Hi there. I'm board certified professional organizer, Kathi Burns. I'm really glad you're here. This podcast is designed for busy entrepreneurs just like you who wanna take better control of your business and move forward with less stress and more success. If this is your first time listening, then thanks for coming. The Organize Energize podcast is produced for your enjoyment, and show notes are found at the podcast.organized and energize.com. Come back often and feel free to add this podcast to your favorite RSS feed or iTunes. You can also follow me on Twitter at Organized Energy and Facebook. All links are in the show notes. Now let's get into the show. Welcome back, you guys. Today, we're gonna talk about how to differentiate your brand to attract more customers. Today, I'm talking with Sue Kirchner. She's the founder of Brandstar Marketing. She's a brand strategy consulting firm, and she's helped thriving businesses create wow brands. She is a wow brand herself. She helps people scale faster, easier, and more successfully. Her proven brand strong methodology has enabled organizations to attract the right customers and employees, which is important, in her new market successfully, help them create amazing customer experience, and increase sales to take the business to the next level. You're gonna love Sue. She's a dynamo. She's also the host of the Turbo Branding Show, which is a podcast and video show designed to help founders and CEOs in thriving businesses ignite their growth by leveraging their brand to grow faster, easier, and more successful. That's what I want for all of you. So let's jump into it, and I'd love to introduce you to Sue Kirchner. Hi, everyone. As promised, I'm here with Sue. So welcome to the show, Sue. I'm so glad you're here. Thanks, Kathi. I'm thrilled to be here today. Yeah. This is gonna be be fun. We're gonna talk about marketing and messaging and all that good stuff. So for people who don't know you, tell people a little bit about your background. What brought you to this stage? Yes. What brought me here? Well, my name is Sue Kirchner. I have a company called Brand Strong Marketing, and I'm also the host of the Turbo Branding Show of which you are a guest, on the show. So absolutely thrilled about that. But, my background is in marketing and branding. But what I am passionate about is helping more founders, more entrepreneurs be able to grow and scale their company faster and easier. And the way that I help them do that is by leveraging their brand. Going back to their foundation to figure out their their why. Why did you start this company? What are you good at? What are your core values? What value do you deliver to your ideal customer? Who is that ideal customer that you serve? And then how are you positioned against the competition so that you stand out and are differentiated? So all of that culminates in me being able to do research and come back and say, hey. This is why your customers or your employees or even investors love your company, and you should keep doing that. Here's the messaging that that you need to share as well as I take a look at the experience that they offer, all of their stakeholders to make sure that they're actually living the promise that they said they were going to offer. So Yeah. You know what? It all sounds so basic, right, when you say, oh, this is what I we all should have this, but you have all the pieces. This is the question. Right? That's always the thing. It's like there's something missing. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So what brought you to this type of work? What's your background? Yeah. My background, interestingly enough, I started I wanted to be an advertising copywriter. I love writing. Well, I love creativity. I love art, design, music, anything in creative sphere, I love. But the only thing that I can do, other than admire all of that is writing. That's where my creativity bloomed. So, I wanted to be an advertising copywriter, but when I got out of college, those jobs were a little bit hard to find. And I end up going to work for, a company that, although it's not known for marketing, at the time, it was the place to be. I worked for Motorola right as the flip phones and the cell phones were coming out. So it was yeah. It was fantastic. And, because I was the only one who spoke Spanish in the marketing department because I grew up in Puerto Rico and in Latin America for a number of years, I got to do the whole breadth of marketing and branding activity. So it was like, oh, you can do trade shows. You can do PR. You can do advertising. Create some brochures. Help us with these events. I got to see all of it, and that was fantastic, you know, and and helping our customers in Latin America start to build a name for themselves as the type of company, because they were mostly small businesses, the types of companies that would sell great cellular products, like like Motorola and things like that. So so that's kinda kind of where I started and got my breadth of marketing, experience and knowledge and came to realize, very quickly that it's not just what you say, it's also what you do. And that's why I love the upfront foundational piece of branding. So, I I, you know, was was dealing and working with Latin America, you know, as with Motorola. I went out and started my own company because the group that I was with at Motorola decided to relocate to Florida, and I didn't want to do that. So stayed here in Chicago and started my own, company as an entrepreneurial venture to help US companies take their products into Latin America and just absolutely loved doing that, you know, until I had kids. And then it was like I didn't wanna travel that much anymore. I didn't like the eleven hour flight to get down to Argentina that much anymore and things like that. So, started focusing and looking around, you know, here in the Chicagoland area about what I wanted to do next, and that's where I started working for a brand strategy firm. Eventually, had some partners, had my own brand strategy firm. And long story short, I've always been involved in, brand strategy and voice of customer research and the customer experience in some way, shape, or form for the past, you know, probably hate dating myself, but twenty years or so. So, yeah, it's it's just been fantastic. And, I had an ecommerce store for a little while, which is where I learned about how do you build a brand. And even though you have a website and think your brand is fantastic, if you can't drive traffic there, you really don't have a business. And, so that was definitely, something that I have leveraged, successfully for my clients is to help them learn how to drive more people to their websites and get themselves known and visible online. So but, but, yeah, I've been, with BrandStar Marketing, had this this iteration of my business for over eleven years, and, just love help working with small businesses, founders so that they can be successful and grow their business, sell their business, whatever it is that they dreamed of doing when they started. Mhmm. It's such a blessing that you spoke Spanish, being from Puerto Rico because then it allowed you to immerse yourself in all aspects of Motorola marketing. Whereas if you would've just been English, you know, people probably on their same track didn't get nearly the breadth of experience that you received. Yeah. Absolutely not. I would've been pigeonholed into, oh, you're the brochure person or you're you just stay over here in PR. And and it was lovely what I the biggest thing that I really appreciated about going out on my own sure. It's risky and it's a big decision and things like that. But once I was out of the corporate track, then it was, like, amazing how many business models there are or ways that you can make money or things that you could do to advance your purse you know, your professional career and even your personal interests. And, you know, when you're in corporate America, it's like there's a ladder and you're siloed and you climb the ladder or you don't, and, you know, hope to make it to VP. But when you have your own business or you're outside in an entrepreneurial, aspect, it's like, gosh. I could I could teach MBA classes, which I did. I can lead focus groups, which I did. I can, you know, do all these different types of activities that, would never have got an opportunity to do if I'd stayed, in a corporation. Yeah. And a lot of people that go from corporate to their own face obstacles. What What do you think was the biggest obstacle that you faced as you were launching and and reinventing yourself? Yeah. The biggest obstacle, one that almost derailed me was, you know, I had made the decision that I wanted to to build my own business and be entrepreneurial. I happened to be getting my MBA at Kellogg at the time and had signed up for an entrepreneurial course. It was one of those pitch courses where investors come in and you have to present your idea and, you know, things like that. So because I had an idea for a business, my team was like, yeah. Let's run with yours. You know, you wanna start a branding firm and you want at the time, I was trying to build an an agency that would help take US companies into Latin America. So, you know, it was very exciting. Went in and pitched to the investor, very high profile investor in Chicago. And, you know, I was like, this is gonna be fantastic. I'm gonna be build this business. Here's how it's gonna grow. Here's how I'm gonna help companies. And at the end of the presentation, he looked at me and he's like, no. No. I'm not interested. I I don't think that's gonna be a good business. And I'm like, I was devastated. I just went home and, like, cried for days because that was what I really wanted to do next. But at least I stopped after the grief period. I stopped and I listened to his advice about his point, which was I was talking about what I wanted, and I was not focusing the message on what would an investor want, what would a client want from this business. So he gave me great advice on how to turn that around, that shift in thinking. So I reworked the whole business plan with my team, and we went back and presented again to the investor. And he's like, yes. Now now I've got it. This is good. You listen to me, so you take feedback, which is great. But more importantly, he's like, but you put yourself in my shoes. And that was, like, one of the biggest lessons that I could have learned from that class is that it doesn't matter what I think or what I want. It's all about the person on the other end of that communication exchange. How can I help them? How can I help make them see what I want them to see, in terms of, like, either what they need or how it can help them? So Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So that was one of the biggest articles that might have just derail I could've just given up at that time and said, forget it. I'll stay here in corporate. But no. I have it. You know, I I love constructive criticism, and I I welcome I never get my feelings hurt. I mean, sometimes you get sad. Right? Yeah. But, you know, it's never about me. It's about, oh, yeah. This this is another perspective of what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. So when you work with clients, what do you think is the biggest challenge that they face? The biggest challenge they face, I think, is they cannot see themselves as others see them, which is basically why I get brought in. Right? Is because the brand where I help people, you know, really understand what their brand is and why their customers love them is the brand resides in the minds of your stakeholders. So you can tell me, founder or executive team, all day long what you think your brand is, but we actually have to go outside and validate that that's the way it's being perceived by the people you care about, customers, employees, investors. So, I do a lot of research, voice a customer. I ask their top customers, why do you love working with this firm? What do they do that others can't do for you, on their best day, you know, how well do they perform, and things like that. And nine times out of 10, what the CEO and founder told me their brand is is not what's being said on the outside. And it's not all bad. You know, sometimes the CEOs and the you know, they're just like, oh my gosh. Really? They say that about us? We're we're gonna go with that. Yeah. That's that's perfect. We're gonna go with that. But if not, if there is a gap, well, then where's the gap? Is it that your messaging is wrong, that you're not talking about yourself in the way that they perceive you? Or is it that your messaging is fine, but you're not delivering? The experience is not delivering what you said you were going to deliver, so the customers are coming up with a different perception, a different brand, when they refer you or, you know, decide to work with you. So that's what we work on then is what needs to be fixed to help you identify the brand position and the messaging and the experience that's gonna accelerate your growth. But they need to be open to hearing Yes. Customers think. Good good, bad, and ugly. Yep. And and and good. You know, like you say, your CEO is like, really? They think that? That's so cool. Exactly. And it's like, you know, when when you're doing brand strategy, I'm not doing a customer satisfaction survey when I talk to your to your clients. What I'm doing is trying to find out why they like you, why they're loyal, why they you know? So there's not a if there's something horribly bad, it will come out in the process. But, generally, it really focuses on what they like about the relationship and and how they work with you and all that. And it's really gratifying to me because I have had some, founders tell me, that, you know, you've helped me fall in love with my business again. Because we all deal with just you know, we're putting out fires all day, and someone's complaining about this and this and this went wrong, and we need to fix this and this and this. And to have someone come back and say, you know what? Let's take an hour and let's focus on what you really do well, and let me share that story with you. It just energizes everyone and gives them the clarity and energy you know, inspiration on how to move forward because they go back to why did I start this business to begin with? And, they're excited about, the growth and the opportunities moving forward. So so that makes me feel awesome is that I can bring a little bit of joy and purpose back into their lives. So Super valuable. Super valuable. I love taking, anytime that, I I used to be signed up for a group that you know, to come in and give viewpoints on on, on, products or whatever, and it's great fun. I just love being the person that's that's reviewing and saying my thoughts. So, you know, it's quite interesting to see what happens in the focus groups. Yeah. Exactly. Do they take that advice and work on it, or do they just say, oh, she doesn't know what she's talking about? Or it's like Right. Right. You have to be open to receiving that feedback. So Yeah. Yeah. What's the most memorable, piece of your career so far from what you've been doing with your agency? Yeah. You know, I think it was actually, it was launching my podcast, is one of the things that I was, you know, I'm sure you you feel this way too, but it's it's it was one of those things where I thought about it forever and just didn't do it, whether it was lack of confidence or or, you know, whatever it was, I just sat on the idea for, like, three years. And then finally, one day, I'm like, why aren't I doing this? I I need to be, you know, educating. I I love teaching, and I love learning, and the podcast allows me to do both of those things. I learn from the my guests on the show, and then I can turn around and teach my clients and others, you know, all of the all of the insights that I'm being, gifted with and gathering on the podcast. So but, yeah, it was a super scary thing for me to do, I thought at the time, and I am just I'm loving it. It's so much fun. I meet the coolest people, you know, as, be either being a guest or having them come on to my show. But most importantly, the what the podcast has allowed me to do was I didn't want it to be just me saying the brand is so important, especially to my target market, which are small business owners between, like, one and and 10 to 15,000,000. And when when you talk about branding with, some of them get it, but a lot of them are like, oh, branding is for big companies. You know, we don't have that kind of money. We don't have that kind of budget. No. Actually, branding is a strategic decision making tool that helps you grow and accelerate your growth because it keeps you focused. It gives you clarity. It tells you how to communicate to all of your different audiences that are important to you. And so the podcast to me was a way to not be just me getting that message out there, but to bring people on like yourself and interview as many small business owners and advisers to small business owners as I can who have a story about how focusing, and leveraging the brand led to accelerated growth for their company. So so that's that's my mission. That's what I I want. There there's there's not enough small business owners that make it to the big times. Right? It's, I think only nine percent ever get beyond the $1,000,000 mark. Only 4% of women owned businesses get beyond the $1,000,000 mark. And I I I applaud entrepreneurs, and I wanna do anything I can to help them, you know, to grow, you know, help their community build you know, provide jobs for people, and then maybe even, you know, sell their business and create a legacy for their family. So So Mhmm. Yeah. And hopefully, more women are gonna hit that mark, with our help. Right? So that that's why I mean, that's why I have a podcast too. You you meet other experts, and then you pass on their information. There's there's so many people doing so many fabulous things in the world. But, you know, it's hard to it's hard to drill down and learn from each one. I think a podcast is a great vehicle for that because you can look at you can look at the content. You can say, yeah. This is of interest to me. Yes. This I I I don't need that. I do need this. Let's listen real quick. And, that's why I also like the twenty, thirty minute podcast format because it's easily consumable. Yes. And and like you said, you know, Sue, it's a chance for me to meet amazing women like you, other entrepreneurs who are doing things. Because, really, when it comes down to it, we do the same thing using different modalities. You know? We're still here to help businesses scale. I do operations. You do branding and messaging. It's we we need it all. No. You absolutely need it all. I mean, you're you're, you know, you're full focus on process and systems, and, I mean, they're absolutely gonna need that to scale. And then I look at it from the point of, you know, the branding or even helping the founder because if you are starting to scale, the the business needs to eventually not be you anymore. It needs to not be the founder. Your your personal brand needs to be transferred to become an organizational brand. Because let me tell you, if you wanna sell that business or if you wanna grow, it it can't be you. It cannot be dependent. Otherwise, you're not gonna get the money you wanted if you sell it. You're probably gonna have to stick around for two to three more years after you sell it because you're the brand still. And, so, yeah, your systems releases the owner from the business, and and hopefully, my help with branding releases the owner from the business as well. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you on that for sure. So that's awesome. So, speaking of systems, what's your favorite organizing hack? How do you keep yourself in line on a day to day with your business? Yeah. I'm, I'm kind of a neophyte, I think. So I I hope I don't embarrass myself by all this. But no. Yeah. Hey. Whatever works. Right? Whatever works is fine. Time blocking, I would say for that's my biggest thing for time management. Yeah. Time blocking, I learned that a number of years ago from another professional I used to know who who was helping with organization. And yeah. So a lot of what I do is meetings and things like that, but then I need creative time. I I need time to write and to do research and things like that that I cannot be distracted. So I have to block those times out in my calendar and know what time of day that's actually peak for me to be writing or be creative or, you know, things like that. So, and I even time block out my personal time. So if I don't, you know, if I wanna work out, I've gotta have it there in the calendar. Otherwise, I can come up with a million other things to do in that hour. So I block those out and make sure that there is just as important as my, professional tasks that need to be assigned. So that's one. Another one that I use a lot is Trello with my team that helps me Hello. Yeah. So for my team that helps me, with the editing of the podcast and putting out my episodes every two weeks, they're in The Philippines. So Trello actually works really well because then we can share files. We can just pass things back and forth, and mark things off and and hold everything together in one central app or or software system. So all of those work, incredibly well for me. And then I've started playing around with AI to help with, taking over some mundane tasks. So it could be like, I use it for I take the transcripts from my podcast, and I have AI just clean up the grammar. Yeah. You know, take out the umms and the ahs and things like that and and and make the transcript a lot more readable. So that's an easy thing it can do. It categorizes all of my podcasts so that I can easily find them based on branding subject or or case story later, and things like that. And I also use it for research, whether that's for new content ideas. Hey. What's going you know, what's the latest that's going on in the in the world of branding? Should I be writing about something like that? And AI can do that research for me. But it also can do research for my own marketing in terms of, like, hey. What new podcasts are out that I should be a guest on? Or are there any associations that I should be speaking at? And I can use AI to help me to pull that together, and it does save a tremendous amount of time. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm with you on the time blocking. And I I love the fact that you're blocking personal and business in the same calendar. I think it's so very important as entrepreneurs. A lot of people wanna do their separate calendars, but then things get lost in in the muck of the stuff. And then, you know, you don't go to class or you don't get the workout because something took it over. Somebody took that time block, and it and it wasn't me, and it wasn't them. And who did that? I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. No. Absolutely. Absolutely. So love that. So if you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self Yeah. What advice would you give her? I would give her, I think, two to three things I would probably tell her. The first is think bigger. Mhmm. So, you know, like, we had talked about earlier, the fact of, like, oh, I've got a job, and I'm just gonna climb this ladder. And, oh, it's gonna be two years between promotions because that's what everybody's telling me it's going to be and, you know, things like that. So think bigger in terms of what can I do? And and part of that is another piece of advice is get to know yourself really early. Your strengths, your personal brand, what you're good at, what you're not good at, what lights you up, what doesn't light you up. I wish I had known that, you know, and worked on myself, so to speak, when I was a lot earlier because or a lot younger. I think maybe I would have made decisions faster, would have would have maybe done some different, different things or at least not have there's been certain points in my life where you're like, oh my gosh. I feel trapped. You know, this this is it. This is what I have to do, and I I'm not happy with this job or, even a client or or things like that. How do I get out of this? And by understanding my strengths and, you know, what I'm good at and what what energizes me in terms of work, I might have been able to, steer the ship in a different direction a little bit faster. So so, you know, thinking bigger about opportunities and what I could possibly do, you know, because that helps, knowing my personal brand. And then the last one is don't be afraid to ask for advice. That was the thing that I, you know, I was always independent, thought I I knew what was going on in life. When I was in my twenties, I was like, oh, yeah. I'm smart. I've got stuff going on. I I I figured out my life. And then you realize coming into your thirties and forties, you're like, wait. There's so many other smart people out there who have done what I want to do. I need to talk to them. I need to ask for their advice, and it's not a sign of weakness to stay. I need help, with anything. So that was something that I wish I had started a little earlier and should've you know, my 18 year old self should've known is that, yeah, it's amazing to me how people who don't even know you, if you ask, it it still amazes me how many people help you. You know? People want to help you. And I think now as a caveat, because I'm married, to a man, and, you know, I think as women entrepreneurs, it's so much easier. I still see the stigma with men asking men. I still see that for us, it's so easy. I mean, we always wanna give information and get information. There's no mark, so to speak, to ask for advice. In fact, I think it's it's an asset. Yeah. Sadly, I think it's still still a little bit strange for men, but, you know, we're lucky because we're women entrepreneurs. Exactly. Exactly. And, yeah, there there's so much knowledge out there that you could tap into by just asking. And as you said, people feel good when they can help somebody else with their career or get a leg up or make an introduction. So even if they don't know you, what's the worst they're gonna say is no. Right? So ask. Ask and get their help. Yeah. Yeah. And back to your point of getting to know yourself and your strengths and weaknesses, I mean, I think that we don't really know ourselves until in their thirties anyhow. But, you know, at 40, I finally had to come to, and I picked up I picked up the book What Color is My Parachute. Yeah. And I still work with people on that, actually, because it's a process. You know, you can take Myers Briggs. You can take all the different assessments, but you can skew them. You can totally skew all of those to a certain point. Right. Get what you want, but the color is your parachute, I mean, it's in what, the 56 edition. You can't mess with the results. The results are the results are the results. So I love that. If any of you are listening out there and you're wondering what are my because I didn't know. My major strength is I love change. Right? Okay. Cool. I would have never come upon that. And so what do I do? I help people change. Right? That's because that's what is my easy thing. They'll be you won't you don't know that until you have the the the right assessment or whatever. So if you're listening and any of you're wondering, go to my color is your my the what color is my parachute? Carol Jackson is, like, 50 editions later. Still the same content because it works. It works. So Yep. Yeah. It works. And it is hard to know who you are. It really is. Who you are. It's hard you have to grow into the confidence of what you're good at or what you enjoy doing. And and it, you know, there's there's a lot that needs to be explored before you can really say, okay. I like this. I don't like that. I'm good at this. Or as a business owner, I should outsource that because I'm just mucking it up, you know, and things like that. So Absolutely. And ask call in a professional because, you know, we can see what you can't see. That's the whole point. That's the only reason why masters hire masters. It helps us see what we can't see. There's somebody that's just looking over, not stuck in the muck of your stuff saying, oh, yeah. Well, maybe have you thought about this? Or have you thought about this? Or I see this in you. That's why going back to your, when you do, you know, the group forums and and, you know, for products and stuff, you learn all this stuff of what people really think about you, and then you can then you can grow and move on. Wow. This has been really good. I love this. I love this conversation. Yeah. Me too. This is fun. Mhmm. Is there anything that you want to talk about? I know you have a a valuable free offer for people. Yes. Yes. You can talk about that, and then let me know if we we haven't touched on a topic that you want to discuss. Yeah. No. I think we've touched on a lot of good things. But, yeah, my free offer is, like we said, it's hard to get to know yourself, and it's hard to see yourself as others see you. However, you still can take strides and start working on figuring out what your brand is, whether it's your organizational brand or your personal brand. So on my website, which is brandstrongmarketing.com on the home page, I actually have a worksheet no. Workbook, so to speak, that has the 10 questions to ask to identify your unique brand. It goes through and then, you know, here are the questions you need to either ask your customers if you're on a business. Or if it's a personal brand, ask the people you work with, your peers. You can ask them a lot of the same questions, and and then it tells you how to distill that information into figuring out what truly makes you unique. Oh. Yeah. That's good. That's a good one. Everybody should do that. Even if you think you know, you probably are gonna learn something that you don't know. I love that assessment. Just talking to your customers and asking them some questions, it's eye opening. Absolutely eye opening. And, you know, don't be afraid because you might actually love what they say, and to the point where you're like, I've had some clients go like, oh my gosh. Can we take that testimonial? I'll just completely make it our marketing campaign. Sure. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. You'll you'll, you might fall in love with your business again just like you said earlier. Yes. Exactly. Love it. Anything anything else? Did I miss anything? Yeah. I don't think so other than, yeah, I mentioned the podcast, the Turbo Branding Show. Mhmm. And, yeah, it's, if anyone is interested in how small businesses in particular, are leveraging their brand, using their brand, case stories, how it helps you get a higher multiple for your business if you wanna sell it and things like that. I've got some amazing guests on and, would love to, have people, you know, come over and take a listen and let me know what you thought. So it's, it's the Turbo branding show, and you can find that on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify. Yes. And we will share that below in the show notes as well because we need to grow podcasts. Speaking of that, gang, if you like this podcast, please give me a thumbs up. Comments are awesome. If you wanna subscribe to my YouTube channel, if you find this on YouTube, please do. I'm this much away from a thousand subscribers, so I'm very, very close to that landmark. I'd appreciate your help with that. Check out all the things that Sue is offering for you, in the show notes. Grab the links. Get to know her more. She is a turbo brand. Yes. She is herself. So until until next week, you guys, we will see you. And thank you, Sue, for being on the show. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much, Kathi. I had fun. Absolutely. Hey. Thanks for listening to this podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you wanna hear more, feel free to subscribe on the platform of your choice. Also, if you feel so inclined, I would truly appreciate a good rating from you to me. Have a stellar day.