How Do You Build Credibility While You Increase Visibility for Your Brand with Loralyn Mears

Welcome to the B2B Growth Blueprint podcast, where we talk with entrepreneurs, founders, and leaders at B2B services, tech, and SaaS companies to learn the systems and processes they've used to create success for their business. And we'll also learn from marketing and sales experts to provide insights to help you grow your business. I'm your host, Mark Osborne. And the podcast is brought to you by Modern Revenue Strategies and their 10x ROI B2B Growth Guarantee. Schedule a free diagnostic call to learn the fastest path to double your B2B revenues in just 90 days. Hello and welcome to another episode of the B2B Growth Blueprint Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Osborne, and today I'm very excited to welcome my guest, Dr. Lauralyn Mears. Now, Dr. Mears is the founder of Steer Us and a recognized expert in leadership development and digital marketing for small businesses. Dr. Mears holds a PhD in molecular biology and brings an uncommon blend of hard science training, executive leadership experience, and media expertise. Her career includes executive roles at 3 Fortune 100 companies, leadership positions in multiple startups, and several ventures she's founded or co-founded. Through Steer Us, the glow-up company, she helps women leaders and small business owners build executive presence, strengthen visibility, and create more predictable growth, particularly in fashion, beauty, and style industries. Her work has been formally recognized by the state of New Jersey, the city of Philadelphia, NJBiz Magazine, and others, earning top 10 innovation honors. At the core of her work is a simple focus: growing leaders and helping businesses shine. So welcome to the show.

Thank you, Mark. Pleasure to be here.

Yeah, absolutely. I've been looking forward to this conversation. So before we jump in on some of these topics, why don't you give our audience a little bit of your background? Sort of tell us the story of the twists and turns of your career.

Oh, that is a long and sordid tale, right? Best told over your beverage of choice. But the short story is that I pursued multiple degrees, advanced degrees in science, because my parents told me I needed to get a real job and real career.

Right.

But what I really wanted to do was write. And I love writing, be it copywriting, be it writing books. I've written several, ghostwritten several others, and I've got even a few more coming out in the upcoming year. So, I love that. But what I did and I learned by going through master's, then PhD, then I started my MBA, and I'm like, you know what? I'm done. I'm done with school. I've been in university for 11 years. It's time to start earning money. All of the things that I did from there went into Silicon Valley, did that dot-com, dot-bomb crash and burn with everybody else. Yeah. Then I was in that space, bioinformatics, data analytics companies, software, tech, all of that kind of thing, trying to find ways to solve problems. And I went into marketing, market research, leadership roles in sales and marketing at big companies, at little companies, at startups, and then came to my own. And the whole path that really ties it all together is all about taking complex messages and chunking them down into bite-sized pieces and then being able to translate them or push them out to the intended audience in a way that they'll understand. That's the, that's really the net-net.

Yeah, well, I mean, that's at the core of all communication, right, is meeting people where they are and then also, you know, meeting them with the message that they can receive where they are.

Exactly. And having formal media training in along that, writing, doing articles, doing my own podcast, all of that stuff, it's really helped me improve my communication skills. And then that's put me in a better position where I can help others improve theirs, right? It's— there's nothing quite like the experience of being forced to explain and teach something to somebody else. Because if you don't know it, you will be snuffed out in 2.5 seconds, right? There is no hiding.

That's right. The, you know, there's the old joke that, you know, those who can't do teach. But I actually think the opposite is true. Like, you have to really understand a topic in order to be able to teach it. And again, have the flexibility to teach it in a way it can be sort of perceived and understood by different audiences that have different sort of learning styles.

Exactly. That's where it is. We, we're always so glib about it. Oh yeah, yeah, I'm a visual learner. Oh, I'm an auditory learner. Oh, I'm kinesthetic. I like writing things out. What we forget though is that our audiences are increasingly global. English isn't always the first language for everybody. Some people have techno weenie brains, right, where they've got that left side logic fully dialed in. And then other folks are those right side creatives. And we've got to find ways that our messages can connect with all those types of brains, never mind the neurodivergent brain like mine, ADHD squirrel, right? And so how I process information and assimilate it all is different than other people. And we need to be thinking about all of that when we communicate whatever it is our message is on whatever platform it is that we're on.

So All amazing topics that we could dive into. One of the places that you and I have chatted about before, and I know where you spend a lot of your time helping folks, is around, you know, sort of creating both visibility and credibility, because it's important that kind of people know you exist, but then they also need to know that it's worthwhile that you exist. Talk to us a little bit about some of the mistakes that You see people make, you know, when they come to you and start working with you, or that they've been making around confusing those 2 things or not getting them in the right order or the sort of the right proportion?

I think the best example, without getting political, but we'll just nudge at the edge of being political. Think about some of the most well-known political figures. That are currently in the news today, how they're covered, where they're covered. And you look at that very, very high visibility, but would you say that they have credibility? Probably not, at least the few I'm thinking of right now.

Sure, sure.

And why is that? Well, because they've confused with having multiple platforms and being highly visible everywhere and equating that with credibility. But what I believe they have forgotten is that credibility really comes around when you think about leadership. Who's following you? Because leadership isn't a title that you're given. It's a choice people make and something you earn. If people aren't behind you and lining up to follow you, you don't have credibility. They don't believe in you, in what you stand for, in what you're doing or how you're doing it. And that's the big difference between credibility and visibility. Now, most of my clients don't have that problem where they're global on every media outlet 50 times a day, they're 500 times a day. That's— my clients are on the other end of things. They're invisible. And so their problem is that invisible brands don't make money. So we help them gain visibility, but we do it through a combination of not just only the mechanics behind digital marketing, you know, how those engines work and all that, right? Feed the beast, feel the algorithm, you know, feed it, feed it, feed it. But also that credibility, how they have to be positioned, Yeah.

Well, and it's so funny, you know, talking about that. One of the mistakes that we see people make all the time is that they'll talk about, you know, sort of we exist and they might spend a lot of money on, you know, sort of advertising that basically just kind of says we exist. And then oftentimes they fall into the trap of we exist and we're the best. We have these, you know, features, which is, you know, a big mistake. But even if they get past features to the actual benefits, they oftentimes focus on the benefits that everyone in the category has. Like, you know, get a calculator, you can add numbers, instead of talking about the things that make them unique. So get a calculator that has the ability to do square roots because then you can do what, X, Y, and Z, and we have the best one that has the ability to do square roots. And so it's so, Interesting to see, you know, companies make that confusion all the time of starting with just, hey, we exist, and then focusing on, you know, the features instead of the benefits, and then focusing on the benefits of the category instead of those unique benefits. As you're working with, you know, sort of companies and, and even individuals as they're building their personal brands, how do you help them, you know, sort of drill in past the features to the ultimately the benefits and to drill in past the benefits of the category to their unique benefits that they offer?

It comes back to your last question, which I don't think I fully answered, but I learned the hard way being in tech companies for so many years, big and small, it was always all about the features, right? Feature functions. Oh, look at this list. Our checklist is bigger than your checklist.

Right?

As soon as you'd put it out there, competitors A, B, C, D, E, you know, F, G, H, they'd all look at your list and go, oh, we can add that. That's a brilliant feature. Boom, boom, boom. And then you just start to lose competitive advantage. And so really where it came down to, and I learned this a long time ago, as I'm sure you have as a marketeer, it's not about the so, it's about the so what. And then you take the so what to the next level and say, so what next? Right? So, so what? You can do all of these fancy things. You've got this service, this product, that whatever techno weenie, it chops, it slices, it dices, it does whatever, right? Who cares? Great. But what's that so what? Oh, it makes dinner preparation easier. Ah, okay, now I'm starting to understand. Oh, and then the so what next? Oh, it's ideally suited to people who have maybe some fine motor integrity issues, and so it's got an easy handle to hold so that dinner preparation for them is simplified, and then they reduce their risk of getting hurt. Even their kids can help them. No one's going to get hurt, and everybody can help in the kitchen together. And we can all sing Kumbaya as the family around the kitchen island, right? So now you— when you get to that, so what, so what next, that's where the magic starts to happen, because then that's where the uniqueness of the individual or the brand can come forward in that sea of sameness.

That's right. Well, and oftentimes we see that what really creates that so what next is having like a point of view on sort of, you know, where the category should be going. What's wrong with the things that exist today? Why we're— reason why we're not making another one just like that is we actually think that this other way is the way to go. And when companies can really dial in that, you know, sort of point of view on The, you know, what's wrong with it today and why we do it this new and different way. That's how they can really dominate and create their own sort of space within a category.

It's because so many people can't answer the question, why do you exist?

Yeah.

It's like the classic 5 whys, right? Root cause analysis. Ask why at least 5 times. A lot of people think, oh, ask why 5 times and then I'm done. No. No. No. No.

No.

You ask why until you can no longer find a question that starts with why. If it's 10 times, 12 times, 11, 13, 18, whatever it is, why? Why do you exist? Why do you want to exist? Why do you want to help clients in the way that you do? Why do your services make the difference? Why do your clients come back? Why? Why? Why? And a lot of people go, what?

That's right. Well, and when you lay all those things out, There's so many more possibilities of directions that you can go, uh, in thinking through, you know, positioning or even, you know, sort of product service design, all of the different things that you could do and, and like these sort of real strategic decisions in the business.

And it's not even just the strategic decisions in the business because I know where we're talking about bringing that arc, the fempreneurs, right? The female entrepreneurs. There's so much in that, and not just for the females. I mean, it really does apply to everybody, but I find especially women. Women generally have fewer resources, they have less time, they have less money, they can get access to less capital. So it's less. So they're already approaching and entering the market from a less-than position. And then that whole head thing about, oh, somehow I'm less than, I might not be worthy compared to, oh, I don't make enough noise, I'm not as public as whatever, blah, blah, you know, Insert figure du jour of whoever the marketing guru is of the year. And so we come in from that position and we think, wow, that's a problem. And so it's not just so much, oh, these kinds of questions and answers and why, why, why do you exist? Why, why do you want to help? Why, why, why? It's about tapping into what's going to make them happy and feel confident if they achieve success. And what does success look like on their level? Maybe it's not A Series A exit with venture capital. Maybe they want to be a lifestyle business. Geez, I just really like it. I'm a single mom. I want to spend time with my people and pets, and I just don't want to work 100 hours a week, 7 days a week. And so they try to find something where, yeah, what I'm doing— and, and I'll just sidebar for 2 seconds as the ADHD squirrel, and we'll bring it back.

You're welcome.

Anyone listening, no, startups are not such an easy path to passive income. It's total, total, total crap. It takes forever for most of us. And I'm one of the mere mortals. Maybe you, okay, you're godlike. Great. Good on you. Fantastic. I'm not. Multiple pivots, lots of hours, lots of months, lots of failures, lots of learning, lots, lots, lots, lots of money. Until you go, all right, am I finally dialed in? I've been trying to swing and align the arrows for so long, finally got it dialed in. But it took a lot of learning from that. And this is the thing, you got to figure out once you get that going, yes, you can start to see the rewards coming in, but you also can't take your foot off the gas.

Yeah. Well, so you hit on some really interesting things in there that I want to sort of double-click on. if we can, which is you talked about, you know, sort of this concept of, you know, feeling like less than. And a lot of, you know, female entrepreneurs that you work with, and I know you do quite a bit of coaching there. Talk to us a little bit about, you know, some of the things that you've seen. And we were chatting about this before, that oftentimes it's more confidence than it is capability that's oftentimes the blocker for folks, especially as they're sort of making you know, mid-career or midlife, you know, kind of resets and moving in new directions. Talk to us about that, the difference between confidence and capability and how those can be blockers and how you see folks overcome those.

So I do see a lot of folks, you know, both genders, but particularly women because I am a female business owner. So other female business owners like to come to me and we work together and lean on each other and help each other and all that really good stuff. And it's really important. And so there's that connection. But many of them are entering entrepreneurship as a secondary path. They didn't see it in their early days, but they've been displaced by AI, let go, ageism, this, that, insert 5,000 different reasons. Net-net, they don't have a job, but they're not trust fund babies, so they need to make money. And so they turn to entrepreneurship and think, well, I always had this talent, but then they come into it and think, oof, I don't know if I'm so good at it. I look at how this other one is and how this other one is and look at her on social media. And I say, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, let's talk about how good you are. Forget about that curated micro slice of social media that you see where she's got 50 filters, makeup done by a professional, nails, this, that, and like, oh yes, right? And you're totally poised. It's again more fakery and fudgery. And she's not posting the 2 AMs and 3 AMs that are happening behind the scenes and the tears and the breakdowns and all the rest of that because I don't know, I can't do this, right? My clients, most of my clients come to me in tears. And it really, like, it really hurts me. It breaks my heart to see that. And I know what that path is like. I've been on it. And so I really try to turn it around and say, wait a minute, let's find out what you are really good at. Forget about what everybody says or what anyone has said, because this is the other thing. Most of these entrepreneurs have a similar story where very few people believe in them. Even their spouses, their friends, their families don't believe in what they're doing. I can't even explain. I don't know. It's like whatever it is, this one, you know, I don't know. And they're all dismissive. And you just keep getting that confidence whacked and whacked. It's like whack-a-mole. And every time you whack something where you thought, oh, I'm kind of good, and then two more self-doubts come up. It's kind of like that experience. And so working with them to really dig into what do you really think you're good at? Not what does your business do? What do you, like you, Mark, think you're really awesome at? Let's figure out how to harness that and put that front and center as your brand positioning because that's what you're good at. And forget about it, a lot of other people may be good at it too, but that's your unique strength. We can't give you a unique strength that doesn't exist.

That's right. Well, and you hit on so many great things in there. One is really this idea that, you know, even if other people are good at it too, that doesn't make you any less than that you are also good at it. And we talked about this earlier, which is that, you know, there are different learning styles and there are different working styles. And so potentially your way of doing the thing that maybe other people do might work particularly well for a certain type of audience or a certain type of customer or a certain type of context. And so finding that and finding that uniqueness and, and matching that up creates the opportunity for success. And there's, there's enough pie for everyone.

And that's just it. This whole ideal consumer persona, right? Ideal buyer profile, whatever you wanna call it, your IBP, your ICP, whatever. It's, it's who's gonna buy your stuff. Right. And understanding that and breaking that down so that it is so specific, that's one thing. And then also realizing that you're not limited to that, but that's where you have to focus. Because I've done that. I've been the Jane of all trades and master of none.

Sure.

And it's really hard being that generalist, either as the individual or as the vendor and provider. You end up satisfying no one, yourself included. And so trying to get to that level of specificity is hard. But my goodness, like once you do and you get, like I said, all the— it's like those magical Swiss clocks and things where all of the cogs and wheels have to be kind of lined up until the thing gongs and the thing moves. And it's, it's all shifting. This row shifting, this row shifting. And you're like, oh, ideal customer persona. Oh yeah, this is the buyer. Yeah, this is their problem that they have. Oh yeah, this is my solution. It solves it. Oh yeah, this is the right pipeline. Oh, This is the channel to reach them. Oh yeah, this is how I need to position it. These are the words I need to use. And then like finally when you get it lined up, cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching, it happens. It, it does. It absolutely does. But do you have the tenacity? Do you have the resources? Do you have the resilience? And do you have the ambition to keep pushing until all those little cogs and wheels line up? Because that's what happens. Most people fall off the wheel.

Yeah. Well, and so true that it doesn't, you know, very few people have that lightning bolt where they see it all in one shot. Almost everyone has to figure it out and move all of those cogs until all the tumblers fall into place.

That's it. The tumblers. There it is. I couldn't think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. And, but it's that resilience, just as you say, and that ability to continue to work at it. They say that, you know, the most common sort of indication of success for an entrepreneur is their ability to fail and then try again versus the folks that, you know, if they fail once, they kind of can't pick themselves up and dust them off. It's instead that ability to fail and try again because for almost everyone, it's a function of failing your way into the right path.

You have to fail into success, right? That ancient Chinese proverb, fall down 7 times, get up 8.

Yeah.

Right? And the whole thing as a trainer, and I've trained— I wouldn't want to add up how many people to step up and grow into their roles as leaders. And I've realized there's 2 things you really, you really can't train or teach people or embody in them. They have to have it. One, ambition. You cannot train somebody to be ambitious and to want more. If they don't, they don't. If you don't want to get up at 5 in the morning and go run and stop eating potato chips and chocolate chip cookies, Lauralyn, right, so that you can lose weight, you're not going to. Oh, imagine that, right?

Yeah.

That's how this works. Or the other thing you can't teach is grit. And I recognize a lot of people have had hardships. Most of us have. You don't get to this age and with all these wrinkles by having a smooth sailing, like, yeah, I was a trust fund baby. It always like everything was good. I just went shopping every day and got my nails done every day. Right? That's that wasn't my path.

Yeah.

And you've got to have that grit. And because of that, what happens is if you can find a way to dig in and push and move forward, and you combine that with the ambition, the desire to want to, to want to get better, to want to deliver something of value, to want. to get financial remuneration or glory, right? Maybe you want to be in the spotlight for doing that thing. You gotta go after it. And there is no halfway. It's not like, oh, I'm a little bit pregnant. You are or you are not, right? Yoda, there is no try. Do or do not, right? I mean, it's that simple.

Yeah. So true. Well, you're obviously an expert in a lot of really interesting topics that, you know, we could spend all day talking about. But I got to be mindful of your time. But before I let you go, what's something on the horizon for you that you're excited about?

Oh, well, as I said, I grew up digesting books, sneaking flashlights and batteries into my room at night so I could read under the covers so my parents wouldn't know I was past bedtime reading. So I'm a huge consumer of books. I love reading people's books and I love writing them. So I have it on my wish list. I have one publisher who's accepted my current book, but I don't like the title that they're putting on it. And so I'm hoping— I'm, I'm going for gold. I want Harvard Business Review to publish my next book. And that's, that's where I'm at. That is my big, big, big bucket list and wish list for 2026.

Can you tell us a little bit about what it's about?

It's called How to Manage People Who Don't Give a Fuck.

Oh, all right. I like that. I like that a lot.

It speaks to what the point is, right? Like, you get it.

That's right. It's very clear, very clear, and certainly a challenge that a lot of us that have lived in, in management roles have experienced. So I think you'll find quite an audience for that.

I'm hoping, because I took all of the PhD research approaches, methodologies— how do you look, how do you dissect it, how do you analyze copious quantities of other research publications of studies, filter through the crap, filter through the noise, distill it down to the ones that make sense, that actually can be applied. How do you simplify it? Taking all that messaging and marketing experience, how do you take the message and make it so that everybody can understand not just what you're saying but how to apply it? All my teaching, training, instruction, same thing. It's like, go straight to application, right? This is not theory because it's a real problem. It's a $9 trillion annual global problem. And so it's got to be solved. Not that I have the solution, but I think I do have a novel approach that hasn't been discussed. And so it's certainly worth putting it out there and seeing what people think.

Try it out. Fantastic. Well, for our audience that's listening and wants to know, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Like most of us, you can find me everywhere. Now, getting me to respond in a timely way, I'm working on that. But you can find me on LinkedIn, Laurellyn Mears. You can find me on Instagram, Steer Us, and you can find me on YouTube, Midlife Success. You can dial into my podcast, Small Business Stories. So there's a few different ways that I'm out there, and just Google me. It'll, it'll lead you. Trust the Google. It'll take you to me.

Fantastic. Well, Dr. Mears, Laurellyn, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. I really enjoyed our conversation. I'm sure our guests got a lot Thank you so much for having me.

It's been so much fun being on this side of the podcast.

All right. Talk to you soon. Thank you for joining this episode of the B2B Growth Blueprint Podcast. We hope you've gained insights to grow your business. If you enjoyed this discussion, please rate, comment, like on your favorite platform, and share to others who will find it useful. Do you know a CEO, founder, or leader at an early-stage B2B services, tech, or SaaS company who would like to be a guest and share their story? Send us a note. Let's schedule a conversation.