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Kait LeDonne is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to personal branding. As the Founder and CEO of LeDonne Branding and Marketing, Kait has carved out a niche in successfully creating brand identities that authentically resonate with target audiences. From small businesses to international firms, her broad range of exuberance and expertise have left a trail of satisfied clients. Aside from strategizing marketing tactics, she pours her insight into her weekly marketing show, sharing the secret sauce of effective branding. Penning down her knowledge, her eBook, The Attraction Magnet, has become a go-to resource for businesses eager to make their mark.

 

In this episode, Jason and Kait discuss:

  • Establish a Strong Brand Identity that Resonates with Customers
  • Building Personal Brands for Business Growth
  • The Influence of Founder’s Brand Equity on Corporate Brand Equity
  • The Rise of Founder-Centric Media
  • The Importance of Narrative in Marketing

Key Takeaways:

  • Explore the pivotal role of personal branding in steering your business towards unprecedented heights
  • Bridge the gap between individual and enterprise principles to form an authentic brand image
  • Harness the magic of storytelling to captivate audiences and build formidable brand recognition
  • Dive into the world of LinkedIn to establish your voice and gain thought leadership
  • Appreciate the significance of being a perpetual learner from industry trailblazers and staying adaptable in business

 

“If you're living in your values, you're living in authenticity. Be intentional with that, especially as a founder, and align your values with the values of your clients and organization to connect with your audience.”

-Kait LeDonne

Connect with Kait LeDonne:

 

Connect with Steve and Jason:

 

Listen to the podcast here:

 

Kait LeDonne - Revisited

If you've been listening to the inside Interviews for any length of time, you know that every now and again we'll revisit an episode, and it might be because we've got an intriguing topic that people find valuable or that becomes hot again. And every now and again there's just a guest that you just cannot ignore because of the things that they say or the way that they say it, or the engagement that they have with us. Well, this is episode twelve that we did over three years ago with guest Kait LaDonne, who is a personal branding expert. At the time that I interviewed her three years ago, she had already built up a really big following on LinkedIn, people in line waiting to do business with her, and in the three years since, it's only grown. This person moved to New York City without knowing anyone and built her personal brand and really put a stake in the ground in the personal branding industry over the last three years. And so Kait is, you'll see, she's real, she's funny, but man, does she know her stuff, and she has helped build brands across the country and really for herself. And so, whether it's social media or thinking about your own brand that just needs a rebuff, a rewire if you will, I think you're going to really enjoy this episode, which is the relaunching of episode twelve, Kait LeDonne with Building Your Personal Brand. Enjoy.                      

Hello everybody. Welcome to this episode of The Insight Interviews- Powered by REWIRE- Powered by REWIRE. This is your host, Jason Abel, and I am super excited about my guest today, Kait LeDonne. Listen to this y'all Kait LeDonne is the founder and CEO of LeDonne Branding and Marketing. Kait works with B2B businesses and consultants to clarify their message, refine their image, and attract the right kind of customers using social media strategies that hyper accelerate brand awareness and amplify credibility. Kait hosts a weekly marketing and branding show and has authored the eBook The Attraction Magnet, which helps businesses implement key branding methodology to expand their reach and presence. She works with small businesses all the way to international firms and has been a contributor on television and national news publications from people that you've heard of, like Forbes, BuzzFeed, Fox Business, and The Washington Post, among others. Kait, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.        


Kait, we open with a very similar question on all of our episodes, which is today, what are you grateful for?

Today, I am grateful for rest and relaxation. We are filming this a day after a three-day Memorial Day weekend, and it was really important when I was talking to my team heading into the weekend, that we observed Monday as a holiday and as respite and rest and recovery as we've been growing so much and working so hard and reaching for some sense of normalcy. Even though I couldn't leave New York to celebrate it in any way, I think giving the team and myself the space of just three days has been amazing and I think surprising to a lot of people who would say, well, haven't you had space for three months now? And there's physical space and there's mental space, and while physical space may be limited, for us, the mental space has been only amplified. So today I'm just really grateful for that time and that observance and that just ability to spend time with our families in full disconnect from the business and makes me more refreshed to come into a week like this week.

Thank you. Well, we'll timestamp this. Yesterday was Memorial Day 2020, and if you do some math there, no matter when you're listening to this episode, we are still smack dab in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. And you, Kait, happen to be smack dab in the middle of one of the epicenters New York City. And I happen to know you well enough to know that you just recently moved to New York, and before we hit record, we had just a short little back and forth about what that experience is like. I would love to just hear your impression of, you moved to New York City, this thing hits, and your business happens to be experiencing some hyper growth before and in the middle of this. I don't want to feed you a specific question, but could you touch on some of those topics?

Yeah. For the beginning of my business in the last five years while I've had it, it was in the greater DC area where I'm from. And for me, coming to New York was always this just soul grabbing experience of I got sad every time I left the city. When I got here, I felt completely electrified. You know, a lot of people say, oh, New York, it's just I could never live there. It's too much for me, it was the complete opposite experience for me. It was like, I can't imagine not living there at some point in my life. So finally, after five years of building out the business and having a model and the means to get me to New York, my dream city, only four months after moving here, the city became the epicenter of this pandemic in the United States. And I always tell people, I feel like I finally met the love of my life after just not even knowing what that felt like and being so happy. And then the guy fell into a coma. It's here. And I was so excited to build this life in New York and with New York and network and do all of these things, and then within very, I mean, we all lived through it, but I was out the day before quarantine started at a bridal shower and just night and day into and now you're in a different New York and a different version of it, and its soundtrack is not here, and its sights in terms of just the people are not obviously present. And all those gritty and amazing things about New York that propelled me to move here were kind of taken. And so it's been a wonderful experience in the sense of having time to actually document, systematize, grow the business, which wouldn't have been possible with my intense travel and speaking schedule before this. And it's been a bit like wake up, work, head down 12 hours, be on a number of Zoom calls, rinse and repeat. I will say, though, during the course of that day, at 7:00 p.m., you have your windows open at spring in New York, and all of a sudden you hear just this crazy applause and screaming and carbons and bells, and the city explodes in unison for two minutes straight, honoring frontline workers and health care workers while their shift changes at seven. And there is this every single day goosebumps moment where you're like, that's right, I hear you New York. Like this city is, if nothing, so resilient and its community so strong that it's this beautiful reminder that even if you can't see the people, we're all here and we're all fighting together in a different fight than what it probably looks like post 911, where you can see the visual damage of this traumatic experience. But here it's like this silent yet omnipresent pervasive threat where you're even looking at your neighbors in the hallway trying to get away from them while we're all crammed in these buildings. But come 7:00, you just hear everybody in the city still standing by the city. At the beginning, my parents were like, are you sure you don't want to leave? And I was like, absolutely not. I'm going down with the ship. Like, I moved here for this. But that sounds more harrowing, I think, than what my firsthand experience has been. When you're quarantined, you don't see this. It isn't like an attack or something of that nature. You can't see it as much unless you're probably at a medical or hospital center, and then you really see how absolutely traumatic it is, but it hasn't been like that, and I'll end with this. I think before this, I had this picture when you first started to hear of Coronavirus, of what Wuhan must have been like, and I don't know if anybody else can relate to this, but in my mind it felt like a Sci-Fi movie, like the sun probably hadn't shone in Wuhan in months and it was probably gray smoke in this very post-apocalyptic feel, and then as we became the epicenter and my family started freaking out about how bad New York is, I'm doing air quotes while I couldn't feel it and the sun was shining and everything felt normal, I realized how much of a weird, preconceived notion I had of Wuhan. That probably absolutely was not the case in Wuhan either. It wasn't like there was just this tinted gray city of just post-apocalyptic feeling, which is totally how I just pictured it, because you heard about it like that.

Yeah. Well, even you talking about everything exploding at 7:00 P.M. with cars honking and people clapping, I've seen that on the news. But to listen to you say it knowing in my mind that you're sitting in New York City right this minute, it gave me goosebumps. I'm listening to that and I'm like, yes, the resiliency of who we are, and your city is just so reassuring and so refreshing, which is really a good segue. I mean, your business of helping entrepreneurs and small businesses and large businesses with their branding and marketing, I mean, there's been such a pullback of expenses and what's going on, but yet I know that your business is still experiencing hypergrowth. Okay, you need to explain that to me. How does that work?

Organically, our business has shifted. When we were branding fast growth companies, we realized that the key ingredient to fast growth, which I think is particularly relevant to your audience, so pay attention to this, was putting the founder's personal brand at the forefront of the company. Because it's easier to latch on to voting and rooting for somebody to succeed than it is to some faceless, nameless corporation. And so, the way we hyper accelerate brands on social media, even if it's a product brand, is to bring forth the founders narrative and put that smack dab in the center. So, then our business, organically started to shift from corporate branding to personal branding, and with that came this pandemic and quarantine and all of a sudden leaders who were highly visible in their organizations because of the physicality of them, were not as visible. They couldn't see their workforce every day, and in some cases their workforce was thousands of people or hundreds of people, and so, I think it really illuminated the need for them to lead quite literally out in front and out in front in a world like this is online because you can't see other people. And so, for us, and I'm very sometimes hesitant, you were saying we have clients in states that aren't experiencing the pandemic like New York, and there's some guilt there. Like, not much has changed here.

That's right.

I feel bad. It's the same thing for me as a business owner. As I watch my friends with brick and mortar businesses or industries, that restaurant and hospitality, a lot of my friends are in really got rocked by this, and to say, oh, well, ours is kind of growing because we help people be extremely visible online has been both I'm very grateful for it, but also sometimes very hesitant to talk about it. But again, I think the space that's opened up in my schedule that would have been allocated before to just traveling and moving around as a person, now to being reflective and really able to have the capacity to do deep dives on processes and efficiencies has been invaluable and fortifies the business for when we come out of such an intense time and are in different times, whenever that may be.

Yeah, I got into mortgage banking in 1993, and I saw interest rates shortly after I got in. We had some rate sheets that had double digit interest rates. Like, I have a rate sheet still in some old dusty folder with 10% on it for a home loan. And I remember thinking, there's no way I'll make it in this industry. People can't afford loans. And one of my leaders at the time said, no, it's the exact opposite. If you can make it through this, young man, like, I didn't know. I was like, the sky is falling. He's like, if you can make it through this, you'll be able to make it through anything, and he taught me how to cut out all the noise, focus on what was important, what we were there to do, and then when things did loosen up and rates got back to at that time, whatever normal was, we were so foundationally solid that we were able to zoom from there. And I think I'm hearing you say the same thing about the travels was cleared out. There was some margin that was in there that you and your team could really cut out some of the noise and more focus, so I appreciate your story there. You said something that I want to ask a little deeper about. You said you were starting to go from corporate branding to personal branding, but I think for the same results, right? Like you're still looking for the results of the company. And so, I know the first time I heard that idea, I didn't fully understand it. So, could you tease that out a little bit for me?

Yeah, I mean, to put it into an example that I think everybody can relate to, and he can certainly be controversial, but let's be honest, I think Elon Musk is the perfect example of this. I think a lot of people get stock in Tesla because they have big stock in Elon Musk. Myself, personally, I know this is an extremely probably subjective and biased example to put forth, but I really believe that guy is going to go down in history as one of the people who really advanced humanity and space travel and all this stuff. And I'm all the way in on him again, even when he can be controversial or names his children in ways that I don't even know how to pronounce.

Makes me think of Prince, right?

Right. I do think that when you look and there are statistics around this and I can't pull it off the top of my head, the exact number, but corporate brand equity is always correlate to founders brand equity. Again, very notable. Steve Jobs, wonderful example of this, the faith that people put in him, that founder's equity, the brand of Steve Jobs and how interlaced that was with the brand of Apple and then all of the cultural things that came out of it. And I also think to think that you can build a company without having a personal brand or without at some point, that personal brand coming to light is not only a luxury you don't have anymore, it's just incredibly short sighted. So, an example of this is, as WeWork grew, you're looking at a company that the founder's brand from the beginning was probably not as out in front as other companies, but now they're making, I think, a Showtimer and HBO series about the WeWork founder, featuring one of the actors from the show Succession. And you see these series about the woman who True Blood and all the books about Theranos that had so many of these narratives. Again, hindsights have become about the limitations of the founder and very tied into the founder's narrative. So, I think as more publishing options come out, like podcasts and those things grow and you're seeing, I mean, this is to really go a little bit maybe off go there.

Untitled design (49)

Go there.

Joe Rogan's podcast just got picked up from Spotify for $100 million.

Saw that.

$100 million, Joe Rogan, Bill Simmons, The Ringer, picked up by Spotify for a greater amount of money than that. And all of the guests they have, or Joe Rogan will have, will be founders of companies. And it's not the corporate brands they're talking about. It's really these thought leader brands and the founder brands. And so, you look at just even from a monetary perspective, the valuation of what media is hitting right now and what media formats, and it's very founder centric or human story centric. And that's the thing. And that's the thing also, if you look at the greatest corporate brands in the world, they are humanistic and they have built it to almost feel like an old pal and friend. So again, the founders brand is always going to have an effect on the corporate brand. It is inescapable at this point. You can either be smart about it and get out in front of it and control your narrative or, you know, find yourself in a couple of years being at the effect of a narrative that was built for you.

So, our audience that's listening, many people are founders, or they run companies, CEOs, presidents, or they have a very large stake in the company, meaning they're the highest or the top five highest salespeople in the company. So, when you say your personal brand is your corporate brand or heavily influences it, and you can either run from it or lean into it, I didn't quote you exactly right, but that was your sentiment for the audience that's listening, that fits that category, as a coach, I hear all the time, Jason, I know that's important, but I don't even know where to start. I don't know what to do. For somebody that's listening to this podcast, what would you suggest that one of the first one or two steps that they take to go, okay, now I'm at least I'm leaning into that idea myself?

                                                                                                         
"I think a couple of things. Our great equalizer for everybody is time, and I realize that when you're running a company, when you're running a couple of companies, our niche has increasingly become serial entrepreneurs, and so their biggest struggle is, I don't have time because I'm running multiple businesses. B what is even the narrative for me? Is it leaning into one company or another? Am I cannibalizing one without the other? We always say start with your personal values. Inevitably, if you found it the company, they're also woven into your corporate personal values because it's an extension of your attitude, perspective, and perception of the world that shapes your business. I think we're fooling ourselves if we don't think it's tied to our own worldview."

Right on.

It's just how it is. And so, if you examine the overlap of your personal values as a founder, corporate values, and for me, our company value is joy, freedom, learning, excellence. All the content then I post from either my personal life or from a business perspective is interwoven in those core values, and it feels a lot less like work or needing to have this very contrived, polished personal brand, because if you're living in your values, you're living in authenticity. But you really have to be intentional with that. If you don't know what values are driving you as a founder, as a professional, and how those interlace with the values of both your clients and your organization, you are going to be off the mark. It's not going to feel authentic. It is going to feel like work, and your audience is not going to connect with it. So, I think that's the first thing in a fun exercise that you can experience instead of, okay, now I need to go through this very corporate process of building my personal brands. No, just start with why personal brands pop on social media more than corporate brands do anyways. It's because they're humas, and humans connect over shared values, so you really have to get present to what yours are.

There was such gold there. There was a Tweetable there, by the way
.        

Please tell me.

Yeah, if you're living in your values, you're living in intentionality. And what I heard you say there just to connect the dots, was sometimes people say, well, I go to work, and I have to work on the brand and do what my clients want or what I think they want or whatever. What you're saying is, no, just be you. Be you. And if you're you and you're putting yourself out there with what your personal values are, they're most likely in alignment with what your corporate values are anyways because you're the founder, you're the leader, and that will work out, and people connect with people. And by the way, people do business with people. They don't do business with businesses.

That's right. And I think at its core, business is simple, not easy. Branding is simple, not easy. And I've seen this again and again. Simple in that if you have an identified target market, if you know what their needs are, if you know what your values are, it is pretty simple to grow a business, right? Right message, right audience, right time. That is the age-old formula of really effective marketing. I think where it gets tricky is it sounds too simple to identify an audience that has a need and then form those relationships with them based on shared values and really great products and services. The way that simple becomes not easy is we think that it shouldn't be that. So, there are times in my business or in my life where I've taken on clients where there's not shared value or not a view of that, and we all know how it goes. 80% of your efforts start going into those 20% of bad behaving clients, as opposed to just saying, hey, look, I have a book of 80% of clients that are extremely happy with us. We share values, we're getting results because the work is enjoyable and there's a partnership element there because again, there's mutual respect and value sharing, and so, wouldn't it just be smarter then to cut off the 20% that isn't as great? And I understand in different businesses that might not be a reality, but in its most simple form, I feel like that is how it works, and it's us that overcomplicates that and thinks there's certainly a point in my business where I thought I had to please everybody. I had to win every contract. The need to be right, the need to win, the need to grow the business outweighed the need to have an enjoyable business that felt like it was in alignment with my values, and it wasn't until I got really honest about that and was okay walking away from things and okay having certain clients walk away from us and start seeing that as they're just not a good fit versus we suck. That was a huge mind shift for me.

Yes. Such a great one, too. I mean, you mentioned some names. Steve Jobs, Joe Rogan. I mean, I thought of some names too. I mean, Richard Branson, I think is a good example of what you're talking about. Oprah, Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx, she did a thing about a year ago that I will never forget. She did a post on most of the socials that was a personal post with some information, but it was her. She's crazy, and she's wild, and she's amazing. And then she did the same exact post from Spanx, the corporation. She showed the engagement of both of those posts, same information. Her personal post, the engagement, I mean, it was ten x. It was exponential in same exact information coming from Spanx, from the corporate post. And so, her point was exactly your point. Be you, make your personal brand, people are interested in you, and ultimately, yeah, they'll become a client. And people love Spanx.

Oh, I buy Spanx because of Sarah Blakely. In fact, this is such a testament to it's not some in branding. It's because this is how strongly I feel about it. During their black Friday sale, I got their faux leather leggings. Again, great product. There's no escaping. If you don't have a great product, this isn't as easy.

But that's right. That's the ticket to the game, right? We're talking about this personal branding and the values piece. The ticket to the game is your product or your service, our conversation is assuming it rocks. It's already up there, because if it doesn't, this other stuff doesn't matter because the market will find you out over time. The ticket to the game is you have an amazing product or an amazing service.

That’s right. You've got that down. Now we're talking about okay, really amplifying that and building a loyal brand following. And so, I was on the phone with them on black Friday, I had ordered the Spanx, my first go at Spanx. I was extremely excited to patronize her business because I love her, and this is just an example of values coming into play. So, I follow her on all the social media. She's extremely, extremely just out there raw, human, and I got these Spanx, and I thought they were just a little too tight, but I didn't know. The whole thing of Spanx is that they should be, and they kind of suck in everything. But, I mean, they were comfortable. I just like, I didn't know if I should size up. So, I'm on the phone with customer service, and the girl who's on the line with me is like, okay, great. Do they feel this way? Do they feel that way? Try this. Do this. Squat down, blah, blah. And then she goes, okay, last test. Pull them up really high. Do you or can you form a camel toe? And I was, like, really trying to make it happen.

We just went there.

Confirmed. No camel toe. Not even the potential of the camel toe. She's like, well, you got the right size. You really don't need to size up. If there's no camel toe, it's not happening. And I was like, this is just everything we're talking about in motion. This is a person who is in their customer service, online chat, feeling empowered to have a conversation that I was not in the least bit offended by. I was like, what an excellent test. Like a camel toe test. That's how you know if your Spanx are fitting or not.

Oh, my gosh.

An extension of her brand trickling in every single part of the corporate brand and just creating this raw in a real brand, and I remember getting off the line and being like, not only was that an A ++ customer service experience. It was funny. I thought I was talking to one of my girlfriends.

Right. There's so many lessons there, Kait. Not only empowering your team to do what it takes to make the client happy and as opposed to asking for permission, or is that saying too much? Or whatever, but I know that brand well enough to know that whoever the customer service rep that you were talking to, she is an extension of Sarah, because Sarah would probably say the same exact thing to you. This brings us full circle to right where you were was the personal brand of the founder. That's an example of her coming through all the way down to the customer service rep, to you, the client that is trying out the brand.

That’s right.

And look at what we're doing right now. You and I are marketing Spanx because of that story.

Absolutely.

How beautiful is that? So, another segue. You put a quote out there that stuck with me. In fact, I read all your stuff. I love all your stuff, but this one hit me between the eyes, so much so, which is when I texted you and said, okay, if you'll do it, I need you to be a guest on the show, and it was this quote: facts tell, stories sell. Yeah, talk about that a little bit.

Not mine. First of all, I think it's like one of those age-old marketing adages, so I can't take credit for it. But I think the thing is like this. You're online shopping. You see a product, you see that it has maybe four and a half stars. I was shopping for a mattress on Amazon, and I saw the product had probably 4.7 stars. It was great. Again, they nailed everything about the product. It was a good product, right? Price, all the four P’s and blah, blah, blah. But then I went into the testimonials, and Amazon and a couple of companies have this really great thing where you can pull up relevant testimonials. So, for me, I needed the side sleeper testimonials. I've been sleeping in the same position on my left side with my right leg up for 31 years now.

Sure.

So I pulled up the side sleeper one, and I remember reading this review and it was like the best mattress for side sleeping. I paid X times more for a Tempurpedic, thinking it would finally relieve my hip, because when you're a side sleeper, you get a lot of hip pain from doing that. I never thought I would find a mattress, let alone for $400 on Amazon that allowed me to sleep comfortably. All the slide sleepers out there, do yourself a favor, get the mattress. And it was like the one click buy. I was doing consumer report research. I was reading like, Good Housekeeping list of mattresses. And I did qualitative, factual, statistically relevant research, had probably like a psycho on the walls of my apartment, like an algorithm of how I was factoring in all of these mattresses stack, ranking them, really probably pacing back and forth in my apartment between should I get this one or this one? And then I read that testimonial. I've been a side sleeper all my life. This is the only one that's really done it for me. I couldn't believe the price either, because that was an objection I had. Like, is it too cheap to actually be a good mattress?

Sure.        

And when they set all that, backed by the 4.7 reviews from 2000 people, I was like, all right. In that moment, all those weeks of research were completely collapsed with a one click purchase decision from Amazon. And that, I think, is just that quote in a nutshell. If you are not producing narratives about the experience of your company and your experience as a founder and what you're discovering in working with clients and growing the company, you are cutting your legs out beneath you when it comes to selling. Because we all identify psychologically as the main heroes in our story of life, and when we hear somebody else tell a story and it's really engaging, we assume the role of the hero in that story. It's just how humans are wired. We are narrative driven species. And so, you need to make sure that's encapsulated in your marketing and in your branding.

And when you talk about founders, that also means if you're a real estate agent running a team, that story is relevant for you. If you are a mortgage banker that runs a region, that story that you just told Kait, is for you. All of that is relevant. You need to produce the narrative and lean into the narrative.

And you need to identify what that narrative is for your consumer. A lot of us have narratives about our own experience, and that is all well and good, but we all know purchasing a home is the biggest investment decision we'll make in our lives. Unless you are independently wealthy and financially just set, you're only going to go through it maybe a handful of times in your life, if that. And so, to really get the psychological standpoint of where your customer is during that purchase, they're confused, they're feeling overwhelmed. They're wondering if the even house they picked was the right decision. Maybe them and their spouse aren't completely on the same page with it. They're envisioning their children in certain rooms or not.

                                                                                                             
"You need to really get flat around those different narratives and bring them to the surface of your brand and talk about how you've worked with people who are going through that narrative, because the sooner somebody hears it and says, yep, that's me, yes, that's how I feel. Gosh, are they reading my inbox? Are they listening to the conversations I'm having with my spouse? That's when you've got yourself a client or a buyer."   


            

Yeah, no question. I know I've observed, because most of the people that we coach are in the real estate and mortgage industry, and I've just observed people that one extreme is they're busy, busy, busy. They're working, working 24/7. They don't have time for anything, but they're just producing average results. And then at the other end of the spectrum, I see the people that are doing exactly what you're saying. Like they're having deep conversations with people, figuring out what's important to them emotionally and psychologically and having a human conversation with people, and they're producing, again, exponential what the busy, busy, busy person is producing, and it's because they're going for that human piece of it. And once you make that connection, that emotional connection with a client, you've got them at that point. And you're not doing it to, quote, unquote, get them, like I just said, you're just doing it to help them. And then as a result, oh yeah, you sell the house, or you make the loan or sell whatever widget it is that you sell.

That's right. Absolutely.

You are leaning heavily into LinkedIn when everybody says, gosh, Facebook ads and Instagram and these other social media platforms, but I see you time and time and time again leaning into and working with clients specifically on LinkedIn, more than some of the others. Speak to that a little bit. Why is that?

I think there's a couple of things that are really working for LinkedIn in this moment. Number one, we're at a standpoint with social media where fake news really, I know that's such a charged term, but when you're looking at Facebook and Instagram, especially with elections and politics and everything like that, people really don't know what is verifiable, what is real, what has been vetted. And the thing that I think LinkedIn does differently than other sites is their team is very heavily monitoring the platform, and I think people do go there for credible stories. They know they're not going to experience things. The content hits heavier. The content hits heavier because of LinkedIn's involvement in making sure it's vetted and verified and there aren't just, you know, anybody and their mom can get on there and write a think piece about something. They will downplay it. They will actively downplay it where it's much more machine driven on other social sites or other social sites benefit from the crazy person on the corner shouting on social media that just fuels those sites, whereas LinkedIn says that's not the intention of our audience. Again, you're talking about a site that knows its audience, a site that knows over 45% are decision makers, heavily educated individuals, professional settings. So, I think for one, their involvement in the content and shaping the content and kicking people off the platform that pose a threat to that credibility, make it a more informed place to make purchase decisions. When you're dealing with larger and larger sized deals, right, you wouldn't be doing a million dollar deal off of in many cases, right? There's always an exception to the rule. But I'm talking about, like, b to b transactions specifically. You're not doing a million-dollar deal because of an Instagram ad. Might buy glasses because of an Instagram ad. That's fine. It's a lower barrier. It's a lower ticket to entry. So, there's that. Number two, I think just the algorithm right now is heavily working in people's favor. You're again talking about a platform that has over 650,000,000 users. About 250,000,000 of those maybe a little bit higher now since the pandemic has started, I don't have stats on that. About 250,000,000 of those 650,000,000 plus users are logging in on a monthly basis. Of that, only 3 million are actively creating content. I mean actively like maybe once a week. So if you do the math, 3 million of 650,000,000 and what percentage of people are getting a lion's share of the view? You're talking about less than 1% getting over 9 billion impressions. It very much is blue ocean. You just get to establish thought leadership and brand awareness so much faster because it's not crowded. And it's so fascinating to me that even in this stage of growth, in just its lifespan, that that's still the case with LinkedIn. Because if you look at TikTok, which is in its quote unquote, infancy stages sure, and now just beginning to get the middle of the bell curve popping in on it, you're already dealing with extremely crowded spaces and these sensations of people who are popping up. On LinkedIn, you still have a really great shot at a land grab. And even if you're doing B to C deals like in mortgage, and you're thinking, okay, well, then I have to be on Facebook or Instagram because that's the world I'm in as a real estate agent or a mortgage broker. That's not true. You're looking at, if you get on LinkedIn, people that have heavier net income, higher salaries, they can purchase higher end houses. There are amazing strategic partners on there. You're talking about estate attorneys; you're talking about divorce.

Untitled design (48) 

Right on.

You're talking about wealth advisors who will basically give you a mainline into their client base. You're winning a lot of third-party credibility in a way that you don't on other social media sites. It's because of LinkedIn that I started getting my name in the, quote unquote lights and commenting on celebrity brands. It's because I was third party vetted by the press and media and other institutional organizations that said, hey, she's good, pay attention to her, versus I could have probably been saying the same exact thing on Instagram, but because my peers and the press didn't cosign it, because they're just not as much on Instagram, I maybe would have been seen as like a smart internet marketer. And there's certainly room for that, but probably not the brand authority that I have become. When you get the accolades and affirmation and credibility that industry and press provide you that is really only available on LinkedIn, maybe a little bit Twitter.

Man, as I listen to you, I asked one question about LinkedIn, I can tell you're passionate about LinkedIn. I feel like we need to have an episode. Kait, just on LinkedIn. That was really good. I want to ask you about twelve other questions, but we're rounding third right now in this episode. Oh my gosh. Was that good? Bottom line in that is I heard you say LinkedIn from a social media standpoint is Blue Ocean. It is. There is opportunity there. And you just gave not only the factual element of the opportunity, but one or two stories where you yourself, who runs a branding company, you're using it to promote your own brand. So, you're not only helping clients with this, but you're actually doing it at the same time.

That's right.

And it's working for you.

Thank you. I think the big thing to keep in mind with LinkedIn, the reason why it works, if this sounds appealing to you, is it's the intersection of algorithm being very favorable and leveraging heavy hitting influence, your influence scraping. This is where Richard Branson is posting and active and paying attention. This is where industry titans are posting and active, paying attention. And if you can hop into the slipstream of that in the media and even get a little bit of endorsement and a heads up here and there from other titans, you get to very quickly amplify your credibility and reach because you're dealing with such behemoths on that platform that you're not in other platforms.

So good. As we head towards home, what projects are- I know you're always working on some cool stuff. What kind of projects are you working on right now that you're most excited about?

Our company has really taken this very unique turn, and this is what I would say to all of you. As a brander, I had this very believed view, possibly heavily biased, definitely cocky, that I knew my target audience, and I think even if you've built your business with one target audience, you need to go through and do that exercise pretty much every year and really start to understand how even your niche audience has become even more niche. Because for us it was founders of B2B companies. That sounds pretty narrow, comparatively speaking, to a lot of marketing agencies. Personal brand agency that focused exclusively on founders of B2B and professional service industries. Got it, clear, definitely know it. As the business started to grow organically, we realized that the commonality of the best clients was founders of two to three businesses. They either had or are currently running two to three businesses. They are now at a point where they are in their 50s plus.     Generally they're getting to 60. They have realized that all the monetary and objective success of building a business has been incredibly fulfilling, but now I can send the elevator back down. But not just to one person, to many, if I play it right by way of speaking and building my brand, I have this institutional knowledge to share. And so, what we realized is all of a sudden, we became this hyper niche agency without us even being intentional about it, for serial entrepreneurs that were now getting ready to do the thought leadership thing, by way of book or speaking. And so we very quickly have carved out a little bit of a reputation for helping serial entrepreneurs publish their first book. We work with publishers and publicists because the average publishing house, when you come to them with an idea for a book, is going to say, great, how many social media followers do you have? If your answer isn't around 10,000, they're probably going to be a little bit more apprehensive to sell, because you're talking about a time when things like Barnes and Noble, they were doing not well before this, certainly after this, that's going to be a different thing entirely, so, it really is dependent upon the author's networks and social influence when a publisher is looking at distribution lines of how that's going to go. And so, I think I'm particularly excited to just see I'm such a fan of Niching that that gets even more and more narrow and even more and more narrow. And for me, just business owner to other business owners listening, I'm like, great. Well, then, if we have even X percent of this very identified market, I only need, at any point in time, 20 of them in rotation to build a very profitable, really valuable and really a brand that is known for something and can grow very quickly. So that's what I'm excited about is finding out and carving out this little space. We love the authors. They're so coachable. Being coachable is a superpower. They come with just worlds of experience. So, we're very selfishly excited to just get a firsthand line into these people that have built amazing companies, and we love working and learning about that industry. My whole team and I are definitely readers and students, so to get to work with the people that produce that content is amazing. But for all of you, what I would say is the reason I think I'm so excited is because really I feel like there's a finger I can put on exactly this angle of what we do extremely well. We've built out a reputation that would have traditionally taken probably ten years with industry partners to build in just a year or two. That's the beauty of when you really, really niche down your brand. You have those values illuminated. You know the value you bring. It just becomes fun and enjoyable to start scaling it.


Nice. Again, I could feel the passion around that as you talked about the specific. I mean, you know, your buyer persona, I can tell that and the things that you're doing with that buyer persona sounds like a lot of fun. Where can people find you out there?

LinkedIn is obviously going to be my favorite. My name is definitely Tricky. It's K-A-I-T-L-E-D-O-N-N-E. So, I would say LinkedIn, I have to say, to make it super simple, that's probably the easiest place. Instagram is probably my second most used, but LinkedIn another thing I love about it, and this is just more so again for following, is they let you develop article series now.

Yeah.

And so, we actually publish a biweekly article called the Build a Brand series, where if any of what you heard in today's podcast is grabbing you, that's the place. Again, to get the mainline into all of that content. We exclusively publish that on the platform.And again, I just want to remind everybody, if I didn't make my case for LinkedIn enough, started that series in October, have over 40,000 subscribers. That is not happening on any other social channel.

First of all, it's a testament to the quality of the content that you're producing. I've read some of those articles and I've employed them because I've read them. You're giving away some really, really good stuff, and I know that part of that is a strategy, but just the manner in which you're helping people just with that publication is huge. And that might be a really good place for people to start to just do some things and try things out and get to know you better. So great. Kait, I don't know that I can thank you enough. That was gold. I wrote down, I mean, you can see my notes. I wrote down all kinds of stuff. So, thank you for that. Maybe we'll have to do around two at some point but thanks a ton for being on the show. I wish you all the luck. I hope that New York City continues to open up slowly but surely and that you can get back to that, like you said, you met the love of your life. Let's get active with the love of your life again, New York City.

I'm really appreciating New York right now, and I can't wait to have the relationship I knew I was going to have with it. But thank you. I so appreciate you for having me. Stay well, I hope everybody listening, does the same and excited to connect with all of you.

Okay, everybody, I don't know if you heard some of those insights, but here's some of the insights that I took away from today's episode with Kait. Gosh. The whole idea of personal values equaling your personal brand and the founder's narrative and how important that is. So, whether you're a team lead or a CEO or a founder, just the fact that your personal values permeate into your personal brand and therefore your corporate brand or the brand of your team, how important that is. And then gosh, how about this quote from Kait? Branding is simple, not easy. And then she teased that out and talked about that, just making me think. And then producing narratives is just so important. And then gosh the story about Sarah Blakely and Spanx, that if you're getting to the end of this episode and you skip through some things, you're going to want to back up and listen to that story. So that's so good. But as we end all of our episodes, it not so much matters what my as the host insights were, but it really matters as to what your insights were. Thanks for listening to The Insight Interviews- Powered by REWIRE. If you got any value at all from today's show, a little nugget all the way up to some big, huge insight, please do us a solid by subscribing, recommending, rating, and reviewing us on Apple podcast Spotify, by Google or wherever it is that you receive your episode. That stuff really matters to us, and it allows us to continue interviewing more and more awesome people. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.  

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Thanks for reading. If you got any value at all from this episode, a little nugget all the way up to some big huge insight, please do us a solid by subscribing, recommending, rating, and reviewing us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or Google. That stuff matters to us, and it allows us to continue interviewing more awesome people.




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