Cynthia Johnson - Be Proactive about your personal Brand

In this Episode of Wiley on Business with Authors - I chat with Cynthia about some key decisions to make when it comes to personal branding.    It was her book Platform: The Art and Science of Personal Branding the helped lead me to this very podcast.   

Cynthia Johnson is an entrepreneur, marketing professional, author, and keynote speaker. She is Co-Founder at Bell +Ivy, an integrated marketing communications firm in Santa Monica, CA, and Las Vegas, NV.   She is co-founder and Chairman at WonderKey Collective, a nonprofit focused on collecting and redistributing corporate technology to foster youth. Cynthia is an Advisory Board member for The Millennium Alliance, a leading technology, business, and educational advisory firm serving Fortune 1000 C-Level executives. She published her first book, Platform: The Art and Science of Personal Branding, in 2019 with Penguin Random House.

 
Cynthia has been a keynote speaker for companies and events such as Alibaba Group in China, World Government Summit in Dubai, Global Ventures Summit in Indonesia and Mexico, and Web Summit in Lisbon, among others. She has been involved in influencer and marketing campaigns for PayPal, Walmart, American Express Business Platinum Card, IBI, and several other leading brands.  Cynthia was listed as top personal branding experts by Entrepreneur, top 50 marketers on SnapChat by Mashable, top 12 Female Entrepreneurs that Inspire by Darling Magazine, and top 20 people in SEO by Guardian. She is a contributing columnist to Entrepreneur and has had work published in Forbes, TIME, and several other industry-specific and top-tier publications. She published her first book, Platform: The Art and Science of Personal Branding, in February 2019 with Penguin Random House.

Transcript

Jake Wiley: 0:03

Hello and welcome to Wiley on Business with Authors. A podcast where we talk with the authors that business leaders are reading. It's a known fact that highly successful leaders are generally voracious readers, and that a great book can be one of the most efficient proxies for experience. My name is Jake Wiley and over my nearly two decades of business experience and client service, owning a business, as well as being a CFO, I've had the opportunity to see the direct impact great books, and thought leaders have had on business successes. I've had the incredible fortune to be able to sit down and chat with the authors of the books, the leaders we look up to are reading and share some of the backstory and insights that led to these thought provoking books directly with you. This week, we're joined by Cynthia Johnson, a leader in the social media space and author of platform, the art and science of personal branding. Cynthia was listed as a top personal branding expert by entrepreneur, a top 50 marketer on Snapchat, a top 12 female entrepreneur that inspires by darling magazine, and one of the top 20 people in SEO by guardian. She's a contributing columnist to entrepreneur and has that worked published in Forbes, time, and several other industry specific and top tier publications. Having had to reinvent myself as a result of the pandemic. I'm especially excited to have Cynthia as my first guest, because it was her book platform that I picked up in early 2020. That helped me put strategy behind my personal brand. And even more relevant, this very podcast you're now listening to. Well, Cynthia, thank you so much for joining me, I know, you probably do know this, because I tagged you Not only that, but I'm a huge fan, I read your book.

Cynthia Johnson: 1:46

I really love what you've done. So I'm just excited that we get to chat. That Thank you so much. I listened to the podcast, and I you know, I know some of the people that you've had on or having on and I think these these are great conversations because that, you know, it's not every day that you get to talk about the moment they got you to the next step or the fail, right, the big everyone wants to know how you won in the in a five minute conversation chooses a failure that happens first, so so thank you for for making space for this.

Jake Wiley: 2:20

Yeah, this is this is great. I mean, you know, not to make your head too big. But I think it was your book that got me started. That kind of ultimately led to the podcast, which is pretty cool for me. So I'm excited that you're here. Thanks so much. Well, cool, I guess getting started. I mean, if you don't mind, share a little bit about like, where you are, what's going on what's important in your world these days?

Cynthia Johnson: 2:45

Yeah, so lots going on. I fell in IB. We're a digital marketing agency based in Santa Monica in Las Vegas. I guess now we're actually national, right? We we've got employees that have moved all over. And we've got a huge team of remote workers globally. so thin clients. We work on a lot of employer branding campaigns, personal branding campaigns, and strategic digital marketing for your really not so sexy businesses like insurance and health care. But on the employer branding side, we work with, you know, some amazing large corporations and small hospital companies. And that's been really exciting. We also just founded a nonprofit. So wonder ki collective Inc is the name and what we're doing, both as an organization, a company and as a team, because of, you know, all of our leadership is involved, as we're taking corporate technology, refurbishing it and redistributing it, redistributing it to foster youth. That's so that Yeah, so those are the big projects and in my life right now. And everything else is a no just comes and goes. I jump into lots of things with a big people person, a project person. So if something comes along that sparks my interest, or the person is interesting, I'd like to jump on board and Syria. But those are the two main focuses.

Jake Wiley: 4:26

That's, that's super cool. And I guess just going back to the first point you made about having more of a distributed team. Is that a COVID related thing? Or is that something that was always kind of in the plans and it just worked out really well?

Cynthia Johnson: 4:38

So it's really interesting. You start a business. I always think you know how you do it, you should do with somebody trust, who's the other half of your brain, right? The part that you don't use, they should be using that to their fullest. And my business partner is that guy. He loves an office. I, on the other hand, not a huge office person. So we we've been testing with, you know, different ways of allowing people to work remote and having small locations and work from anywhere policy. But COVID really allowed me to put this theory to the test full force. And it worked, right, and people still do their jobs. And it turns out that with a little bit of freedom, you know, there are plenty of people that do better. They do faster, they do it with more autonomy. And because of that autonomy, there's just more thrill and passion behind the work. And so we've, we've kept our two offices, they we downsize them a bit, because we can't have so many people in in one space. But we we allow everyone to work from from anywhere. So as long as you know, there are there, it gets a little tough when people start wanting to move overseas, and we're like, how does this even work? How do we pay you? Bitcoin? Which has been a tricky, a tricky hurdle for my business partner to help us get over this side of the business. But yeah, no, that's, that's where we're at now. And I'm excited, I'm excited. I think it's the we were heading, I think the world is heading there slowly, you know, and I think for all of the negative things that came with, quote, COVID, in quarantine some of the positive, or we got to see how people play when the cards are down, and how they show up, when we can, you know, as a world, just made these assumptions, that if when people were in an office, they were going to do the work or people didn't follow a structure, they wouldn't they wouldn't do the work or they too much free time or free space, then the work would suffer. And the truth is, that's not that's not the case. So it's been really exciting to watch the experiment come out as such positive feedback.

Jake Wiley: 7:07

Yeah, that's, that's cool. And I think, you know, another positive aspect of COVID is that, you know, in my, my work, my line of work, what I do on a day to day basis is, I was out in the field, talking to people every day. And you know, we got sent home, and it was packet ups and, you know, get behind your computer. And I think within two weeks, you know, I was out there looking for some guidance on how to get there. And that's how I found your book, right. So that's why I picked it up is because as I figure out how to change the way I do what I do, you know, in this new environment, I gotta start and I got to get all the all my ducks in a row. So I think that, you know, when you think about your book, you know, here's your first book, right?

Cynthia Johnson: 7:51

First in that first and only at the moment. Sounds like there's a whole other story there. But maybe maybe another day. Yeah.

Jake Wiley: 8:04

You know, there's, there's so much information in the book. And there's so many different things to tackle that like more than it was, you know, it's almost overwhelming, but in a positive way of like, there's just so many different ways to go about how to tackle social media and kind of that presence that you're trying to build. But I guess the most pressing question I have is, why did you write the book.

Cynthia Johnson: 8:27

I wrote the book. Because there was a point where I was, we had another agency that was acquired by this, this company. And through a series of events, we were forced to sort of test these employee branding campaigns to improve the corporate brand, because the corporate brand was going through a PR crisis, and essentially, wasn't as valuable as the human capital. And so through this experiment, and I think just some of the things happening in the world at the time, it became really obvious that the these people, normal people had an extreme amount of value. And that companies were important because those people were there, not the other way around. And so I felt really inspired to talk. And the other thing is, when you talk about personal branding, it's been pushed down and given this negative, you know, like connotation and then people have been, oh, I don't want to package myself and the truth is, you've already started you went online, you went, you went to a wedding, someone took a picture of you. And but no one was really talking to the normal person saying, hey, how, like, how do I how do I use social media? How do I use media so that I don't have to keep making lateral moves in my career, so that, you know, I can leave and whether it's Started family and get an MBA and go back into the workforce, not 10 steps behind because my LinkedIn isn't updated or whatnot. And so through just my experience of what I was able to do, working in a company being an, you know, pawn inside of this bigger game, I was like this, there are people that need this. And I sat down and I wrote, I wrote a proposal. And I sent it to my agent who had been trying to get me to write a book for two years about other topics. And I was like, this is it. And I had a book deal and seven days, it was really crazy.

Jake Wiley: 10:38

That's a, that's a, that's an amazing story. And I think that he, one of the things that you talked about, kind of resonates with kind of Tony Shay's mentality at Zappos, right? empowering their employees to kind of be their own people and, and having the faith in the trust and the value of like, the mass of people, as opposed to like, what the organization represents. And he definitely see the other side of it, where it's like, don't do anything, you know, like, we don't want you to post something that could expose us to liability.

Cynthia Johnson: 11:07

Yeah, well, and that's, you know, that's the other part of it right is is, companies don't give their employees framework they don't get, they don't tell them the rules, and then they expect them to play by the rules. And the truth is, there are no rules, until until there are no Someone has to think of them, write them down and make sure that it gets to people but you know, influences is becoming increasingly decentralized. Every single day, we it is not, it isn't uncommon to not have a phone, it is a it is or is extremely uncommon to not have a phone, it is very uncommon to have a phone with a camera on it, it is neutral, and you're still in the minority, if you don't have a social media platform that could go live at any second, somewhere on your phone. And so you, you hire these people. And and then you just instead of figuring out how to, you know, give them the guidelines, the tools, the resources to be a human being and also work for you, you just shut it off, and you shut it down. And you simply say, No, we'll just we'll start with we won't do. Because we're scared. I've also found working with lots of companies, both as an agency and internally, I worked on the platform side of life streaming website. So I'm familiar on both ends of what this looks like. And it's really interesting that you would hire someone, and then immediately set the tone of I don't trust you. It's like, I I'm gonna hire you to do this job to represent my business. And in some capacity, whether it's in an internal employee reading the books, or you're facing Cust customers, but I won't allow you to represent our company in any other way online. And like, it doesn't, it just doesn't, it doesn't work. And unlike companies who are, are trying to trap their employees into this world of you can't do anything, you're going to fail. Like, I say that very confidently, like you are, you're you're failing already. And if you work for one of those companies, you should quit, right? Because they won't be around. You can't put people in a box anymore. We have access to too much information and too many other opportunities. And an even whether it takes five years or 10 years, it starts to come to the surface, the happiness, the frustration, the bullying, you know that or how that's how it feels when you're a company like you can't, you can't do that. So our model is given the resources, you know, education, and the parameters and see what happens.

Jake Wiley: 13:51

In you know, let's just take the extreme, let's say you really have no parameters, right? Have you seen companies that are just, you know, almost kind of like the Zappos mentality of like, just go fix it? Oh, yeah. And it not work, I guess, you know, like, we're the big fear. Everybody is like, this is gonna blow up. This is gonna be terrible. We're gonna have people go off on crazy tangents. But have you ever seen that happen, you know, are people's worst fears actually coming true or not?

Cynthia Johnson: 14:17

So it's funny, because on one side I've seen and this is really inspiring that we ran an employer branding campaign with Walmart, and Walmart employees. And they're like, here's the password, take it over, like, people run with it. And you can see some of the amazing content that's coming out of the stores now. You know, they're like, there was the grumpy granny who was taking pictures out of a store, right. And I think even Elon wanted her on the show. Amazing press, super happy employees. They just ran another campaign with Katie Couric, where they interview employees doing things like having a better diet, or reading books. Nothing to do with Walmart. Right. It's just it's demonstrating how important the people that work there are. And yes, Walmart benefits from that, where I've seen it go wrong is in, specifically in things like health care, things or, or finance, wealth management, where people are unintentionally breaking laws, right? Like a doctor, for instance, or a med student, posting an X ray, not realizing that the person's name is in the corner of that X ray, or, you know, those are when you get into those fields, there's a whole separate set of standards that we do we work with hospitals, and we work in healthcare to me to help ensure that that doesn't happen. I'll tell you love, love them dearly, doctors. Because, you know, they're they're so smart. And they're so interested in what they're doing this sometimes they think that the little details can sometimes break. But but that's where making sure everyone understands the rules is really important, the reinforced, but at the lower, not lower, but you know, I guess lower level employee tier, right, so your doctor versus let's say, you know, front desk person at the hospital, like I said, we see more mistakes with the doctors than we do the front desk person.

Jake Wiley: 16:30

So I think what you're what you're really saying is that the tone from the top is don't do it. But it's not the people that they're telling don't do it to that are the problem. It's generally the folks that would be saying, like, you shouldn't do this. So the ones that create all the issues anyway. Yes, yes. From a social media perspective, you know, you've got somebody like me, I went and got the book, because I needed some guidance and some frameworks is like, what are you supposed to do? How are you supposed to do it? How often are you supposed to do it were like, how do you get started? Yeah, I guess, given some advice for folks that are listening today that are looking for, like, what is the lowest line, lowest line fruit that they can go out and kind of tackle right away? And see the biggest bang for the buck?

Cynthia Johnson: 17:17

Yeah, so the first thing you want to do is I call it ego surfing, but it's just searching yourself, right? This that, yes, having a book, you know, and even in life, you know, you read the book, there's a lot of how to kind of things in there. But when you get into the How to, by the time a book is written, printed, I mean, from the time I started the proposal for that book, my book, and the time that it was published two years, and I wrote in the first six months. So from six months to the time, it was published a year and a half later, the internet changes. So when you get into like, conceptual thoughts, it's more about changing the way you think about something. The why are you doing it is a lot more, you know, can be more important than than what you're doing, and how you're doing it is more important than what you're doing. And in this case, I'd say search yourself, right? See what's already out there about you. And, and that there's so search your phone number, search your email, search your wife, your husband, whoever it is, right? Have your mom searched for you, if your mom can find it, someone else can find it. There's even no idea how many times I've found, you know, just scrolling through old Facebook profile pictures, it's like, here's this now stellar executive, but you scroll back to 2008. And they're doing a keg stand on party and you're like, Whoa, we should block that image. You know, you don't have to say goodbye. But the other thing is checking all of your your security settings on the platforms, everything from Amazon to Yelp, right. We've turned down clients because of their Yelp reviews. Because if the some of the things people will say on Yelp, and they think no one's reading is atrocious. So I would say start there because you'll feel safer. putting content on top of a clean platform on a clean surface than you will putting it out into the unknown. Right. And you don't know what's, what's out there about you? And I promise you, there's something right, there's something that you wouldn't you just want to get rid of. The second part is make sure it's up to date, right? I would say right, right? Your most impressive, the most impressive things you've done, right? There's your who you worked with, what schools you want, you've gone to all these different elements of who you are, and I have a sheet I can send you and kind of how to do it, and then hand it off to three or four other people and tell them hey, circle The three most important pieces of information on hearing. And it's interesting because it's usually the same information circled, and it's never what you think it's going to be. It's always, you know, we, as people tend to think the most important thing, or the thing that took us the longest to do is the most important thing we've ever done, or was the most difficult for us was the most important. And the truth is, it's not people see, where they place importance is, is tends to be in lighter areas that they can digest easily. So I would say, to do that, and up to update your profiles, you know, and this is, if you've never did anything else, update your profiles to reflect who you are now. And if you walk away with just doing that, you've done something right, you've done something to push yourself in the right direction, because whether it's a new job, or new way of doing things, like the your online presence is the first impression. And we don't know that very rarely, you know, very rare instances, will we know if our first impression went well or not, because we can't see someone searching us on on Facebook, or incognito or, you know, what they saw what they didn't like, or even if they were looking in the first place?

Jake Wiley: 21:28

Yeah, one of the points that you brought up, about searching yourself, and then the book you really go into, and you just set it as the incognito setting, right is to take off the filter that like Google already puts on your computer in your browser, when you go search, it's looking for things that are common are tied to what you've searched before, when you take it off, and you make the same search and you get a really different result. And I found that was that was really interesting. Yeah.

Cynthia Johnson: 21:57

I had a friend who he, he was like the, the Tinder hacker. He basically built this massive mailing list by making himself look like the Tinder pic of the day. So he became the most swipe right person on Tinder. And it was this hilarious growth hacking campaign. And he started a company where he would teach guys how to improve their Tinder profiles. And he taught me that you could fit you find someone through their phone number. And you can find in all the way the back channels it's like searching incognito searching on channels, they won't, they wouldn't consider maybe cleaning up, right. You know, not everyone goes straight to Google. Some people go to Facebook's other people are looking at you know, Instagram or whatever it is. Yeah. incognito, on the passing it off to someone else, just do a search and see what they what they find just to have a comparison.

Jake Wiley: 22:54

Very, very interesting. And I think the other point you brought up, you know, going back a second is asking somebody else, right? Like, what's, what's the most important thing about me like when you think about me, what, what comes to mind. And your point about it being very different. You know, I was like, I asked my wife that question, right. And the response I got was, okay. Didn't, okay. It's a guy that, you know, it was like, all right, well, I think if you see that, then other people who too, and that needs to be reflected in who I am, you know, that I'm putting out there in the world. And I thought that was two pieces of like, advice is like, kind of take your own filter off.

Cynthia Johnson: 23:37

Yeah, you can. It's so it's so difficult to be objective about yourself. It is in really, really hard. You are with yourself all day long. And all of your thoughts and all of your interpreted reactions and perceptions of how or how people perceive you. And, you know, you'll find that people have bigger ambitions for you than you have for yourself most of the time.

Jake Wiley: 23:59

No, that's pretty cool. That's a cool statement. That's nice to hear. You're like, oh, wow, you really think? Yeah. So, yeah, I think that starting starting there really, really important. So you know, that's the baseline, right? You've done that you've kind of cleaned it up, you've got yourself out on on the networks, I guess what networks? Right? Where should we be? And you know, does that different from person to person? I mean, I know the answer is yes. But yeah, hear your answer.

Cynthia Johnson: 24:32

So it is different from from person to person. I say. There's a couple things, right. So if you have a really common name, you want to be in a lot of places. The common name you have in common, we have common names, like how do you show up and be the most important, Johnson it's really hard. So one way to do it is to create a lot of accounts, make sure that they match so There's a, I talked about this in the book a little bit, but accom are a tool called no 1k and o w e m.com. And it'll actually sign you up for, you know, 1000s of social media sites at once. With and you just make sure your bio matches, make sure that your image file is your name. So, find an image, make your profile picture, make sure that that file name is your name, and then just put it out there, because the more information you tell the internet, the less it makes up for you, first of all, so if you, if you have a more common or less common name, and maybe a mug shot online, I would definitely do this, push all of that to the bottom. And then where you stay active should be if you're going to should be where you spend your time, right, like what's going to benefit you the most, if you're looking for a job, obviously, LinkedIn, if you're spending time on Instagram, and Facebook, but it doesn't serve you as like a human being in the workforce or your career, whatever you're using the internet for, just make sure that your privacy settings are, are really, you know, like strict. So you know, what people can see. You know, I can compare this to credit scores, when someone looks at your credit score, you know, they looked, you know, what they're looking for, and you know, what they're going to find, and that's exactly how you should be online, you know, there can be bad stuff, you just have to make sure that it's not accessible to everybody. Like people make me make mistakes. But, um, so definitely they are but for career people, you know, I would say, just put it out there with a purpose and intent if you're going to do it, right. Don't Don't let the internet take advantage of you don't want these platforms take advantage of your content, you should be taking advantage of them.

Jake Wiley: 26:52

Right, I guess being thoughtful about what you get yourself into, you know, in these kind of feeds, and you know, getting sucked into stuff. And you know, it's like, once it's out there, it's out there. What you comment on, right?

Cynthia Johnson: 27:07

Right? Like, we've seen this happen a million times, right? People lose their entire careers over a comment on a post that they didn't think people are watching you. Like, they're gonna see that nasty comment, and they're gonna follow you down the rabbit hole into your world. And so the way you know, you want to make it work for you, not, you don't wanna work for it. It's always something don't make it. If you become if your goal is to be an influencer, and do it that way, that's fine. But know that that's a job. Right? It's a job. And if you don't plan on making this a second job than it should, it should really be something you set up and use thoughtfully. So that doesn't hurt you when you're trying to use it to help something.

Jake Wiley: 27:59

Yeah, I think that's spot on. Yeah, the thing about it even even if like follows you, it might not be immediate, you know, like, the takeaway is that, if you're looking for something that's high profile down the road, you're going to get a thorough, thorough look over. And all those things, you know, that 510 1520 years ago that are out there on the internet, whatever it may be like, they can still find that. So

Cynthia Johnson: 28:24

also Don't, don't freak out, if you find something you like, oh, like, I'm aging myself here. But my live journal is that how do I get it? Right? I would say in these cases, Google cease and desist letter, download it from the internet, and then send it be your own fake lawyer. They'll take it down. Nobody wants that, you know, just get creative. But protect yourself.

Jake Wiley: 28:53

That's awesome advice. So let's, let's turn the page a little bit and talk about what you're doing more with the agency side, right. I know, you're helping people like me find our way in this new brave new world that continues to emerge. But can you think about more on an enterprise level? What's working best right now?

Cynthia Johnson: 29:17

Yeah. So what we found is the first problem one, right is that the opportunities are hard to see if you don't have the information in front of you. So collecting and sort of cataloging people in your organization based on the their desire to participate, right, so they opt in. And we start by collecting as much information like what else are you involved in? What do you like to do? What are you like to talk about? Where are you right? So in the week, we have a client that has a lot like sales teams, for instance, all over the country. different facilities. And what we did. So you have sales teams, you have doctors, and you have like three different departments, they wanted to kind of get involved. What we need to know is where are you? What have you done before, right? So a doctor's resume looks very different from a salespersons resume. But she'd be interested to know that many sales people have clinical backgrounds, because that's how they're able to sell the product or service. So we, we create these very dynamics or profiles, and we make them searchable. And then we go after different opportunities. So local media, local news, events, podcasts, whatever it is, and they go, and they speak on subjects related to business. And they, they represent the company, but they do it from a place of having expertise in something. So one of the one of our clients, I mean, we ran this campaign, they were in everything from New York Times to Washington Post. And it was just because they have doctors. And so we create this network of doctors, clinicians, sales, people that understand this very one topic very well. And we push it out there. And as it comes back, we sort of sort through the employees and the people and find the right fit. And because we have such a vast grouping of people to pull from, we're able to do it quickly and faster than other organizations. We really enjoy the long term campaigns, specifically with organizations that are cataloguing their team and employees, because we can look at it and say, here's all the positive press positive sentiment, we also create media kits for all of them, help them create content, put it out on social media, so that there's by lines coming from their experts. And it really builds the authority of these facilities, or these organizations or doctors. And it does it in a way that's decentralized enough to where it's not one person, one doctor, one employee, that's kind of capitalizing and taking over the majority, but it's really broken up across borders, and states and departments. So that nobody's is really is everyone's benefiting or has the opportunity to benefit. But nobody is kind of becoming a superstar, right? It's like, because that could that that causes problems. The same way hiring a spokesperson will cause problems. Right? Yeah. subway.

Jake Wiley: 32:35

Okay, so if I was, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put it this in my words and see if I got it. Right. Yeah, so you've got a big organization, right? And we're talking about the social media, and there's really kind of like the tip of the spear. And then there's like the back end, right? So the tip of the spear is and who, who's interested in kind of participating on the front end of what we're doing, we've got messages, we want to get out, you know, the organization needs to be the one right? Like, this is not a marketing campaign. These are people. So we've got some people that say, they raised their hand and say, I want to be that person, you know, I want to be part of the team. That's the tip of the spear. So messages go out. And then there's, you know, interest that comes back in and you say, Okay, well, that's great. You know, we've got somebody in Philadelphia that's interested in x. Well, it doesn't go back to the person that wrote the article that was based out of California, you know, you say, No, no, let me connect you with the person in Philadelphia, that's an expert in exactly what you're asking. Yes. So you kind of have the front end of like, we're generating interest. And then we have the back end is like, we have this broad network of like, expert people that we can attack in every single market and every single kind of segment of the business.

Cynthia Johnson: 33:49

Yes, exactly. And the the other part is, you get you cross industry, because we've had, you know, people that were x professional athletes, or x beauty queens or they had these lives that existed beforehand, and other this expert in this other thing, which makes them important to a whole different kind of media, still the right audience, and we can branch out in that way, which supports marketing and support sales, which supports brand awareness if and it localizes the content. You can look there, you know, there are hometown heroes everywhere. And and that's important.

Jake Wiley: 34:32

Yeah, I was gonna say and I think that with what kind of resonates with me on that is if you think about most companies probably take the approach and I've seen this a million times where it's like, here's how we do things like we expect everybody to participate. And not everybody's really interested or feels comfortable, you know, doing certain things or like writing little post or trying to get out there or speaking in front of the media or presenting on a panel like that's okay. Yeah, some people do some people thrive in that environment. And you're kind of what you're saying is you're like, let's, let's flip it a little bit. And let's bifurcate let's, let's take the teams and find out where their talents are. And then like, let's really focus on that. So if you're comfortable, being in front of people, in marketing, in kind of doing the webinars or whatever it is great, let's get you out there. And if you're not, but like you are the renowned expert in this particular certain thing, or you are the hometown hero, as soon as something comes up in your area, you're going to be the one that we set, and therefore, like, everybody's still involved, right, but it's just kind of bifurcating your teams. And you know, maybe it's try for catering whatever the word may be, but getting the right people doing the right things, that everybody wins,

Cynthia Johnson: 35:48

everybody wins. The other thing that happens, which is really interesting, is the internal communication improves. Because when you start seeing the people you work with, in media news, we had one, one woman we worked with, she was the head, she was like the chief HR person, right? Turns out she was she's 68 years old or seven years old, at the time. Her weekend hobby was like, racing, like driving race cars, she would race them. And now you know, we had an opportunity to create content internally for the company, because everyone has to deal with HR. So everyone knew who she was, and to find out that she was actually a racecar director on the weekend, you know, you have, you have those really amazing improvements internally. And then also, what happens is, there's a bunch of people that initially are like, all in, but as everyone else sees how it works, those numbers double and a triple. And you see an improvement on the participation of the executives and the higher level players because now they're seeing how the benefit, right, and they're sort of getting pushed to do more to keep up which is which is great. And it just creates a new kind of, like dynamic with with the culture is like people now they know their coworkers a little bit better. And they you know, they have things to talk about, like the internet's blow up with much, you know, with actual news, not just a blog written by someone in an office somewhere doing marketing for the company. So I think those are those are also benefits to the organization, but from a marketing and brand sentiment and thought leadership, when there's no greater thought leadership, or even marketing on its get an SEO, you want backlinks gonna get a PR you want mentioned you want, you know, to understand your local, one local facility over another, the best way to do is by understanding who your team members are and getting them involved. So it's great, like first, you would probably jump right in, right, and maybe three of your coworkers wouldn't, and until they see you successful, and then all of a sudden, like, let's do this. The other thing we do is we help create the social media structure and processes for the company. So we'll go in, and we make sure that there's checks and balances. So if you're going to post something out, like Oh, hey, Jake was was in, you know, on Fox News, and we want to post it, you know, that goes back to corporate, make sure that the it's approved and whatnot, and everyone, we also host links quarterly trainings for most of the organizations we work with. So anybody who wants to participate, just join these webinars, and we walk them through how to post and how to handle content and make sure we're available if they ever have questions. Because, again, there's that is telling someone to be creative. And then there's telling someone to be creative in a box. And you'll find it gets more creative when you give them the box. You just give them this like very wide room to work with. So it's very, very custom based on what the needs of the organization are. But at the at the core. It's just finding your people telling stories that align with what they do and making them the expert. It's like, how do you get and then also, how do you grab the attention? If you're, if your teams are going after a 1% of the population? How do you how do you gravitate? How do you stand out? You don't do it by doing that thing or doing the same? Right? You do it by hiring people to stand out and then helping them stand out more. Right.

Jake Wiley: 39:42

Which is what everybody says they do. Right? Like we hired the best. We've got the best team. Yeah. All right, well, that'd be the best.

Cynthia Johnson: 39:49

Let them be the best. Yes, that could be the motto of the company. It's like don't end And on the flip side. Just letting you encouraging people at companies to not allow your, your career to take a backseat to this organization, I think those those days are gone. You know, like you, it's fine to have a job and like, in certain roles, if that's what you want to do, and like, you don't have to participate, that's totally fine. But if you do, and you feel like you're being stifled because you work for a company that doesn't trust you, how can you trust them? Right? Yeah, that's a great point. I think there's a lot of smart people out there that are on one sided bad relationships with organizations like to stop it. Yeah. Yeah.

Jake Wiley: 40:44

So I'm gonna, I'm gonna try it, like, you've dropped a lot of great knowledge on them to try and like, summarize what you told me, or what you told all of us here. So as an individual starting point, search yourself, do a unfiltered search of yourself on the internet. And then, you know, get ready to figure out like what the world sees of you when they search you, right? So you know, might might be a little bit shocking, then to, you know, create a plan on what you want the world to see of you. And then you probably need to ask for help. Not what you're thinking is necessarily the right brand, but bring in other people to give you their perspectives. Yes, to help craft your message, right, and then get out there and then be intentional about what you're doing. Right? Okay. If you're an organization, you need to look at your social media strategy and realize that your people are your assets, right? They're not liabilities. And then you've got to figure out a way to structurally empower them to be assets for the company in the marketplace. And one of the ways that you can do that is to kind of bifurcate your, your talent pool and say like, if you're interested in this, let's bring you in to the tent. And we'll talk about how to do this how to do it effectively, and will give you a platform to shine. If you're not necessarily interested in being on the front end tip of the spear, you know, we're gonna bring you out on the back end, because we did still hire you, Because you are the best at what you do. And just because you don't necessarily want to be up presenting in front of folks, that's okay. But we're going to get interest that's driven by the tip of the spear. And we're going to pull you in there. So now you've got a whole team that's working together. And I think, as an aside, a really good story is that like I had a post about renewable energy, I used to work in that field for a while. And as a result, somebody else in the organization was like, Oh, that's super cool. We've got this renewable energy client that has a question, I would love to chat with you. That would have never happened. If I hadn't made that post, which I think is like, just spot on to your point is like you get out there and all of a sudden people see who you are. And you get brought into things that would have never been there before.

Cynthia Johnson: 43:08

Yes, that is the, you know, you should really be around all the time to summarize.

Jake Wiley: 43:18

The last point, which I think is inherent in all this, that you made in the book, and I'm bringing it out, because I think it's super important is like being authentic in your messaging, right. So don't just go out there and post what you think the world wants to hear. Because you're just not going to do it. for the long haul, right? Like, you may do it a couple of times. But if you can be authentic, it's going to bring people to you, right, and it's going to create that sense of community because people can rally around people that they think are authentic. And the conversations that are generated there really make such a big difference, you know, and it works outside of your organization, too. Right? It gives you common threads with people that maybe they're they're a lurker, but you meet them for the first time. And they're like, Oh, so you know, you've got your pilot's license, and I'm like, I do have my pilot's license. Like, I think that's really cool. You know, and you have this great conversation that they have never would have had if I just never said anything.

Cynthia Johnson: 44:15

Yeah, they're like, Hey, I'm trying to make this deal happen. Would you take out we take us out? things that could actually happen. Even maybe you don't want to do that. But I mean, I just think of, yeah, it's the sharing ideas. I think the media part in the social media part and the content writing part, are looked at as a hurdle in a lot of ways. When but if there's, if there's structure and process in place, and checks and balances, which is what our team offer, right, we go when we offer these things. And we, at the corporate level, they still have enough oversight to feel safe, endless, endless opportunity when it comes to internal communications. Cross department interactions on top of marketing and brand sentiment benefit, or reviews even right, like, probably identified 30 companies on Glassdoor that that will never ever ever do this campaign. Fair enough. So yeah, it's, it's great. It's really great to talk to Tom, thank you so much for being such an advocate for the book and reading in. Yeah, I say encourage people, if you have an idea, just, you know, don't ask one person and get no and move on. You know, I, I started and stopped writing a book for years. Until it felt right and what it when it did, it clicked and everything kind of fell together. So don't don't quit. That's awesome. Well, thank

Jake Wiley: 45:52

you for sharing. I think, you know, one. I read the book, and I still learned something today. So thank you. And, yeah, I think your messages great. I appreciate your time. And thanks again. Thank you so much. That concludes this week's show. Thanks for listening. Please leave a review on your favorite podcast platform or directly on the site. Your comments are truly appreciated, good, bad or indifferent and will help make the show better. This is Jake Wiley with Wiley on business and we'll talk again two weeks