Making Time For Marketing With Karen Tiber Leland

There we are again. Once again, my own music makes me happy. It's like Pavlov or I'm like Pavlov. It reminds me I'm about to do something I really love, which is talk to interesting people and learn something for our viewers listeners. All about it. Today's conversation is all about marketing and branding in particular, maybe a little emphasis on your personal brand. We have a great guest today who's an expert in this area, so listen in. Hi again everyone. My name is Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach, host of the Scaling Up Business podcast. We've got, as I record this today, nearly 300 shows now. So we've got lots and lots of shows in that back catalog on everything to do with scaling up and the leadership required to take the company there. So all the things to do with strategy, with your people, with your execution and even your cash model. We've got all that and more@scalingcoach.com so if you want to find anything from the back catalog, go to scalingcoach.com if we can help you find a coach in your neck of the woods or with an emphasis or specialty in your industry or kind of work or particular challenges. We got hundreds of coaches in the Scaling Coach Network in the world of scaling up. So I'm happy to help connect you with some. I tend to stay pretty full, but anyway, lots of that and more@scalingcoach.com so we're going to talk now with Karen Leland. Karen, do you like the whole name? Karen Tyber Leland.

I do like the whole name, yes.

I always figure like when you get the whole name, you're in trouble. Your mom calls you, right? Get in here.

Middle name. If you get Karen Francis Leland, then you're in trouble. Then you're in the doghouse.

So just a little bit of intro for our listeners. Viewers. Karen Tyra Leland is founder of Sterling Marketing Group. It's a branding marketing strategy firm in New York. They've got some fantastic clients, Cisco, Amex, Martin Marriott, Apple, LinkedIn, lots of other folks and a mutual friend of ours, Lynn Twist, that she's done some work with and who's also been a past guest of the show a couple times. So anyway, I'm happy to have her join. She's also a best selling author, a guest on shows and in the media and that kind of thing, regular columnist and you know, just a world of groovy good wisdom from everything that you might want. Host of Thought Talk podcast. I don't know about that, but maybe you'll talk to us about that. The. The world, though I would say the thing that I really noticed here is that there's an undercurrent of the CEO and the executive brand in the background of that as well. Today we're actually talking about making time for marketing, making time for critical things and doing a good job for that. So, Karen, welcome to the show today.

Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.

Great. And you're in New York. We're on the two ends of the coast today. How often that is the case, but I'm glad to have you join us. So I gave some of the background. When did you become an entrepreneur? When did you become interested in marketing branding? How did that. You know, were you eight when this whole journey started or. You know what, it's funny that you.

Say that because, you know, one of the things I always tell clients is that they. There's. What I call is there's certain brand energies that people have for their personal brands, as business brands do as well. But I say you can always look back to when you were a kid and see even as a kid, you had those qualities. And it's funny what you said about being eight. Cause I remember once when my family went on a camping trip to Yosemite. I was across the river from our campsite and there was like a little hutch and I'd gathered all these things together like a pine cone and things. And I. And I was leading a nature talk. I think I was about 8 or 9 years old. And my parents were freaked out because they didn't know where I was. They thought I was lost. And finally when they found me, I was just there with a group of people giving them a nature talk at 8 years old. And so in a funny way, I've always had this draw towards entrepreneurship and towards public speaking and towards branding. I mean, you can look way back, actually started out in my professional life, I was for. As a branding and marketing strategist. I went to school for musical theater. So I was a musical theater major. So I was a theater major and an art minor, which believe it or not, has an incredible underpinning for doing branding is those two things. And then I worked as a management consultant and ran a management consultant firm for many, many years. And I remember at one point in the management consulting firm that I was running, I had a business partner named Keith. And we were giving a speech all day, workshop actually. And at the end of the day, a woman came up to us and she said, hey, I work for Wiley Books, and if you guys can write like you talk. We'd love to have you do a book for us. And that was my, you know, my first book and that was 10 books ago or 11 books ago. So I've always had this leaning towards being an entrepreneur and it's sort of like wherever you put me, I find the entrepreneurial opportunities there. So I mean, it's just kind of in my blood.

So I was having a conversation about this earlier today with my wife. Would you say that you're focused more on finding the problems or the value, opportunity, difference, something that need.

Yeah, that's a great question because I mean, I often find that people either are going towards something or they're going away from something. Right. And I'm much more of a towards something gal. So I would say I'm more focused on what the opportunities are more rather than on the problems. I mean, people call me usually either because they have a problem they want to solve, I. E. They should be a thought leader and they're not, I. E. Their LinkedIn isn't up to speed, I. E. Their CEO brand isn't where it should be, or they call me because they see an opportunity. I know I could really be out there more as a thought leader. I know my CEO brand could make. Be making a bigger difference. So I can't control the way people come into me, but usually my direction with them is towards what the opportunity is. I just personally find that more fun, interesting, powerful.

I got it. So you have been now working in marketing for a long time and what led you to this latest idea about actually making time for marketing?

You know, it's funny because one of the books I wrote about, I'm going to say it was six or seven, may have been eight years ago, was a book on time management. And the publisher, because he used to lead time management workshops and the publisher came back to my writing partner and I and he said, hey, we love this book on time management. It's still selling, but we'd love it if you'd update it because it was written seven years ago. He needs to be updated with all the Zoom stuff and the Internet stuff and the social media stuff. So he said, you know, rewrite it and do an additional 30 or 40% of the book change. 30 or 40% of the book. So we did. So we rewrote that book to include all this stuff about managing time on Zoom and managing time in social media. And so the new time management book really comes out of the no nonsense time management book is really including all of the traditional Stuff, plus the new. And so because I do branding and marketing, I know one of the big breakdowns people have is how do they make time for marketing. And so it seemed to me that those two topics, right, the brand mapping strategy book I wrote and then the no nonsense time management book, they had a perfect blend together.

Yeah, I think it's an interesting thing. There are some of the people that we work with in our world that are great and obsessed with marketing, right? They're, they lead with marketing and, and, or maybe sales and. And then there are others that are really busy with their core product or service. They do construction or they, you know, whatever it is, they rent heavy equipment, they build software, they build widgets, you know, and, and they get very concerned with that. And then they do a bad job with marketing. Interestingly, if some of the marketing firms also do a bad job with their own, it's like they're busy doing everybody else's.

I can't tell you how often I get called by a marketing firm to help me with their marketing or, you know, my, my favorite example of this is I once got hired by a VP of, of marketing at LinkedIn to help him redo his LinkedIn profile. You know, there you have it. It's very hard, very hard to see through the inside of your own eyelids. And you know, it's cobbler shoes. It's hard to make time to do your own thing.

Yes, totally, totally get that. Well, I think in the world of the time management stuff, we're going to get into some of your stories that illustrate this, I think, and we'll tease out some of the ideas. But we see people all the time. There's just too much to do. They're overwhelmed, they can't think about where to start, so they work on the noisiest things in front of them. Right. And it's not always the most important or best use of their time. And they end up cutting short parts of their life that really matter. And then they do a bad job at work because their relationship's gone to shit or they're, you know, whatever it is, Right. So they're not managing all the concerns that they have in their life and they're they're just grappling with overwhelm. So those are things that we deal with all the time. And for sure, marketing is one of the things that gets shorted in that mix of. Talk to us about some of your clients and their stories and the things that you've done around managing time and making time for marketing and like that.

You know, it's interesting what you're saying about overwhelm and all of that. I have a client, she's, you know, late. Late 30s. Seriously, CEO of a very successful nonprofit. Very conscientious woman, really, just amazing work ethic, lives in New York. And I remember she called me one day. This was about five or six months ago. So you're a little bit more in the pandemic than we are now because, you know, slightly more. And she said, it's been an interesting year. Yeah, she said, I don't know. It's been an interesting year. Said, I don't know what's wrong with me. I can't focus. I'm not getting as much done every day as I normally get. I have this huge to do list, and I used to get most of it done, and now I'm not getting all of it done and blah, blah, blah, which is not uncommon. I hear this a lot from people. And one of the things that I said a few things to her, and one of them was I said, look, first of all said, you have to realize that, for example, when I used to do big graphic programs, because I do a lot of photography on my computer. If you've got a big graphic program running on your computer, it takes up a lot of bandwidth, right? It takes up a lot of juice. So it slows things down on your computer. Everything going on in the. And this was before the election as well, everything going on in the background, the pandemic, the political unrest, the election, all of this, the economy, all of that is like a big, gigantic computer program in the background. And it slows things down. And I think we don't recognize how those things, even if we don't realize them, run in the background of our psyche, right? They run in the background of our consciousness. And so in a certain way, they steal our focus. They slow our focus down. So I think that's one way, one piece of it is everybody. There isn't one person I know who's a highly effective, highly performing person who hasn't called me and said something like, I'm just not getting as much done as I normally do. I'm just not as focused as I normally am. The most productive people I know have said that to me. I mean, I feel that way about myself. So I think one is, we have to realize there's a lot running in the background that takes our time and our attention, whether we recognize it or not. And then the second thing I said to her was, I said, angela, here's the thing. You, like most people, have what I call magical thinking around your to do list, which is you think if you write it down, it's magically going to happen. And the reality is that for the most part, the things we write on our to do list for that day do not get done. There just isn't enough time. Something comes up, something takes longer than we think it would. So what I tell people is the way to win at that is to write everything you want for the day on your to do list, no problem. But then pick those two or three or four things that. And sometimes it's one thing, right, that's critical to get done and make sure those things get done and then consider everything else icing on the cake. Then at the end of the day, you'll have a feeling of winning and making progress instead of this feeling of, oh, I didn't get everything on my to do list done, and I'm such a loser, and how come I'm so unproductive? Because that feeling actually slows people down as opposed to the momentum, right. Of getting things done. So it's picking those one to four really critical, important things and making sure those get done. And she did that. By the way, I told Angela, do those two things. And she came back and said, you know, that's really changed how I manage my to do list. And she feels better at the end of every day. I mean, I know it sounds sort of silly to say feeling better is the goal, but if you feel better about your productivity, you're, you're just going to be more productive because it builds momentum rather than takes momentum away. Does that make sense?

Yeah, if you feel capable, right. You think, well, maybe I could do one more thing or maybe I'll tackle that. I think that's a really key thing. Of course, our listeners, if you're already using the daily huddles that we talk about, then the practice of naming a top priority for the day is already something that you and your teams are doing. And not only is it a personal practice, but there's team reinforcement for it. So the people around you are pulling are that same idea, that same thing. So some of our listeners will be really familiar with that concept of naming the thing. But I think the other thing that you pointed to is just that the notion that there's a lot of things on our to do list. And I, I remember somebody told me years ago that to first to get like, to imagine. And I, I repeat this all the time with folks. Imagine all the things that you have to do and handle. Think about the things that you've got to grapple with in the world and think about all the lists and all the things that other people want you to do and all that. And then get that. Whether you live a long and successful life or you get hit by a bus tomorrow, there's always going to be something that isn't getting done right.

There's always going to. We will all die with something left on our to do list. To get to do list.

Right. Then your friends and family will gather around, they'll say nice things about you, and they'll go have lunch.

Exactly.

So how important is that list?

Exactly. Exactly.

Well said. Yeah. So I. So I love this. So talk about applying these things and breaking them down. In the world of marketing and some of the folks that you work with, you talked about a CEO, somebody else who was not getting their core offer done, and they hadn't broken that down. And personalization. Yeah.

I had another. Another business owner that I was working with. She ran a coaching firm and a consulting firm and very successful, very talented, really good at what she did. But she would tell me she'd have people call and she'd have this conversation with them and they wouldn't close. And I'd say to her, well, Suz, why do you think it's not closing? And she'd go, I don't know. I'm not sure that I'm clear enough on what I'm saying, even though I know what I'm doing. And what we realized out of the conversation was that she was presenting this big thing that was actually overwhelming to people's brains. You know, I always tell clients when I'm figuring out what their brand is, whether it's a business brand, a product, personal brand, a CEO brand, doesn't book brand. I always tell people, you have to understand that the brain looks for patterns. The brain loves a pattern because the brain likes to go, oh, I can fit this in this box. Because then the brain can relax and really be present. So what happens is she was giving people this really big picture. And the big picture, while accurate, wasn't allowing people's brains to land anywhere and rest. But she never. She wasn't taking the time to sort it through because she was like, so I gotta get this done and that done. So one day I just said, look, just do an hour. I call it a rent my brain session. Right? We did a one hour rent my brain session, and we took just an hour to break down that bigger picture into some Steps and some ways to present it so that it was more of a process. And she could say to people, well, there's a process, and here's the three steps so their brains could go, okay, 1, 2, 3. Oh, I can relax. I can breathe. I know what it is, right? And she told me that the very next day, she had a client, a potential client call. She gave them that example. You know, she used what we talked about, and she said, like, a $30,000 client, just like that, closed. And she said she's used that system ever since. And she said, it's much easier for people to get their hands on it. But here's the trick. That was an hour of her time with. Which has saved her, I'm going to say, probably hundreds of hours in conversations. But there was that hesitancy to take the time she thought it would take to sit down and work it out. Does that make you sense?

No. I totally can relate to this. It's funny, because I lost a client sale recently. I was working with a prospect, really excited about this company. Felt like such a fit. I had good chemistry with the CEO, and it felt like it was business that I wanted and thought I should get. Right.

Yep.

And. And as I understood my competitors, I'm like, yeah, no, I've got this thing. And I definitely got a little cocky. And then I let them, like, have the whole world of all the cool things that we could do, but they weren't ready or needing all the cool things that I could do. They just wanted, like, this one focus area. The company that came in and recommended this one little focused area won the business, and I lost. And I think the mistake was I overwhelmed them with a bunch of things. And how instead of saying, yeah, what you need right now is this. There's other things I can do, and you'll need them later.

Let's start here.

Yeah. This is the thing to focus on.

If you look at the research, the brain can only hold three to a maximum of seven things at one time. And the problem is, when you overwhelm people, what happens is they still sit there and nod politely and smile, but they're gone. They're no longer actually present. And so it really is that fine balance between giving people something that's what I call crunchy, you know, that. That. That their brains can get wrapped around, but that's also. That really presents the brand in a. In a particular way. And by the way, it takes time to figure that out. You know, Mark Twain famously said, I would have written a shorter letter But I didn't have the time. You know, it takes time to sort this stuff out and figure out it's not quick. And so I think people often are hesit put in that time. But it's really. Do you want to put in the time on the back end or the front end? Because you save yourself a lot of time when you do it on the front end.

It's funny, I will often encounter people and we do a whole bunch of things in sort of our core work with companies and they'll be like, oh yeah, we worked on our purpose stuff. We have a great why statement for the company and that kind of thing. And they throw me out like two paragraphs. I'm like, oh, that's horrible. And they're like, no, no, no. It's really great. We worked on this for a long time. I'm like, I'm looking for three to five words. I just want to touch or grab your heart in three to five words. And. And that's it. That's all that we want to do with that statement. All the rest belongs somewhere else, but it's not here. And I think that it takes time. Right to. And sometimes an outside perspective on.

I've had, I've had off site branding sessions with companies or teams within companies where it took an entire day to get to the one or two sentences that were the essence of their brand that they all could agree to and they felt that language really represented them all day.

Yeah. And sometimes iterations right to come.

Absolutely no question. But again, it's this idea that we resist. I'll give you an example. Outside of work, everyone understands this. You walk by a light bulb in your house or your apartment, it's burnt out. You think, I really got to change that light bulb. Then you walk by it again. Then you walk by it again. And you will walk by that light bulb 45 times and think you have to change it. Right. As opposed to the minute you will have spent 15 minutes thinking about changing the light bulb and writing it down on a list rather than the two minutes it takes to get a light bulb and change it. It's a little bit similar to that. It's this idea that you really have to understand that when you're putting time in at the beginning, it really does produce something on the outside that saves you time.

Yeah. So I think, I know I do that a lot with my wife and she with me, she'd be like, tell me about something a million times. I keep thinking about, oh, I should do that sometime. But it's definitely not now. And then I'll walk by it, I'll see it or whatever and I'll be like, oh yeah, I got to do this. And it's bugging me. And I have the same thing with her. I'll say something and it really needs to be her, not me that does it. Like, why don't you just do that right now? Later. Later. I'm like, you're never gonna do it later. Stop telling me you're gonna do it later. You intention doing it later.

Well, and the problem is, is that when those things are left unfinished or incomplete, they really do steal a little bit of, of emotional energy, right? Or, or energy from us. Because all of those things that are incomplete leave that sense of unfinished. I mean, I'll just give you a simple example. I mean, I'm on a tear to end the incompletion we cause for other people. So here's a very simple example. All your listeners will be able to relate to this and all your coaches for sure will be able to relate to this, which is you have a potential client, they ask you for a proposal, you have a conversation, you write a proposal, you say, great, just let me know one way or the other so we can complete it. They don't let you know. You send them an email, they don't let you know. You send them an email, they don't let you know. You call, they don't call back. And it leaves this gigantic incompletion where all they had to do is send you a one line email saying thanks, but we're not interested or thanks for your time, we're going in another direction. So we, or you call somebody and they say they're going to call you back within 24 hours and they don't. So there's all these little incompletions that we leave for. Or they say they're going to have something done By Friday at 1 and then Monday at 9, they go, oh, I'm sorry, I know it was due by Friday at 1, but I didn't do it like, well, just let me know Friday morning then. So we, we create all these incompletions for other people and it really does drain us of a little bit of mental or psychic energy. And I think that people don't really realize the vast impact that has on their productivity, their sense of well being, their relationships with other people.

You know, I had a friend who worked for a company and, and they, they had a lot of phone calls, that kind of thing. Like most of us and emails, things like that. And they had a voicemail greeting that said, you know, leave a message, I'll return your call within 24 hours. And, and I remember that after a while I figured out how to reach them on their mobile phone and that kind of thing because, because they never did. And I said, listen, why don't you change your voicemail message? You have no intention, you have no reliability at all at returning anyone's phone call within 24 hours.

Right.

And they said, oh yeah, no we can't. We have to put that in. It's the company's sort of mandate that we have to say that. And I said, well, you should go like declare a breakdown or something with the company because your company is completely unreliable at doing this thing. You're not the first person, that company who does that kind of thing and you keep putting out that nonsense. So you're completely hypocritical. There's no integrity at all in this.

And think about how that impacts their brand because every voicemate, every voice message basically over promising and under delivering, that's, that's how they are creating their brand in the world by that one, by.

That one simple action, that one simple thing. And it was funny. Now you have to have a fairly good relationship in regard for the person to have that kind of a straight conversation. Yes, I had. It wasn't just anybody that I could say that to.

Stranger.

And there are times when there's someone who's maybe a little more a stranger, but you could be that straight with. But you know, is anyone that straight with us all the time at the nonsense that we do and are kind of ignorant too? I wonder.

I mean, I think our really close friends and clients are. I know, mine certainly.

Yeah. I got a message from a friend the other day. He said, listen, you do this, you did this thing recently and I saw it and it's not who you are, it's not you at your best. And I was like, oh, it stabbed me because I could tell like he was true, but I also knew he really cared and so I spent the day thinking about how to clean it up.

And yeah, you know, we're all, I mean, everybody. I remember years ago when I was running the management consulting firm, we were doing a lot of customer engagement and employee engagement work and I did a project with Ritz Carlton and I remember talking to one of the senior managers and she said to me, you know, we know that we're going to make mistakes. Yeah, we know we're going to make in all of Our properties, thousands of mistakes every day. Two differences. Our competitors are making tens of thousands of mistakes every day, she said. And we know when we make a mistake, our job is to immediately fix it, apologize, clean it up and fix it. And she says that's why we empower our staff to fix it at a lower level so that they don't have to keep putting everything up the chain every time. And I think that's the key. We're all going to make mistakes. I mean, I would not want to be held to a standard of not having ever made a mistake. We're all going to make mistakes. It's how fast you clean it up, you apologize, you rectify it, you fix it. I mean, that's really the key. And sometimes clients, there are clients who will not forgive you for those mistakes. And then you just have to move on once you've done the big time to clean it up.

Horace Schultz, former CEO of Ritz Carlton Talk to our summit series in a recent Zoom last quarter. And, and so we're doing these summits all the time with, with some really top level CEOs and, and gurus. So if you haven't done it, go check out our summits and register for the next one. And for all of our listeners and, and viewers here, I think it, it, we, we just so he was fantastic one and he talked specifically about that like really empowering people to fix stuff.

When it's, that's part of their secret, you know. And again, you know, when you talk about, about time and branding and where they, where they meet, right. You can say, well, it's, you know, if you, if you're empowering people on the front line to take care a lot of that stuff, one that incredibly increases your brand, but it also saves you time as a senior executive because every little thing isn't being filtered up to you. People are not frightened to actually take some initiative to make something happen. You know, in terms of personal branding, it's back to what you were saying about the guy who had the voicemail. It's recognizing that as an executive, as a CEO or as an executive, what you're putting out there, whether it's within your company or externally, what you're putting out there, even those small things start to shape your personal brand. They shape your executive brand, they shape your CEO brand, they shape the way people see you.

Yeah. So let's continue on that. You also talked about an exec who was working on a book, tell that Story.

Oh yeah. Well, you know, I, I'm, I'm on my 11th book and they're all traditionally published. So I have publishers I have to get. Like I don't have the luxury of, ah, it doesn't matter, you have a.

Reputation now for turning.

And I have a contract. So I have to deliver certain things on time. And I had it. But I've worked with a lot of clients on writing their books, helping them write their books and getting them published and sold. And I had somebody that called me and they said, look, I'm just struggling with my book, it's not getting done. And I said, well, what's your writing schedule? And this person said, well, you know, I write. You know, I set aside days to write, like I'll write. I set aside Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays to write. And said, okay, well first of all, right, there is your problem. Very few people, there's very few writers that can say, I'm going to write every day, I'm going to write all day long. Because it's the amount of mental energy it takes to write. So one is I said, let's get on a more realistic, holistic writing schedule, which is every morning for two hours set aside to write as opposed, you know, every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, instead of trying to do these all day marathons. That's, that's one way to allow your brain to wrap it. Because imagine how overwhelming it is to your brain to say we're going to write from 9 to 5 Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And I couldn't even start if I said that to myself. So I said by doing it, saying it's two hours, you know, three, four or five days a week, your brain can go, I can handle that. So that was one kind of time trick to get it done. The other thing was I told the person, do a pattern in writing that we call a free write followed by an edit. So a free write is where you just empty your brain. You're just writing what you, you're just totally emptying your brain. You're not doing any editing, even if it sounds illogical, and you keep writing. So I had this person do a thing where they set their timer. You know, they use their, their iPhone, right? Or whatever, their PDA. They set their timer for 15 minutes, free write on the topic for 15 minutes. Then they go back and they spend 15 minutes editing. Then they 15 minute of free write, 15 minute of editing, 15 minute. Because you're utilizing a different part of the brain. So it also was more, more effective. But the other thing I had this person do, and again, this is Sort of the branding part. Remember that story I told about the friend that had the big. She was kept presenting the big picture of what she does. Well, this person had the big picture of their book. And I said, look, you have to break that book down into really small points and then you can hook all the points together and decide which goes with which. But I really had the person break it down even every chapter. I said, break it down into just the point and then spend 15 minutes writing just about that one point. Not even 15 minutes on the chapter, 15 minutes on that one point. And then when all the points to the chapters are done, that chapter's done, then you can go back and knit them together. You know, there's so much power in, you know what I. Chunking things down, taking even, even brands. Right. I always talk to clients and I say, because CEOs will call me and go, it's overwhelming trying to do my CEO brand. There's so much to do. And I say, well, there is, except for you can only do one thing at a time anyway. So let's figure out the one thing that you have to start with. Like, for example, and this is true with almost every executive who comes to me, your LinkedIn is terrible. It is not up to snuff for where it needs to be. Let's get your LinkedIn on brand. Let's start with that. That's one.

Most people who have a good job, they like have a crappy LinkedIn you. That LinkedIn gets fixed up when they're starting to look for a rank.

Exactly. But the time to fix it up is not just then, you know, because 77% of the people that you're going to do business with are going to look you up on LinkedIn Media.

Yeah. Not just when you're looking for a.

Job, but employees, by the way. And people have this misnomer that it's just about when you are looking for a job. Totally untrue. LinkedIn today is like the living resume. And people go to see who you are regardless of if they're an employee, they're a customer, they're media. I mean, the statistics are pretty phenomenal. So, you know, so like, that's an example of you're. You're chunking it down to. Let's just do that one thing. So it's pretty simple. And sometimes you have to even chunk that down to, let's just get you a new profile picture to start. Let's get you a new about to start. Let's change your headline to start right.

Okay, so let me ask you a question. So now we've got all these things chunked down. We thought about the time and that kind of thing. And I have my own thoughts about this, but I'd love to hear your approaches. So when are they going to happen? How long are they going to take? And what about actually, like, those things that I have in my calendar? And then when they come, I just. Don't you want to do them?

Like, that's. Welcome to my world. Every day. Every day I have a really good one of my best friends in New York, and I'll call her and I go, oh, my God, I've got to write this report for this client, and I don't feel like doing it. And then she'll laugh and I'll laugh, because of course. So again, this is. I have found that this is the trick with that stuff. It really is about chunking it down. So literally, literally every day I will go, I don't want to do that. Not because I don't love my job or I love my clients. I do. Just because I'd rather be horseback riding or I just don't feel like it that day, or I'm tired or I was out late the night before. Who knows? So the trick is, is when you feel like you don't want to do it, you have to find one piece of it that you can do, no matter how tiny it is. And literally. Oh, you're gonna think I'm crazy, but literally, sometimes I will say to myself, I'll use the report as an example. Okay, I don't want to do this report, but I know I have to. What's the first thing to do? First thing to do, go to my file. Find the client file. Great. Client file. Find that client. I will talk out loud to myself. Great. I found the client file. Like, it's like a check mark, right? Check. Because the incompletions give you take away energy, but completions give you energy. That's the opposite of that. Even the small completions. Great, I found the client. Okay, find the SWOT study.

I did.

Great. There's the SWOT study. Click. Great. Copy and paste the SWOT study into a new document so I can edit it. Great. Check. Okay, now I'm going to take just the strength part of the swot and I'm going to take just the first two paragraphs. I'm going to copy and paste them to the top of this document. And all I'm going to do is go through and edit and look at that first one or two paragraphs. That is the degree to which I have to manage myself. And there are days and let's. Let's all tell the truth about this. There are days where that process starts like this. The alarm goes off and I go, okay, Karen, you need to stand up and get out of bed. Great. You need to go brush your teeth. Great. You need to take a shower. Great. You need to go get a cup of coffee. Especially during COVID a lot of us had days where we had to manage ourselves that tightly. But the advantage of doing that is it's like little yellow highlights or check marks and those little things. You notice that the energy starts to build and you get more and more momentum and more and more energy. And then within a period, about half an hour, an hour, I'm into it. And I no longer have that conversation called I don't want to do this anymore. That works 99% of the time.

Yeah. To getting that done.

Every once in a while I just go, screw it. I'm just going to go horseback riding or watch a movie or take a walk in Central park or put it off for a day.

I will do that. I'd be like, you know what? My brain is mush. I did. In fact, we did a little bit of this yesterday. I had some stuff. And a couple days before that, I'm like, let's find a new home for that. Because I'm not in the right headspace to do that work right now. It was a fairly strategic procrastination, but it was still procrastination. And I was managing the deliverable.

I mean, that's the point. The dangerous procrastination is one where you've got a promise deliverable. And your procrastination ends up in you not meeting that deliverable. Because that's where you start impacting your business brand or your personal brand or your executive brand. Like, I was meeting with a client the other day and he was telling me that they're having an off site. And he got a memo from one of his senior people and he. And he runs an organization of about. In his company. About 2,500 people report to him. 25, 2700, they're having an off site. One of his senior people sent him an email and they said, let's make sure for this meeting we start on time. There's no multitasking. And he had this whole list of things. And my client said to me, I think he meant that for me. And I said, why? And he goes, because, you know, I'M all, this is a new client. I don't know him very well. I'm getting to know him. And he said, well, I multitask. I don't start on time. And I said, so what you're telling me is your brand in your own company is this? And he said, yes. And I said, how's that? I turned Dr. Phil on him. I said, how's that working for you? And he said, not so good. I said, no. So you gotta. That's the part of the brand you gotta change, because internally, that's how you're known.

Yes. Yeah. And I think sometimes we're delusional about that. Right. Like, we all have ways of looking and thinking about ourselves that fit. And we see ourselves a particular way. Other people see us completely differently. Right. And there's some reconciliation, which is a good thing. So one of your big focus is that your personal brand, Right. How are you known and working on that over time? What are the steps to working on your personal brand?

Yeah, you know, oddly enough, they're not. I just want to say they're not. I'll answer that. But they're not really that much different than the steps to a business brand. They're just a different focal point. Right. So. And by the way, I just want to say, I know you'll get my website afterwards. I have a little free quiz on my website and. Go on. And they can find out where their personal or business brand is. And it's very practical. So they can see where they score and they can see some practical things to do. It's free. It takes maybe five minutes to do. So it's called the Modern Marketing Pyramid Quiz. So, okay, so here's the thing about a personal brand. The very first thing is, is you have to be able to articulate what that brand is. So my metaphor for this is you wear glasses. I see. I wear glasses, too. I just don't wear them on these kind of interviews. But, you know, when you go to.

The eye doc, I usually only wear them on these kind of interviews because the screen is too close and my eyes are too old that, like, I actually have great distance vision. It's at the computer. So some of these people are like, why aren't you wearing the glasses? I'm like, oh, I don't need them. Except when I'm looking at, like, you.

Have to see the screen. I just have to answer questions so I don't have to. So, I mean, we both look super blurry right now. So, you know, think about, like, when you Go to the optometrist and they put that big metal thing on your face and then they click those lenses while you're reading the chart, they say to you, right, does it make it clearer? Fuzzier. Clearer. Fuzzier. In a lot of ways, a personal brand and a business brand, but a personal brand is a combination of getting eight of those lenses really clear. And one of the issues is that people think it's just about finding an elevator pitch, right? So, like, I just have to get my quick little quip about my personal brand and that's it. That's. That's. You do need an elevator pitch, but that's only one of eight things that you need. And so these eight lenses are really part of what you have to have to define your brand. And that's things like what's your unique branding proposition and what's your brand energy and what's the tone or the feel of your brand? And what's what I call your signature story of how you got there and what's what I call your signature style and your signature services and a SWOT analysis. So it's really. I mean, it takes me an entire day's worth of work. I don't always do it in a day at one time. Sometimes it's a series of zoom calls, but it takes me about eight hours worth of work to get someone's entire brand articulated in terms of that personal brand proposition. And people are often really shocked that when I say, they say it's going to take that long, and I say, yes, but always at the end, I've never not had a client say to me that was one of the most valuable things they ever did because it really clarified for them who they are and how to present themselves and how to make decisions about certain things based on that brand. So I think that's sort of the first piece is that clarity. It is shocking to me how many people go out and start promoting their brand before they have that work done. And the problem, of course, is how are you going to know what you should do and how to do it if you haven't done that foundational work first, Right? So that's sort of. That's actually this pyramid thing. That's sort of the first part of the pyramid. But then the other thing is then you have to decide, okay, what's the strategy going to be, though, to put my personal brand out in the world? Whether the goal is to be a thought leader in your field, whether the goal is to be get a promotion as an executive I mean, I've worked with a lot of people that they just wanted to get a promotion as an executive in their company, so they had to increase their personal brand. I've also worked with people where they were in their companies and they had the position they wanted, but they got a new project, a big project, and they wanted to make sure that the brand was well established as they went into that new project. I'm working with the CEO right now. He just got a new job as an executive in a very, very large company. Brand new job. He said, karen, before day one, I want us to figure out what my brand is going to be in that company and how I'm going to make it happen. He goes, I want that onboarding to be part of establishing that brand. Very smart thing to do. Right? So the second piece is you have to figure out the strategy. There's over 40 different tactics you could use to build your personal brand strategy. Well, you're not going to do all 40 at best.

Best before lunch.

I'm going to do them all before lunch. Right. Well, you might, Bill, because you're an advanced soul. I'm sorry, the rest of us mere mortals, but you're going to at best pick two to four that are really going to be the ones that are right for you. And what's right is going to be a matrix based on what you're good at, what you have the time for, what you have the money for, where your audience consumes information, what's right for your brand. There's a whole art to figuring that out, and then it's pursuing those in a logical way. I call this sober marketing and sober branding, because one of the things I think a lot of people do is what I have termed. It's actually the title of the next book, Drunk Marketing. I think people do a lot of drunk marketing, personal and business, which is they just throw it at the wall and go, let's do Facebook ads. Let's write blog posts. I had somebody call me the other day and they said, I really want to expand my personal brand. So I've been writing a lot of blog posts, and here's who I've been writing it for. And I said, well, is that your right audience? And she said, no, they're not the people I would get as clients. I said, well, why are you writing blogs? Then? She goes, well, I just thought it would get the word out there. I said, so you're spending all this time doing something that isn't for the right audience, and you're not even sure is the right information. And she said, yes. And I said, that's probably why you're not getting the result you want.

Sounds awesome.

Yeah, sounds awesome. As Dr. Phil says, how's that working for you? So, you know, it's really. And we all have done it. I mean, I'm guilty of it, too. So it's really figuring out what that strategy is, and then it's implementing that.

I think the difference is how much time you spend on it. So I've experimented with lots of little things and. And sometimes I'll say, there's something here. It's not yet producing a result. I'm going to stick with it and play with it, because even if it's kind of an instinct, I'll. But a lot of times I'll just.

That's different. That's experimenting. That's not drunk marketing. That's giving something a try to see.

Right.

I'll give you a perfect example of that for me is Clubhouse, right? Clubhouse started this hot new everything. And I was on it. I got on it like six months ago.

Should we go on Clubhouse right now And.

No, let's not. And I was on it here.

There's two notifications from Clubhouse.

And I was listening to it and I thought it was interesting and I was in on some conversations, but I thought, this is kind of like the party line of the old days, right? And I was like, okay, but I don't have this much time to do this. And I start. And I started leading a few things on Clubhouse and co leading a few things on Clubhouse. Now, listen, I know people that love Clubhouse and just think it's been fantastic for their business and their brand. For me, Clubhouse has not proven to be a useful place for me to build my brand. I build my brand much better by doing my own podcast, by being on fine, excellent podcasts like yours, right? And by. And by writing, you know, that's just a better avenue for me. That doesn't mean Clubhouse isn't great for someone else. It just.

What your message, what's not right for me.

So I think what happens is people get on what's hot because I've had all these people call me, I should be doing clubhouses. And I said, no, no, no, not necessarily. So that's the whole thing. There's 40 different tactics. You have to.

But you might experiment with it.

You can experiment with anything, but you want to figure out what are the ones that are right for you. Not go into this sheep mentality of I've got to be doing all of this. So that's kind of the next phase and then the final phase. If you are really looking to build your personal brand to the point of thought leadership or industry leadership or even a really strong executive presence within your own organization. You know, I do a lot of work with executives on executive presence because really all executive presence is, is the internal corporate word for personal brand. That's all it is. Right. That's what executive presence is. And it's really about doing that. Those things that you've determined work on a consistent basis with quality, consistent with what the brand is, that you've come up with that whole first phase, looping back to the first phase and then making sure that your collateral reflects that, your LinkedIn reflects that. Anything you put out there reflects that. If you have a website, the website reflects that. You know, all of that is part and parcel of what works.

Yeah, it's interesting. So experimenting, chunking things down. There's a lot of good stuff here. And then there's the aesthetic assessment that you. Is an assessment that you've got there. Or a quiz.

Yeah, it's a really short nine question quiz. It literally takes less than, you know, ten minutes to do, five minutes to do. And it's a series of criteria and you get to score yourself either as a personal brand, a CEO brand or a business brand. So you can choose which one you're scoring and then you just answer the questions and you get automatically sent back what your score was, what level you scored at, and some very specific recommendations for how to move it to the next level.

All right, so we've talked about blocking time for important things, including your marketing and branding, and setting aside realistic times rather than whole day things, but little chunks of things, and then breaking things down into many tasks, lots and lots of smaller ones. And especially if you're procrastinating or struggling to get started or going with something, break it down into even smaller steps. Right. Think about just making that next thing and then the next thing and that that has a building momentum for you and feeling like you're making time. And then there's the work on your company or your personal brand, breaking that into individual projects and pieces. Within all of that. If you want more information, go to Karen Leland dot com. We'll put it in the crawl down at the bottom of the screen. We'll put it in the show notes and all that kind of thing now. Karen Leland.com Karen, thanks so much for joining us.

My pleasure.

Thanks for a great conversation today. It's been a lot of fun. I want to give some thanks to others and like that reminder. If you dug the show, if it was helpful for you, share it with somebody else. Spread the love, share it all around and if you like it, want to get more like it, make sure that you subscribe so you get them every week. You can subscribe, subscribe wherever you get your podcast, video etc or you can go to our website scalingcoach.com if you got any feedback for us send us an email to info scalingcoach.com right there in the crawl in the Show Notes info scalingcoach.com I want to give big thanks to Lucy Summers there in the background, keeping our show rolling and getting our guests prepared and scheduled and all the stuff to do with producing the show. Also big thanks to Verne Harnish, author of the Scaling Up Framework work and the original Rockefeller Habits. Our audio is edited by Albert Burge at Popfly Productions. The show notes are written up by Ayn Kadina and proofread by Tim McGowan. Thanks again everyone for listening. Keep Scaling Up. We'll talk to you again next time. Bye bye.