263: Victoria Kennedy — Leverage Your Personal Brand for Business Growth

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done. I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent, and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have talent to doxatant and you won't be disappointed. Go to doxatant.com Bill G Again, that's doxatant.com BillG. One more time. Docsatalent.com Bill G Check it out today.

Everyone. My name is Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach, host of the Scaling Up Business Podcast. We've done now almost 300 of these episodes. It'll be 300. I'll make a big deal of that when it finally arrives. But I'm super excited to have another conversation. We have all these back conversations, the notes, that kind of thing. They're everything to do with scaling up, getting the people right, dialing in your strategy, learning to execute better, improving the cash model of the business and the leadership that goes along with all those things. What I like to call the fifth decision. All that and more. ScalingCoach.com ScalingCoach.com is a place you can go get all of those tools, notes, listen to the shows, watch the things, all that more@scalingcoach.com Anyway, there you go. That's enough about that. And of course, we also have coaches, as you might guess, who work in scaling. Not just me, but nearly 200 around the world now. So we can help connect you to someone in your neck of the woods that can help you figure out either how to get scaling or how to manage the growth that you're already doing. Those are the two big things that we address all the time. So without that out of the way and in the background, we're going to talk to Victoria now. Victoria, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm so happy to be speaking with you.

Awesome. And Victoria's in Las Vegas, a city that my mom's family is from and that I lived in once years and years ago and actually where I had my first radio show by accident one night.

It is not a bad place to live.

I was in the radio station late one evening when somebody else didn't show up and I had been Around a little bit, working on different projects, and the program director, who's still a dear friend who's since retired. Anyway, he got on the phone with me. He said, bill, you know, kind of what to do to the show. Have some fun. It's cool, you know, whatever that was. Ken. Ken Kendra, his name. Anyway, I went on the station that night, and he's like, you know, you sound pretty good. Why don't you take over that show? Wow. I started doing a show and anyway, I have a love of Vegas, a love of radio and all that's connected. So let me tell you about Victoria. We all, I think some of us worse than others, could talk about ourselves, but that's a terrible bad habit. So Victoria is CEO of Victoria's pr. So she's a PR firm, and she works in particular on personal branding, helping companies leverage their brand, develop visibility, and use that to grow their companies and their businesses. And she's been featured in all kinds of publications, Forbes, Entrepreneur, TV and radio stations, given TEDx, talks, like that kind of thing. And so she has something to share with us today, so she's gonna tell us some stories. So, Victoria, welcome to show again and tell us your story. Like, how long have you been in this kind of world? I know you. You said you were. Did some opera singing. Like, that's a whole range of. So give us a little background on. On Victoria.

Yeah, absolutely. And, yeah, thanks for that intro. You know, it's one of those things where whoever's listening to this and whatever you'. I'm sure you didn't grow up thinking, mom, I want to be an Internet marketer. Right. That wasn't, like, your first thing. Right. But you may have developed some skills as a young child that you're now using that you now found out is your superpower. Well, that's my story. That's sort of how I came to find out that PR was my superpower. So growing up, I wanted to be an opera singer. Love singing opera. I love classical music. I love all of that. I was fortunate enough to get to travel the world single singing opera all over the world in castles of cathedrals. I had a number one hit single in Europe. I even sang with Andrea Pichelli, which is awesome. And I didn't realize a brand name.

In the opera outside of opera.

It's like, people only know that when I'm like, you know, stepbrothers. The song at the end that Will Ferrell sings, the Time to say Goodbye, that's that. Oh, I know that. Yep. That's Sandra Bocelli. So that was my background. And now here's the thing that a lot of. A lot of times, and maybe you're listening to this, you think my background is in. I was an artist before, in my past, or I did this really well. I was pitching editors, I was pitching tv, I was pitching radio, magazines, all of that to get my music out there. Because here's the thing, if you don't get your music or people to buy music, you're sitting for your supper, literally, right? So it was really important for me to get and build connections with the right people so that I could have this career. That's the only reason my career was so successful, is because I had that superpower of making these connections, getting people to write about me, getting in those magazines. Now, I didn't know this was a superpower. I just thought, I am going to survive. I'm doing whatever it takes, right, to live off my craft. When I came back to America, they actually, I got kicked out of America not for the reason you think. The government decided not to renew my visa, because, you know, you need a bunch of money to, like, stay out there and all these things. And so I. America, I'm from American. I went to USC for college, all that good stuff, and went to Europe, but could only stay for two years, got kicked out, had to come back to America. And I thought, I have zero skills. I'm not even qualified to run a cash register at, you know, Taco Bell. I literally had no life skills, right? If you've done one thing your whole life, how in the world are you going to jump into a different market, right? So I thought, this is my opportunity to prove to myself that I can do this. I can create a business. I've had a nice career, but I want to do business and prove to myself that I can. And to be quite frank, I was charting poor. So I thought, let's do this. I'm going to go all in. And I know those, those ads you see right before YouTube videos, like, oh, if you just buy my course, you can make millions of dollars online. Right? We've all seen those. Most of those people are my clients, by the way. So I. I saw that.

I don't care anything about those Lamborghinis out there. It's the books I love, right? Those. That's what's really. Yes.

But those things, they actually work. And I'm going to tell you a story about how it actually worked. So here I was thinking I'm not even qualified to run A crash register. I have no skills outside of singing. What am I going to do with my life? I saw this ad from a guy named Dan Henry. I don't know if any of you guys heard of him. He's like this Internet marketer guy and he's like, buy my thousand dollar course or whatever and learn how to make Facebook ads for other people. And I'm like, shoot, that's a lot of money. Which is a lot of money. When you don't have any money, you don't have a job. Right? And I thought. But I believe in myself and I'm just going to go all in and I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to find some way to figure this out. I'm going to make this work. So I bought his course. I devoured it.

Dan Henry watches or Dan Henry.

No, this is Dan Henry the entrepreneur.

Dan Henry get clients.

Kind of get clients, yes. And bought his course and went through it. And in the first month I made my money back. I got some clients and I went to networking events like crazy because that. I was old school, right. I didn't know you could do it online. And I. And I'm in Vegas, which is there's networking events where there's, you know, there's cocktails in the morning, in the evening, at night. I mean, there's any time there's a.

Chance to 24 7, whatever you want. Yep.

Right. So there I was like just, you know, hitting the pavement, trying to get as many clients as possible. Most of my clients were old performers. And what do you do when you can no longer perform? You become a real estate agent. Right?

I didn't know that. I didn't know that.

Yeah, right. There's such a similar personality. You know, you have to be a front person. You have to be like always on.

I thought you sold insurance on late night tv.

You do that too. And so I found that most of my clients are real estate agents. So I thought, I'm going to stay to that niche. I'm going to do real estate. Because I really get along well with realtors, their fellow performers. I like the personality. I can do this. So built my business just doing what I had done, right. I leveraged my personal brand. I started creating all this valuable content for realtors. I started putting out all this, you know, articles, Facebook lives, all these things about real estate. I started to like train people. And this is important for you guys to listen to. You're training your audience about how to perceive you. Okay. People accept you what was that? That, what's that saying? People accept what they read about you, right? So just say, this is how you treat me. This is how you're going to start treating me. So I was training my new audience. I'm an expert in real estate, right? I was from zero to six figures in nine months, zero paid ads just from the pr, just from the organic. This is guys, also why I believe in it so strongly, because I've done it for myself. So everything is going great, you know, the company's going really, really well and then boom. Pandemic, right? Yeah, the story, I think everybody has pre pandemic story and then the pandemic happened and then what happened after, right? I think this is a very generic story. So during this time I thought I lost almost all my clients. You know, real estate isn't an essential business, so they all either went on pause or they canceled.

Now what kind of real estate were you doing? What?

Real estate marketing, like running Facebook ads for them. I had an ISA server helping to.

Promote properties for sale, commercial, residential, both residential, residential.

So I was getting them leads, you know, potential buyers, potential sellers, so they could talk to them and make a deal. All online, all digital. And again, pandemic happened. And I thought, what the heck am I going to do? So I went back to what I'm good at, which is primary. And I, and I thought to myself, what is the best real estate publication that all these. Because all these realtors were so scared, they didn't want to take a chance on me. They thought money is so scarce right now, I don't know what's going to happen. The economy. Why in the world should I trust you? Who are you? And I thought I need to gain their trust. And here's the thing, guys, this isn't just the pandemic. People are going to be thinking that about you. I'm sure you've heard this, this objection. Why should I go with you? Who are you? Oh, what, you got a clickfunnels award? I don't know what the heck that is. I have no idea what that is. That means nothing to me. Tell me something that actually means something to me, right? Industry specific publications, guys. Remember that, we're gonna come back to it. So I thought, what's the number one real estate publication in the world that would actually make a difference to my audience? Inman. Inman publication Inman News is the number one real estate publication in the world. Somehow or other, through my magical skills and 60 days, I ended up being asked to be an Inman brand ambassador. Only 35 people get asked every year. I am a contributor to Inman publication and they asked me to speak on stage to over 1000 realtors on their virtual event. So that was just one of the things I had done because I'm like, pr got to make it happen. My business was fine. Things were up and running again. All my marketer friends started paying attention and they're like, victoria, how are you thriving during this time? Like, what is going on here? How are you getting on all these publications? And to me, I thought, well, this is so simple. It's something I've been doing my whole life. And now I'm going to go back to the fact where I said, guys, if you're listening to this, remember there may be a superpower that you have done your whole life that you even realize. And even like what you say in your book, Bill, is like, are you an integrator? You know, are you, are you an entrepreneur? Maybe there's a superpower that you're not utilizing right now. Are you really good at organizing things? Are you really good at sales or whatever it is? Maybe this pandemic has taught you this is actually where I really thrive. Hone in on what your strengths are, which you're already good at. So I realized I'm really good at talking to the media and actually really like it. So I decided I'd do a beta just to see, you know, can I actually do this? I'm actually good at it. Invited a couple of my marketing friends, did a quick beta. The beta went so well. Some of those clients are even still with me to this day from that first original beta. They are just like not turning off the pr, you know, which is what happens when you realize the power of your personal brand. Why would you turn it off? If you don't have to pay for a lead and somebody actually contacts you and they're already sold on you and see you as an expert, why in the world would you turn that off? Right? That's a warm lead. So I decided to go all in on the PR because I really enjoyed it and loved it. And within three months, we had reached six figures. And we've had six figure months consistently since then. So it's been exponential growth. We have 30 clients now and don't happy to say, knock on wood, we've never had an unhappy client, which is awesome. And yeah, that's sort of my story of how I got into pr.

Wow. So that's moved pretty quickly. I mean, I see a progression of Stuff, but it's accelerated now. Didn't real estate, though, see a big increase this year? Did it just change so much that there was no work in it, or do you still continue where I am. Real estate's crazy.

It's been great. I actually, I still have a lot of real estate clients. I help a lot of people in the real estate space, but now I do their PR instead of their lead generation, so I just switch the services I do. So now, like, I get them on their local TV stations, I get them in their local papers. Yeah. Have them seen as that authority in their market. Because every realtor wants to be the most known realtor in their area. Right. That's so powerful.

For sure. Right. And I know around where I live, they. There are certain realtors who get more listings than anyone else.

Yeah.

And they're very visible as having figured out the way to market the homes. The homes all sell for well over the asking price. And there's a whole thing about generating bids and that kind of thing. But there are a few people and, you know, and you see them around, whether it's. You see their name associated with a listing or you see them on a. I mean, the best ones aren't really unlike the bus stop signs, but you see them all over town, in different places, in the supermarket and so on, and they've spent the time to do that. That's different, though, than the pr, the ones that show up more organically in the area.

Well, it's, you know, it's that branding and it's that omnipresence. It's being that. Go to. It's being that first person that people think of when they think of real estate or whatever your niche is. Right.

So talk to us about that. I've wanted for the last two years to be top of mind. Like, okay, if you think about a scaling coach, I want people to think of me early. Right. In that process, I want to be just considered. I really don't need everybody to choose me, but I want my choice of who I work with, that kind of thing. So I spent a lot of time being visible. I don't know if I ever get that right. So let's not dissect me, but let's talk about some of your clients. What have you done for them? How did it go? That kind of thing. You talked about Luke, about Jared, about. You mentioned Dan, Henry, that kind of thing. Share some of those stories with us.

Yeah, I definitely can. You know, I'll. I'll speak about one of my clients. But I think it honestly might be beneficial to the audience as well if like talk about you because I think that what you're going through is what a lot of people are going through is like the, you know, I hear this all the time, Victoria. I think I'm doing everything right. Like, you know, I, I post, I do this, I do that. Like, what am I not doing?

Share some of those first and then if you want to pick me apart, I'm happy to play guinea pig.

Okay, good. Well, I'm going to tell you about one of my clients. So I'll tell you about my clients, Luke. And he started with us and he was like on the seven figure run rate, right? So he hadn't quite reached the million dollar mark yet, but he was, he had just gotten there, right? So he's, he's right there right now. He's like ready to scale, which is great. However, you hit a ceiling. And if you're listening to this, maybe you can relate where once you get up to a certain level, it is so hard to go to the next level, right? If you like, once you reach 10K, you're like, I've met T10K. But then it's like impossible to get to 4050. Then once you're there, it's another. You talk about, yeah, it's another barrier. And so there he was like, yeah, I've reached this million dollar run rate. I can't break through. How, you know, how do you break through to the next level and how do you, like, he may be able to hit that every month, but how do you break through to the next level and keep going and going?

And just for our listeners, right, we have people that in our accelerator stage that are trying to get their first million in business. We have others that are trying to get to 100 million for the first time. And we still have some, some of our core clients who are, have billion dollar goals right now. So you might be working at any number of different levels of the conversation. The ideas here are the same though.

So absolutely, it's, we get that plateau, right? And I said, Luke, let's work on making you the category king. You do mortgage marketing. Mortgage, right, mortgage. I don't know if you know anything about mortgage people.

Very sexy.

One, it's yeah, super sexy. And two, they're really hard to sell because they're, they're contract people, right? So they're very like cut and dry. Like this is the numbers. Does it make sense? You know, real estate agents want you to sell them the Dream. And they're very much to, like, go along with the flow. Mortgage officers are like, does this make sense? Where is my money going? You know, it's, where's the roi? Right? And I thought, we gotta find a way to make you sexy, right? To make you this person that they're gonna really look up and respect. Right? So it's what we did. We found what was in his background. I just want to say you're another mortgage marketer. And so if you're thinking about, like, I'm stuck right now, it's because you're representing yourself the same as everyone else. If you're saying, I'm a this coach or I do this, so is five other people. How are you different? So with Luke, we sat down. I'm like, tell me everything. Don't sugarcoat it. I'm your publicist. Just tell me it. All right. Found out he had so much sold mortgage in the past. He was a loan officer in the past. He didn't want to tell anybody because he didn't like doing it. He wasn't very successful at it. But then he was super successful at marketing. And I said, you. What you think is your flaw is actually your key to being different from everyone else. How many marketers out there are former loan officers? Hardly any. That's super hard to do to be a lender, you know? And it doesn't matter if you didn't do it or you failed at it. You're good at marketing. That's why they're hiring you, not because you were a former lender. But we can use that angle to have them respect you. So now we use that angle, Said, hey, this guy's just like you. This guy is also former lender. This guy also has his license. He knows where you're coming from. He's not just one of those, you know, marketing guys who wants to sneeze and, like, doesn't know anything about what you're doing. He's been there in the trenches with you. These are the kind of articles we written, we wrote for him. So we went after, like, the top mortgage places, like National Mortgage News, Mortgage Banker, Mortgage Mortgage Lending magazine. Places that typically, you may think industry specific, they're desperate for content. No, they're very guarded about who they have inside of their inner circle. It's like an inner. It's like, this is our magazine that we're so proud of. It's just for lenders, and we don't let anybody in. Just anybody. Right. So we had to be very particular about how we approach these people. Right. It wasn't just, he's a marketing person, he makes so much money. You know, I want to, if you're listening to this and if your calling card is how much money you make, you need a new pitch, you know, because that doesn't open any, you know, I make seven figures a year. Okay. That's not a calling card.

Yeah.

Lead with value. Find your unique selling proposition. And sometimes it takes another person to see, really see you what your unique value value proposition is. You know, my clients work with me because they think, well, I've done this, that's great, but let's. So does everyone else. Why are you, you. Why should they work with you? So we focus on the fact that he was a former lender. This opened up so many doors for us. We've been able to get him in National Mortgage News, Mortgage Banker magazine, Mortgage Lender magazine, Mortgage Leader magazine, Marriage Mastery Podcast, the biggest mortgage publications in the world. He is now contributors for. He is. What is this done for him? Is one now he has, he's way past the barely breaking point of seven figures. He's doing very well. He's had to hire more people. He's on a year long contract with us. So like he's not going anywhere. Which is fantastic because he sees the benefits of this more so than this. He was on a podcast, a mortgage podcast, and the host said, you really know what you're talking about. I want to invite you to speak at my mortgage, you know, lending summit. And I also, I want to introduce you to some mortgage people that could really use your services. Here's the thing. PR being in the right rooms. We all know this. It's not what you do. That's not who it's what. It's not what you know, it's who you know. That's what PR does. It opens up doors for you that no paid ads will ever open. I'm sorry, you can run paid ads to your blue in the face. It's not going to take the place of meeting someone face to face and having that connection. And that is why PR is so powerful. And that is why, if you really want to, don't just be a normal business owner. Like if you're happy making 20k a month or whatever, and that's fine. But if you want to be the category king and the industry leader, then you absolutely need pr. That's how you become the best at what you do.

So you focused on the differentiation and then you started to put out content for this person. And that set him apart and got him attention for a particular thing, gave him more credibility, Right?

Yeah.

Okay, so that's our first one. So then talk about the young entrepreneur that you helped grow and build and develop his brand.

Yeah.

What did you do with somebody who was young, who didn't have a lot of background?

Yeah. So this kid, Jared, I love Jared, you know, so headstrong, so entrepreneurial, you know, 19 year old kid. And thinking now I have marketing business, you know what I. It's doing really well, which is awesome. And I'm not quite sure what I want to do. He's pivoted since then to coaching business. So this is, this is what happens when you work with a young person. Right. They're constantly switching. But I told him, I said, once we build your personal brand, you can switch to any business you want. Which he's done seamlessly, you know, because we built his brand, we built people following him. So when we first started with him, he had a mortgage, he had a marketing business for e commerce shops. He did all of their Facebook ads. Right. That was his business. And we thought, all right, I want to build you up. Because he told us, Victoria, I'm doing this. I'm not quite sure if I'm 100% passionate about it, but it's making me a lot of money. But I might pivot, right? And I said, okay, great. I'm glad you're telling me this now because what we're going to do is not so much focus on your business, but focus on building your personal brand. So if you ever want to leave it, people are going to follow you. Okay. This is why I was able to pivot so quickly and make a ton of money, is because it was the strength of my name. People knew that I was successful and that I was good at what I did, and so they just trusted me. So I'm like, I'm going to do the same thing for you, Jared. So with Jared, we built him up. We put him in e commerce magazines, we put him E commerce podcast, things like that. But on top of those things, we also focus on his personal brand. So we got him an entrepreneur magazine, right. We are thinking about, all right, how can we get him on top publications for entrepreneurs, right, so people can start seeing him as a thought leader. He pivoted to his coaching program, right. He was doing seven figures in his marketing. He pivoted to his coaching program and is already doing six figures in his coaching program. And of course, I'm not going to take all the credit for that because he's an amazing guy. But the fact is he could pivot so quickly because he had that trust. You know, he's another one of our year long clients. Every single month he's getting on podcasts. Every single month he's getting publications, top tier publications, because we built him that way. And another thing I just want to specify as well is guys pr. You have to think about it as a long term game. If you really want to be the number one authority, you have to be thinking long term. Don't just think short term. That's not what a real business is and that's not what being in an authority is. Right. When we first start with everyone, we can't just go to like Forbes, right? We have to start small. All these people telling you about all my clients. Yes. We've been able to do incredible things for them because they've been with us long term. We had to build them up in the press. It's just like, you know, you don't ask someone to marry you on the first date, right? You, you court them. Recording all of the editors saying, hey, you know, we got him in digital journal. Woo. You know, we got him in his local paper. Isn't that cool? Right? We're building it up. We're telling a story. You know, we're not just, here's why you need to publish it. And this is what's in it for us. It's hey, look at our client. It's done this, our client has done that. This, this, this. We're building you up. And this does two things. One, it's great for us to get you in top tier press because the editors are also following along with you on your journey. And two, your whole audience is following along with your journey. You know, how many times have you seen entrepreneurs, they've never got pressed. Their social media looks like crap. And then all of a sudden, the next day I was featured in Forbes and everyone's like, this person bought it. What a fake. Like literally. That's the opposite of authority building. How much more powerful is it for your audience to follow along on your journey and say, hey, I was on this podcast. Hey, I was just in the small publication. Hey, I just got featured in my local press. Hey, I'm a little bit bigger now. Hey, I got Business Insider. Hey, I'm in Forbes now. It's a story. All life is stories, Bill. You talk about this all the time. People want to be attached to a story. They want to follow you along on your journey. This is why we do the slow buildup as well. It's so good, not only for us, but for you as well. It really makes you see. Seen as that industry leader in the eyes of your audience.

Well, you can buy your way into some things today. There are certain publications that, you know, you can pay a fee for and be listed as a coach, and their coach, counsel, blah, blah, blah, or whatever it might be. And there's a little bit of, like, checking, but it's really about the fee. It's another way for them to make some money. But I don't know if everybody knows that. Right. Because I've seen people. You'd be like, oh, well, he's in this thing and that thing. And. And some people get a great deal of prestige out of some of these things, the listings and the articles and stuff, even when they are paid for. Right.

Well, it's about how you do it. Like, even, let's say you buy it, right. And you've never got press. Right. But most of your audience, let's say, they don't even realize that. Have you been taught how to leverage that? Do you know what to do with a Forbes win? Do you. Do you even know what to do with that? Do you know how to leverage that? You know how to keep leveraging that to get more press? No, because you didn't work with a PR company. You just bought it off someone in India that you wired money Bitcoin to. Right? So you gotta do it the right way. So, like, if you're gonna be on something that big, you owe it to yourself to, like, get as much leverage out of that as possible, you know?

Now, you mentioned Dan Henry earlier and you said you were able to get him verified. Did you have some special trick to doing that? Was it just that he hit the right numbers and got verified, or the IG and the Facebook, the Twitter verified. Particularly hard talk about that.

Yeah. So people don't know what verified means? It means a little blue check mark on Facebook and Instagram. You know, there's like that blue check mark just shows they're the actual person, they're the legitimate person. And I know you're shaking your head, Bill, but the thing is.

No, no, I'm. Like, it suggests even if people don't know what it is, they like, oh, that person's like, a little more credible, a little more. A little. Little bigger deal, right?

Yes. You know, everything is online now. That's how business is done. That's where we're all going. And that is the strongest thing you could possibly do to show your audience I'm a legitimate, credible person. It's like an actor constantly holding around their Academy Award. Right. Which is, you know, but, but you don't have to do that. So you don't look like arrogant or anything. It's just there. Yeah. So if you are a serious person on the online space, I definitely recommend it. Something that you think about getting verified. And now most people think, oh, do I have to have a certain amount of followers or make a certain money? It honestly doesn't have anything to do with that. It's very hard process. It's really about the amount of press that you have. That's why celebrities, they can get it done like this and they have like, you know, 5,000 followers and they can get verified because they have all this press about them. Right.

But if you're on the Internet, not that many. My daughter has well over that in on her Instagram and she's not verified. Well, I don't think actually.

Well, it's, it's very hard. That's why. Right. It's extremely hard to get verified. You have to. It's all about the press. It's not about how much money you make and it's not about how much followers you have. It's about how notable are you. Are you actual an industry leader? Are you actually an authority in your field? Right. So a lot of people come to me and they're like, I have a lot of money. That doesn't mean anything. That doesn't mean you're credible. That doesn't mean your authority. Let's build up your credibility. Let's tell your story and tell people why you're credible. Because with Facebook and Instagram, it's not just any willy nilly publication. It's the exact publications that they deem are credible. Right. So it's knowing where to get the pieces published, getting them published, you know, having the right PR person. So we are a media company, so we have our own portal. It's a specific portal that you have to like actually legitimate company to have access to it. You have to have Facebook rep. There's many steps involved in it. But it's worth it right at the end of the day to have that verification. You know, I like I said to do the whole full circle story. Dan Henry was my very first coach in digital marketing. I bought his little course and then now I'm a legitimate PR company and he actually came to me. I was able to get him verified. So be able to help your mentor, you know, is like the was the ultimate full circle moment for me. It was really cool.

Nice. So what's your personal brand audit or question? Like, I'm willing to play guinea pig with you for a bit. Grill me maybe something. I mean, we could talk about our clients too, but whatever you think is.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so tell me, like, what is you were talking about this fear that I think a lot of people have and like, tell me, like, what are you doing currently and where do you think the problem is? You know?

What do you mean, what am I doing?

You said, you said currently. You're doing everything right. Like you're, you're posting on social media, you're doing all the right posts, but you want to be. You want people to think about you and think scaling coach. You want to be the first person on people's minds. Is that correct?

Yes.

Okay, great. Yeah, absolutely. So it. The first thing I would do is where are the actual publications that people are reading? Like, have you been on Forbes, Entrepreneur, and all those things, like the big ones, Business Insider, Inc. No. Okay. Okay. Here's why. I think that they're, they're good ideas because one, they're huge publications that people who are actually coaches, they really look up to them. They're actually reading these publications. They carry a lot of weight. Wait, you know, and the great thing about doing them is you can keep leveraging this content. You know, you just need one article in Forbes. You can use it for life across any platform, any email, any marketing, anything. What I like to do is, like, my articles that I've been on Forbes is I'll keep repurposing it. I'll say, yeah, drawback, this is a quote that I had said in the article in Forbes, right? And I'll put the link to it, but I'll put a quote and then the next thing it'll be like a screenshot and it'll like, be another quote, right? So I'll constantly repurpose the big publications that I've been on. One of the other things I do is for remarketing. So retargeting. I'll put a link to a publication that I've been on. Like, I was just featured in Entrepreneur and I'll put a link to that. So it's retargeting. People who've come to my website already familiar with me, they can see another reason of why I'm credible. Right?

So we've done almost no publications. I do the show. We've done lots of these shows now, and the show has a pretty good Following. Then of course, we have an email list, we have social following. I have people who fall in on Facebook, actually has the most interaction. Facebook, a little bit on Instagram and then some LinkedIn and those. And Twitter's useless in my world, that I can see. But anyway, so those are some of the places that we show up. And then of course, our own website and blog and. And that kind of thing. But I don't think I've. I've maybe been cited in some of those other articles, but we haven't put an article on Business Insider or Forbes or any of that at this point. Entrepreneur or Inc. Or any of that. Really.

I would definitely consider it. And another thing, and I think you do this as well. But one thing I would like to say is sharing audiences. Sharing audiences is huge. Right. So working with other JV partners, like someone like me who has a big audience, like we do a live together or we do an Instagram. Right. So we're sharing. Like, my audience is now learning about you, your audience is now learning about me. Right. It was mutually beneficial between both parties. Right. So somebody who has a complimentary skill to you if you're able to share each other's audiences. I've gotten like, when I've done a JV like that, like overnight, I've gotten thousands of followers and messages on Instagram of like, hey, I saw you on Dan Henry's Live. Like, I saw that you did blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, because now.

Right, right, right. Yeah. So we get some of that. Right. Because some of our guests have particularly large followings, but not every guest does a good job of promoting their appearance. Sometimes they're just using your show, but there's a mix of that. Right. And so that has definitely helped us by doing the show.

Yes. But also actually getting on their platform because right now they're on your space. But actually getting in their space, be it a Facebook group or however they like to interact with their audience, like actually going in and doing that. I do a lot of master classes for, you know, my clients are seven, eight figures as well. So I'll do master classes for their students, for their coaches, about pr. But also I get to pitch at the end, so I give them information, but also they can hire me for my services. Right. So there's so many different ways. And to be honest with you, Will, and you guys may think, oh, yeah, that's sort of whatever. Here's the thing. Even though I run paid ads, most of my clients come from word of mouth referrals. Why because of the brand. Literally, someone will post something in the clickfunnels group, which is like a quarter of a million people. I need pr. Eight people will tag me. People that I don't even know, I've never met before, I've never done their pr. And they're like, Victoria Kennedy is the best. And I'm thinking, how do they know that? They know that because people have been talking about it and I've been in so many other people's groups just promoting my value sharing audiences. So it's that omnipresence things that Grant Cardone talks about, Gary Vee talks about. That's how when you said, I want people to think of scaling coach, want them to think of me. That's how you do it. You're sharing the audiences and you're having that one thing that people are thinking of you about.

I think it's good that you point out what are the specific publications or media outlets because there are places like I enjoy putting things on Instagram, but. But my audience isn't hanging out on Instagram. I get a fair amount from one of my family members who's got a huge media presence.

Nice, nice.

They're not hiring people like me to help them. They're not growing a business right there. Right. So it's a different kind of following. And even that for that same matter, like my daughter and her friends, she has a pretty good sized following. Right. They're also not hiring me. It's amusing. Right. It's a, it's a place of amusement and connection, but it's more personal than anything else.

Yeah. And if you're in those publications that your audience is actually reading.

Right.

You know, anyone who's reading that, they care, they really care about their business. You know, those high quality people telling.

Our client stories has been the thing that's been the most fun to do. Right. When we have permission, when we're able to directly tell a client story or even feature a client and the things that we've done for them, that's the thing that I most enjoy doing.

I love that.

All right, so some takeaway points to tell folks and some more information about this. You've got to invest in the brand time and money spent working on your brand rather than leaving it to chance. And if you don't craft the story, the narrative, somebody else will do it. It'll happen by default. You really want to make sure you think about what is the story you're telling and then the organic matters as much as the paid out there. There's a great deal of trust built with that. If you want to find more information about Victoria's PR, you'll go check out victoriaspr.com and we'll put that in the crawl on the screen here and in the show notes and that kind of thing. But you know, how do you move yourself from lead marketing to pr, from one industry to the next, from being an international opera singer to running a PR firm in Vegas, right? You're going to leverage and transition, combine those things. So if you're interested in more information, you'll go find all of that there. Victoria's pr. Big shout out to Lucy Summers in the background helping get our show ready and produce and distribute and all of that. And to Vernon Harnish, author and creator of the Scaling Up Framework, my mentor in all these things. And then of course to Albert Burge at Popfly Productions who edits our audio. To Ayn Kudina and Tim McGowan who write up and compile and proofread our show notes and get everything out the door. Thanks again everyone for listening and watching. Keep Scaling Up. We'll talk to you next time.

Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software. Powered by Align, it's the official software for Scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in time, real, real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app, you can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software. It's what I actually use to manage growth in our Scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Align. To try it now, go to aligntoday.com Bill G One more time. Align today.com Bill G that's aligntoday.com Bill G Check it out and try it now.