Brand Building, Branding Queens, and Leadership, with Kim Derrick Rozdeba

Brace yourselves for a riveting conversation with Kim Derrick Rozdeba, an author, blogger, and branding guru credited with shaping some of the Fortune 500's most legendary names. Ever wondered what it takes to build a powerful brand? Kim breaks it down to five C's - commitment, construct, community, content, and consistency. Each element plays a vital role, and Kim takes us through each one, providing insights into their intricacies and how they intertwine to form a robust brand. 

Inspiration abounds as we journey through the successes of 20 entrepreneurial women who have built iconic brands, with the likes of Veuve Clicquot and Spanx leading the pack. We delve into how these brand queens leveraged leadership techniques to expand their businesses, develop their brands, and leave a lasting legacy. Now, have you ever wondered how Martha Stewart turned her challenges into stepping stones to success? We dissect her intriguing story, unearthing valuable lessons for both budding and seasoned entrepreneurs.

We also point you to resources that will equip you with the tools to foster personal growth and leadership. Tune in, learn from Kim Derrick Rozdeba, and draw inspiration from iconic female leaders. Ready to step into your leadership potential? Let's get started!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway.

Speaker 2: 0:16

Hey, it's William and welcome to today's episode of the Catalytic Leadership podcast. Each week, we tackle a topic related to the field of leadership. My goal is to ensure that you have actionable steps you can take from each episode to grow in your own leadership. Growth doesn't just happen. My goal is to help you become intentional about it. Each week, we spotlight leaders from a variety of fields, organizations and locations. My goal is for you to see that leaders can be catalytic, no matter where they are or what they lead. I draw inspiration from the stories and journeys of these leaders, and I hear from many of you that you do too.

Speaker 2: 0:57

Let's jump in to today's interview. I'm so excited to have Kim Derrick-Rosdiva on the show. Kim is an author, blogger and branding guru who has guided some of the Fortune 500's oldest and most iconic brands. He has over three decades of strategic planning, branding and executing multi-million dollar advertising and marketing campaigns, pr and corporate communications in the agriculture, pharmaceutical, petroleum, airline, telecommunication and automotive industries. He recently published his first book, branding Queens, which is about 20 incredible women who built global brand dynasties. His goal is to share his branding knowledge today, and I know every one of us is ready to listen. Kim, thank you so much for being on the show.

Speaker 3: 1:49

William, thank you very much for having me on your show.

Speaker 2: 1:53

I would love for you to share some of your story with our listeners, Kim, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Speaker 3: 2:03

So I could go right back to my early days of when I was playing with my sister and I always ended up sort of on a stage and I would always be sort of standing there acting as if I was a leader of some sort. I don't know why it came natural to me to be always sort of me on the front. I'm trying to lead people, or at least try to get people to see things differently. So, as I went through my career, I'm an introvert, so that's even harder, I think when you actually think about it. One-on-one I'm really good, but large audiences it took time and some people say, oh no, you're not an introvert, I act like an extrovert because to work and to be a leader you have to be seen, not necessarily heard, but you have to be seen. I think introverts have. I think we have an advantage we spend maybe a little bit more time listening than actually telling.

Speaker 2: 3:19

I agree. I'm an introvert who operates as an extrovert in so much of my life, and I think sometimes there's this misnomer that introvert means that you hate people. I don't think that's true for either of us. It's just where do you draw your energy? Is your energy from crowds, from groups of people, or do you find that you draw more energy solo, doing things that really fill your tank?

Speaker 3: 3:46

My wife is an extrovert and when we go to parties at the end of it I'm totally exhausted. She's always the one saying just one more, just a couple more minutes. And then when we get home or the next morning and we talk about the party, I'll have maybe actually had three really good conversations. But they were deep conversations and my wife would have actually talked to everybody.

Speaker 2: 4:18

That's so funny. My experience as well. You talk a lot about branding. I would love for you to talk about what a brand is and why it's important.

Speaker 3: 4:30

Sure, I'm going to kind of stole the quote from Maya Angelou, and my definition of brand isn't about what it says or what it does, but how it makes its customers feel. So brand and branding is all about that perception, that feeling that the customer has because they own the brand. So you can influence it absolutely. Every touch point that you have, every opportunity you have to convince or to get somebody to have your brand or to want to use your brand, you have lots of opportunities to convince them and to prove to them that your brand is worthy of their loyalty.

Speaker 2: 5:23

When we were talking earlier. We were talking about what you call your five C's of branding, and I think this is fascinating. I would love for you to share about that as well.

Speaker 3: 5:36

Branding is very complex. I think people sometimes get it mixed up with marketing. Sometimes they get it mixed up just that it's a logo or a name. So what I tried to do with the five C's is give you sort of a nomenclature but also sort of streams of principles of how to build a brand. So the five C's, quickly, is commitment, construct, community, content and consistency.

Speaker 3: 6:12

Now I'm going to go back to the first one, because the first one, I think, is really important and that's the why it's the commitment. And the commitment is everything from your vision, your mission, your purpose, your brand promise. Why are you doing this? Yeah, yeah, the second one the construct is the logo, it's the color palette, it's the tonality of the brand. Is the brand funny, is it serious? What are all the constructs? I mean smell your five senses. If it's a food item, a lot of the touch, the feel, the smell becomes really important.

Speaker 3: 6:55

The third one, which is community, is really bigger than just the customer. A lot of people say well, I thought it was going to be customer, one of your five C's. Customers are hugely important, but your entire community, in particular your employees, are just as important. They can be your advocates, they can actually be your brand leaders every time that they're with their families, with their communities themselves, then your actual communities that you work in are just as important as well. The content this is the one that really is marketing content. But it's bigger than just marketing, it's public relations. It is how do you present yourself as a leader to your community? Are you not only just a leader, but do you have an opinion on what's going on? Ideally, that opinion is clearly close to what you do as a business, but it doesn't stop you from being part of your community. Of course, digital, social, all of those other aspects of marketing come into that.

Speaker 3: 8:11

The final one, and probably the most, it's not the exciting one For me when I actually started looking at all the things I write on my blog this one I don't write about as often. I don't know why. It's analytical. Probably that's part of it. The consistency what is your governance? What do you have in place that the product or service that you're providing is going to be delivered consistently every time? That's not even good enough. What you have to do is always continue to ratchet that up. You've got to follow trends. You've got to follow your competition. Do you have all this data that's coming in. What are you doing with it, how are you analyzing and how are you making sure that you're moving forward and not just sitting back and reaping the rewards of your brand? Because your brand is dynamic. This one is really, really important.

Speaker 2: 9:11

That's so good. I love how you've created the 5C model, the framework here, in such a way that no matter what people are doing, where they're doing it, it doesn't matter, it just applies. These are handles that they can grab and really take and do something with those. It's so practical. Looking around at so many of the organizations that you've worked with, of those 5Cs, which one do you think is the one that so many companies really poorly execute?

Speaker 3: 9:42

To me it would be the commitment. Why I say the commitment is sometimes it's just words, a mission statement, but have you actually built it into all the other Cs? That's good. I can answer the why. In the elevator, I'm good, but is it actually used all the time? When you're actually making business decisions, when you're looking at product development, are you going back to this is going does this fit? Does this actually fit? Or are you doing this because there's an opportunity and there's money on the table that you don't want to lose? That's really good.

Speaker 2: 10:31

It reminds me of something I heard once Is it just what's on the wall, or is it what's going on down the hall? That's a great one. Is this really who you are? I love that. A lot of the folks listening to this show are entrepreneurs. They're agency owners, they're leaders. They're starting something new and fresh For something new, for a new company, a new organization. Which Cd do you think is the most important?

Speaker 3: 10:58

I'm going to go back to the commitment If you don't have that figure it out. What's really interesting, though, is if you're really new as a business, that may not be that clear, because you're focused on a product At the beginning of your journey. It is about the quality. It's about how am I going to make this, how am I going to make it in a way that's going to be cost effective, or how am I going to deliver it? What's the channels for delivery for this product? Out of mind, out of sight, we're not going to have a product or a successful product. You are really focused on what you're trying to accomplish, that's, deliver a product or service that is exceptional. The why may not be so clear. The consistency is the other piece to the puzzle of getting that right, because if it's not delivered consistently, it's like a personality. It's a schizophrenic personality going okay. Well, last time I came in, this is what I experienced. That's not the same experience I got this time. It's like airlines you never know what you're going to get Boy.

Speaker 2: 12:30

Isn't that true? A friend of mine, jonathan Milligan, often says consistency is the mother of momentum. Everybody wants momentum. Every business, every organization wants momentum. But how you get there is the day to day. It's the consistency, it's the blocking and tackling consistently, over and over and over, working the system, calling the place. That's hard sometimes because entrepreneurs and leaders oh look at that, hey, let's try that. Why don't we do this? Let's try that.

Speaker 3: 13:00

Oprah Winfrey, who's in one of the branding queens in my book, always denied that she was a brand until she learned that one aspect of a brand was being consistent. When she understood that, she understood that she was a brand because she was consistent. She has always been consistent in what she delivers.

Speaker 2: 13:27

Oh, that's good. Let's talk about the book, because I think you've written something that is incredibly insightful and helpful and can be for so many of our listeners. You wrote this about 20 entrepreneurial women who built iconic brands over being one of them. Who are some others that are included in the 20 and the brands that you're looking?

Speaker 3: 13:50

at. Most of these brands are consumer brands. I mean, I had to sort of stick with consumer brands, partly because I wanted people to have a relationship that they've already had a relationship with these brands, so that they could understand where they were coming from as opposed to a manufacturer. There's a couple here that may not be familiar to most people but it goes back to 1810, the first brand that I have here, which is Vouve Cliqueau, the Champagne. Barbara Nicole Cliqueau started. Actually she married this fellow who was a person that worked in textiles family well, to do family in France. They got into. Actually, her father-in-law had some vines that they were growing and they were just growing grapes and selling the grapes to other vineyards. Her husband and her got really enchanted by this whole idea of growing your own grapes and producing your own product. They started dabbling and then he suddenly died yellow fever. Most cases back then what the woman would do is sell the business, give it another family member. She had a daughter at the time, a young daughter, but she was passionate about this as much as her husband. She's convinced because she was a widow. She convinced her father-in-law to allow her to continue the business and the rest is history. That's the oldest brand. The others that you would probably be familiar with Bissell carpet cleaning. That was Ann Bissell back in 1876.

Speaker 3: 15:55

Margaret Rudkins I don't know if you'd know Margaret Rudkins, but if I mentioned Peppridge Farms, she started Peppridge Farms. She was not a baker, she actually was a wife of a stockbroker, got caught into the Depression. She had a son who had allergies. Her doctor had said to her well, all these starting to come out with all these new Wonder Bread, all your purified things, lots of packaged products. He said if you got your own whole wheat grain and made your own bread, you'd probably be good for him. That's what she did. She learned how to make bread. People started loving her bread, neighbors, friends and even her doctor, because she presented to her doctor and she started a business selling bread. From then again, history tells you the rest Olive and Beech. Beech aircraft One that you would never think of, but Beech aircrafts. They still fly today. The company has been bought a number of times but there are still planes being made, beech aircrafts.

Speaker 3: 17:14

Her and her husband he was a pilot, she was not. She was really good at numbers. She probably. She actually never did have a degree in accounting or anything but she knew numbers. She could do equations in her head Most of us couldn't do on paper. She actually took over the business when her husband passed away. Again, this was a situation. She had two daughters. She didn't have to, she was quite well off, but she took the business and made it actually international. I can keep going, I can keep going.

Speaker 3: 17:54

I can give you a sort of maybe more recent brands Sarah Blakely Spanx, which I think is a one that is quite famous today. Other ones that have been in the media recently is Martha Stewart, another really interesting character, debbie Fields. She started Fields Cookies. The interesting lady.

Speaker 3: 18:26

One of the interesting things from her perspective was when she started her business, franchising was really popular. It was an easy way to get finance and an easy way to expand quickly. Something like this expanding quickly because it was a new concept. It's kind of like the coffee shop. You had to get one on every corner to build one your brand awareness but two just to solidify and make the barrier a little harder for somebody else to come in, particularly in that low-end entry. You don't have to have a whole manufacturing plant right away.

Speaker 3: 19:12

She started and she did not want to franchise. Every location was company-owned. The reason she wanted a company-owned is so she could control the quality of the product and the delivery of that product. She wanted it to be an experience, a fun experience, interesting. The other thing she did is that the cookies were actually made on-premise, not from the dough that was pre-made, frozen A lot of places. What you see today is exactly what you get it's cooked there, it's baked there, but the product is mixed Again for consistency. That's why most brands do that. She wanted ownership by her managers, that they felt proud that they were presenting you a product that they made from scratch. Wow, that's smart. It was a different approach. It was not an easy approach because they had to put all the money up for every store. It was harder. We'll have to read the book. It wasn't easy to get started with her vision. Those are just a couple.

Speaker 2: 20:32

Fascinating. It certainly went to my appetite.

Speaker 1: 20:35

I would like to dive into this and read about each one of these, because I don't know some of those names.

Speaker 2: 20:39

That's fantastic.

Speaker 3: 20:42

One thing that you had mentioned when we previously talked was all of this has to do with leadership, the five C's I was actually thinking about. These are actually applicable for leadership as well. So, true, it worked really well for me from a branding perspective, but actually when you start looking and I was looking at these women and going, okay, what are unique about them from a leadership perspective?

Speaker 2: 21:13

The five C's are all part of that- Are there threads that you see through that in these women, as you look at their leadership styles, are there consistent themes that come out to you?

Speaker 3: 21:26

There are. I'm very far and happy to do that. I'mal tanky. The first one is believe in yourself. As a leader. You don't have a lot of people you can talk to about what you're thinking. It's true, you can't go to your employees and go. You know what I'm thinking of doing this to our company. You know I'm thinking of. You know maybe restruct, you can't do that. So you and most people when you're starting think you're crazy. Yeah, you know media reaction and most of these women people go you can't do that. No, that's not going to work. So believing in yourself becomes really important.

Speaker 3: 22:10

Tori Birch another again her brand is her. When she first started, she started with the concept of having her brand on all the pieces. So most designers, most that they start with, they start with one product clothes maybe. When she started she started with clothes, shoes, accessories, jewelry, all under the Tori Birch brand. These were all designs, all related, all fit together. People said to her you can't do that, that's too big, it's going to be too hard. And she did and she opened up her store. Her first store first day sold out of everything. Wow. So that's the first one.

Speaker 3: 23:03

Self-aware, I think, is another hugely important one self-aware, but also eager to learn. All of these women started from ground zero. Most did not have a formal education, university degree or any discipline that they could fall back on, so they had to learn. They had to learn about manufacturing. They had to learn about customer relations. The neat thing is they understood their customer. So, as a leader, you do need to understand your target audience as well. Be it to be an employee, be it somebody that you're serving, it becomes really important as to understand it. Which takes me to the next one, which is empathy. I saw this across the board. Their social consciousness of their community was huge, so some of them actually started. You hear about socially responsible brands today. This was natural for most of them.

Speaker 3: 24:08

Wow, I'll start with just a quick example of is Madam CJ Walker. She was the first black millionaire in the United States and she started with hair products. But she started with the whole idea of helping empower other black women. So she employed a whole network of black women that she brought in. She actually built a university, and the university was not just on how to sell their products. It was all about how to build your confidence, how to dress, how to present yourself so good. So she brought, empowered a number of black women and that's I mean, go back in time, that's 1906. So, wow, she was. Her parents were slaves when she started and she's actually started as a wash woman, washing clothes for others. That's how she started, my goodness. But the other, as I said, social consciousness standing for something, again, that probably came out as well.

Speaker 1: 25:30

So yeah, she was a black woman no-transcript.

Speaker 3: 25:34

You know, you have to care about something and give, as I go back to the social consciousness of just giving, was really important and understanding your why of what you're trying to achieve as a leader, I think is really important as well. Consistency principles and the other one I saw was persistence and persistence, because if you have no one believes what you're doing is going to succeed, you have to be consistent. I'll give you one quick story. It was Estie Lauder and when she started she had, you know, built a couple of products face creams, lipstick and she tried to.

Speaker 3: 26:29

You know, she went to Saxford Avenue Main floor is all your cosmetics and she went to the cosmetic head and said I'd like to, you know, open up, you know, into your store and, you know, offer my products. And she goes well, you know, if our customers ask for it, then we'll, we'll consider possibly bringing your products in, but right now nobody's asking for your products. Just happened the next week or a couple of weeks, maybe not exactly the next week, but she was across the street at a functional luncheon and she was doing a speaking engagement and she was, you know, talking about her, her brand and what she's going, and at the end of it, she offered every woman in the audience a free sample of her lipstick and she said you'll have to go to Saxford Avenue and ask for it.

Speaker 2: 27:33

Oh, that's brilliant. I love that. Never give up, right? No, never, never give up, and you're not going to let what you can't do stop you from doing what you can. I see that too, and so many entrepreneurs that are successful. They will not. They will not stop when they hit an obstacle, they just figure out a way around it, over it or under it.

Speaker 3: 28:02

So I'll add one more. The one I want to add is intuition and I heard this a number of times in reading about these women, and Oprah Winfrey talks of it quite often about listening to yourself and making sure that you will have the answer somewhere. So Lillian Vernon, who started the Lillian Vernon a direct marketing, and she started with her. She used to have there were little booklets that she mailed out which had all these different products that were. The uniqueness for her products was that they would be your name would be on them.

Speaker 3: 28:51

So, everything that you would get would have that special nuance of having that person's name on it. So there were a lot of gift items that she had, but she always said her success came from what she called her golden gut, she. When she was buying all of these things and she was the one that was buying all of these different items that she felt other people would want was exactly that she used her gut instincts to determine what would work and what would not work, and she was quite successful at it.

Speaker 2: 29:29

The leader's intuition. We were talking earlier about personal branding and creating yourself as a brand, and you have a strong opinion on this.

Speaker 3: 29:40

Well, I do. I'm not sure people want to be a brand. If they really truly want to be a brand, I can see people using some of the five C's using you know. Understand your why, I think is extremely important. If you are, you know, selling a service, you are a consultant of some sort, you do need to understand what your why is, understand what your purpose is and what your promise is going to be to your customers.

Speaker 3: 30:13

But defining yourself as a box of cereal, I don't want to do that, because a brand is exactly that. It's fixed. You fix it, you write down all the characteristics of your construct and that's what you live by, and I find humans to be a little bit more complex than that. So there have been, I mean, all for. Winfrey is a brand. Queen Elizabeth II was a brand, I'm not sure. Queen Elizabeth II well, she had probably really nice personal life, maybe, but every time we saw her, we saw her in a way that would they wanted her to be presented that brand. And we do see some brands out there that get into trouble. You know big brands and what we find to see is OK. When you're famous, are you a brand? Well, yeah, but it depends, because you can be famous and not really be a brand. And it's safe to be, you know, somewhat not committal to being a brand, because then you're stuck, because you now become that box of cereal Wow that's so true, thinking about, you mentioned Martha Stewart earlier.

Speaker 2: 31:36

Yeah, you know, martha Stewart was a brand. I think you know, and if you hear that name. It's synonymous. It's still so synonymous. But her personal issues, right, taxation and whatnot really created a giant speed bump in that brand. Like when you, when you look at somebody like Martha Stewart, like, what do you think in terms of that? Like when you allow something from that's not part of the carefully crafted, carefully engineered picture that you want to present. What is that? What are the implications of that?

Speaker 3: 32:13

Well, it was in the millions for her brand. So you know the selling of insider trading scandal that she was involved in, the money that she was involved that she saved by selling her shares before negative information that had entered into the marketplace would drop, the shares was less than 100,000. I think it was. I'm trying to remember it was less than 100,000. It wasn't, you know, in her. In the big scheme of things it was not a lot of money. But with her always fighting the case and I think she believed that she was people were going to follow her. But she, when she said she was innocent, I believe she thought people would believe her, the judge would believe her, everybody would just fall into line and things would be fine. But it got worse and she kept fighting and she kept fighting and so a woman who is very good at public relations read this one wrong and it was millions and millions of dollars lost in her shares. The company itself almost went under. It took a long time for it to recover, but she recovered.

Speaker 3: 33:43

As a brand. Was she used as an example? Absolutely. I think the actual crime was petty. Possibly because maybe she was a woman, I don't know. But they thought, okay, this is a really, really well-known person and we're going to set an example and there's been lots of people, famous people that have never been taken an example of lots of different things. So she read the situation wrong and the consequences. She had to bear the consequences and the company had to bear the consequences as well.

Speaker 2: 34:27

I think that's such a lesson, and I constantly read biographies and so many historical works that teach me lessons from people who've gone before. I don't think I'm going to live long enough to make all the mistakes myself. I'd like to learn how to avoid as many ditches as I can, and so sometimes from a great leader I can learn what to do, but sometimes I can learn what not to do, and that can be incredibly valuable as well. So I think it's so important to look at someone like Martha Stewart and say, okay, what can we learn from what she did right? What can we learn from what she did wrong? And I think so many entrepreneurs really need to take both of those to heart. I love that you've captured that here.

Speaker 3: 35:10

Thank you for that, and she's an incredible woman in the sense of how she's reinvented herself over and over and over. She started as a babysitter. She went from being a babysitter to a stockbroker Wow, I went from a stockbroker to a caterer, went from a caterer to a book publisher of cookbooks, and then she went on to being a TV personality, with her TV shows which had cooking and lifestyle and doing all these incredible things to make your hosts look fabulous. And then she continued to reinvent herself. I think she's got over almost close to 100 books in her name.

Speaker 2: 36:04

My goodness. And again, there's that persistence right that never give up, martha. I love that. Is there a book that you think of when you think of your journey, a book that has made a big impact on you that you would say, hey, if you're a leader, I think this is one you really need to read.

Speaker 3: 36:24

So David Ogilvy on advertising is a classic. I used to work for Ogilvy so he was actually I'm kind of dating myself now. He actually was still the head of our company when I worked for Ogilvy and Mayther way back when. So the book itself was not only unique because it's, I mean, well written, really simple, but we would actually get memos from him and with clear thinking of how important is the customer and today we hear customer centricity all the time. But from his perspective, if we had a customer, we use their product. Everybody within the organization should be using their product. So that's one Others start with why.

Speaker 2: 37:30

Oh yeah, that's a great book. As people, as we wrap up today, I'm curious if people walk away with one thing from this episode, kim, what would you like that one thing to be?

Speaker 3: 37:43

So I'm going to go back to my definition of a brand, because if the original Maya Angelou's original was about what a person does and Maya is about a brand, but they're the same thing. It's not what we say or do, but it's how we make people feel and, as a leader, the same thing. How do we make them feel so good?

Speaker 2: 38:12

They'll always remember that. I know our listeners are going to want to stay connected with you, Kim. What is the best way for them to do that?

Speaker 3: 38:20

LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. You'll see me. There is Derek Kim-Rozdeba on LinkedIn, but then the other way, you just Google me or you can Google Branding Queens You'll get to my website. It is my last name, rozdebacom. I'm easy to find on the internet.

Speaker 2: 38:43

That's fantastic, and don't forget to pick up a copy of Branding Queens. I'll have a link to that in the show notes. I'm looking forward to reading my copy. Kim, thank you again so much for the generosity you've shared today. So much insight, so much wisdom, so grateful. Thanks for joining me for this episode today.

Speaker 2: 39:00

As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticaleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out.

Speaker 2: 39:34

My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20-plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. If you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader. I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticaleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.

Speaker 1: 40:20

Thanks for listening to Catalytic Leadership with Dr William Attaway. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode. Want more? Go to catalyticaleadershipnet.