Catalytic Leadership

Cold Leads Aren’t the Problem; Here’s How to Build Trust Fast

• Dr. William Attaway • Season 3 • Episode 108

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Struggling to stand out online? Pouring energy into content that barely moves the needle? You’re not alone — and the issue isn’t leads. It’s trust.

In this episode, I sit down with Emmy-winning filmmaker and founder of Brandmagnetic.com, Mariana Henninger, who helps online business owners build trust fast through emotionally resonant brand videos. Known as the queen of brand videos, Mariana reveals why the “long sales cycle” isn’t a law — it’s a myth — and how to use story, emotion, and psychology to convert cold traffic in 3 minutes or less.

We break down the exact system she’s installed for agencies scaling beyond 7-figures — one that shortens nurture sequences, strengthens brand trust, and creates assets that sell while you sleep. If you want to build trust fast without gimmicks, this episode shows you what to change, where to focus, and how to finally be unforgettable online.

⏱ Chapter Breakdown

  • 00:00 — Intro: Why this conversation matters right now
  • 00:52 — Meet Mariana: Emmy-winning filmmaker and founder of Brandmagnetic.com
  • 01:26 — The hidden trust gap most marketing ignores
  • 05:22 — Why standing out is harder than ever — and what to do about it
  • 07:28 — The myth of the long nurture cycle (and how to collapse it)
  • 08:35 — The 4 Trust Triggers that accelerate conversion
  • 13:32 — How to meet cold leads during the “Instant Trust Window”
  • 16:04 — Why brand videos outperform nurture sequences
  • 21:55 — Turning story into system: emotional visuals and B-roll redefined

📚 Books Mentioned

  • Everything is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo
  • Trust by Dr. Henry Cloud


Want to see what this looks like in action? Watch Mariana’s personal brand video at Brandmagnetic.com/mariana. And if you're ready to rethink how you’re showing up at the top of your funnel, grab her free cheat sheet at Brandmagnetic.com/cheatsheet


Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.

Connect with Dr. William Attaway:

Dr. William Attaway:

I'm so excited today to have Mariana Henninger on the podcast. Mariana is an Emmy-winning filmmaker and founder of BrandMagneticcom, where she helps online business owners accelerate trust and increase sales by creating instant connection with cold audiences using a single three-minute brand video. Known as the queen of brand videos, she blends emotional storytelling with strategy to create a forever asset that makes you stand out and does the heavy lifting so you don't have to. She's also the host of the Empire Secrets of Digital Marketing podcast. Marianne, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being on the show.

Mariana Henninger:

Yay, william, always a treat to chat with you I always enjoy our conversations, and this will be no exception.

Dr. William Attaway:

I know I'm excited.

Intro video:

I'm looking forward to sharing this one Yep. 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.

Dr. William Attaway:

William Attaway, I would love to start with you sharing a little bit of your story with our listeners particularly around your journey in your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Mariana Henninger:

Oh, that's wait, let's just address this question your development as a leader. That's so funny. I don't see myself as a leader but, william, like being in your world. I'm like I think I should be more of a leader.

Dr. William Attaway:

You are so thank you.

Mariana Henninger:

Thank you for phrasing the question that way and I appreciate that my story is wild. So there's so many different things I could say about my story To try to condense what could be a bigger book into just a shorter answer for you. I got started as a journalist. As a photographer, I went from undergrad to living in Bedouin tents in the Middle East and pitching stories. I lived in a hostel for 18 months and pitched stories every single day to editors hoping to get my photos bought, and it really taught me how to pitch really fast, how to look at stories, even having been trained as a journalist. That was kind of how I got started to. You know, even having been trained as a journalist, that was kind of how I got started and as I was doing more and more storytelling at the time through photography, I learned something very quickly which is in order to tell the best story I needed to make people feel so comfortable with me.

Mariana Henninger:

I didn't have a whole lot of time right Sometimes, even if I'm fast forwarding probably 10, 15 years, when I was at working at NBC and I was flying all over the world you know, afghanistan and Haiti and Finland and Ukraine and all over the world telling people stories.

Mariana Henninger:

I didn't have unlimited budgets right, so I needed to get people to trust me very quickly, to know that I was going to do their story justice, and to be able to look at their story and be able to pull out the most impactful parts of their story.

Mariana Henninger:

So that, and my biggest goal and this is why I love documentary filmmaking, which I ended up graduating from photography into documentary filmmaking the biggest reason I love documentaries is because they put you in the shoes of somebody whose life and whose story you wouldn't otherwise necessarily care about, and when you're able to do that, you're literally taking a stranger to this person, a stranger to that story, to that reality, and making them care, making them feel something At the end of watching.

Mariana Henninger:

At the time, I worked on a lot of short pieces and so getting people to trust me really fast and then understanding how to tell their story in a way that really packed that punch, that emotional punch, and made people feel something, made people take action, eventually leading to an Emmy. As you mentioned, I actually got nominated for a second one and yeah, so those are the two things that I really learned in 15 years of traveling the world, first as a photographer, then in video and working for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, time Magazine and then finally NBC, before I realized I was a closeted entrepreneur and I needed to do my own thing.

Dr. William Attaway:

I love that story. You know, there is no such thing as a wasted experience in your life.

Mariana Henninger:

Oh my gosh, no yeah.

Dr. William Attaway:

Every bit of that has made you into the leader, the entrepreneur, the business owner that you are today and helps you as you serve your clients. You're building, know, like and trust right, just like anybody else in the marketing world, but you're accelerating the process. How?

Mariana Henninger:

do you do that? Well, it all starts with any good marketing, right? So I'll just tell you really quick. I think I need to bridge from journalism to what I do today, which is, straight up, digital marketing and really understanding how, as you said, to accelerate trust, how to make you stand out, how to make people instantly feel connected to you, so that you are not lost in the sea of sameness if you're an agency owner, so you don't blend in with everyone else.

Mariana Henninger:

I actually heard a quote from Hermosi on his podcast just the other day and he said building an agency is the lowest barrier to entry. All you need is a cell phone and an internet connection. And I'm like, oh man, truly, so many people can call themselves digital agencies and might not have the credentials, might not have the credentials, might not have the experience and definitely, if they're coming from scratch, they don't have what your listeners I'm sure have. And yet they're flooding the marketplace, they're creating more and more content. We know that AI is spitting out content in so much volume right now, and so how do not only do we stand up, but we pierce through that noise and create that instant connection, the moment that people cold audiences land on our website, land on our social page and not forget us like that.

Mariana Henninger:

That's the, that's the goal here we don't want to be forgotten and we want to create an instant connection so that every time we're showing up, every time that we appear in their inbox if, luckily, we've been able to grab their email, or we're showing up on socials if, luckily you know they followed us they're paying so much more attention into the marketing world because I'm obsessed with marketing, I'm obsessed with sales, I'm obsessed with, like, understanding how to get people to feel something so that they can take action faster on a thing that you know, hopefully, will transform their lives. I'm actually very picky about clients that I work with. You know there has to be alignment of values, so I love promoting businesses who really and truly bring something incredible to their clients, right? So, anyway, what was your question?

Mariana Henninger:

So so like how do we do that Right?

Dr. William Attaway:

How do you do that Like yeah, like in trust is is a long lead. Typically you've got to really work to build that trust factor, but you've figured out a way to shortcut that a little bit.

Mariana Henninger:

For sure. That's actually the number one myth that I love changing people's perspectives around, like business owners' perspectives around. We have just bought this complete myth that it takes six to 12 months of having to show up consistently, of having to put out all of that content, having to work so hard to nurture people from cold all the way to, hopefully, a potential client, and hopefully they don't unsubscribe in the interim. Hopefully the algorithm doesn't turn on us and we don't show up anymore. Right, we've just bought that. This is the way to do business. We take somebody from cold, we hopefully try to grab their emails with something really, really catchy, right at the top of the funnel and then we hope that they stick around long enough over months and months and months in order to build that trust with them, what I call micro dosing. We're micro dosing little bits of ourselves, little bits of our brand, so that they eventually trust us to be the person that will bring that solution to them, and so that's what we believe.

Mariana Henninger:

That is the pain point of the reality of marketing in the digital space that we've just accepted. How do we accelerate that? Well, good old marketing starts with understanding your audience really deeply and starting with them first, right, and so what I use is what I call the four trust triggers. We need to understand how to hit these four trust triggers so that people can accelerate, so we can accelerate that trust the moment that people meet us online. So, before I talk about the four trust triggers, I'm going to explain something that's going to sound so obvious when you hear it, but we really don't think about it, and that is when people first meet us, meaning they first land on our socials or they first land on our website. Typically it's going to be one of those two, or they maybe even hear about us from somebody else.

Mariana Henninger:

When that first connection happens, we're not typically there, right, it's our website speaking for us, it's our social speaking for us. We're not necessarily, we're typically not interacting with a very cold audience the moment they meet us and what's happening is that that cold person that cold they're not even a lead yet, right? But that cold person is what are they doing, william? They heard about us. They went to check us out. They went to figure out what we're about, right, they're checking us out. Actually, what's his name? I have his book and I totally blanked on his name. There's an author that talks about how people are checking us out, in the privacy of anonymity, in their own time and space.

Dr. William Attaway:

That's good.

Mariana Henninger:

And so this is what I call the instant trust window. There's a window of time it might be like 30 seconds, it might be a minute if you're lucky where people are actively looking at your stuff and wanting to know who you are. And what they're trying to answer is is it worth it for me to pay attention to this person, to this brand right, or to this business? And what do we have, william? What are we serving them with? We're giving them an about me page that, more often than not, we kind of wrote it was a tortured writer. About me page, right? We? Write in this person. We write it.

Mariana Henninger:

We wrote it 10 years ago when we started our business. Or whenever we start our business, we're like oh, I guess I need an about me page. Oh, what am I gonna write about myself? That doesn't sound too self-glorifying.

Dr. William Attaway:

That sounds so true, and we never look at it again, right. That's right, because we don't want to.

Mariana Henninger:

We don't want to right who wants to talk about themselves. We have learned that it's all about our clients. It's all about them. It's all about and listen, I'm not anti that messaging, and I think Donald Miller did an amazing job of shifting our perspective with the story brand concept into making it all about your customer, your customers. Yes, your customer is a hero.

Mariana Henninger:

However, your customer, the hero, wants to know who you are. They want to know who you are because they want to know if they can trust you to solve the problem that you, with such amazing copy and whatnot, you're saying that you're great at and you're saying that you can solve for them. Ultimately, they want to make the decision about whether they want to work with you versus anybody else, and what we're doing is we're not paying attention to that message. That truly shows them who we are, and so that About Me page that we wrote and we forgot about is typically and you know the stat, I think we talked about this when we first met it is the second most visited page on any website. It is or about us or meet our team, whatever you want to call it 100%, it is.

Mariana Henninger:

Why? Because people want to know, william, they want to know and so, and then you know on your socials. If you're lucky, you might be one of those people who realize it's important to like pin something at the top that kind of explains who you are Most. Some people don't, some businesses don't do that. And what? When you don't do that? Here's what happens. Your cold audience person who might've been a perfect client for you next week, right, who might've been so ready to work with you, they are put into this funnel that we just assumed this is how digital marketing works. They need to come into our nurture sequence. That is going to take two months or whatever long. However long our nurture sequence is because we're treating them so gently. We don't want to like oversell, we just want to like microdose. It give them a ton of value, value, value, value.

Mariana Henninger:

That's right we don't want to talk about ourselves because God forbid. You know we make it about us and truly it's not. It's not that you need to make your marketing about you. You need to meet them in that instant trust window, that those 30 seconds, that one minute where they're actually out of their own free will, trying to figure out who you are, so that they understand whether they pay attention to you or not. We need to meet them with something impactful and something that's going to drive so much emotion that they can't ever forget who we are.

Mariana Henninger:

And so what I've developed is, you know, with my background, in like beautiful, intimate personal storytelling.

Mariana Henninger:

You know I had a documentary that went on to play in Congress in enacted law.

Mariana Henninger:

Like this is what I special, what I'm so passionate about, is like how to squeeze your essence into like three minutes so that your audience who would watch your brand video on your about me page pinned on your socials maybe it's in your email signature, it's on your sales page, If they're landing cold on a low ticket offer that you have ads running to they need to know immediately what you're about, what you stand for and hit those trust triggers which I'm gonna talk about.

Mariana Henninger:

So I wanted to just set the stage before I told you the how of what. Our myth is right. We just believe this myth that it's going to take months to convert somebody, when, in fact, that is doing them a disservice. We are doing our best clients a disservice by delaying this process, by accepting that it's going to take months, accepting that it's going to take months when, in fact, once they know who we are, all that needs to happen next is they need to make sure you're a fit, they need to make sure those trust triggers actually match them, and then they obviously need to know a bit more about your offer, make sure a few other things are aligned, but we can accelerate that process so much by giving them this asset that makes them feel like they know us before they ever get on a sales call.

Dr. William Attaway:

That's so good. And that is exactly a myth that I hear all the time. Yeah, it's got a long sales cycle you got to deal with you know you got to. You got to build this thing over time. Don't sell. Don't sell too early, don't sell too fast, don't present your offer. Don't lean like value, value exactly like you said. Walking't sell too fast, don't present your offer.

Mariana Henninger:

Don't lean like value. Value, exactly, like you said, walking on eggshells and there's a lot of truth to that. Like what, I'm not what I'm what, I'm sorry. I'm not saying that you should push your offer very quickly. What I'm saying is that we hide behind providing value and showing up as the expert, first and foremost, versus showing up as the human and the human. Showing up as the human first and foremost versus showing up as the human and the human showing up as a human means. This is what my value, this is. This is why I do this. This is why I'm passionate about helping you, because this is, you know, there's so many how, how long do we have? I can go into right, but um, but I I do want to answer your question of like, how? Right, so I explained how this works. But how do we actually create that single brand story? Like?

Mariana Henninger:

I work in brand videos because obviously video makes you come more alive, a lot more. There's a lot more impact in video than in text. We know that from science. Nothing against text. I love, I love that.

Mariana Henninger:

But so the way that we do that is by hitting those four trust triggers. The first one is people need to feel that you get them. So it does start with your audience. It's honestly, your brand video is all about your audience. It's how to connect with your audience by using your story, so you get them on a very deep level. The second trust trigger that they need to feel in order to trust you faster they need to feel that you care about them deeply, that it's not just about you know, flashing a Stripe screenshot and you know, oh my gosh, my a hundred K months, you know all that marketing stuff. It's not about that. They're not a number to you. They are human whose business you are passionate about helping and accelerating right, and you're passionate because you truly, truly care about them. So that's trust trigger number two that has to come through in that video or that, whatever you're doing to meet them at that trust window. The second they connect with you. The third one is that's where the expertise comes in.

Mariana Henninger:

So to me, expertise comes third, which is like you have got them, and it's expertise in the sense of you've done this a lot, you know what you're doing. You can provide relief for your clients that they're in the best of hands. So your expertise is not even about you. It's about giving them the sense of relief that they don't have to worry when they're working with you.

Mariana Henninger:

And then the fourth trust trigger is that we vibe right, our personalities match Like. You can have all three you get me, you care about me, you're the expert, but I might not actually like you as a person, right? Or we might have different styles and maybe that would mean it's not a match right styles and maybe that would mean it's not a match right, and you're not everybody's person and that's okay. And so, learning how to work from your audience to understand what, what their, what their fears are, their desires, their, all these things that you know, I'm sure your audience knows about because they do marketing, so understanding them deeply and then understanding reverse engineering from that into your story to understand which story and which parts of your story are going to hit them where they need to be hit, in the sense of hitting those trust triggers for them, for your ideal client.

Dr. William Attaway:

I love this. I love the simplicity of this. I love the depth of this. I love this. I love the simplicity of this. I love the depth of this. This hits all manner of relational touch points as you're building a relationship. I mean, I think about this, care right, I get you. I understand you.

Dr. William Attaway:

You know, the niche that I primarily work in is agency world right, and the reason for that is because I'm a third generation entrepreneur. My dad started a traditional ad agency back in the 70s and ran it for 40 plus years. I know that world, I know the language, I know what it's like from both sides and it gives me the ability to create a relationship with people, because I know that.

Mariana Henninger:

I would even say I would even go deeper. William Knowing can also be so superficial, right? Chad GPD knows. That's true. That's true. You get them. That's true. You experience that. Get them, that's true. You experience that with them there's a level of empathy that comes from like feeling the same things they feel, having been through that.

Dr. William Attaway:

The pain, right the pain points. As you go through that journey. I watched my dad struggle. I watched him think more hours is going to equal more effectiveness. And I watched what happens when you sacrifice your marriage on the altar of potential success with your business. I watched what happens when you don't make the turn when the industry changes.

Mariana Henninger:

Can I challenge you again? Not only did you watch it, you felt it right. Yes 100%.

Dr. William Attaway:

You experienced that within your own family and I'm sure you watched it, but there was a lot of emotional journey there for you 100%, and these were catalysts that help me now with my clients, to help them avoid some of those ditches, to help them say, hey, you know what? Do you know where this road goes that you're on? Because I do. Let me throw up a few warning signs for you that are going to help you avoid this ditch. Let me help you go farther than maybe you even think you're capable of and get there faster, because you don't have to learn some of this stuff the hard way. That's a catalyst inside of me. Yeah Right, but what you're describing is like how do you take that? How do you take that story? How do you take it and present that in such a way that people feel like you get them? Yeah.

Dr. William Attaway:

Right, they feel seen, they feel heard. You get it, you understand and you care enough to want to help me overcome it. Right, this is so powerful and you do this in three minutes.

Mariana Henninger:

I know. So that is the challenge, right, I keep forgetting. There's somebody famous that it can be quoted. I don't know if it was Hemingway or I really can't remember who it was who said I wrote you a letter If I had had more time it would have been a paragraph. You know what I mean. So, it takes so much skill to make something shorter and more impactful. I tell the story sometimes of the documentary that I made that won the Emmy.

Mariana Henninger:

My first cut was 45 minutes and I was so proud of that cut. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. This I didn't even, you know. At the time I didn't even know we were going to submit it or whatever, and my boss turned around and said it needs to be 10 minutes and I was like, oh, the way that I describe it, William like going back to the editing floor and being like I'm going to cut out so much good stuff. I remember that it felt like my heart was bleeding on the office floor.

Mariana Henninger:

I think in visuals a lot and that was the one that, like this is how it felt. It felt so painful to go back and cut so much out and, who knows, I don't know if it would have won as a 40 minute doc and yet as a 10 minute doc it's like punch to the gut and so it takes a lot of knowing what to keep and what to leave out, knowing what to film. There's a lot of what I call I don't even call it B-roll, I call it emotional visuals, because your visuals are a character in this piece. They're also pushing forward the emotions that you want to trigger in your audience. That's actually the most important question you want to ask is what is the emotion that I want my audience to have after watching this? That's really good. And then to something that you said earlier.

Mariana Henninger:

You know I have clients who now have a brand video installed, Like I call it a system.

Mariana Henninger:

You really install the system throughout your funnels, throughout your business, and they say things.

Mariana Henninger:

Like you know, we skipped the four or five emails back and forth now and people are coming to the sales call.

Mariana Henninger:

All they need to know is all they're asking about are like what are the details of my offer? They don't need to be sold on me. They feel like they know me already, and these are people who you know had previously not spent those months and months being nurtured by them. It was just feeling like they knew you, as if so the way that I describe it is, it's as if they had had this intimate coffee chat with, like a best friend, and that's the feeling that you want to have in your brand video, which is very I mean, in a way, the word, the words brand video don't really do it justice, in that there's all sorts of brand videos out there and I feel like the biggest mistake that most folks make is that they're just like not deep enough in that storytelling, in those very intentional emotional visuals, and you need to be very intentional to be able to do that in three and a half minutes, four minutes, and pack a punch.

Dr. William Attaway:

And that's how I would describe it. I mean watching yours, right, watching yours, that you did for you. I was struck by the richness and by the depth and by the impact, and that's really what it feels like. You feel the impact of the video as you're watching it, like, oh man, this is hitting so many different places internally. Wow, this is powerful. And that takes a very special skill set and really the hands of a surgeon to know where to cut. You know, and I think that's what you bring, the expertise that you bring to your clients.

Mariana Henninger:

Thanks, william. I really appreciate it, and sometimes if I'm on a podcast I'll do something really crazy, which is pause just for a quick second. Come right back, but you can watch my brand video at brandmagneticcom slash Mariana.

Mariana Henninger:

Oh I love that, yeah, but it helps to watch it, I think. First of all, again, thank you so much for sharing that, because it really makes my heart so happy when people express the results that I want to achieve with these brand videos. But in addition to that, it's just kind of like describing a movie. Right, you can describe it in so many words. You could talk about how it impacted you, how you cried, all of it, how it changed your life, but watching it for yourself and actually feeling it is the biggest testament to how this works, and so I appreciate you saying that so much.

Dr. William Attaway:

Well, we'll have a link to that in the show notes so people can go watch this and experience it, because that's really what it is. It is an experience. It's not just something that you watch while you're doing something else. I'm going to encourage the listeners to actually pay attention, like take three minutes and see what happens. So good, mariana, I want to talk about you for a minute. You know you are leading, and you are leading at a different level today than you were three, four, five years ago, and that same thing is going to be true three, four, five years from now. How do you stay on top of your game? How do you level up with new leadership skills that you are going to need to have in order not to be the lid or the cap on your business's growth for the years to come?

Mariana Henninger:

I hang around people like you, william, I'm not even joking. People like you, william, I'm not even joking, I think you know I I'm not. My business is on the younger side. I haven't been around for 10 years doing this business of. You know, I have 15 plus years of experience as a documentary filmmaker. I have fewer years as a business owner and a marketer and you know, as with every business, you're typically wearing more hats than you would like in the beginning.

Mariana Henninger:

I've kind of passed that, that level now where I have, you know, people in place that are that assist in all sorts of ways. But I've also I think we chatted about this I have been blessed with team members who, for a good amount of their work, kind of self-lead, where it's very collaborative, and I think it was really meeting you and I'm not just saying this because I'm on your podcast, but meeting you brought to my attention that this is not a skill set that I can just wing and I need to be a lot more intentional about growing and we talked about this when you were on my podcast where leading yourself is the most difficult task. You are the most difficult person to lead. I think it's about being around people who are doing it right. It's a lot about, yes, reading the right books or doing the right trainings, but ultimately, being around people who are doing it right and watching their example experience.

Mariana Henninger:

Again, less watching and more like feeling, like getting the feeling from them of what it means, like what, what does that nuance look like to navigate difficult situations with your team and and decisions for growth? You know, wearing less of the implementer hat and more of the CEO hat. That's kind of the stage where I am right now, and so I, you know, have me on the podcast a year from now. I'll probably give you like five other places, but for now, I really enjoy your podcast, I really enjoy your work. So looking forward to hearing you at the Commitment Summit and hopefully this is not this is going to be played beforehand, I'm not sure, but it will Absolutely.

Mariana Henninger:

Okay and yeah, so that would be. That's what I'm doing right now.

Dr. William Attaway:

You know. I love that you share that. I'm humbled that you would, that you would find it useful. The things that were put out, that's awesome. I love that you talk about the community, and I think this is something that a lot of entrepreneurs lack. They don't have a group of people that they are growing with. Growing alongside learning from sharpening each other, challenging each other, growing and learning together. That is critical for long-term success. The entrepreneurial road can be incredibly lonely if you try to do it all by yourself, but we were never intended to do that. Finding your people, your tribe, your community that then you can go forward with helps you to truly go farther and get there faster. I'm so glad you brought that up.

Mariana Henninger:

For sure. I'll add two things to that One, and they're kind of interconnected. One thing that I was praying a lot about at the end of last year was exactly that I felt like I had these sort of shallow really nice, you know, shallow relationships with folks in my industry, peers in different groups, that I'm in different masterminds, but I really, really missed having deeper connections and having like my go-to group of gals, and I was praying to God. I was like God, I really want this, like I hear people you know what you just described I was like that sounds so good. It feels like I don't really have that, that go-to pod that I can come to um with, to to really mastermind together, right, and I think I think I had great other people that I could sort of high level conversations with, but and God really fulfilled that dream Um, it was, um, initially it was like three of us and it wasn't very active.

Mariana Henninger:

It was like a private boxer group and now, uh, we invited a couple people, a couple of key people, and now we're like six of us and I the way that I describe it, it's kind of like sex in the city where, like we're, we're just like joined at the hip and it all sort of evolved over January. And you know this is going to sound very girly, but we talk about like stuff that happens to women over their forties. We talk about motherhood, we talk about, and then we talk about a lot about business and I love about life.

Mariana Henninger:

a hundred percent, that's what it is.

Mariana Henninger:

Being able to have that, that peer group where you're like really, um, there there's no topic that's off off the table is has been a game changer. And then the second thing I'll say is that maybe this answers your question about leadership too. Is that one shift that I've made since the beginning of my business? I would say, like the first year in business this was not the case for me, and then I really decided like this is going to change and it's going to change like today, and that is that God's my CEO. And I know that can sound like if you don't have a relationship with God, that can be like what the heck is she talking about. But really what I mean is that I'm not bothered by the ups and downs of my business. I'm not. You know, I just told you before we hit record, I had this massive opportunity that was previously a yes become a no, and I was just like, okay, that's all right, god's going to open some other doors over here, and just relying on God for that stability of spirit has been a game changer, and I truly believe that maybe that's what I'm bringing to the table to my team as well is just that everything is figureoutable. Thank you, marie Forleo. You know there's nothing, that there's no circumstance that's going to affect how I feel, and it doesn't. Quite the opposite.

Mariana Henninger:

I'm so passionate about my business, I'm so invested in my business, I'm invested in my clients and I do a lot of work for my business. I, you know, I'm constantly studying. I'm, you know, I'm constantly studying, I'm constantly learning, I'm constantly growing and implementing new systems. All that good stuff. But the most important thing is, like I'm hoping, like the way that I look at my business, is that I'm helping bring to the surface who you are as a human, and as a human you were created by God and that's, you know. I think there's like such an awesome connection there. So, anyway, so that's another really awesome, like important layer of my business. I love that.

Dr. William Attaway:

I think you know you have found your people, your mastermind group, when you can bring all of yourself into it, not just the highlight reel, not just the front facing or client facing you, but all of you, and that's what you're describing. You're bringing all of you into this setting, including your faith, and far too many entrepreneurs who are people of faith feel like they have to segment or wall off that part of their lives and not bring that part of them into their business, and I think it's so much healthier to understand that you are one person and to live a life of integrity means that you are living a life where everything integrates together where everything touches and you're not trying to wall off or separate one part of your life from the rest of it.

Dr. William Attaway:

That's healthy, that's awesome. So kudos to you.

Mariana Henninger:

That's encouraging life from the rest of it. That's healthy, that's awesome. So kudos to you. That's encouraging to even do more of that.

Dr. William Attaway:

I love that You've mentioned that you're a learner. You're a continual learner. You are learning all the time. You're watching, you're listening, you're reading. I'm always looking for the next good book. Is there a book that you would recommend, that you've read, that you think, oh man, this one made a big difference in my journey? I'd love to recommend this to the other leaders who are listening.

Mariana Henninger:

That's a great question. I do a lot of selective learning and what that means is so I'm looking at across my table. I have like six books on my table right now.

Mariana Henninger:

And I've literally read specific chapters of each book, which is not how I recommend reading every book, but I am intentional about not spending time. Well, what is it called Just-in-time learning, right? So what is the thing that I need to focus on right now and what are the very specific resources that are going to get me to that next step in that thing that I need to evolve in?

Mariana Henninger:

I'm going to give a shout out to you again because that book Trust that you recommended to me is phenomenal, and it's also the word that I want to be known for, and so everything that says trust, I'm like I'm going to read that, I'm going to learn that. I think you know, I'm going to learn that. I think you know, just from a quick branding BTS of my business here, that in the beginning I did a lot of my messaging around brand videos and I think that was a lesson that I learned that when people hear brand videos, they think, oh, it's content, oh, that's nice, you know, that's's nice to have. And I think I'm hoping that after listening to our chat, folks can see that the video is just a tool that you use to accelerate trust in that very specific moment when people are meeting you for the first time. All of the people who will become future best clients for you are going to, at one one point, meet you for the first time, and it's accelerating trust at that point. And so, anyway, so all of this, to say that in the beginning I used to talk so much more about brand videos and now I talk all about trust and I feel like that really just owning that word is so important for me and my branding and that's something that I encourage everyone to have the one word or the maximum, like two words that they're known for, so that when people think of that word, they think of you.

Mariana Henninger:

Leadership William Chas. Arianna, you know it's important to have that Like what is the one thing that you bring that's different from everyone else?

Dr. William Attaway:

So good as always. Every time we talk I feel like we could go for another hour. There's so much wisdom and insight you have brought into this conversation, so much expertise that you bring to this topic, and I'm so grateful to you for being willing to share that so generously today. Thank you.

Mariana Henninger:

Thanks, William.

Dr. William Attaway:

I know people are going to want to stay connected to you and continue to learn more about you and Brand Magnetic. What is the best way for them to do that?

Mariana Henninger:

Yeah for sure. So if you listen to this conversation and you're like I don't think I'm doing a good enough job as soon as people meet me to really make that connection, really make people feel something and really become sticky, and if you're looking at your marketing and you're thinking I think I can do better at this point of the funnel, then I've got a great resource. That's a bit more practical than the conversation we had today. So really to dive into how to create a story, a brand story, that converts, you can grab that cheat sheet at brandmagneticcom slash cheat sheet. And I'm on socials. Brand Magnetic connect with me in all the places where you would find people.

Mariana Henninger:

But that's a great cheat sheet to get you started on this process of like how to think about my story in a way that is going to really move the needle and connect with people the moment that they meet me.

Dr. William Attaway:

So good and so generous again, thank you for that, my pleasure.

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Dr. William Attaway

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