How Branding Impacts Small Business Success

How Branding Impacts Small Business Success

June 2018

Content

Featured Speakers

Moderator: 

Emily Stringer, Manager, Executive Advisory Services at MBO Partners

Featured Speaker:

Lynn Miller, Ed. D., Faculty and Portfolio Manager, Women’s Programs at the Center for Creative Leadership

00:03  Introduction of the event, MBO Partners, and speaker

04:10  Introduction of the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL)

05:33  Webinar learning outcomes and agenda

06:10  Brand speak (Coca-Cola and Disney)

11:18  Brand: From competence to competitive advantage

14:38  Leadership brand value sentiment

19:30  Define your current brand

30:50  Agency plans for your brand

45:26  Reinforce your personal leadership brand online

50:34  Q&A

55:55  Closing remarks

Why is branding essential to you as a small business owner? Whether you intentionally spend time building it or not, you have a reputation, and that reputation is your brand. What you deliver and how you deliver it are the foundations of your brand.

It is challenging to grasp and incorporate possible marketing channels into a business, which is why it is necessary to define your market and build an impact by targeting a wider consumer clientele. It is beneficial to take note of the explanation and recommendations provided by the key speaker of this webinar in order to effectively take advantage of their experience in growing your own unique brand.

In this exclusive webinar, Lynn Miller, Faculty and Portfolio Manager for Women’s Programs at the Center for Creative Leadership, discussed the powerful allure of brands and how to develop a distinct brand perspective.

This Q&A-style discussion covered:

  • How to actively manage your brand
  • How to attract the clients you want
  • How your brand can create the impact you are looking for
  • How branding can help your business grow
  • How branding matters to your work as an independent professional

Are you interested in attending the next webinar in the Marketing and Branding series? View our upcoming events.

[00:00:03] Emily Stringer Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar, Independent and Empowered: What does BRAND have to do with it? Featuring Lynn Miller from the Center for Creative Leadership. Next slide, please. Well, if I can, yeah. 

[00:00:27] Emily Stringer  My name is Emily Stringer and I will be moderating the webinar today. A little background on me. I've been with MBO for over seven and a half years. As a consultant services adviser, I respond to requests from independents who are curious about MBO service offerings.This is done through consultation appointments where we learn more about your background needs and determine if MBO services are the right fit for your business of one. Next slide, please.

[00:01:15] Emily Stringer A bit about MBO partners. Our mission statement is to make it easy for independents and their clients to work together. As a high level overview, we offer a complete, all inclusive business operating platform for independent consultants. We take care of the administrative items that are typically outsourced to several different vendors, such as incorporation, contract review, liability insurance coverage, invoicing, expense review and processing, tax withholding and payroll, and access to tax efficient portable benefits. Additionally, we offer a proprietary marketplace for independents called MBO Connect. Here, you can view opportunities from Fortune 500 client partners and find your next independent consulting project. Next slide, please.

[00:02:19] Emily Stringer Now for some housekeeping items on the webinar setup, first and foremost, you can see the controls listed here. Secondly, we will be emailing a slide deck and a recorded copy of the entire webinar to all registrants within the next week. Last, we will be taking questions throughout that will be addressed at the end of the presentation. Any questions that we do not get to will be answered via email after the presentation. Next slide, please.

[00:02:54] Emily Stringer If you want to follow this presentation on Twitter, use #MBOWeb to submit your questions and comments @MBOPartners. Next slide, please.

[00:03:09] Emily Stringer At this time, it is my pleasure to introduce you to our speaker, Lynn Miller. Lynn joined the Center for Creative Leadership in 2008 as a Senior Faculty Member, bringing over 30 years of experience in the education and the business sector. Lynn provides design, development, and facilitation for numerous and diverse CCL clients, enabling them to succeed in developing their leaders and organizations for success. In addition, Lynn was recently promoted to Faculty Manager with responsibility for matching the faculty talent with CCL's clients and in managing the quality and delivery of CCL's global portfolio of women's leadership programs. Lynn, at this time, I'll turn it over to you.

[00:04:04] Lynn Miller Thank you, Emily. I'm so glad to be with you today to talk about leadership brand. First, I want to share a little bit about the organization I represent. The Center for Creative Leadership, known as CCL, is a not for profit organization that studies leaders and what makes them effective. And then we work with organizations to help them fulfill their mission through helping them develop more effective leaders to engage the heartline of their employees. So if you look at this slide, you'll see that we have got the experience. We have over 40 years in the area and each year, we serve over 30,000 leaders worldwide. We have expertise, from our researcher, from our practitioners, from our evaluator, we are fully staffed. We also are global in that we sit and have offices on six different continents and we work with clients from more than a hundred and 35 plus countries. So in 2017, we were ranked number 4 in the world by the Financial Times. So we are in the top ranked area of leadership, education and development. But enough about us, let's talk about today. So today, you know, at the conclusion of our time together, you should be able to answer the following question. So why is managing my brand important? What is my current brand? And is that what I want to be known for? And how can I be a more effective agent for myself by managing my brand? So our agenda in order to get through this is these five areas that I will cover today.

[00:06:07] Lynn Miller So first, let's start with, Brands Speak. So when you think about a brand, I want you to really think about, how is that brand unique? And I've given the example of Coca-Cola to kind of picture it when I'm talking about the elements of how brands speak to you. So what are the characteristics of a brand? What is the relevance, the quality that they bring? What are your expectations when you experience this brand? And does that brand actually deliver what your expectations are? Does it match and often we develop an emotional attachment to that brand. So brands evolve, and if you don't think about that, we have emotional attachment. Just think about the what I call brand wars of Pepsi and Coca-Cola, which are legendary. So I wanted to talk about how Coca-Cola evolves and how they're managing Coca-Cola. So I just thought this slide was very interesting of the different ways that Coke has branded themselves. There are multiple ways that Coca-Cola brands, but they tend to give a tagline. And so, as you'll see from the 1800s all the way to 2018, they seem to develop in their advertising a way that they want you to attach themselves and provide a tagline for you. One of the taglines that if you, on my slide from CCL, that we often use to describe us, it's not the only one, but we often say "leadership is all we do." So with this, I want to give you another famous brand to think about, and that's Disney.

[00:08:12] Lynn Miller So Disney is a company that is extremely competitive, but they're very competitive and very concerned about their brand. So when you think about it, one of the ways that they've taken care of their client base or their customers is really looking at how do we get our leaders, how do we get the organization, our leaders, to really live the brand, because that's extremely important to them. So what they do is they really want leaders to be able to talk about what's the unique differences, what are their organizational goals? How do we, as the business itself inside of Disney, generate a value proposition for our customers and execute it flawlessly? So in order to do this, in order to engage leaders, to engage employees who then engage their customers, leaders have to model it. And this is Disney is well-known for their development opportunities that they give their staff. The other thing is that, as you know, especially with Coca-Cola and with Disney, both of them evolve their value.

[00:09:40] Lynn Miller So now I want you to think about-- Can you get the slide to move? I want you to think about your favorite brand? I just have given you 2, but I want you to have a brand in mind. So when you think about this brand, what would you recommend this brand to others? What would you tell them about this brand? What is unique about it compared to other brands that you use or provide a similar service or similar quality? Can you actually quantify what it is that it does for you? And do you tend to have an emotional attachment to it? And finally, what do you think the owners of this brand do to ensure your experience? Because as I've said, Coca-Cola and Disney, they actually manage their brand quite well and are very concerned. So as an entrepreneur, as a single business owner, whatever your field is, whether you realize it or not, you have a brand. It's how you get your work done. It's what you deliver, but it's also how you deliver it. So like it or not, every day somebody is reviewing you on the impact that you provide.

[00:11:18] Lynn Miller So why is brand important to you? So it's from your competence to a competitive advantage. And that's how I want you to think about brand today is not only managing it, but managing it to give you a competitive advantage, to continue your business, to provide new business, to get you introduced to clients, to leverage the difference that you make to influence your clients, and really to have others recommend you. And so why is this important? So one of the reasons is, it's the research that MBO has actually done. So I wanted to point this out because one of the things that I think is really interesting is, just as CCL has found over its 40 years, is the competition is stiff.

[00:12:14] Lynn Miller There are many more entrepreneurs out there. There are many more independents that are working. Look at this, you now represent about 31% of the US labor force. So think about that, that you have a lot more competition out there, and so you have to stand out. You have to make sure that your brand is known. So I have a question for you. So we're going to do a poll and Emily's going to help me with this, but how are you actually managing your brand when you think about it? So you can answer, "I manage my brand as rigorously as Disney does",  "I sometimes review what I stand for and how I deliver my value", or "I haven't given it much thought." So take a moment and give us your answers.

[00:13:15] Emily Stringer We'll give everyone about 20 more seconds here to get your answers, and so far we are 54% voted. We have quite a few people who are saying they sometimes review what they stand for and how they deliver their value. A couple more seconds here and we'll go ahead and close this poll. So what we have would be 20% of our participants saying they manage their brand as rigorously as Disney, 51%, vast majority, saying they sometimes review what they stand for and how they deliver their value. 29% saying they have not given it much thought.

[00:14:01] Lynn Miller Okay, so 70% of you really could use some help in thinking about your brand. That's really the essence of the talk today. So I want to come and talk about your personal brand. Can you get our slides to move a little bit more?

[00:14:30] Lynn Miller There we go. So when you think about your brand, it's a collection so when you're thinking about developing your own brand statement, what do you stand for? A really good place to start is a collection of your values. What do you actually stand for? What are the offerings and how does that make you consistent in delivery? So one of the things, you know, and when I think about and I'm going to give you some more examples of that I used to think about your personal values and how that really represents your business. It could be something as achievement, responsibility, integrity, competence, love, courage. What is it, the brand that really the values  that really sell you and differentiate you from others? I want to give you a couple of people to look at their brand statement.

[00:15:42] Lynn Miller So this is Amanda Steinberg, and she's the founder of Daily Worth, and Daily Worth is a business that is geared towards women and building their personal wealth. And you could see from her site that she has over 1,000,000 subscribers, so she gives lots of advice. You know, you can go out to her site for yourself, but I want you to see how she puts her brand statement. So look at what she values intelligence, her charisma, her optimism for developing self-worth. So that's how she really thinks about what she's bringing to the table as far as her values. The next person I want you to think about is Oprah Winfrey, and of course, you're probably very familiar with the founder of the Oprah Winfrey Network. And look how she positioned her brand, and what she values. So she values and thinks of herself as inspiring and teaching others. I don't know that I would have really branded her that way, but this is personally what she values and what is important to her, and that's how she sells herself. So I've got one more person that I want you to look at, but I'm not going to give you their brand. I want you to help us define them. So when you think of our former first lady, what might be her value proposition? And so I'm asking you to chat some ideas for, if you were going to write a brand statement with those types of things, what would be her value statement that she would have? So if you'll take a few minutes or a couple of minutes and just chat with us.

[00:17:50] Emily Stringer At this time, you can enter any comments, any ideas that you would like to share into the questions field and send those our way, and we will define the brand of former first lady Michelle Obama. Okay, we have a couple of things coming in. Passionate, real, self-confident, more than a wife, smart, partner or equal, independent, strong, eloquent listener to empower, equip and mobilize people and groups, compassion, family, community and strength, well-being, a team builder, integrity, leadership, transparent, to be a vessel of love, grace and empowerment, educated and informed. All pretty on the money, wouldn't you say, Lynn?

[00:18:51] Lynn Miller I would say that, and the thing that's so interesting is we had no difficulty coming up with Michelle Obama's brand, of course, because she was in the forefront and very, you know, for 8 years we saw her as the first lady. But also how easy would it be for your clients to brand you if we put your picture up? What would they be saying? What could they chat if we asked them? What would the labels be that they would say about you? So when you define your own brand, you want to really think about not with your aspirational brand is, but you want to be realistic about what your current brand is and that's really your reputation. What are people saying you deliver? And extremely important, how are you delivering it? So it's important to get really clear on what you are seeing at, and so I've got a way for you to look at motivations, values, differentiation, impact and marketability. And so as we look at the-- our next slide.

[00:20:18] Lynn Miller These are the questions that after the WebEx is over, that I really would like you to take some time and this is how you begin to really evaluate your brand. So you start with yourself, and you ask yourself, what motivates you? What are your value drivers? And then, what do you stand for? What do you actually offer? And I want you to think about the competition out there. What's unique about you? What differentiates you from the others that deliver a similar service? What result can people expect, can businesses expect when they work with you? And what makes you stand out and please take some time to kind of contemplate and reflect, and I would suggest that you actually wipe them out.

[00:21:19] Lynn Miller So when you think about values, I wanted to give you just a list. It's easier to start with a large list and then to think about what do I always value, what do I sometimes value, and what do I never value? And you can get, you know, you can just Google values and come up with a whole list or you can sit down and say, let me just think about what are my values, what are the words that really resonate with them, and write them out. And I expect you not to stop to get 10 to 15. You know, then I want you to cut that list down to 5. What are my top values? Then cut that list down to 3. And that's the things that should be driving your business. Not only will it keep you authentic, it will keep you happy that you can match what you're passionate about, what you feel, what you value with doing your business. And it might be some of the reasons why you got into business for yourself.

[00:22:33] Lynn Miller Then I want you to take a moment and-- what are you known for? what do you differentiate, so when you think about this, you know, are you known as a turnaround artist? Can you come in or are you known for your project management skills in difficult situations? So what's your nook? There's plenty of people that can project manage. What do you particularly-- what's unique about you? Are you known for your expertize in a particular area? Have you really exploited that and let people know? Are you bringing that uniqueness out as you battle the competition and bring value to your client?

[00:23:17] Lynn Miller The next is in what ways are you making a difference? Now, these are the things that you often think about putting on your LinkedIn or your website or your elevator speeches. You tend to play a lot on your impact. What is it that you're leveraging? What result can people expect? But the other things to know what drives you are extremely important.

[00:23:44] Lynn Miller And then finally on this, as you're looking at it. What's your marketing plan? Do you actually have a marketing plan? How do you sell yourself? and how do new people find out about you? And how do you present yourself online? So what is your current brand? But before we make you define that and have you define it. I want you to look at another person's brand. So one more example and I'm going to have you define Parker's. So here's Parker. Parker's known for being decisive, confident, observant, responsive, very driven, risk taker, so you can right there see the value. Known as an expert designer in software and hardware architecture, that experience. And this person, Parker's focus is really going to be on project management, a software installation. But look at one of the things that's extremely important is complete projects with an agreed upon timeline. So if you were analyzing, if you worked with Parker, this is what you would be asking, what's the value Parker brings? So when you actually think about your favorite brand, what is the value branding? What do you get a sense from Parker that really motivates him or her? What might be a differentiator? Why would you want Parker to work with you? What would be the impact? And also just from the values we talked about, what do you think your concerns might be? So when I looked at Parker, one of the first things that came to me was Parker is known for being decisive, confident, risk taker. I'm wondering how much of a risk taker am I going to be dealing with? And then as a consultant coming in, this is very decisive, if it's going to be inclusive? Are they going to bring other people into decision making or do I have somebody that's a renegade that I have to worry about? So you think even though the qualities that Parker is really selling, there might be a downside to it. You know, I have to think about what are the concerns? So for you personally, what are concerns that people might have when they work with you or how they work with you?

[00:26:52] Lynn Miller So I'm going to give you the steps to do and this would be just to build your current brand, one of the things that I haven't asked you to do on your current brand that I really think that you should do and that is to ask a client. How they would evaluate you? What would they say your brand is? Who you could you go to? Who is an advocate for you but who's a realist and would tell you? So one of the best ways to build a brand is another person. I'm going to give you a pretty well-known entrepreneur out of the Atlanta area, the founder of Spanx, and if you know the product, it started out as a pantyhose that had no season and she tells, actually in this, the story of how it started, how the idea started. If you look at Spanx now, if you go to their store or online, you'll see they have a whole extended area of underwear garments for women. But with this, look at what she talks about here, about how she got started. So she has a story and it's kind of an intriguing story of how her business started. You know, as many of these things start, it started out of necessity. So what is your story? If you look at today, in March 2012, she's named one of the world's youngest self-made female billionaires by Forbes magazine and her tagline is "Trust your Gut." Now, we all know that we talk about trusting your gut a lot, but gut is built on experience, so it's not just a whim. It's really built on your own personal experience. I know you all can hear me clicking to the next slide.

[00:29:13] Lynn Miller What is your story? So even though I've asked you to take all of those steps, I also want you to take this step. What inspired you to start your own business? I know some of you are kind of laughing and saying, oh, my God, I just got tired of corporate America, but what was it that really pushed you and decided and what was your story? And then what do you enjoy about doing it? What is it about being your own boss? But what would others be interested in that might be personally for you? But what do you enjoy about working with your customers? With your client? And can you tell a very succinct story as you saw in Sara's? Only took a paragraph to tell. So if somebody asked you, what's your story? How did you start? Do you have an elevator speech, something that can take you to 30 seconds to a minute? To be able to tell succinctly how you got to your point today. So I want to take you in the next direction about once you have your current plan and you've evaluated it.

[00:30:39] Lynn Miller What is it that you have to be an agent for yourself? So this is the marketing and I wanted to really plant the seeds here for you to think about this. So this is a very famous agent, a Hollywood agent, Kevin Huvane. And so the interesting thing about Kevin is he actually was going to grow up to be a lawyer. So he went to law school, but he found out that he had a particular talent and that talent was actually negotiating. And so he worked for a hotel chain. As a part time job, as he was putting himself through college and what he found out was, is that with his personality, he could actually help the people that were in the hotel when there was a problem. He could negotiate a quick solution. If somebody complained about people making too much noise, he could work a deal where he could have them move to a different hotel room or even if they were so unhappy, arranged that they could move to a different hotel. So he had this skill and so, he really got to know some very famous people and they invited him to kind of join their agency. So the interesting thing is you can see his client base there, pictures of very famous people. Now, believe me, he didn't start out with real famous people, but he had another talent, and his other talent was recognized talent. So he actually met Jessica Parker early in her career and found several of these very famous people. So it's not just women that he represents. He's represented Brad Pitt as someone whose very famous. But what I wanted to really project from Kevin is that he built his skill over time. It didn't just come. He found and recognized his negotiation skills. He recognized that he was and a person that can find talent. He happened to love the theater. He spent so much-- he lives in New York, so he spent so much time in the theater, he'd love to meet new talent. And so today he's known as a power agent. But I want you to think that's how we got started. That's his story. But what does he actually do for his client, why does he not only get these people, why do they stay loyal to him? Because certainly, they could have gone to somebody else, but these artists have stayed with him through their career.

[00:33:40] Lynn Miller So when you think about it, what does he actually do? So when you think about what does an agent do for a movie star? You know, they go out, they sell them to other people. They talk about what they could do, what they could produce, what they charge, why you would want them. And remember, he didn't start out with the rich and famous. He helped them become rich and famous. So we had to sell unknown talent to people, to put them in to their movies, in the show, and so he had to negotiate, he had to talk about their quality, what was unique about them, what they stood for, what they could expect if they worked with them. So think about what makes a great talent agent. And what does that do for you? Are you able to sell yourself to new businesses? Are you able to bring out the qualities that you have? Are you able to present yourself in a full light when they don't even know you? Do you think about some of the people that he first worked with? No one knew them. How does he sell a talent that's unknown when you walk into businesses every day that you haven't used to? So how do you do that? So I want you to think about it. Obviously, you do it. But have you ever quantified what actually you are doing, so when you think about this, our next poll comes up. How effective are you at being an agent, you've got your choices here. So I'd like-- Emily, if you can help us launch that poll.

[00:35:36] Emily Stringer Yep, we've got you Lynn. So how effective are you at being your own agent? Very effective, somewhat effective, somewhat ineffective, or I really need to improve the skill. We'll give everyone about 20 more seconds here to get your vote in. We are at 58% voted right now. Now, it looks like we have got lots of confident folks on this presentation getting an overwhelming majority, saying they are somewhat effective. We can go ahead and close this poll out. So we've got 10% saying they are very effective, 54% saying they are somewhat effective, 21% saying somewhat ineffective, and 15% saying they really need to improve this skill.

[00:36:32] Lynn Miller But, you know, this is so interesting because I think we should identify those 10% because we need to be talking to those people and find out what they did.

[00:36:42] Emily Stringer Yes, we do. I agree with you there.

[00:36:44] Lynn Miller We need to just really talk to them and then look how high our somewhat effective is. I'm very pleased with that. But then we've got, you know, about 36% that really think that they can use some other skills to really help them. So when you think about this, what could you do to really branch this out. And Emily, I'm going to throw you a curve ball here because we've got several people, 64% somewhat effective to very effective. I'd love to just offer a chat right now. And if I could have those people in or some things that have helped them be pretty effective at their own agent cause I'd love to learn from them.

[00:37:37] Emily Stringer I would too, Lynn. Yes. If you guys want to chat in your answers, we'd love to hear from you. I would love to be able to share out how you are effective with the folks I talk to every day, because it's a great skill for independent contractors, businesses of one to have. It's so important when you are you when you're selling yourself. You can type those responses into the questions field. Oh network, network, network, yes! Being able to articulate your strengths. Also very true. Being kind, easy to talk to and myself. I have a talent for building trust very quickly, knowing your subject matter and being confident in what you know. Use seminars, conferences, LinkedIn, Twitter to promote your brand. Testimonials and word of mouth. Let my action and results talk about myself and you know what, Lynn, throughout this webinar, I actually got a LinkedIn message from one of our participants inquiring about partnering with MBO Partners. Talk about being your own agent. That's how you be your own agents.

[00:38:55] Lynn Miller Well, exactly right.

[00:38:59] Emily Stringer Great responses here. Lincoln visibility via regular postings. It's all great idea, great content. It is a really awesome way to put yourself out there.

[00:39:12] Lynn Miller Emily will these ideas be on what they get after work?

[00:39:18] Emily Stringer We will catalog them. It will not be presented when we mail out our slide deck. However, I will be capturing these so that we can keep them on file. And I don't see a reason why we can't put together some kind of collateral.

[00:39:38] Lynn Miller Because I'm going to give some ideas in my next slide, but you all are in the field doing this, and what works for you as an independent contractor consultant? And this is the knowledge that needs to be shared.

[00:39:55] Emily Stringer Yes, you are exactly right.

[00:39:59] Lynn Miller That's why you're part of the network, this particular network is to share some of these great ideas. Well, thank you all for participating and chatting with us on what you say. I want to just show you some ways that we've come up with to improve your agency. Now, I think it came out in the chat, definitely master your message, you have very short time to make an impression on somebody. So, you know, if somebody asked you, you should be able to right there, be able to give your elevated speech. Your reputation, your ability to build trust can change in a nanosecond. And believe me, people talk. So if you with a client and something doesn't go as well, how are you going to recover? So you how are you going to live your brand, be known for what you want to be known for? When someone asks, you've got to have examples of your successes. I would also offer in this came out of our internal meeting that we had yesterday. I think you ought to be able to even offer some failures and what you learn from that and what you won't repeat, those also make great stories is to talk about how effective your learning agility is and how that makes you even better for your client. Extremely important, as you all know, manage your online presence. One of the things that we all-- most of us do, all of us, but if we're going getting ready to interview somebody, we're getting ready to talk to somebody, how many times have we gone out to LinkedIn to find them or just on Facebook or just Googled their name to figure out who they are and what they stand for, who they're connected to, who can ask about? So you really have to be to know what you do and as we all have learned and your Twitter accounts, all of your accounts that you are in the social media. People can find you even very private. YouTube videos have been found. So I caution you to have out there what you want out there. The other thing is conduct an audit. Now, I'm not sure many of you thought about that, but really go and interview your client and ask them what they hear, what they think, and what do they hear on the street about you and their company? What do you known for? Why have they been able to tell you internally? Then you also, because we sometimes are not great at selling ourselves, you need to find champions, you need to find clients that will, of course, give you an endorsement, but besides that, especially when you're already inside a company, and let's say that your specialty is project management, you've just done something in one area of the business supply chain. If that person can recommend you to another side of the business, can you build your wallet, as we like to say, inside that one company, that you can actually do multiple projects from them, not necessarily in the same area. Have you found them to be champions for you? And ask them to be for you. So it's not just hoping they will be, but actually asking them to be. And then I think one of the things is do not be discouraged by "no" and I want to speak to the entrepreneurs and this is based on CCL's research. Women tend to think "no" means "no" for a long time, and men tend to think, this is a gender difference, men tend to think if "no" means "no", this hour? This day? but not forever. I want you to be able to not be discouraged by "no" but to take it as you know, maybe next month they made me and I you know, I have a job that allows me to hire different people and I have found talent wise and I found that the person that stays in touch with me, even though I don't have something now, if they continue to stay in touch with me, I tend to go back to them and use them. So I just want from a buyer of talent, I just want to let you know that the person who stays in touch seems to be very present in my field of who I want to use. And then the other thing I suggest you is find a mentor or coach someone that can give you that advice, that can be a great evaluator for you.

[00:45:17] Lynn Miller And finally, what I'd like to show you is, when you go out, I think to start auditing your online brand, which is extremely important, as you all know. Go out and see what your competitors are doing. What do you like about what they're saying? You know, nothing is a greater compliment than stealing somebody else's stuff of how they presented it to looking and seeing what their website looks like, what their LinkedIn looks like. What is it that they're doing that makes them unique? How can that fit into what you want to present? And focus on what matters to you and if you aren't social, get social. And I love the several the suggestions speak up at conferences. Nothing helps you more than to have a presence and you never can tell, as many of you know, or that are told up online, what that networking. It might not be the person in the audience, but you never can tell when they talk about you as a brand to somebody else. Think about the times that you've talked about, a particular brand that you have loved and you've talked about it and how passionate are you convincing somebody else? They should try it. So if somebody speaking up for you and how do you get in there?

[00:46:53] Lynn Miller And with that, I want to thank you for your time today, I know that we're going to open it up for some questions. One of the things I want you to know that I really enjoy people reaching out to me, so I'm more than happy to give you my personal information. You know, I'm on LinkedIn, so you can certainly go out there and connect with me and then CCL has great information, we particularly have a lot of things on Brand, so this is our guidebook on leadership brand and what you deliver. It will have inside of it, I've talked about values. This book tends to have all-- it's a very short book, it's like 30 pages. It will have exercises in there and it will have the value cards where you can do your own values for what's really important to you. The other thing that CCL offers as just as MBO does, is we have many free webinars, so please use CCL as a resource for you. With that Emily, I'll turn it back to you.

[00:48:04] Emily Stringer Great. Lynn, thank you so much for the insightful presentation today. Great information for us all to get together and learn about us and collaborate on, and we really appreciate having you here and having all of our participants on the line for an interactive presentation. With that said, we have a couple of polls that we need to launch before we get into our Q&A.

[00:48:31] Lynn Miller Right.

[00:48:31] Emily Stringer So we will get those up on the screen very quickly. First and foremost, would you like more information about Lynn Miller and CCL? Yes or no? And we'll give everyone about 30 seconds here. We are at 57%, 10 seconds to go. And we will go ahead and get that poll closed out. Next, would you like more information about MBO Partners? If yes, we will be in touch with you within the next two business days and we would be more than happy to talk to you a bit about who we are, what we do, our positioning within the industry and how we might be able to help you streamline your business of one. And we'll go about 10 more seconds here. Well, thrilled to see about 60% of you are already engaged with us here at MBO, and we'll go ahead and close that poll out. And one more, are you interested in receiving an invitation to MBO Connect? As a reminder, MBO Connect is our proprietary platform where our clients can post projects that are independent contractors can go and apply for. If you would like, just one other way to market yourself, link it to your LinkedIn, use your resume, whatever methodology you would prefer. We'll go about 10 more seconds, here we are at 48%.

[00:50:22] Lynn Miller And Emily, it's really funny, already getting invitations for LinkedIn.

[00:50:26] Emily Stringer Oh, great, great. You can go ahead and close that one out as well, Ryan, thank you. So with that said, we've got a couple of items here for our Q and A. First just one very quick housekeeping item for those who have asked when they will receive a copy of today's webinar via email. We will be getting that out within the next week. Please keep an eye on your email and we will send that to all of today's registrants. Above and beyond that, I see where we have someone who is asked for lend your information. We will get that over to anyone who has requested that and have Lynn reach out as necessary. And for the person who is asked about MBO's products and services in Canada, shoot us an email at info@MBOPartners.com, and we'd be happy to talk to you about what's out there for you. That said, we will jump into our other items here. Lynn, first and foremost, how can you test out whether or not your brand is effective?

[00:51:35] Lynn Miller Well, first is do you have enough business? You know, so that's one way and the second one is, do you have repeat business? You know that you've got an effective brand, if people come back and want to use you again or if they have not needs to the specialty that you have, such as I hope that I don't have to use my plumber all the time. Do I recommend? Do they actually recommend? So I would look at do you have repeat business and do you have recommended business, and then I clearly check an audit. Go to a friendly first just so that you can get your questions down and then to go to somebody that you feel personally maybe that you've done an okay job, not to you personally, the top of the line. And what would they say about you? So I think it's really those things.

[00:52:35] Emily Stringer Great, Im very much agree with that methodology, and I think that is a wonderful advice, Lynn. Next, how often should you revisit your branding?

[00:52:48] Lynn Miller  I really believe if you do the kind of steps I've asked you to, kind of giving you advice, as I think you only need to do that once every six months, I believe your online brand, you know, once you've figured out what your brand is and what you stand for, that really is your go to market kind of thing. Refresh if you don't have exactly on the website what you want, then you need to refresh. I wouldn't be changing your website all the time, so get that down. That should stay for a good six months. And as you build business or different types of business, you can refresh. But I would monitor your online brand once a month. I would just look to see what's known out there about you. It's not what you're publishing. What are others might be publishing about you, and I would really keep up with that.

[00:53:45] Emily Stringer I think that is excellent advice, we will take one more question here and then get things ramped down. Lynn, what are your preferred vehicles for managing the online presence between social media, web pages, CRM or anything else that might be out there?

[00:54:04] Lynn Miller Well, I personally, and let me just declare, as I should have, I'm a baby boomer, so I just want to make that clear. But I personally always Google people. I checked LinkedIn. But LinkedIn, you know, I kind of manage that. I use-- I would check their Twitters, their tweets. What are they doing? What are they, what are people liking and stuff like that. I would really see what happens in that. If you tweet a lot or like a lot, what is that saying about your brand? So be cautious, especially in our world today, of what you choose to like or dislike out there. And is that how you want to be known, if it's how you want to be known? That's great.

[00:54:59] Emily Stringer So if I'm hearing you correctly, Lynn, it sounds like it's a great idea to separate your business and your personal social media, so that way you don't have any intermingling and you're not giving clients the wrong impression by having personal information out there.

[00:55:14] Lynn Miller Yes, but I also say anybody can find your Facebook account, so we cannot be naive.

[00:55:22] Emily Stringer Absolutely.

[00:55:22] Lynn Miller So just understand that, and they can find videos that, you know, if people want to know more about you and you are active on the social platforms, they can find you. And I do a lot, you know, YouTube for finding how to do things, which is another great avenue for you to put a video out there. Give free advice, people love that.

[00:55:51] Emily Stringer Yes, people certainly do. Well, with that said, we are at the end of our lunch hour together. We are at 1:56. We do not, unfortunately, have time to continue the Q&A. However, for those who have requested information, please be on the lookout for that to come through your email in the next couple of days here. We will get you all your slide deck within the next week and we look forward to seeing everyone online for future presentations. And Lynn, we thank you again for the wonderful talk. And I think this gives everyone quite a bit to chew on.

[00:56:32] Lynn Miller Yeah. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it.

[00:56:35] Emily Stringer Great. We hope to have you again soon. Thank you all for being on the line. And please keep an eye to your email.