Overblocking Time For Real Life

SPEAKER_00 0:25

It could be painful to overblock your time because you look at your calendar and you're like, oh my gosh, like I can't get anything else done today. This is all I'm gonna right. But that's because the magic brain wants to say that I can get 15 things done today. And the reality is you might get five things done because each of those things is gonna take more time than you're giving yourself credit for. And I like overblocking the time because, like you said, maybe I get a little extra done and I have, you know, next week's post ready to go. Or maybe I have a little bit of time to run and get a snack, or to go to the bathroom. Sometimes we don't even allow ourselves the time to do those things that are like, you know, like I have back-to-back calls all day and I can't, you know, I can't even take a break. So, so overblocking gives your body the time that it needs for the things that you you forget to work into your schedule.

Why Personal Branding Feels Hard

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Welcome back to Plan Like a Boss. I'm your host, Tanya Lawson. And if you've ever found yourself frustrated when it comes to personal branding, you're gonna want to listen to this episode. Kelly Shukneck is a marketing strategist and thought leadership expert who helps professionals move from being the industry's best kept secret to a recognized authority. She's the author of the book Unlocking Your Authority X Factor, where she shares her proven three-pillar framework for building a brand through visibility, credibility, and consistency. As the founder of Two Mile High Marketing, Kelly has spent over two decades helping leaders refine their messaging and build sustainable platforms that attract the right opportunities. She's also the host of two of her own podcasts, Beyond the Bestseller and the Authority X Factor. Kelly, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you here. You're having me, Tanya. I'm looking forward to it. Awesome. Well, I like to start these interviews by asking everybody the exact same question. I want you to tell me your story. How did you get here? Because I think so much can be learned from our stories, and so many people can relate to them. So, how did you get to where you are today?

Kelly’s Path From Publishing To Agency

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Yeah, I love, I love that intro question. So, uh, well, I'm gonna back up to the beginning of my career. So I started in publishing. I worked in publishing for 10 years and um have always kind of worked with authors, you know, ever since then. But when I left publishing, I went into marketing and I I worked in a marketing uh I worked in marketing for a virtual CFO firm. And I was there about seven years. I helped grow the firm from 4 million to 12 million while I was there. I became the marketing director, I built a team, um, loved my job. And uh I like to say that I did my job a little too well because uh our growth led us to be acquired. And uh when we were acquired, we were acquired by a firm that was much larger than us, and they had their own marketing team, and I lost my job. So um it didn't happen immediately. So when the acquisition happened, I had a couple of years where I was I was thinking about, okay, what will I do next? You know, I worked in publishing, I worked in marketing, you know, will I start uh a marketing agency? Will I go work for somebody else again? You know, I was really, you know, thinking through that for really a couple of years. I was I had this time, this runway to think about things. And so I had dreamt up to my high marketing. I I had dreamt up having my own company. I uh, you know, didn't actually know what I was going to do yet, but I I, you know, having a marketing agency, that was basically, you know, the the idea that I had. Um, well, the day that I was laid off, it was like, okay, it's time to, it's time to do this. It's time to, you know, I've been dreaming about this for two years. Let's let's make this happen. So I started Two Mile High Marketing. I did not know on day one what I was going to be doing, but uh after a few conversations with people, I realized where my we're, and we're gonna get into this, but I realized what my authority X factor is, um, which is which is what I what I call it, right? The the skills and experience that brought me to the place that I was where it just made sense for me to serve clients in a certain way. So it wasn't just we can do all things marketing. It was I can help develop a thought leader, right? So I can help a business owner develop a personal brand, a thought leadership platform, share their expertise with the the world and bring in the business uh through that thought leadership platform. It it was kind of just, you know, over a couple of weeks, I was talking to people and realized that this was really where I thrived. Um, and so I started Two Mile High Marketing, positioned us as, you know, the thought leadership experts, and we grew really, really fast. So that's kind of my really in a nutshell story of how two mile high marketing came to be and how I became kind of the thought leader of thought leadership and personal branding.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Love that. And that's so relatable because there are probably people out there listening right now who are in your exact same position in this economy who've just been laid off and are like, do I want to try to fight to go back into corporate or do I want to do something on my own? So now you kind of touched on my next question, but I'm gonna ask it so you can go a little deeper.

Defining Your Authority X Factor

SPEAKER_01 5:46

What exactly is the authority X factor? And why do you think it's the missing link for so many talented professionals?

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Yeah. Well, so from my own experience, you know, I worked for, I worked directly for CEOs for 20 years of my career. I was the person, what I what I called, the person behind the person, right? So I worked for CEOs who had these, they had these ideas. They, you know, they they had the vision, they had the dream. And I was the one that they would send all their messages to and I would get it all done. Right. Um, and I thought that was what I was good at. I thought that was my role. And when I finally decided to go out on my own, I realized, wait, I have 20 years of experience. I have, I have a skill set that makes me unique, right? Um, my background in publishing, I mentioned that because part of thought leadership is often having a book in hand, right? And so um my publishing experience really lent itself well, lended itself well to uh, you know, helping people with have, you know, we we do ghostwriting. So helping people have that book in hand, having it be a part of their overall marketing strategy. Um, and I say all that because, you know, I took all of that, all of my skills and experience for granted. And I just saw myself as the person behind the person, the person who just does the things that somebody else dreams up, right? And when I finally realized that my own skills and experience made me unique, um, that's what really allowed me to grow my company very quickly, to position myself as that expert because I was. I just didn't see myself as that until I kind of got forced off the ledge, right? Um, and so that authority X factor is what I now help people with identifying that in themselves. Um, whether that's somebody who's working in corporate, somebody who's been laid off, somebody who is even running a business. One of my one of my uh clients has been running a marketing agency for 25 years, but never really built a personal brand, right? He had business coming to him, he's grown a business, he's been successful, but also he's like, I really, you know, in this age of AI, I really need to differentiate myself. I really need to stand out in the marketplace because um anyone can build a website now with AI, right? But if you're gonna hire an agency to do it, why would you hire this specific agency? Right. And so, um, so anyway, so I now work with people from all stages of that, right? So somebody who is just in the beginning of building a personal brand to somebody who is an established professional, but really just needs some help with identifying their authority X factor from an external perspective, right? What do how do other people perceive me and how can I speak directly to that audience in order to serve them and grow my client base?

SPEAKER_01 8:37

You are so right. And I never thought about it that way. But we do tend to purchase from people that we are familiar with and that are like us, that we relate to. And and in this age of AI, you're right. It's so easy to throw a website up there. I could create a marketing website right now, and marketing is I do marketing as part of my business, but it is by no means my expertise. And it's just so easy to do now. So yeah, building that personal brand is so important. Now, in Authority X Factor, you have three pillars, right? There's three pillars to this framework. What are they? Well, without giving it all away, because we want people to buy the book, but what are they? And how do they work together to build that personal brand?

Visibility, Credibility, Consistency Framework

SPEAKER_00 9:25

Yeah. So the the book actually came from I I go out and speak. So same, same as what I help my clients do, I help get them on stages. Um, I go out and speak as well. And so I have a talk that I give where I talk about the three pillars of personal branding. And when I was writing my book, I was like, these are exactly what I need to be talking about and helping people understand. So anyone who's wanting to build a personal brand, there, there's three things to be thinking about. Number one is visibility. So you have to get visible in front of your target audience, right? Um, your target audience has to know who you are in order for your brand to build. So super important is getting visible. And that visibility can look different for different people. But for an example, if you're uh if you're in professional services, if you are serving other businesses or other business owners, you should be more than likely you should be active on LinkedIn, right? That's a platform that probably makes sense for you. But the the specific platform is going to depend on where your audience is. But let's let's for the sake of this example, let's use LinkedIn. So visibility is, you know, getting on stages, being present on LinkedIn on a regular basis. Um, it might be showing up on podcasts, right? Um, those ways that you're going to uh get in front of your target audience, you know, making sure that you are remembering to do that. A lot of times we get busy as business owners. We're busy, we're, you know, we're swamped with client work, we have plenty to do, right? And we forget that, like, oh, we got to keep showing up in a way that people are gonna discover us. Number two is credibility. So it's not just about getting on a stage, but once you get there, how are you going to show the audience that you are that expert? A lot of times it is having that book in hand. You don't have to, you don't have to worry about these things if you don't have, you know, if you don't have a book in hand, don't get overwhelmed by like, oh, now I got to write a book, right? But there are other ways that you can establish your credibility. Uh, if you're, if you're doing LinkedIn content, one way to establish credibility might be uh producing some case studies. So tell it it and case study can be like, you know, you can you can create some overwhelming case study, right? But you can also just be talking about your client experiences on LinkedIn, right? So case studies being just, you know, I'm just talking about something I helped one of my clients with, right? And that is establishing my credibility. People are seeing that uh I'm helping other people do this thing that they need help with, right? So um, so so credibility is important. So not just coming on talking about the topic, but coming on and talking about um how you've helped other people and showing that through your content, through um, you know, again, like having that book in hand. Maybe you're putting together infographics. I mean, there's lots of different types of content that you can do that is helping establish your credibility as the expert in your field. Number three is consistency. So I I have a client I worked with many, many years ago, and his go-to phrase was 80% of marketing is is um simply reminding people that you exist. And he says it all the time. And I always I always have this like in my in whenever I'm giving a talk, I always have that quote on the on the screen because I'm like, there is no truer statement about marketing than that, right? Um, yes, you need to to you know get visible in front of your target audience. You need to establish your credibility, but you also gotta keep doing it. You gotta keep showing up um, I'm gonna say every day, doesn't have to be every day, but day to day, right? You have to be showing up in ways that your your audience is gonna find you. And so the way that I uh kind of coach people around consistency is it doesn't have to be every day. It doesn't even have to be every week necessarily, but commit to something that you can commit to. So if you're gonna, if you're gonna blog, for example, uh commit to once a month, right? That might feel like, well, that's easy, right? But some months might get crazier than others, right? And so um maybe the months where you're less busy, you can you can build up some content that you can post over time so that you could hit those months, like maybe December is a month where you're not gonna have as much time to be writing. So now you've had you have some some content built up that you can post that month. Don't what what I uh recommend not doing, right, is okay, I'm gonna blog every single day, right? I'm gonna blog every day. You know, I'm gonna write a 1,000-piece, you know, uh post every day, right? And two weeks in, you're like, oh my gosh, I can't keep this up, right? Don't do that to yourself. Commit to what you can commit to realistically. So when it comes to LinkedIn content, I recommend showing up two to three times a week. Uh again, if you're doing nothing, then like let's start with once a week. Let's start with every Wednesday, I'm going to do a post on LinkedIn, right? And then once that becomes easy, and and I have found that when you're doing it regularly, when you're showing up on LinkedIn regularly, you're posting content on any platform regularly, the ideas start coming to you faster, right? So it becomes easier to uh it just becomes easier to know what to show up and say because you're it's a muscle you're developing. Once you do it, it becomes easier um each time, right? So once it becomes like, oh, this is a breeze, okay, then add, you know, a second day and do two days a week, right? But but start with where you are and add on as you can versus overcommitting and then not being able to deliver on uh that consistency promise you're making to yourself. So consistency can look different to different people depending on where you're at, but create a schedule for yourself and stick to it. Um, so again, uh visibility, credibility, and consistency. I talk about each has its own chapter in my book. So I talk about them in in more depth. But those are the three things to be thinking about if you really wanted to develop a personal brand or thought leadership platform. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

And for those of you listening or watching, Kelly is living what she's saying. She's being visible right now on this podcast. She's showing that credibility because she's already talked about two of her clients in this call. And consistency, I'm guessing this isn't the only podcast you're gonna be on. I right? Because if you're not living what you're teaching, you probably shouldn't be teaching it.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Yeah, yeah. We help our clients uh get what would what we shoot for with our clients is two to three podcasts per month for them. Um what I do for myself, I actually try to do one per week. Now, I again consistency doesn't look like actually doing one every week. It might be, I might do three or four in one week, and then maybe I have a week off or a couple weeks off or something like that. But what I'm trying to do consistently throughout the year is show up regularly because I can't, I can't control Tanya when you publish this episode, right? Um, and so as long as I'm continually recording three to four podcasts every single month, I know that there's going to be a consistent output of those podcasts when they're publishing. But yes, I did, I think I did 60 podcast episodes in 2025. Um, I told my assistant this year, let's let's let's bring it down a little bit. I don't need to do quite 60, but like let's shoot for 52. Like let's shoot for, you know, about an average of one per week. Um, I don't think everyone needs to be doing that. I think that for me it's important because it's part of what we do for clients. So I so I do want to be living what I'm teaching, right? Um, but I I do recommend if you're B2B, if you're serving other professionals, uh at least, you know, one or two a month just to have a regular presence on podcasts. I love that idea. Now, sometimes life happens.

Planning For Life Disruptions

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Yes. Okay. Sometimes life happens. Uh I dealt with this last year. I was diagnosed with breast cancer and I went through chemotherapy, and pretty much everything stopped. Now, for solopreneurs who are already stretched thin, um, the kind the the the idea of constant concrete content creation can can feel pretty scary. And I I love that you mentioned like something realistic for you. None of that New Year's resolution, I'm gonna go to the gym every day. But say you're already a stretch thin and then life happens. What is something that that the solar printing or can do to set themselves up for success when life happens? Is there anything they can prep for?

SPEAKER_00 18:14

Yeah, so well, a couple things. So one of the things that I do is I so I think we we often overcommit ourselves, right? Like we think we can do all the things. One of my one of my clients uh calls that the magic brain, right? So our magic brain thinks we can get 500 things done. And the reality is we might be able to get 10 things done, right? So whatever that looks like, you know, I I I oh I do this to myself all the time. Even though this is my client and I listen to her, I listen to her talk all the time, and I still do it, and I have to keep reminding myself like stop doing that, right? Um, so one of the things I do in order to make sure that I am making time in my week to get those things done. Um, now again, I do a lot of content. So I'm not, I don't, I'm not saying everyone needs to do the amount of content that I do, but um I block it on my calendar. So every Monday, and again, going back to the magic brain and and my client who uh teaches how to be, she calls it relaxed productivity, how to be productive in a mental state that you can really be productive in instead of like overcommitting and then being stressed out and you know, uh interrupted like five million times while you're trying to do something. Um I over like over block my time. So if I think that it might take me 30 minutes to do something, I block an hour or maybe even an hour and a half so that I know for sure that I'm going to get that thing done. Right. So every Monday on my calendar, I have an hour or maybe a 90-minute block for LinkedIn content. And I sit down during that time and I do my LinkedIn post for today and then two more posts for the week that I schedule out, right? I also have a block on Mondays for my blog. So I want to make sure that I'm I'm sitting down and I am getting my blog post out. I do a weekly blog post. Again, not recommending you have to do a weekly blog post, but that's what I want to do. Um, so I put it on my calendar so that I'm for sure going to um make time for it and get it done. The other thing is is um batching that work. So, you know, you mentioned uh that, you know, life gets busy, right? Like so you might have a week where you're super busy or a month where you're super busy or whatever. Um so you might want to batch it where it's like you might batch four hours one week, right? One day to uh work on all of your content. The the uh Hal, not Hal Lred, uh Cal Newport teaches this. He's a have you heard of Cal Newport? He's the author of um Slow Productivity is his book, uh, and um Deep Work. He has more books, but those two are the two that I've read that um so he he talks about this too. Like he has days on his calendar where it's like he it they're themes. Like so the whole day, like maybe it's Tuesdays are sales days, right? So Tuesdays I do all my sales calls, I do all my sales follow-ups, emails, whatever, right? Like, so if you maybe have a content day once a month. And so on that day, because you're batching everything, you're not, you're not context switching. You're not doing one thing and then switching to something else. And now I'm going to a sales call and now I have to do an email. Now I have to, you know, you're you're focused on content that day. So maybe you're doing your blog post for the month, you're doing uh four LinkedIn posts for the month, right? You're but your it your mind is focused on that one thing. So you're thinking ahead and you're you're planning that out and you're scheduling it. Um, so those are a couple of tricks to to help with when life gets busy. You still might, you know, but what let's say you get busy on the day that you're supposed to have that that time block, right? That happens to me sometimes where I think I'm gonna get something, I'm gonna have all day Friday to do a certain task and then something comes up and I didn't get that at all, right? But because I know I needed to get that done, I move it to, you know, maybe, maybe I get caught up on Saturday, maybe I move it to next week, whatever. But because I'm blocking the work on my calendar, I always know uh what work I didn't get to, and then I can shift around the f the the coming week to make sure that I get caught. Up on those things.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

And you also mentioned because you overblock your time. So maybe you give yourself an hour and a half to do something that you think will take 30 minutes. Let's say that thing only takes 30 minutes. Maybe you can use a little of that other hour to go ahead and create like something you talk about all the time and just bank it. Just have like a file banked so that it's like, oh, you know, my daughter fell on the playground and broke her arm and I have to go to the ER. I'm just gonna post this because it's already ready to go.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

It's ready. Yeah. It's pain, it's it could be painful to overblock your time because you look at your calendar and you're like, oh my gosh, like I can't get anything else done today. This is all I'm gonna, right? But that's because the magic brain wants to say that I can get 15 things done today. And the reality is you might get five things done because each of those things is gonna take more time than you're giving yourself credit for. And I like overblocking the time because, like you said, maybe I get a little extra done and I have, you know, next week's post ready to go. Or maybe I have a little bit of time to run and get a snack or to go to the bathroom. Sometimes we don't even allow ourselves the time to do those things that are like, you know, like I have back-to-back calls all day and I can't, you know, I can't even take a break. Um, so so overblocking gives your body the time that it needs for the things that you you forget to work into your schedule. I don't know if everyone does that, but I am so guilty of that. And so when I overblock, you know, if I end up end up like, oh, I got my LinkedIn post done in 30 minutes, now I've got an extra hour to get caught up on email, you know, to get caught up on some messages that have come in, whatever. But you're otherwise, you end up getting distracted by those things and then you don't get the actual work done. And so I find that overblocking just helps me make sure that I'm giving the task the time that it deserves.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

Oh no, you're totally right. Um, and on my on my schedule for scheduler, even for podcast interviews, I have it put a 15-minute buffer on each side so that I have time to prep, you know, prepare and and get everything set up between guests. So yeah, absolutely.

Talking About Yourself Without Bragging

SPEAKER_01 24:38

Now let's go back to personal branding real quick. There are a lot of people out there who shy away from creating that personal brand and talking about themselves because they feel like it's bragging. And, you know, I'm I'm a good little girl from the South. I grew up in Tennessee. You know, we don't brag. We're always humble. What do you say to people who have this sort of mindset?

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Yeah. Uh it's it's real, right? That that struggle is real. And especially if you're somebody like me who was the person behind the person, right? It it was so much easier for me to put my boss in that position and to go, like, oh, look how great he is, look what he's doing, you know, versus having to say anything about what I'm doing. That feels awkward, right? Um, but when you start looking at it from the lens of it's not a, it's not actually about me, it's about the person I'm trying to help, right? And and if I am sharing, you know, if I'm sharing my experience of going out and being on a stage, right? It feels like I'm bragging that I got this speaking spot and like look at me. And, you know, it it when you like to be uh behind the scenes, it's it's hard to do that, to put yourself out there in that way. But what I was saw when I started doing that was how much people were going, oh, you're the one who's always on stages. Can you help me get on a stage? Right. They were seeing it like through a different lens. It wasn't that they were going, oh, you're always talking about yourself online, right? They're going, Wow, you're doing these things. I want to do that too, right? My book came from wanting to help other solopreneurs who were, you know, they were, they were hearing me talk about these things about building a personal brand. And they're going, I want to do that, right? And so I wanted to be able to hand them a book and go, here, here's the manual to to doing this. Here's what I what I did to build my personal brand, and here's, you know, how you can apply that to yourself. Um, I didn't want my book to be all about me either, right? But but the reality is I I can only tell my own stories. I can't tell your stories. So, so I'm telling my stories, but again, through the lens of how can this help somebody else who's going through a similar situation? And how can it help them also, you know, uncover their authority X factor and develop their personal brand, right? So some of it is we just have you just have to do it. Like you just have to get over that uh that imposter syndrome, that fear, that um, you know, I don't know what other words for it are, but you know, that feeling that you're having. And and but look at it from how can this help this person that I'm trying to reach versus like, how can I show up and talk about myself? People with big egos have no problem doing that, right? Like they it but right, but many of us don't have that ego. We we actually like we feel awkward doing it. But when we can get over some of those feelings and realize that it's not about us, it's about who we're trying to serve. That's really the the um how you can how you can um get yourself in the right mindset for that kind of content.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

I I like that that thought process because it's like, you know what? If I can do this, then you can definitely do this. And by holding that back, you're almost doing your customer a disservice. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

I mean, how true, right? Because I was able to build my brand really quickly, my build my business really quickly. My brand was built over many years of showing up online. But then when people are going, like, how are you doing that? You know, it's like, well, let me tell you, like, here's here's how I did it, right? Like, so it wasn't about talking about myself. It's like they're they're questioning that because they really do want to know, well, how can I do that? Like, how can I get out of corporate? How can I start a business and and you know, go grow quickly? How can I get on stages? Those things were like, I'm just sharing my experience. And yeah, like I am nobody special, right? I am just somebody who uh was working for other people and finally decided to do it myself. And there's so many people out there who want to do that or who are maybe really, really small solopreneurs who want to grow their business. And if I don't help them with, you know, the the sharing my experience and kind of here are the steps to what I did, then they're gonna remain stuck, right? But if I share some of that, that might help them get unstuck and get to where they want to be. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

Now, you just talked about how you grew your business really, really fast.

When Growth Feels Slow And Lonely

SPEAKER_01 29:08

What do you say to the person out there who is growing their business, but maybe it's not going fast and they get really frustrated with it? What are some for them?

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Well, I think, you know, we all have different paths, right? Like, so um for me, we grew really quickly out of the gate. And then, you know, I was new to owning a business. So I'm also very open about the fact that like things grew really fast, and then it was like, oh, we had some projects end and we've been doing this, right? Like we've been up and down, like trying to find, like, okay, how I've never run an agency before. So figuring out like I hired people, how do you make sure you don't overhire? How do you, you know, all of those things, right? Um, I think that for anyone, uh what I highly recommend is finding community with people who you can learn from. Um, I'm I'm part of a couple of different communities for marketing agency owners, and that has been super, super valuable to me because I'm I'm daily communicating with people who own $15 million agencies. And I'm also communicating with people who are, you know, my size, you know, under a million, right? And so, like we grew fast, but I'm still not at a million dollars for my agency, right? So um, I'm learning from people who I can, I can, you know, I can learn from them. I can see what they've done. I can get their, they can mentor me in some way. And I'm also communicating with people who are at the same stage as me. So I don't feel like I'm the only person who is this small and I'm, you know, I'm I I'll never be that right. You there's the you want to find those people who you can learn from and you can um maybe even like tell some of your struggles so that you can, you know, talk through those things um with people who have been there, who have have um had similar experiences and uh can just help support you through that. I for me that has been really, really valuable um because you do feel like you have days that are that are hard and you feel like alone, especially when you are a solopreneur. Um and so the the you know getting involved in networking groups and um organizations that are specifically for you know your type of business are really, really valuable.

SPEAKER_01 31:22

Yes, that is so true because it can feel like you're completely alone at times. And and to be able to talk to someone who understands, who's been there. Um, and and this could be something like a paid a paid mastermind group, which I am in, and it could be a you know, just a mastermind group you put together, which I'm also in. And both can be very beneficial.

The First Step To Get Seen

SPEAKER_01 31:46

Now, for someone who is feeling just really invisible in their industry right now, what is the first step they should take to start getting seen?

SPEAKER_00 31:57

So I recommend content uh in some way, right? Um, I for me years ago, uh, I recognized that I had a a huge fear of public speaking. And even podcasting was like a a really, really big stretch for me, like to get on a podcast and talk to somebody. Um and so I forced myself to start doing video content. I started doing video content um every day. And I was posting on TikTok and then what what felt appropriate for LinkedIn, I would cross-post to LinkedIn. Um, and I was doing that every day. Now I don't you don't have to do that every day, but I was really pushing myself out of my comfort zone. And you can tell, I mean, I do podcast interviews all the time now, right? Like I don't have any problem with it, but I I did at first. And so it it so for me that was that was my fear. I wasn't worried about not being known in my industry, but I also wasn't known in my industry necessarily either, right? And so doing that started getting me recognized. Uh, I started building my um my following on TikTok, building my following on LinkedIn. And um, when I went to launch my business, people, I had a network. I had a professional network, people knew who I was, they knew what I had done because I was showing up regularly. So whether you have a fear or not, uh I I encourage you to do content, whether it is written content on LinkedIn or video content, or again, maybe it's a different platform depending on where your audience is, but you've got to show up in a way that they uh that people start knowing who you are and that you're also practicing your message, right? So you are becoming known in your space because you're sharing um knowledge and wisdom that other people can learn from, and that's really going to help you start to get more recognized in your industry. Absolutely.

Slow Down, Build Stability, Wrap Up

SPEAKER_01 33:52

Now, I like to always wind these interviews up with also the same question. So we we talked about your story. My last question is I want you to think way back to when you were first starting out. What advice would you give to that, Kelly?

SPEAKER_00 34:10

Oh, I love that. Um uh well, first starting out in my business, the advice I would give myself is like is to slow down with the hiring. Right. So don't get don't get too, I mean, growth is great, right? Growth is is when you're growing your business, growth is amazing. And um, but when I look back, one of the things is like I got super excited about the growth and not realizing like how much like business can be up and down, and business can be, you know, you don't know when you're gonna get your next client and and whatever. So I would tell myself to slow it down a little bit, right? Like I I I feel like that's weird advice to give, but like really looking back, it's like, you know, just take it one day at a time and you know, don't get overexcited about where this is going. It's gonna happen either way. It's gonna happen. So, you know, don't, don't uh maybe don't, don't uh what's the phrase? Don't count your eggs, don't count count your chickens before they're hatched or whatever, right? Um, and I think that some of the struggles that I've also experienced over the last couple of years would have been better if I would have just taken it a little bit more slowly, right? But um, but overall, growth is is exciting, it's fun, it's amazing. Um, I'm I'm super grateful for the growth that we've had and also learned some hard lessons along the way and uh wish that I could have told myself that sooner.

SPEAKER_01 35:40

Yes, and I love that you normalize those ups and downs because they are so true. I remember a time in my youth where I would get frustrated every summer because business dips in the summer. And I started getting a new planner at the beginning of the year and turning to the month of June and writing on that calendar that things are going to slow down, but they will pick back up. So that was just my little reminder to myself because ebbs and flows are just a natural part of business. They are going to happen. And it will recover.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

Yeah. Yeah. And it cut yeah, it's but if you take things slowly and don't just get, you know, 10 steps ahead, uh, then you're you're a little more prepared for that. Uh you know, that that that was my experience. Not everyone's gonna have that experience, but that was for sure what what I have experienced. And and now I'm on the other side of that, like where I'm I'm learning what uh my word of the year for my business is stability, like learning what stability looks like and trying to get us to a place where you know we're we're stable. Um, and you know, I think that's a good problem to have, right? Uh just that we've we've been up and down and and uh to to get to a place where we feel like okay, like we can weather any storm. That's where I want to get. I that's where everybody wants to be. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

So as you're listening to this, I want you to remember what Kelly said. You want to be visible, you want to make sure people know you're credible and you want to be consistent. So start working on that exact formula. And until next time, keep planning like a boss.