because there are certainly those in marketing, I think especially in things like B2B marketing, who have the sense of, it's not a, brand being this fluffy thing that they don't need to focus on as much, whereas, they focus on, features and benefits, or, the bottom line.
all of that stuff. But there is, of course, a place for brand. I think that brand is incredibly important. We'd both agree on that much. So I'm wondering how you'd articulate not exactly what the split should be, but sort of the position that pure brand messaging or pure branding content, things that brands put out there that are perhaps not directly about the product.
What place those maybe should have in a brand's marketing activities, and if it differs depending on situation. Does that make any sense?
[00:12:05] Where does brand messaging fit in with your overall marketing content?
[00:12:05] Guest - Kate DiLeo: It does. You're asking a question, Christine around in my opinion, kind of hierarchy of content and placement of brand messaging as it relates to the rest of your marketing content and various marketing and sales activities you may undergo. And one of the things that I always want us to remember is that when we talk about brand and when I teach about brand content, that brand trifecta of tagline, Value proposition statement, differentiator statements.
I want us to remember that's almost like the tip top of the content hierarchy. It's the very first line of defense. It's what you say in that first 30 seconds to compel somebody to want to know more. And so it needs to be strong. It needs to be highly emotional and provocative. Not pretentious. And what it should do is open the door to that person going, now I want to know more.
Now let me dig into features, benefits, pricing, inclusions, explainer videos, how it works, content, proprietary approach, and then even into other things like white papers, blogs, case studies, social proof, et cetera. All of these things back up and bolster the message that you've delivered in the front line with that brand trifecta messaging at the tip top.
But nobody cares about the thing you deliver or your customer case studies until you can tell them What you do, how you solve their problem, and how you're different in the first 30 seconds. And so that's why brand is imperative. You still need to create this message and deliver this message that authentically allows other people to opt in to have an actual conversation with you.
[00:13:47] Host - Christine Gritmon: So it's about getting that real hook, not necessarily something as shallow as a hook, because that can just be snazzy work that says nothing. But in terms of that concept of the hook being the thing that draws them in, that makes people want to learn more, that prevents them from scrolling past on social media or swiping past or, whatever, or just kind of skipping your Google results, any of that gets them to want to know more.
Ah, love that. So, in terms of what a brand needs in order to get people to not only want to know more, but also to recognize them when they see them again, to seek them out to get that stickiness, what are some things that you feel A brand really needs to have in place and that, that can run the gamut.
Obviously, I'd imagine some sort of statement because that's what you've talked a lot about and I gather that's really the core of brand trifecta's work. But what are some things that brands of all sorts really got to pull together before they really have a strong brand?
[00:14:44] What do brands need to have in order to have a strong brand message
[00:14:44] Guest - Kate DiLeo: Well, I'll tell you, even before you write the statements, right? Before you write a winning tagline or a winning value proposition statement that's memorable and people go, Oh yeah, I know that company or that organization or that person. Number one, you need to know how you authentically show up in the world.
And so one of the first pieces of work that I do with any client is to take them through understanding their brand's authentic personality and tone of voice. So I'm going to talk a little bit about how you sound and seem and show up in the world because brand is not aspirational. Brand is really true to who you are today and how you show up in the world.
You can have strategic business goals, but if your brand does not sound like you and seem like you, people will smell it a mile away. So you've got to be number one, extremely authentic and know how you sound and seem so that every piece of your messaging and every piece of your content and every piece of your materials.
Thank you. Feels like something that is truly you. The second piece is you need to know who you're talking to and why. Because in order to have a brand that resonates at a heart level, you need to know who it needs to resonate with. Your brand's job is not to convince everybody in the world that they need to buy from you or like you.
Your brand's job is to speak to the few who will most deeply resonate at a heart level with what you're saying and will want to opt in and take the next step with you. Those two pieces of knowing who you are and how you show up and then really understanding who you actually need and want to speak with are imperative before you begin the brand building process.
[00:16:19] Host - Christine Gritmon: One thing that I love that you pointed out, you said brand is not aspirational. It's who you are and kind of how you show up right now, and that is a really strong take, because I think in the past, a lot of times brands have kind of tried to be a little more aspirational. I think that represents a shift.
[00:16:38] Guest - Kate DiLeo: It
[00:16:38] Host - Christine Gritmon: I mean, what do you think about that? And how do you think that shift really occurred? Because I think brands used to be seen As being more, smooth and polished and aspirational and that really has shifted. We want to relate to brands. We want to see ourselves
[00:16:52] Guest - Kate DiLeo: right.
[00:16:53] Host - Christine Gritmon: in brands really clearly.
Do you feel like that's a shift? I think we're, similar ages. I think that we've both seen the shift. So what do you think that comes down to?
[00:17:03] When did brands shift from being aspirational to being real and relatable?
[00:17:03] Guest - Kate DiLeo: Well, I'll tell you two big things that happened to start to make that shift. Number one, and I talk about this in my book which is called muting the megaphone, but do you remember Christine, like five, 10 years ago, ClickFunnels came onto the scene and you'd go to a website page and it was just like, So long and 75 buttons and you couldn't figure out what you're clicking and you're
[00:17:23] Host - Christine Gritmon: I'm sure they'd lose people very high up in that funnel. They'd lose people. It's like you have to jump through hoops in order to get to the meat. What they're trying to sell you.
[00:17:34] Guest - Kate DiLeo: The first thing that I began to notice in my work was that people were tired of being inundated with content Get to the point. Tell me authentically who you are and what you do And I think the second big thing that began to happen is not only was there an overwhelm of content that made consumers go, Ugh, please just be real with me.
Stop trying to sell me with like a three stage funnel. Oh my god. The second thing that began to happen was pure digital exhaustion. COVID made us really tired. We spent more time on our computers and devices than ever before, and more than ever, we were also the loneliest that we've ever been as a society.
And that loneliness really created a craving for human connection and authentic human connection. So more than ever, consumers, no matter your age, no matter what generation or where you live even, or your socioeconomic dynamics, we want authentic. Brands to whom we can relate and surely understand who they are who's behind the brand And that's why I say brand is not aspirational if a consumer can't see the human behind the brand message You're gonna lose them.
You're gonna miss them because at the end of the day People buy from people.
[00:18:51] Host - Christine Gritmon: They absolutely do. And that brings me to another topic that I want to dive into. So as one of my One of the things I've been really geeking out on lately is about the concept of people within organizations having their own personal brands, which also represents a shift. There used to be this sense of, you don't want to rock the boat, just be a cog in the machine.
Otherwise, if you stand out too much, you're going to get clipped or, your company is going to worry that either you're putting all your energy into your profile and business and activities rather than theirs or some other competitors gonna swipe you up. But now smart businesses are recognizing that it is really smart to have internal people developing thought leadership developing a professional presence, so I just want to hear your take on sort of how, if someone out there listening is kind of ready to take that leap and is interested in figuring out how their brand fits within their organizational brand.
We, we are assuming here that they want to stay. We're assuming they want to grow within their organization. They want to be a good representative of their organization. They aren't, testing out the waters for their own gig. They Want to stay there. What are some brand considerations there that perhaps they should have while building their brand within the Organizational brand.
[00:20:10] Let's talk about becoming a personal brand inside of an organization
[00:20:10] Guest - Kate DiLeo: Well, I think first and foremost, I love that you call it. This is not about trying to jump ship or leave your organization, right? So, so often we think, Oh, I have to build a personal brand to leave and get the next job. Actually, hold on. If you take a step back, your best place where you want to start to bolster and strengthen your personal brand is when you have a great company that you work for and you want to continue to grow and thrive and add value to the organization.
Here's the thing. Leadership. And I think a lot of employers as well as employees around you will begin to see you differently and lean on you for your expertise and seek you out when you have a strong personal brand said differently, people need to know you right and so I think we've got to go back to the beginning of our conversation, which is what is your lane in your zone of excellence?
What are you known for? When I began to build my personal brand many years ago when I was working in corporate, I sat back one day and I thought to myself. Because I was challenged by a boss, by the way, to say, well, what's your one liner? I was like, oh gosh, what do I say? My name is Kate and I'm known for what?
And I had to sit down and think very hard about what am I known for? What's the pattern of what people always call me for help? And I began to realize it was messaging. In finding the pattern and the clarity among all of the details for people, I was able to synthesize and say it's this as quickly as possible.
This was many years ago. And so I had to build a personal brand around that. And the second thing that I needed to do is be really confident in that and begin to evangelize that brand meaning I would start to show up and speak about it in gentle ways. Talking about, I'm passionate about this. I love doing this.
I had this great opportunity to help so and so with this. And I've leaned on them for other things. You've got to softly evangelize. And the third thing that I think is important with personal branding inside an organization. Is to really be curious and open to asking questions of other leaders, even outside your own leadership team.
That's direct. You directly report to let them know you and see you and begin to see other parts of the organization. When that happens, you're going to create this consistency among different parts of the business that see you for your core brand.
[00:22:30] Host - Christine Gritmon: I love that and you started getting into something that I was gonna ask you about next. So there we go which is Kate, how did you start building your own personal brand and What were those kind of? plOt points along the way where you realized, first of all, that you did have a strong personal brand.
And second of all, when you realized you could leverage that into helping build the brands of others.
[00:22:55] How did Kate start her personal brand?
[00:22:55] Guest - Kate DiLeo: Yes. I'll tell you it. There were many years where it felt like a zigzag path because I was working for a couple great organizations and at the time I didn't really want to be an entrepreneur. I had my business is kind of a side hustle. I was building my family and I thought, Oh, this is great, but I don't know if I ever want to do that full time.
I was concerned about certainly growing in my corporate career and I needed to take that seriously. And so I had a number of positions in marketing As well as sales and operations, and one of the things that I was really adamant about was sitting down and getting to know other leaders and other teams, and I used to drive them nuts because I kept asking them, Well, why do you do it that way?
And well, so what do I need to do differently in my role in marketing it to think about what operations is doing to deliver on the promise we're putting into the world or I go and ask sales. But why do you say it that way? And how come I can't see it this way when I run an ad for us for marketing and I'll tell you what being almost a bit of a pain was a big part of my personal brand building that I recognized if I don't have clarity of how other people view this organization, I'm never going to be able to help them create consistency and I certainly won't know where I fit into the puzzle when I was
[00:24:08] Host - Christine Gritmon: one thing that, one thing I just wanted to pick up on is I just had a conversation with someone recently who is going out on his own as a consultant after a while being in house at various companies. And one thing he pointed out is he said, I was always that guy. People were like, Oh, that guy again, asking the questions, digging into these things, questioning everything.
And I said, you know what? You can go from being, Oh, that guy to. Yes, that guy. Sometimes that's what you need. And I love that you pointed out that really brings people to a point of understanding and insight. Sorry to interrupt. Continue. I just had to, I just had to point that out because I love it.
[00:24:44] Guest - Kate DiLeo: It's so great and I was that person and I think the other thing that I noticed though Is I began to ask others around me. So this journey of me figuring out what my personal brand was For a while there. I felt stuck because I was so in the weeds of oh, i'm a project manager. I'm a marketing manager I'm a brand manager.
I'm a this and i'm a that and I was so title focused that I missed the clarity around understanding what am I actually really great at? Because it's about more than title, right? So I actually had to start asking coworkers, family, friends, and I asked him a couple of simple questions. If you had to come to me with any sort of problems, what do you know I could solve for you?
And then I started to ask, what am I like the best at? Like, what do you know out of your entire friend circle? Oh, if you need that, go to Kate. And it was fascinating. I began to see a pattern. I asked like 20 people and the number one things that they started to tell me were, you are incredible with language.
You can totally take a complex message and boil it down. You somehow clarify complexities. Kate, you're a wizard. They just started saying these, and you know what? That was imperative for me to hear what others were saying. Because I was so in my head, and I was so lost in my job title, and my job responsibilities, that I think I lost sight of that out of some of the parts of All the various titles and roles that I've had, what is the true pattern of excellence and natural capability that I have as Kate?
That was the beginning for me to then start to put language around that and go, Oh my gosh, it is brand. That is what I'm good at. And now I can start to speak to that differently.
[00:26:26] Host - Christine Gritmon: And I love that you pointed out that it really kind of had to come from outside. So many times we just, we're just rocking along doing our thing and we think, well, yeah, I can do that. It's not that hard because we're great at it.
[00:26:38] Guest - Kate DiLeo: That's right.
[00:26:40] Host - Christine Gritmon: yes, oh, that is so huge, so I absolutely love that you had that experience, that you were able to build upon it and ask people what that meant for them.
Ah,
[00:26:50] Guest - Kate DiLeo: Absolutely. It was great. Christine, at the end of the day, I always try to remember that for branding, whether it's a personal brand or corporate brand, we're stepping out into the world and we have to remember that we're not in the business of convincing. We're in the business of converting.
And so it's really important for us to spend the time talking with folks and working with other coaches or experts who can help us synthesize our brands, nail that down and get things aligned in such a way that when we step into the room, we can speak to that with confidence and clarity. That's the stuff that somebody else sees at the other end of that conversation and goes.
I want to know more. I want to go deeper with you. I want to partner with you in some way. I want to take the next step and buy.
[00:27:38] Host - Christine Gritmon: So you've worked with lots of brands, your own and those of others, of course, that you've seen. What do you feel are some of the most effective ways to get your brand message out there? Once you've defined it, once you know what you stand for and how to phrase it so that other people can kind of see themselves in it and be like, yeah, that's me.
That's what I need. How do you even get to the point where they? Can encounter your message. What do you feel is really effective there?
[00:28:05] What is the most effective way to get your brand message out there?
[00:28:05] Guest - Kate DiLeo: I would say believe it or not running ads is one of the last things you need to think about, I say that jokingly, but i'll tell you You've got to use your immediate network. So what do I mean by that? So not all of us need to go build a personal brand website unless you're ready to go consult or do something on your own.
Okay. And if that's you, that's wonderful. I do think you need a digital presence, a digital footprint that includes a website, but for many of us that might just be leaders within our organizations. Maybe we're trying to be better known in our spheres of excellence. Maybe it's in our communities, our industries.
You've got to leverage getting that message out there through your social channels I want you to remember that like your linkedin profile for example is really your walking resume and your walking website, your own personal website. And so it behooves you to really make sure that your messaging is updated on your LinkedIn profile or on your Instagram, wherever maybe you show up most frequently and where your community is.
And then of course, show up in those rooms and engage with people. It might mean that you join some CEO mastermind groups. Maybe there's some free networking groups with peers. in your community or in your sector or industry, but you need to show up in the room and then begin to speak to it in that way.
That's when the glue starts to kind of happen. And then the last piece is posting on things that you're passionate about as it relates to what your personal brand is all about. Are you posting? Are you sharing others content? Maybe you don't need to do a 15 minute video or run your own podcast, but maybe it's sharing a great article that inspired you, that has to do with what you are so great at and what you love.
People ultimately connect with others who are passionate about the work that they do. And so if you can stay in your zone of excellence and stay passionate and share that passion with others, Even through something as simple as social media, that is a first big step in getting your personal brand out there.
People will know you and see you and refer to you.
[00:30:03] Host - Christine Gritmon: Amen. Well, Kate, this has been incredible. I was so excited to have this conversation with you. Absolutely delivered. So tell the good folks at home where they can find you, why they should find you, and what they'll find there.
[00:30:18] Catch up with Kate DiLeo
[00:30:18] Guest - Kate DiLeo: Well, thank you for having me. So you can take a look at LinkedIn, of course, Instagram, but you can also check out my website, which is www.katedileo.com. I'm sure Christine will have that link in the show notes. And you'll see details not only on my book and speaking but you'll see a link to brand trifecta, which again is that digital brand building platform.
And I invite you to check out the book or the platform and learn more about this approach around how do you build those 1, 2, 3 components of a brand message that's ultimately going to bring more of the right people to the table at the right time.
[00:30:52] Host - Christine Gritmon: I love that. Well, I'm very glad that this right person, Kate DiLeo, was brought to our table here at Let's Talk About Brand at the Right Time. Thank you so much for being here, Kate.
[00:31:01] Guest - Kate DiLeo: Yes. Thanks, Christine. It was a joy.
[00:31:03] Christine Gritmon: And thank you for joining us for Let's Talk About Brand. Whether you are listening to us on your podcast player of choice, or you're joining us here on YouTube for the video podcast, either way, please be sure to subscribe, leave a comment if you like it, and join us next week, because every single week we're coming at you with a different, very smart, extra special guest talking about a different element of personal branding.
See you
S4 Ep07: Let’s Talk About Tapping Your Potential with George B. Thomas
George B. Thomas shares his personal brand story. Starting as a developer who started to teach Hubspot, he shares how being himself got the attention of others and started him on a path that led to starting his own agency. Along the way he shares valuable lessons for anyone looking to develop their own personal brand!
On today's episode, I want you to be inspired by the personal brand story of George B. Thomas.
I first encountered George when he was on stage hosting the Inbound conference by HubSpot. George has such a great energy, and he brings so much value to many people in so many different ways, not just as a HubSpot expert, but also in the way he talks to people and cares about people's lives.
Today we are going to talk about how he first grew his personal brand by aligning himself with other companies and what that led to. We're going to talk about his adventures within agencies and how they helped him to continue to evolve his brand. Then we will talk about the next phase of his career as he launches his own agency and how all that work became the unknown foundation that allowed him to launch quickly.
Finally, we talk about his newest initiative that goes beyond his agency work and speaks to the core of what he's always been about, which is, corralling untapped human potential and encouraging others to go for it the way others have encouraged him along his journey.
Tune in as we talk about:
[00:00] Welcome George B. Thomas!
[04:34] How did George start his personal brand?
[07:51] Personal Brand Lesson: Be very careful that you don't let what you think are weaknesses stop you, because many times what you think is a weakness can be your strength.
[09:14] What was George doing (before video, podcasting or any internet content) that captured the attention of Marcus Sheridan?
[11:03] Personal Brand Lesson: If you’re sitting in an organization you can become a leader. You can be a thought leader. Even if you're not the owner, even if you don't work for the organization that you're teaching the things around, that's the power of building a personal brand inside of the organization.
[15:31] When it comes to building a personal brand remember that different people engage with different types of humans. So its not a competition with others - you are just reaching the people you were meant reach and others are reaching the ones they are meant to reach.
[19:42] How George decided to start his own agency and how the work he had done on his personal brand helped him launch quickly.
[24:07] How does George decide what opportunities he is going to align himself to? |[29:18] What is next for George?
Contact George B. Thomas:
Website: Georgebthomas.com
Podcast: HubHeros
Podcast: Beyond Your Default
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Christine Gritmon: Hello, welcome to Let's Talk About Brand. I am your host, Christine Gritmon, and I'm coming at you every single week on Let's Talk About Brand, interviewing another guest expert about another topic related to personal branding. Today, we get to hear the incredible personal brand story of George B. Thomas.
I first encountered George when he was on stage hosting at the enormous, Inbound conference run by HubSpot. I've seen him on stages numerous times. I've been on his podcast. He has several podcasts. He has several video series. He's done a whole bunch of stuff with his personal brand, but when it comes down to it, what really lingers with people and what they really notice.
This is George himself. He just has such a great energy, and he brings so much value to so many people in so many different ways, not just as a HubSpot expert, but also just the way he is and the way he talks to people and the way he cares about people's lives. So we're going to hear from George today about, first of all, how he became George B.
Thomas in terms of, becoming that name that companies recognized the value in. We're going to talk about his adventures going, within agencies, starting to take more steps. He's in the final stages, starting to do more content, and eventually starting his own agency, plus another new initiative that goes beyond his agency work to really do the core of what he's always been about, which is, corralling that untapped human potential and encouraging others to go for it the way others have encouraged him along his journey.
All right, so as many others have said before on many other stages, come on down George B. Thomas!
George B. Thomas: All right, I'm on the price is right. Let's go.
Christine Gritmon: The price is always right on Let's Talk About Brand.
George B. Thomas: I know. I can't wait. I'm so excited, Christine, today to just unpack and add value and help the viewers or listeners of this content that we're about to put down.
Christine Gritmon: And I'm so excited because I have had the benefit since Probably about 2016 or 2017 of seeing you share your gifts on stages, on podcasts. I have been on your Marketing Smarts podcast and it's honestly one of my favorite podcast appearances I've ever done. You're a really good host. And can I just say the thing that I noticed most about you as a host, which I think is probably an indicator of how you operate as a person and as a creator and as a brand, is that you really listened.
To me. And I know, obviously, when I'm talking with people and interviewing them, I do listen. Obviously. It's a conversation. But you really were so on it where you'd take like a tiny, specific grain of something that I said and you just spin it out. And I really appreciate that about you and what it says about you as a generous creator.
George B. Thomas: Yeah, it's funny, Christine, because when you say that, I'm like yes, it is how I operate for me. It is all about the humans and all about being human. And when I say that, I have to say it's about being a good human along the way and good humans listen to those who they're interacting with.
Good humans make those people that they're interacting with feel comfortable. And so when I bring somebody on the marketing smarts show or the sidekick strategy show or any podcast that I'm creating with somebody it's like, how do I make them comfortable? How do I listen intently? How do I create a dope conversation?
That all the listeners can just feel like maybe we're at a bar or a library and they're just listening in and they're getting like these secret gold nuggets of information to use for their business.
Christine Gritmon: Oh, I love that. Thank you so much. So I want to give the folks at home just an overview of who you are, what you're all about. And let's actually start pretty early, George, because we're going to tell your story here today on Let's Talk About Brand, because you have built a brand while within another organization.
You built a brand as an employee. You have built a brand in, conjunction with another brand, and you've built a brand just as you, as George B. Thomas. You've done all sorts of things, many of them concurrently. So let's go to the start, not like literally birth, but whatever avenue in which you started building your personal brand, if we can even say that.
I know it sounds like a weird thing to say about yourself here's where my personal brand started. But still, George, when did your brand start?
George B. Thomas: Yeah, darn it. I was going to say I was born in 1970. No, I'm just kidding. So what's funny is I can actually pinpoint to the time. When the brand was born per se. And here's the thing, a couple of things that I want people to understand is that a lot of what has happened has somewhat been strategy.
Somewhat just been circumstance and somewhat just happy accident, but they can learn from what has happened along the way. So in 2012, I was working for a small agency in Massillon, Ohio, and our social media guy came running in and he's Hey you've got to check out this webinar by this company called HubSpot.
They're doing the world's largest webinar. And the owner and I were like a what by who we had no clue that there was this thing called inbound marketing or this software called HubSpot, but we sat down and we listened to this webinar. And during the world's largest webinar in 2012, they were saying, Hey, we're going to give away 10 tickets to the top 5 percent of tweeters.
This was back before Twitter changed their name. Anyway, the 5 percent of tweeters on the webinar, long story short, we won two tickets. By the way, I didn't tweet once the owner didn't tweet once our social media guy, his fingers are on fire. Ah,
Christine Gritmon: I have to point out that's actually part of how I started building my personal brand. I started, participating in those conversations, tweeting at conferences like Inbound, and that is how I got seen at the beginning. So I love that part of your story begins with getting seen as participating in, in an event.
George B. Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. So we went to Boston. We learned about HubSpot. I fell in love. I went from a designer developer, a guy who pizza and a six pack comes in the office and a website comes out the other side to saying, I want to be a marketer when I grow up. One certification became two, became six, became seven.
And then all of a sudden, I got the phone call. And this is the birth of the brand. I got a phone call from a gentleman named Marcus Sheridan, who I worked for before he wrote the book, They Ask, You Answer, but is the author of They Ask, You Answer, and a couple other books at the time of this recording.
And he says, Hey, I think you have some talents that I can use. And my small agency back then, it was called the sales line. And so I got hired there and immediately we started creating a podcast called the hub cast, which was a podcast specific for hub spot users. And he, in 2014 made the words of. I want you to start doing video.
And so I started doing HubSpot video tutorials. Now this is way before video became cool because it was like in 2018 that they started saying, this is the year of video. Now they've said this is the year of video ever year since then, but in
Christine Gritmon: is not the year of video. I think this is the year of audio.
George B. Thomas: Yeah, I'm right. Exactly. So podcasting and video tutorials, and that is where all of a sudden we went from this crazy thing of like inbound zero, I would call myself to this journey of becoming an inbound hero. And the fun part about this too, and I think something that the viewers and listeners can learn from when Marcus said, Hey, we're going to start a podcast.
I said, Marcus, you're crazy. I hate my voice. Now I have to fast forward to the first inbound conference we went to after we started the hubcast. And all of a sudden people in the halls were like George B. Thomas, which. How do people know my name? And then we would have conversations and they would like, dude, I'd love your podcast.
I love your voice. And I'm like, wait, I hate my voice. They're like no, dude, you sound like a radio DJ. And here's something that's interesting. When we're thinking about building a brand, we've got to be very careful that we don't let what we think are weaknesses are stop us because many times what we think our weaknesses can totally be our strength.
And so my voice and my presence and who I am being on audio and being on video and being consistent is what has taken this guy who was an inbound zero, just trying to figure it out, wanted to be a marketer when he grew up to where we are today. But we'll talk about that in the future.
Christine Gritmon: I wanted to go back to something you said, which is Marcus Sheridan reached out to you and said, Hey, I think I have a use for your talents, but you skip past the part where those talents were on display. So tell me. What did Marcus see in you, and how did he come to see it? In what way were you putting yourself out there in your early days so that you could be plucked from relevant, from, relative obscurity?
What were you putting out there back then in those early days, before the podcast, before the videos?
George B. Thomas: Yeah, what's funny is I wasn't putting anything out on the Internet, but what I was doing was being me. And let me explain that. So as I was going through this educational journey with HubSpot Academy, because I did want to be that marketer when I grew up, right? And I was getting the certifications, I would hop on these webinars.
And I would engage in the chat pane and I would answer the questions, but then I'd also be stupid. I'd be like M& Ms or, Skittles or, fruit of the looms or Hanes or like I would just be like funny, but engaging in these webinar chat panes and people would just start joking around and just make it fun.
And all of a sudden, the people who are running HubSpot Academy, the people who knew these webinars, they're like, hey, this guy's kind of cool. Then the only other layer of this is every time I got a certification from HubSpot Academy, I put it on LinkedIn and I said, Hey, another one down on a mission to catch them all.
And so there was this internal conversation at HubSpot, which Marcus talked to the folks at HubSpot. And there was this exterior explaining of my journey, my educational journey and who I was building myself into being. And out of those two things, That's how I got the phone call.
Christine Gritmon: Sharing your journey is absolutely huge. That is everything. So I love that worked for you. All right. So you're working with Marcus Sheridan, SalesLion. You have your podcast going, you've got your videos going you went to your first inbound marketing conference after that, and okay, so let's take it from there.
So what happened next in your brand building journey from there?
George B. Thomas: Yep. So in 2012, when I was at that event, I saw Gary Vaynerchuk speak and Christine, I said, I want to do that. And what I meant is I wanted to stand on stage and I wanted to entertain people and I wanted to educate people. And when I started working for Marcus and we started doing the podcast and we started doing the tutorials and the video.
The next thing was, how do we get me on more stages? And that really was the next elevation of the brand is how do we get on stages and educate? And the next thing I ended up having my first keynote, I went and keynoted an event called a min bound, which is Minnesota's inbound version. That was in like 2015. In 2015, I also got selected to do a breakout session at inbound.
So now I was speaking at the event that just several years ago was the catalyst for where I was headed. And I've been able to speak there every year since either digitally or in person, if it was an in person event, I have been there. And so it's just this idea of being able to be on stages. Now there did come a point in time where this switched a little bit.
We went from the sales lion to being about a team of four or five humans. We got acquired by a brand called impact brand and design. They're an awesome company, but I went from being pretty much independent person who created content and helped educate humans about HubSpot because Marcus was teaching content marketing.
And I was teaching the HubSpot side of that content marketing for our clients. And so we got acquired. It was a team of about 45, almost 50 people. And I was like, ah, this does not compute. I do not belong here. What happened? All of a sudden I have a manager. And so I freaked out mentally and I bailed.
And I ended up going to work for another company, which is Impulse Creative. And when I got there immediately, by the way, Remington Begg and Rachel Begg, they're amazing humans. I got there and what did I start doing? I started podcasting. I started creating content. So I started a YouTube channel called sprocket talk, and we went from zero subscribers to over 7, 000 subscribers just on HubSpot tutorials.
So again, what was I doing? I was taking this brand that I was, had built, and I started to rebuild the brand under the George B. Thomas, but then Sprocket Talk name, Impulse Creative name, instead of the sales line name. And it got to the point where there was another crazy phenomenon happening. And that is when I would talk to people, they would say you guys have a really cool software.
And I would be like, what do you mean you guys? And they're like you work for HubSpot, don't you? And I was like, no, I don't work for HubSpot. Here's the other crazy phenomenon is a lot of people either thought I worked for HubSpot or they thought I owned Impulse Creative, which I did neither. I was just a guy who created content consistently for people in the HubSpot ecosystem.
And all of a sudden they started having their own perceptions and placing me in where they thought I belonged. And it wasn't even reality, but it was perception. So it was their reality. And so what I'm the reason I'm bringing this up is because I want everybody that's sitting in an organization that might be watching or listening.
This realized like, Hey, you can become a leader. You can be a person of a thought leadership or of power. Even if you're not the owner, or even if you don't work for the organization that you're teaching the things around, like that's the power of building a personal brand inside of these organizations.
Christine Gritmon: I love that, and it clearly worked out really well for you. You became known as the HubSpot guy. I want to roll back, because I know that you've maintained good relationships with these people and with these organizations. I want to know how Marcus Sheridan and how Impact and how, all these places reacted to it because I would imagine, what you said almost, almost sounds like what organizations kind of fear when putting people forward, which is that your name was out there more than the organizations and they didn't even connect it to the organization necessarily.
However, I have a feeling that's not really, how it went necessarily. I think that you probably brought value to those organizations with the strength of your personal brand. So can you talk a little bit about how Your personal brand actually helped those organizations as well, because it certainly, certaInly did.
George B. Thomas: So mindset especially at the Sales Lion, and even at Impulse Creative, the mindset was we can have personal brands inside the organization, because the only thing that does is it powers up the brand even more, right? There's only so many people that Marcus Sheridan could touch. And there's only so many people on this planet that Marcus Sheridan was made for.
Okay. And I want everybody to understand it made for meaning the tribe that he'll be able to collect. There's another set of humans that were made for me, meaning they like the way I talk, the way I do my tutorials, the way I act as a big freaking goofball on podcast. They'll be able to be my tribe.
And so now all of a sudden, what you can do is you can start to create these single community, but there's almost like these micro communities inside of that. By the way, we're not inventing anything new. If you think about. Let's say a mega church and you'll have multiple pastors. Why do you think that is?
It's because different people engage with different types of humans and they'll find their place. And so at the sales line and impulse creative, it wasn't a competition of the George B. Thomas brand can't get bigger than, or sprocket talk can't get bigger than whatever it is. It was a how do we create the most buzz, the most movement and we really at that time we weren't in a because it wasn't as much of a buzzword as it is now.
We weren't in a let's build a community mindset, but just naturally. What we are doing with who we are, we were building a community. The other mindset that I have to unpack is that Marcus, and he would say this publicly many times is that when you are willing to hire stallions, you realize that sometimes they have to run.
And while for a timeframe, you might have them in your organization. If you're truly a great leader, you get more excited. When they head out to their next adventure, instead of getting hurt by the fact that you have been the incubator to grow them into who they can become. I have this scenario right now, by the way, in my own organization, because punch line, by the way, I've started my own company.
We'll talk about that a little bit more, but I've been growing. All the people that are in my organization in the understanding that they may go off and do their own thing. For instance, I hired both of my sons to do podcast editing and video editing, but am helping them figure out how to start their own podcast editing and video editing business.
I hired Jorge who is my HubSpot implementation specialist. And one of the things that I said after we got him on boarded is, dude, I want you to start doing HubSpot tutorials and putting them out on our YouTube channel and putting them out on LinkedIn. Why? Cause I want him to build his brand. for his people, for his tribe that will collect around him so that we can empower the George B. Thomas brand as a whole. And will he eventually ride off into the sunset? Maybe. Will I be sad? No, I'll be happy as hell because I know that he came into our ecosystem. I was able to grow these people and help them become the best versions of themselves. Now, that unfortunately is not the leadership that is in most organizations.
And if I could impact anything on this planet, I would get more leaders to think that way. Now, just because they don't think that way, though, doesn't mean that you shouldn't think in the way that helps you become the best you possible. And that is always going to be by creating a personal brand around who you are, your values, your missions, and the things that you love.
Christine Gritmon: Wow, boy, are you singing my song. I love this. Okay, so I want to make sure we get up to present day. So here we are. You are being acknowledged as the HubSpot guy. You don't work for HubSpot, but you are known as the HubSpot guy. So where do we progress from there? You've got your tutorials up, your sprocket talk, is that it?
So where do we go from there?
George B. Thomas: Yep. So I decide not to work at any agency. That's where we went from here. So I got to the point where I was like. And by the way, first of all, and I got to say this because I think it's a narrative that a lot of people run in their brain. I had told myself I'm a great number two to a number one. I'm a great Robin to a Batman.
I was not allowing myself to have first player energy, but it got to the point where one morning I woke up Christine and. As, as audible as it could sound without me being crazy. I heard if you don't do this, you're going to regret it when you're 70 very specific number, by the way, I don't know why 70, but if you don't do this, you're going to regret it when you're 70.
And so, I decided to start my own jam. And at that point, I wasn't even going to start an agency. I'm just, Hey, I'm just going to go out on my own. I'm going to do some HubSpot consulting. And so I gave Remington Bagot Impulse Creative a 60 day notice, and I worked every one of those 60 days because I was trying to give him time to replace who I was and what I did in the organization, because I was a vital part of the attract and probably convert phases of what they were doing from gaining new clients because of all the education and content we had put out there. But now it's been about a year and eight months, year and seven months. I've been doing my own thing. We went quickly from just it being me, a solopreneur to doing a Hubspot consulting to now we're literally like a HubSpot agency.
We've got, seven employees, four contractors, more clients than I ever thought we would have. And it's just been like. Somebody basically buckled me into a rocket ship and hit the button, but it doesn't, it didn't make sense to me at first. Like why would the business be having the success that it was having as quick as it would have?
Because one would think, Hey, you're going to start your business. You got to eke out an existence. You might be profitable by year three, who knows, but the somebody that I was talking to one of my first clients and they actually called me and they said, Hey how much does it cost to be your client?
Because I know here in the very near future, you're not going to be able to take any new clients. And I, first of all, I said, thanks. You're crazy. He goes no. I don't think that you understand what you've been doing. He goes for 10 years now, you've been pulling back a slingshot, pulling back a slingshot hub cast podcast, sprocket talk video tutorials, he goes, the day that you put out on social that you are starting your own business you let go of the slingshot.
He goes, so I hope you're ready. And he knew what he was talking about because it has been that kind of going out of the slingshot, fast forward just craziness in all the good ways that it could be to the point where I understand super blessed. It feels like we're cheating, but we're not cheating.
We're here's the thing that everybody's understand building a personal brand, adding value to the world, being consistent with content, it's not cheating. It's a great marketing plan. And again, along the whole way, not by purpose, but a lot by just oops, did I do that? Like the Steve Urkel thing.
We were building this crazy marketing plan for the day that we decided just to go do our own thing. And so you're right. Like I get emails that will say Hey, you've got to work with this guy. He's the goat. Now, Christine, I would never call myself the goat of anything, but that's the perception.
Therefore, that's their reality. That's where they've placed me based on something that most people would call extraordinary. Now, here's what I want to say. I don't necessarily think that I've done anything extraordinary, meaning each day it was about a video tutorial or each week it was about a podcast episode.
That's not extraordinary. However. When you do that consistently for 10 years. Now that's extraordinary.
Christine Gritmon: It certainly is. And the great thing is you are doing your own thing. You are running your own agency, but you are. You are still working with adjacent companies. You do stuff with HubSpot. You do stuff with Marketing Profs. So I want to talk to you a little bit about that stuff and how that fits into your whole personal brand ecosystem because you don't have to be lending your personal brand to other entities, but you are because there's alignment there.
So can you talk a little bit about those things that you're doing and how you decide which opportunities like that to do?
George B. Thomas: Yeah. So a lot of it, and again, because it's all about the humans and being human, a lot of my decisions are truly made with gut. Sometimes I try to stay out of my mind because my mind can be a little bit crazy, like many of our minds. But I do choose to work with different brands. So for instance, marketing profs was a client before I had my own company, meaning when I worked at impulse creative, one of the things that marketing profs paid us to do was just for me to show up and emcee their webinars. Okay. So I had been doing that for about a year through impulse creative. And then when I decided to make the jump of being my own boss marketing profs was actually looking for somebody to host their podcast.
And and Hanley. Came to me and said, I'd really like you to be the host of the podcast. First of all, I love Ann Handley. She's freaking amazing. She's a great human. She helps other humans be better humans with everything that she does. So I
Christine Gritmon: She also has a strong no assholes policy. That's something that I really respect about Ann Handley as well. She will only work with good people, so if you're in her ecosystem, not only have you gotten the good person stamp, but you know you'll be working with other good people and supporting good things.
George B. Thomas: that's it. And we aligned so much in that because my policy is no douchebags allowed. Like the only rule that we have no douchebags allowed. So what's fun. Is marketing process became really one of my first clients when we went out to do our own thing and it had nothing to do with truly what we were known for, which was HubSpot, but it was this podcast and it was the webinars and emceeing.
And so literally every week I'm doing a MC project for them. Every week we're putting on a podcast for them. And I love it. And. The reason I love it is because I love learning. So I get to interview smart people like yourself. I like educating others. So we get to create this podcast and put it out to the world.
And it's just an amplification of the brand. Now, here's the funny thing. I noticed some similarities. I had been doing HubSpot tutorials. Hey, you guys have a great software, meaning they thought that I worked for. HubSpot. When I started doing the B2B stuff, so Marketing Smarts podcast and the emceeing a year later, I was featured in an article of one of the top 12 B2B marketers to pay attention to.
I've never once said that I was a B2B marketer, a B2C, a B2G, a B2 anything. I'm actually just a guy who focuses on the humans and how we can make businesses that those humans work at better, but because of being on a B2B a podcast now also on my brand started to get associated with business to business, which I am not complaining.
I don't care. It's literally like another chink in the belt of the brand. So what does that allow me to do? Well, It allows me to walk into B2B spaces. It allows me to walk into inbound spaces. It allows me to just go into these places, be who I am, and allow the people, the tribe, the community, to dictate their reality, how I fit in it.
And that's a wonderful place to actually be able to sit in and understand that people are going to accept you for who you are, just be you be unique, be human, be mindful, be like, there's a whole framework right that we're working on that we want to talk about when we talk about it's all about the humans and me being human, like there's some elements in there that we want people to understand this is what we mean. So eventually we're going to talk about that more and it's going to be on one of the two podcasts, maybe both podcasts that we're doing now inside the organization. We might make some videos about it. Listen, if you're listening, I'm not creating any new strategy.
I'm just telling you what historically we've done and what in the future we're going to continue to do to allow people to get to know who we are.
Christine Gritmon: Now, one thing I find really interesting about this whole story is that, as you've said, you are a human, you're not a marketer, you're not a B2B marketer, you are a human who's about the humans. That is the value that you bring to the table. However, you have done this with a very specific vehicle, and I don't mean your content types like podcasting, I mean HubSpot.
So you have built your brand. within the vehicle of another brand. And you've tried different things. You're not afraid to move around. You're not afraid to break free of constraints. This is something that, this is a pathway and guardrails that you've chosen and that you continue to choose.
So I'd love to hear a little bit about what's behind That. Because you could easily have said, you know what, since people are responding to the human hero for humans part, I'm gonna go be a coach. I'm gonna be a business coach. I'm gonna go do, this other thing. I'm gonna go make my own software.
But you've chosen not to do that. You've chosen to stay within. I'm going to help bring HubSpot to more people. So I'd love to hear a bit about what's behind that, how that has worked. Any objections to that I hear?
George B. Thomas: No.
yes,
Christine Gritmon: you've chosen to do that.
George B. Thomas: yeah, I'm going to yes. And you're there and you'll see what I mean here in a minute. So here's the thing inside of HubSpot, because HubSpot was a tool, it allows me to be me. Now I'm a recovering youth pastor. I think that's why for me, it's all about the human and about being human.
And in all of my videos or most of my videos got to be careful of absolutes. I would end with this tagline of don't forget to be a happy, helpful, humble human. And there are things in my life that I've learned along the way that are Pointing to make sure that you're focused on happiness and joy and living the best life that you can make sure you're focused on being a humble human, not a narcissist or egotistical because if you get, you know, ego is kind of the enemy helpful, meaning add value to the world.
And what's fun is it was a vehicle for me to have that narrative to show up. And the reason that I was showing up that way is because the fundamental principle of what I was trying to do is get more people to show up that way. Because here's the thing in 2012, when I went to that conference, HubSpot was saying, don't call me customer, call me human. And I was like, now that right there is something I can get behind. And so I feel like I've diligently been being that human element of don't call me customer, call me human of the HubSpot ecosystem the entire time, like doing my part to keep them on the narrow path of being this type of community of being a value based, we're not competitors.
We can all help each other. Let's just make this the best ecosystem possible. And I've just been doing my part in that. Now, here's what I'll tell you is the reason I chose to stay there is because it was working. And the thing that you're diagnosing too is one thing that another buddy of mine said one to me one time and it blew my mind.
But I think if you're building a personal brand, you have to leverage this. He said, dude, you are a transition specialist to which I said, what the heck does that even mean? He goes, I watched you go from being a designer developer. To somebody who is going to learn marketing and learn HubSpot, he goes, then I saw you go from that to doing podcasting and from that to doing video.
But the whole time you're doing podcast and video, you were doing marketing and you're doing HubSpot, but you are transitioning into these things. Now it's like transition into AI because AI is a hot topic, right? So you're adding all these elements you're pivoting and you're transitioning into these things in these hot pockets, in these hot moments.
And you're just like creating the superhero tool belt of things that you can do. Listen, if you're going to build a personal brand, you have to have curiosity, right? I already talked about consistency, but curiosity. And the ability to learn things and implement things along the way. And it's because you might be teaching something, but you have to learn this thing to teach it.
You have to learn this thing to be able to do it. And so that's idea of pivoting or transitioning and curiosity and understanding that it's going to be a windy road. Now, where I want to get to, and I'll pause before we actually go deep into this, I, when I started the business I did start a podcast, it's called a hub heroes podcast.
We named the company George B. Thomas LLC, which we're probably going to name because it needs to be an agency name, next year, sometime we'll probably come out with that. But along the way, I realized one thing, Christine, for the last 10 years, I've been helping humans with HubSpot
Christine Gritmon: Okay.
George B. Thomas: and everything that I've taught happy, helpful, humble human.
And the way that I teach people to do marketing and sales now, because by the way, it's gone past marketing. It's marketing sales service. I've had 41 HubSpot certifications, been a HubSpot accredited trainer did onboarding for HubSpot themselves for two years when I was an impulse creative, but everything that I would teach, I would realize it was predicated on the fact that they were good humans.
And not everybody comes with their business hat on and understands how to be a good human. Or some people even have lived a life that have forced them not to be or understand what being a good human and showing up as a good human is. And so because of the launch of the business because of the mindsets that changed in me from a, I'm a great number two to a now I have to have first player energy.
We've also started something new. And again, I'm not gonna create a brand new strategy. I'm just going to rinse and repeat what we've historically done. But you mentioned go be a coach or be, by the way, I feel like I am a business coach. It just happens to be wrapped up in HubSpot, marketing, sales, service, that type of thing.
But we're literally getting ready to launch a thing called Beyond Your Default. Which is now, instead of just helping humans with HubSpot, it's just going to be about just helping humans.
Christine Gritmon: I love that. Which is what you've been about this whole time. And it explains your story too. You've tapped your potential. Just in increasing ways over the years. And here we are. I love it.
George B. Thomas: Here we are.
Christine Gritmon: George, this has been absolutely amazing. I would encourage anyone to look at all the stuff George has done whether you're interested in HubSpot or inbound marketing or not.
Regardless, George will inspire you. So George, tell people at home, where can they find you? Why should they find you? And what will they find there?
George B. Thomas: Yeah, so first of all, what you'll find there is just somebody who fundamentally cares about your future success, whether it be as a person or as a business, somebody who's ready to have a conversation, ready to listen and give you advice, whether that's working with us or not working with us. I just know, That is my job to sow the seeds, to be a blessing and whatever happens will happen.
That's just how I roll now, where you can find me. If you're looking for like marketing sales service help you have HubSpot or you're thinking about getting HubSpot, then just head over to georgebthomas. com. That's the website for right now that everything lives at. If you just love podcasts and listening to podcasts, you can listen to the hub heroes podcast, because that's our kind of HubSpot business marketing sales service specific podcasts.
Now, if you're listening to this and you're like, I just need like a mega dose of what just happened on this episode. Almost every day of my life, then I would suggest you go to beyond your default dot com. There's podcast episodes there. There's a free newsletter there. And there is a community that we're building out there that are these folks who are either, in a fork in the road of their life, or they feel stuck and they feel like they're destined to go somewhere, or maybe you were just pouring a freaking high achiever. Maybe if you're one of those three types of people, then beyond your default in the content that you're going to find there and becoming a better human um, having somebody to traverse the a hill of success or the lane of significance that you might be chasing. That's where I would send them.
Christine Gritmon: Ah, I love it. And I can personally vouch for this, people. George actually will talk to you and wants you to succeed. That's not a gotcha there. Like he will do it. So reach out. Thank you so much, George. This has been amazing.
George B. Thomas: Thanks, Christine.
Christine Gritmon: And thank you so much for listening, whether you are listening to Let's Talk About Brand the podcast on your podcast player of choice, or if you're here for the video podcast on YouTube. Either way, please do subscribe.
If you liked it, please do leave a comment or a review, and please do join us next week when I'll be back here with another guest expert talking about another element of personal branding.
Bye!
S4 Ep06: Let’s Talk About Personal Brand Impact
Emmanuel Probest talks about how personal brands can make a bigger impact. One of the best ideas that we talk about is how your personal brand is a vessel for an idea. It is a way to relate to people and to express yourself and who you really are. And through that, you can make a bigger impact!
Have you ever wanted to have a bigger impact on your personal brand? Have you thought the only brands that can have a big impact on our culture are the big consumer brands? Think again!
Today I’m talking with Emmanuel Probst about exactly that. One of the best ideas that we talk about is how your personal brand is a vessel for an idea. It is a way to relate to people and to express yourself and who you really are.
To do that we first define what a brand and culture is and we discuss what it means to make a measurable change in a culture. We also talked about how you find the message that your brand will be the vessel for. Then we wrap it up with a marketing lesson from Picasso.
Emmanuel Probst is the head of global thought leadership at Ipsos (one of the largest market research firms). He also teaches brand strategy at UCLA, and he's the author of “Assemblage: The Art and Science of Brand Transformation.”
Tune in as we talk about how personal brands can make an impact:
[00:00] Welcome Emmanual Probst!
[03:09] How do you define a brand?
[06:52] How do you define culture?
[08:22] At what point are you considered to have a personal brand?
[11:20] Should you follow your gut or data when it comes to marketing your brand
[14:02] Is there a separation between the person inside the brand and they things that are selling?
[17:51] How can you find the core message for your personal brand?
[21:20] What roles do influencers play?
[24:46] What marketing lessons can we learn from Picasso?
Contact Emmanuel Probst:
Linkedin: Emmanuel Probst
Book: Assemblage, the Art and Science of Brand Transformation
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Christine Gritmon:
Hello and welcome to Let's Talk About Brand I'm your host, Christine Gritmon and this podcast is coming at you every single week with a different guest expert talking about a different element of branding, especially personal branding. Today's guest, like many of our guests, has experience in both the worlds of consumer brands, and personal branding.
He is the head of global thought leadership, among other things, at Ipsos, which is an enormous market research firm. He also teaches brand strategy at UCLA, and he's also an author. He is a Emmanuel Probst. His most recent book is called Assemblage, The Art and Science of Brand Transformation. And one of the things that we're going to be talking today, talking about today, is how in order to shape culture and kind of shift the world on its axis a little bit, You don't necessarily have to be a huge consumer brand.
There are big personal brands doing that, and there are even small personal brands having their own impact on culture in their own way. It really ripples out. You can create a personal brand that really... It's a vessel for an idea which is something that we get into in the interview. So today we're going to talk about, first of all, what we're even talking about when we talk about brands, when we talk about personal brands, when we talk about culture and cultural impact, what are we talking about there?
We're also going to talk about impact, about how you can make sure that your brand does have an impact no matter how big or small you are. We also get into something that I know, especially the smallest of new baby personal brands struggle with, which is How do you find that idea that you are a vessel for, and how do you start having an impact in your own world?
You don't have to think on a global scale when it comes to the impact your personal brand is going to make, but thinking about the impact you want your personal brand to make is a very important part of the equation. So we're going to talk about all of that with Emanuel Probst here today. I'm so excited to have him on.
All right, so without any further ado, we are going to bring him on.
Hello, Emmanuel! Welcome!
Emmanuel Probst: Christine, thank you for having me on the show.
Christine Gritmon: Thanks for being on. So you actually reached out to me after an episode that I had last season with Marcus Collins. We're talking about branding and culture. And that actually taps into a bit of what we're going to be talking about today. We're going to be talking about how personal brands can shift culture in a really big way.
When we were talking before we went live, we're talking a little bit about, some of those brands that aren't just consumer brands like Coca Cola. They are people, they are places, they are bigger than just a label on a product. So first, I'm gonna back up, and again, it's a really basic question, but through hundreds of interviews, there have been, slightly different nuances on this.
I'm gonna ask you, Emmanuel, how do you define a brand?
Emmanuel Probst: Yeah, the way I define a brand is the way they define the brand and they meaning the individuals, not even the consumers, meaning the audience. So it's a bit counterintuitive to put it this way, but as marketing professionals, we know so much about our brands. Anyway, we know so much about our category the way we define it. It's fine, it's useful, but the core definition of a brand is how do they define it. They meaning your audience. Definition of a brand is that. How do they perceive your company, your services, your products? It is their definition that matters most, not ours, and our job is to help shape this definition they have in their mind.
Christine Gritmon: So one thing that we were talking about in the green room, you were pointing out how a brand is not just Coca Cola, Las Vegas is a brand, the Pope is a brand Bono from U2 is a brand. So what makes those three very different perspectives, what makes those brands, whereas, my friend's house cat is maybe not a brand what sort of makes that difference there in terms of being a brand in a larger sense?
Emmanuel Probst: First off, they're all similar because they all try to stand out. Las Vegas competes with San Francisco, Los Angeles, and arguably destinations for gambling in Asia. And U2 competes with other bands, maybe like the Rolling Stones, just like Justin Timberlake might compete with Justin Bieber, and Rihanna might compete with other artists, right?
So we all have a competitive set. If you will. What makes them different is their uniqueness. It's how distinctive they are. It is. It might be their distinctive brand assets in terms of Las Vegas. You can think of the lights and you can think of the strip and you can think of a Bellagio fountain. You can think of the Las Vegas sign.
Paris is going to be the Eiffel Tower, and U2 is going to be not even about the music, but it's going to be about his demeanor and him wearing his glasses, for example. If you think about the Pope, he's very distinctive in terms of, again, I'm not getting into His religious beliefs even, but he is very unique in terms of the way he dresses and of the way he presents himself in front of an audience.
So distinctive brand assets might be specific manifestations of a brand if you want. That can be clothing, that can be colors, that can be sounds, and then. What meaning do we associate to those different brands? And that conceptually is not different for Coca Cola than it is for Las Vegas or for the Pope.
What are the meanings? What are the perceptions? What are the unique meanings and unique perceptions that we, the audience, Associate with these brands.
Christine Gritmon: And that leads us very nicely into kind of the next place that I want to go with this, which is how brands, and especially personal brands, even individuals, can really impact culture. But before we dive into that, I would love to hear how you would define culture as someone who is involved in this kind of marketing landscape, which surely impacts your definition here.
So how would you define culture?
Emmanuel Probst: Yeah, I actually did quite a lot of research on this for my prior books. So for my first book, that was Brand hacks. And of course, I'm picking up on culture in my latest book assemblage. A culture is loosely defined world. And how we can summarize it is to say it has to do with your beliefs with customs, with the activities you engage in and with culture makers, the world around you. Specific brands help shape culture like U2 for example specific people, politics. So culture is about your core beliefs and Activities and the way these evolves around you in light of the current show and environment.
Christine Gritmon: Now, as we know, there are certain people who have managed to have sufficiently Impactful and magnetic personal brand as to be able to impact not only the immediate people who engage with them and interact with them directly, but can have a larger impact that can impact something as large as a culture, though cultures can be all sizes, of course, as well.
But what are we talking about when we even talk about a personal brand? Do you feel like everyone has a personal brand? Do you feel like there's a certain kind of tipping point where you become a personal brand? What kind of, what people get to define themselves as brands, is what I'm getting at here, in your opinion.
Emmanuel Probst: Yeah, people get to define themselves as brands the moment they choose to. So everyone has the opportunity to create, define, grow a personal brand. Now it's up to you to do it and to decide if it's something you need to do. And with that said, in most occupations, you. Forgive me for being so blunt, but you need to sell, which means you need to create a personal brand.
And what I mean by this is if you're a dentist or if you're an orthodontist, or if you're a lawyer, or if you're a personal trainer, or if you're a gardener, or if you're an accountant, all these are occupations where We as consumers have dozens of options to choose from. So though its not intuitive for your business and maybe your personality to create this personal brand, you're going to need to do this because those fields are just as competitive as everything else.
THat's why a personal brand is important. That's what a personal brand is about. You create a personal brand the instant you choose to do so. and then a personal brand needs to be attuned to culture. And eventually, I guess the difference between a small and a bigger personal brand is It's ability to either embrace culture and eventually to make culture, to impact culture.
In other words, are you jumping on the bandwagon and you're tuned to culture, which is great, which is good, which is what you need to do. And you take it a step further and you start defining culture as a change agent.
Christine Gritmon: Absolutely. Now you work with Ipsos, which is, one of the world's leading market research agencies. So there's an analytical component in there as well. So I'm sure that you have seen, not just from the sort of gut driven vibes perspective, which tends to be honestly the way I tend to do things.
things But also from an actual, data perspective, some people with personal brands are able to get to the point where they are really impacting things way beyond themselves. Putting on your market researcher hat for a moment. Cause you're in that world. How? How do people tend to do that to a point where it is actually statistically significant?
What are some ways that personal change makers do make measurable change on culture from a marketing perspective? Does that make sense? I'm asking in a weird, circuitous way. But what are some ways that tend to tip that, to move that needle there?
Emmanuel Probst: You said two things that are important. Christine, you said you do things with your guts, and then you spoke about measurement. When you're a really small brand and you get started, I think it's completely fine to do things with your gut. And in fact, you should always follow your instincts, your creativity, and building a personal brand means emphasizing who you are.
It is not transforming you into someone you're not. And as such, you should, regardless of the data you have access to or not, you should follow your instinct and you should magnify your strengths. That's what building a personal brand is about. It doesn't matter how big your brain becomes, you should never lose sight of your own personality, your creativity, what your instinct guides you to do. Or else you just become a poster child and you really don't want to be this.
Let's talk about measurement now. That's where the biggest brands have an advantage. Again, when I say a big brand, it might be Coca Cola, but it might be also Las Vegas, or it might be Justin Timberlake, Gordon Ramsay, and Taylor Swift.
They're big because they have a lot of reach, and therefore they can get very scientific in terms of the outcomes they measure and whatnot.
Silence. You said I work with Ipsos, and we're indeed one of the largest market research agencies in the world. I might surprise you, but conceptually the way you measure Coca Cola and the way you measure the impact of Taylor Swift is not that different.
That is, how do you drive, how does the brand drive different attributes? What are the attributes people associate with the brand and what are the outcomes the brand drives. And so you measure these in isolation, but the way you do things are not conceptually that different for Taylor Swift than it be for Apple or REI or Patagonia.
Christine Gritmon: Now, one thing that you mentioned before is that ultimately as personal brands, we are still trying to sell something, generally speaking. Whether we are an executive with a company, and we are representatives of that company. If we are solopreneurs like myself, and we are the product.
If you're someone like Taylor Swift, where music is the product. But of course, it goes so far beyond music, in a case like hers, to become a cultural phenomenon. One thing that a lot of people really seem to worry about when they're first stepping forward as a personal brand is wondering about that balance between keeping it focused on the thing or the service or the whatever that they are trying to sell versus keeping it focused on who they are as a person. So what are some of your thoughts about how people can find that balance and about how that balance may even shift over time as their personal brand develops that critical mass that makes it magnetic?
Emmanuel Probst: Yeah, I'll reflect on Taylor Swift and if I may on my personal experience and of publishing books. You said music is the product. And I may slightly rephrase this and say her music is a vessel for an idea. It's a vessel. It's a way to communicate the way she feels and a way for her to relate to people.
But really what makes money is to sell tickets to her shows. Sure. She might make money from downloads, but that's literally anecdotal. If you compare, the money she makes from, basically feeling stadiums with dozens of thousands of people is the same thing in the book business. You can sell books, but frankly, the revenue.
from books is anecdotal compared to the revenue that comes from consulting or from speaking engagements or workshops and so on and so forth. And her music is a vessel for an idea and a way to relate to people. And a book is a vessel for an idea and a way to relate to people and to express yourself and who you really are.
And. Make yourself unique, different, and relatable at the same time so that you can sell the product. So another way to put it and to really simplify things is Taylor Swift doesn't have to sell herself in her songs. She just had to tell people the way she feels so that in turn she can sell 200, 400. 3, 000, 30, 000 tickets.
So it's the same thing as a practitioner. If you're a cosmetic surgeon, you need to be omnipresent on social media because people will care more about your social media activity and following than they will about your qualifications. And on social media, you're going to show. your art and how your personality translates in your relationship with your patients so that then people book appointments and surgeries with you procedures, I should say.
Christine Gritmon: I love what you said about how it's not about, the external product that is being sold so much as being a vessel for an idea. That is fantastic. That also can be really intimidating for a lot of people, you know, kind of figuring out. Go to Simon Sinek, start with why, but that's really the essence of a personal brand, really.
I like to think of it as your job is task based. But your brand, who you are, is not task based. It is based in something deeper that is transferable between different jobs, between different skills. What are some ways people can maybe get to the essence of what the underlying idea that they are a vessel for could be when figuring out their personal brand?
Because not everyone's going out there to change the world. Some people are like, I just want to sell stuff. But when it comes down to it, a powerful personal brand, no matter what it is you are nominally selling. is going to have a much greater impact and be a lot more flexible if you are indeed a vessel for an idea.
So what are some ways people can get started identifying what that could be for them? Because it's inside of them, but it's hard to find sometimes.
Emmanuel Probst: yeah, you used a an important word. You said it can be intimidating and I get that and I agree. There's a good news. The good news is in the world we live in now, in the world we live in today, it's okay to embrace vulnerability and imperfections and differences. And you don't have, not only you don't have to be perfect, but in fact, you don't want to.
There is no longer this perception, and there shouldn't be, that success is about being tough, and being the big guy, and with the big voice, and all that. No. Just reflect on who you really are. How do you do this? Just think of the things you like to do, and maybe the movies you like to watch, and the books you like to read, the podcasts you like to listen to, and think of the attributes that define you. You don't have to go too deep. I'm not going to take you through a psychology session here, nor would I be qualified to do but really, what do you like to do? What are the colors you like? What is the type of music you like? What are the tones you like? And That is how you're going to shape this unique personal brand of yours.
But again, I insist that imperfect is perfect. That is, authenticity is most important to people. And let me link this to very big brands. They know this, and they enable this in their marketing now. If you think of Dove, Dove is a massive brand. It's a uni level brand. It's a global brand. Dove embarked a few years ago on what they call the Dove Beauty Project, to reveal people's real beauty.
What this means is instead of using perfect models in their advertisements, they started using everyday people. And that was a few years ago, and they continue on this trajectory. Most recently, Ogilvy, that is a large advertising agency, Ogilvy in the UK pledged to stop using Photoshop. That is to stop retouching people and pictures to make them perfect.
So the point I'm making here is even the biggest brands in the world are embracing imperfections. And the good news is As a personal brand, as an individual, let alone when you're getting started, is you just have to embrace this. You don't have to walk it backwards from perfection to imperfection.
You're already authentic. You're already vulnerable. You're already imperfect. So now you just have to push this forward and bring it to your audience. Just like Taylor Swift does.
Christine Gritmon: That actually brings me to something that's been in a special interest of mine lately, which is that, big brands are starting to recognize more and more that one of the kind of hidden superpowers they can really tap into is their people. They're actual humans but that could be a bit of a tricky thing for some of them because I know the old school mentality was if our people are out there doing their own thing and being their own strong personal brands, first of all, other companies might poach them.
Second of all, they might be, too preoccupied with building their own name that they're, neglecting our brand or whatever. But I think that's changing. I think brands are recognizing more and more that the fact that a company is made up of humans can be an incredible force. And then, of course, there's the fact that more and more brands are working with influencers who are their own independent personal brands.
I'm curious about your take on both of those phenomena.
The idea of activating your people and recognizing the strong, incredible, potentially very influential people who you have within your own organization, but then also borrowing influence from professional influencers. How do you feel both of these things are really impacting the way that brands can help shape culture?
Emmanuel Probst: Yeah. So first, Christine, that's a very good news for our listeners today is you don't have to walk backwards. You said big brands are trying to become more personal, more authentic, closer to people. Again, if you're an individual, you're already personal. You also spoke about big brands trying to empower their people to be the voice of the brand, if you will.
The truth is, This is very hard to scale. And yes, brands are trying to work in that direction, but it's very hard to control. And that's a problem you really don't have if you're a sole practitioner or if you're a small business with, 10, 20, 30, 100 employees, and you have 1,2,3,4,5 locations. It's a very different deal when you're Starbucks and you operate 11, 000 stores.
From the get go, that's a problem you don't have to solve. Now you spoke about influencers and the original value proposition of influencers is that is to reduce the social distance between the brand and the audience. Silence. What this means is we like influencers because they're relatable.
In other words, they are just like your neighbor and they live. Or at least they're supposed to live in a place just like yours, in sharp contrast with the likes of George Clooney or big personalities that we don't live like. 99. 5 percent of us, if you will.
Now about hiring influencers to work with you, enabling that reach, be careful what you wish for.
Number one they are following and how many people they can really reach. Look under the lid. Is that real? What is the level of engagement? They have with their audience. And number two, what is the fit between both influencers and your product? And in other words, you don't want just any influencer to represent your brand.
What other brands do they work with? What is their personal narrative? What is their creative style? And. Does this all align with your, when your product, the message you want to convey with your audience.
So last but not least is I would look towards smaller influencers when they're not as expensive, but also they have a much higher engagement, much better intimacy with their audience, with their followers.
And last but not least, But they are likely not overwhelmed with brands, and therefore they will give your brand more of a voice, if you will.
Christine Gritmon: Now, this is going to be a little bit of a spoiler for your latest book, Assemblage, but one thing that I was very intrigued about when I read some of the bullet points on it is, you mentioned what Picasso knew, and what all marketers need to learn. I'm very intrigued by that bit. So hopefully people will still go out and read Assemblage, even if they get this spoiler, but I'm intrigued by that.
So what did Picasso, who was inarguably an incredible cultural shifting personal brand. What did he know that that we as marketers should learn?
Emmanuel Probst: Yeah. By the way, Christine, about Assemblage, I have two good news. Not only people can read it, but they can also listen to the book. It's available as an Audible format. That's the first good news. The second good news is I'm not the one reading the book. And they can listen to the book without the accent
But back to your question, Christine, there is an important chapter in this book called The Assemblers and what Picasso knew Well, the artists we admire the most, like Picasso, they're talented, but not always in the ways we think, meaning the real talent is often assembling. To deliver on the artistic vision rather than necessarily creating the art themselves.
So what I mean by this is the likes of Andy Warhol, for example Jeff Koons today. They have plenty of people working for them. The same applies in cooking. Gordon Ramsay doesn't cook. Alain Ducasse Doesn't cook. The same applies in music whereby a famous dj, let's say like David gta, by definition, assembles samples from other musics.
Phil Williams does not know how to read music. That's a fact. That's not gossip. He had to admit under oath that he didn't know how to read music, yet he sold millions and millions of records. Digital Kaen is the same thing. He's a music producer. So what all these people have in common. Is the pick and choose from talents, from samples, from culture, what makes sense and the symbol the samples is bits and bobs, if you will, into a new product, into a new service, into a new narrative, into a new story that they're going to bring to their audience.
The second thing we can learn from Picasso is, yeah, he's known for his great paintings. But beyond that, he was a prolific artist, also creating china and pottery and sculptures. And the point being that he had such a wide range of products, such a wide range of items that he could sell to his audience.
He started poor, but by the way, he died really rich. The point being is, yeah, he could sell a 50, 70, 200, 000 paintings, along with plates and lithographs that were more accessible to a wider audience. As such, he was one of the first marketers to exemplified to pioneer, I will say, the concept of line expansion.
Christine Gritmon: So I'd like to hear a bit more about that line extension, because the thing is, when we think of Picasso, most people do really think about his paintings and stuff. And that actually brings me brings us to another point, which is that, It's not always about the one thing that you do.
Sometimes the thing that you do that kind of leads the way allows people to discover the other things. But, line extensions, I'd like to hear a little bit more about what you mean by that. Especially when it comes to things like that.
Emmanuel Probst: A great analogy, very relevant, I believe, is the fashion industry. In the fashion industry, when you look at Christian Dior or Balmain or Balenciaga, fill the blank, they have catwalks twice a year and they impress a very small crowd of people attending those catwalks, maybe 150 people, if that, in Paris, Milan, New York. How many dresses do they really sell? A dozen, if that. And those are really expensive and beautiful by all means, but not really practical. The point is not to sell dresses at catwalks. The point is to demonstrate the creativity to make culture. Influence culture in that process to get as much media attention as you can.
So that in turn, you can sell in the case of Balmain, a 650 t shirt, or you can sell some perfume or some cologne or some handbag, or some ready to wear items. That are very scalable and extremely profitable. And so the point is, as a Customer, when I buy that T-shirt or when I buy that perfume, I'm being part of the dream.
I'm being part of this aspiration, this creativity, this identity, this culture that is on the catwalk and it's my way of accessing this. So that's really. How you can think of it in terms of world architecture is you have those leading products that ironically don't really sell. They do, but not that much, but they're here to build this perception.
It's the same thing in cooking. You have very few 3 Star Michelins in the world. In France, I think you have about 11 or 12 of them. And you have a few dozens in the U. S. That's really not that many. Gordon Ramsay doesn't make, I mean he does, but his main source of profit is certainly not that three star Michelin that he has in London.
The point is to sell cookbooks and to sell TV shows and to sell speaking engagements and to sell workshops and of course to drive traffic in burger restaurants that are way more profitable and move way more volume down. Any 3 Star restaurant you can think of.
Christine Gritmon: All right, so we've talked about artists and large brands and things like that and people who have become kind of larger than life, connected to this larger kind of cultural zeitgeist and shifted it with their ideas. Now let's take it down as we round this interview up, let's talk about a few things that a person listening at home, maybe they're just trying to do their business.
They're not trying to sell out stadiums or anything like that. When it comes down to it, as humans, a lot of us do feel a calling to be a vessel for an idea. So what are a few things on a smaller scale that someone listening right now could do to get started in seeing their personal brand and seeing themselves being a bit more as, not just sales driven, but being more kind of a vessel for those ideas that they hold dear in a way that will at least shape their world and the world immediately around them.
What are some things people can look at and start doing to get started there?
Emmanuel Probst: Yeah, I think you want to do two things. Two things that you can do immediately. Number one, what are the five, six, seven unique attributes that define you? Or maybe those attributes are not unique in and of themselves, but they make you unique in combination. So what are the 5, 6, 7 things that you'd like people to remember about you if you meet them for the first time at a cocktail party? That's going to be the foundation for your personal brand. And then you're going to emphasize that authenticity. In terms of activation, if you will, that's where you're going to use those, what we call performance marketing and the performance metrics, meaning you're going to look At how many reactions you generated, how many people are subscribing to your content, and then lower in your funnel, how many leads you generated, it can be how many appointments you generated, and how many of those appointments did you convert.
into a deal. And then those clients of yours, you're going to want to drive recommendations. You're going to want to drive word of mouth one because this is free advertising for you and two because people trust their friends and family way more so than they trust advertising. So you're going to want to work on this core client base if you will so they advocate and spread the good world for you So that's really how you on a very small scale.
That's how you're going to Work out your funnel you define your brand strategy and I almost want to say if you really get started don't spend tons of time. Don't overthink it. Spend some time on this, but don't overthink this. Who am I, and who do I want to appear to be to my audience? What are the attributes that make me unique in, in combination, right?
And then you go to markets and you analyze who's Performance metrics that I just described. Now, later on, when you grow your brand, when you become bigger, you're going to want to worry more about your competitive set and how they articulate their message and how you can difference use and how you can compete with them and all that.
But that would be 3, 6, 9 months down the line. It's not something you need to do today.
Christine Gritmon: All right thank you so much for all of this. This has been wonderful and definitely very inspirational, honestly.
I'm excited to play a bigger game with my own personal brand now, and I hope everyone listening is as well. All right, Emmanuel, so tell us. Where can we find you? Why should we find you?
And what will we find there?
Emmanuel Probst: Really liking your questions Christine, they're clearly articulated, but also very different from what I usually hear on podcasts. Where can we find me? I'm on LinkedIn at Emmanuel Probst, and you can also find my book Assembly, which is the Art and Science of Brand Transformation. It's available in bookstores.
Importantly, it's available on Amazon. You can buy the hardcover. You can also access The electronic version of the book and as we said earlier last but not least you can listen to the book if you want Why well because I produce ideas For brands every single day, that is, if you subscribe to my content on LinkedIn, for example, you will access tons of ideas several times a week.
Every day you will see my comments on the largest brands and several times a week you will benefit from the guidance I provide. And why? Because I combine academic. Knowledge through my books and my studying and obviously my academic background with practitioners experience of spending 20 plus years counseling some of the biggest brands in the world.
So I bring this knowledge and this expertise to you. I was going to say at a fraction of the cost, which is the price of a book, or even for free, if you want to just read what I publish on LinkedIn.
Christine Gritmon: Fantastic. Thank you so much for being here and I hope everyone is inspired to get out there and make whatever change, make some ripples, make an impact and who knows how far out into the culture it can ripple out. Thank you very much for being here, Emmanuel.
Emmanuel Probst: Thank you so much, Christine. Thank you to our listeners for being with us today.
Christine Gritmon: And thank you for listening to Let's Talk About Brand, whether you are listening on your podcast player of choice or if you're joining us for the video podcast on YouTube. Either way, please do make sure to subscribe, leave a comment or a review if you like it, and be sure to tune in next week when I will be right here with another very smart guest expert talking about another specific angle of branding.
Bye!