Personal Branding with Cheldin Barlatt Rumer

In today's episode of “Follow our Lead with Alaina Kearney," we are thrilled to welcome Cheldin Barlatt Rumer, CEO and executive producer of THIS IS IT NETWORK. THIS IS IT NETWORK is a global, female, minority-owned digital streaming platform. Cheldin hosts a daily digital talk show that shares the stories of inspiring female leaders, executives, and entrepreneurs. 

Cheldin is also the author of SCREAM YOUR DREAM 66 Lessons to Build Your Personal Brand. She provides tangible steps to help you shape your online presence and grow your business. 

She also works with business owners to build their brands, tell their stories, and craft their messages. Cheldin hosts workshops, is a keynote speaker, emcees, and moderates various events. 

Cheldin shares her inspiring journey as an immigrant from Sierra Leone, West Africa, to building a very successful digital network - something that didn’t exist when she was younger. Cheldin talks about what it was like to break into a niche market, why she focused on women, how she gained subscribers, and ultimately, how her dream became a business. Cheldin discusses the importance of authenticity, positivity, and storytelling when building your personal brand. Our conversation is riddled with tips and tricks you can implement to fine-tune your personal brand.

Check out the podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. 

Learn more about THIS IS IT NETWORK.

Follow THIS IS IT NETWORK on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X, and TikTok! 

SCREAM YOUR DREAM 66 Lessons to Build Your Personal Brand by Cheldin Rumer 

This episode is presented by Barsz Gowie Amon & Fultz, a certified public accounting firm specializing in tax, audit, and advisory services for businesses. They have offices in Media, Delaware County and Chadds Ford, Chester County, Pennsylvania. Visit their website at https://barszgowie.com/ to learn more about their services.

Watch the episode live on YouTube!

Transcript

Alaina Kearney:
Welcome to Follow our Lead, the podcast that dives deep into the stories of leadership excellence and the people who define it. In today's episode, I'm thrilled to welcome Cheldin Rumer, CEO and executive producer of This Is It Network, a global, female, minority-owned digital streaming platform. Cheldin hosts a daily talk show that shares the stories of inspiring female leaders, executives, and entrepreneurs. Cheldin is also the author of Scream Your Dream: 66 Lessons to Build Your Personal Brand. She provides tangible steps you can take to shape your online presence. Cheldin also works with business owners to build their brand, tell their story, and craft their message. In addition, she hosts workshops as a keynote speaker and emcees and moderates various events. Join us as Cheldin shares her journey, her challenges, and her unwavering commitment to inspiring others through the art of storytelling and the power of digital media.

This podcast is proudly brought to you by Barsz Gowie Amon & Fultz, a Pennsylvania-based accounting firm that exemplifies leadership in tax, audit, and advisory services for businesses. I am so excited to have you. This is such an honor as a marketing professional. I feel like I am fangirling so hard right now. But I want to just dive right in. So I want to talk about your story, okay? You are the one who's always listening to everyone else's story. So now I want to hear your story.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Thank you.

Alaina Kearney:

Starting from the very beginning. All the way from the beginning. I know you were born in Sierra, Leone, West Africa.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

I was, I was, I was.

Alaina Kearney:

And you went from that to living in the United States, being a CEO, an entrepreneur.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Yes, all the things.

Alaina Kearney:

An author, a mom, an award winner. The list goes on.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

All the things, all the things. And I think that being from West Africa, coming from my foundation has always been so strong. Having a strong foundation of knowing who I am and knowing where I'm from, but also the power to go explore truly what makes me unique. I'm unique amongst... I'm one of four, and so I'm a middle child, which is not a surprise to anybody who's ever met me.

So understanding where I am uniquely, they're heavily academic and brilliant. My siblings are brilliant. My parents are brilliant. But academics was really where they really shined. I mean, they all have great personalities and are so much fun. We're all so much fun. But I never really saw myself thriving the academic space. It's just kind of funny that I'm an adjunct professor now and then I teach all these courses, but really my personality was always big even when I was really young. And they always knew that, and they always really allowed for me to be that class clown, to be the one person in the family that gives the speeches, the one person that emcees the holiday events. They allowed for that to happen.

And so I always went after those pursuits. I grew up watching and loving talk shows. My mom would record talk shows. Just to age myself my mom would record talk shows and I would come home and we would just watch them together. And I was just fascinated by telling stories and listening as much as talking. It was just a really cool thing to be able to study that. I went to LaSalle University in the Philadelphia area. I played division one field hockey and ran track for a very short time there.

And so being an athlete paired with being an immigrant, paired with all of those things was just hard work determination. And that allowed for me to be an entrepreneur is if I was really setting myself up to struggle as if I was strutting myself up to really know how to fail, to know how to start over, to know how to win, to know how to go into a room being the only one or the only one who wanted what it is that I wanted.

So I really was grounded and I know a lot of people aren't necessarily as grounded and aren't fortunate enough to have that foundation. But I was very fortunate enough to have that foundation paired with the love of talking, and then paired with some gross ambition. You mix that all together and then here I am. And so really, I studied media communications at LaSalle. Always wanted to be on television. Again to age myself I wanted to be on MTV when they really played videos. Remember that?

Alaina Kearney:

I do.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

And I wanted to be the VJ on Spring Break in a bikini being like next step on stage, Eminem. That was like my ideal goal, got derailed just with trying to eat, got into sales and cold calling and selling advertising space, and then helping people promote parties. It was the height of the dot com space after I graduated. And so helping a lot of my colleagues and friends and buddies launched their dot coms and that I began to understand, "Okay, I'm going to invite people to an event. There's no one here." And then because I invited them, someone came. The action marketing, living marketing, living advertising, living promotions just lit me up like, "I'm going to make something up. I'm going to send out a JPEG and it's going to go out into the world."

And then there's a line of people that got dressed and parked their car and bought the drinks and did all the things simply because I asked them to, simply because I communicated that. Once I got a taste of that, I knew that this is the space that I needed to be in. So I really paired my love of media and communications, my foundation, my ambition. I paired that all together. And here I am just really telling stories every day and loving every minute of it.

Alaina Kearney:

So what you do is so unique, what This Is It Network. So unique.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Wild.

Alaina Kearney:

So tell us what This Is It Network is and how did you get the idea for filling such a crucial gap in the market?

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Thank you so much. Thank you so much. So in 2009, I started i-g creative, which is in essence the parent brand of This Is It Network. And so i-g creative was a PR marketing and digital firm. So we did publicity, advertising events, graphic design, web design, social media. That was what we did. And we primarily did that for small business owners. And those small business owners tended to be solely women. It was the cupcake lady and the bracelet gal, and the T-shirt girl, and the people that were really building things independently.

What we would do is we would get them ready for media opportunities such as this, get them ready for Fox Good Day, get them ready for The Today Show, get them ready for local media. And what I saw, because I'm so much of an extrovert, if you haven't noticed, because I'm so much of an extrovert, it was so surprising that these individuals who dedicated their lives to their skill set could not part their lips to say why somebody should buy their cupcake versus somebody else's? Why somebody should buy their jewelry versus someone else's?

It wasn't the marketing part that we executed that was difficult. It was getting them to be able to say why they were worthy of attention. And it just broke my heart as somebody who was overly enthusiastic about just about everything to see somebody dedicate, remortgage their house for what it is that they love and what it is that they were good at. And so what we would do is we would practice in the office. I would pretend to be on Spring Break on MTV. I would turn my conference room into a small studio.

I would interview my clients, and I physically saw something change. I have a certain energy about me that allows hopefully for people to feel comfortable. And so when people are in a comfortable space, they tend to let their guard down physically, shoulders drop. And they tell me about their grandmother's recipe. They tell me why they started the jewelry company. They told me they were an ex-lawyer that now is a fitness expert. They tell me these things because they're in a safe place. They're not feeling as if I'm not paying attention or I'm going to say, "Oh, now to the weather."

It's very much I'm going to give you space and I'm going to give you time. And in exchange you're going to give me honesty and authenticity. At that moment I was like, "I want to do this for the rest of my life." And at that moment I said, "This is it." And that's why I called it that. And this is it. I'm not doing it. I'm not doing anything else. This is what I'm doing. And we slowly built it from there.

Alaina Kearney:

I mean, that's absolutely incredible, but how do you go from taking that idea and making it into a business? It's no easy feat.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

No. It's a work in progress, my dear, dear friend. And it wasn't really a business at first, and just most recently did we begin to look at it in a more strategic way. At the beginning, I was just interviewing my clients and again, preparing them, and we would record it and be able to utilize that content and be able to push that content out. Then colleagues would send me their clients for media training or just to practice. So it was very loose thing. I'd go to an opening of a tin can and be like, "Hello everybody, how's everybody doing?" And I just loved it so much that I just saw it as an extension of i-g creative and not a separate entity all to itself.

As we began determining what are the pieces of content that are out there? What are the outlets that are out there? Regionally and even globally, there wasn't so much for what I call remarkable women. There isn't a place where the ambitious woman can go and find content to feel really good and not alone. We're a lot ambitious women. We are balancing a lot of things. I have two children. I'm married, I have a career. We're in that sandwich generation. I have two 78-year-old parents that I love so much.

We're balancing all of that in the palm of our hands, unapologetically. Not complaining. So is there a place that doesn't shush me? Is there a place that doesn't say I'm too much? Is there a place that rewards me for my ambition as opposed to try to muffle it? And so I knew that we could do that by telling the stories of other remarkable women who are really doing wonderful work by creating their businesses. And so it was really one step at a time. It organically grew where people invited us into their lives. They started watching us. It's completely self-funded, so there is no big parent company. And it's really been a labor of love knowing that there's a void in this market, knowing that in the bark of remarkable women for us to tell these stories.

So it's just grown. And then we're so grateful for the partners that are supporting us and the brands that are like, "Yeah, we want to talk to more women between the ages of 30 and 55. They're spending some money." And they're spending money on their kids, they're spending money on their parents, they're spending money on themselves with some overpriced leggings. So how do we encourage brands to support our efforts? And that's really what we've been working on.

Alaina Kearney:

Okay. So we're going to talk about that in a second. Before we get there, though, I'm so curious, why not be on YouTube or have a podcast?

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

For sure.

Alaina Kearney:

Why start the network?

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Why start the network? For sure. And so for me, I'm a visual person. Video has always been, again, going back to that MTV kind of scenario, always loved-

Alaina Kearney:

My kind of girl.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Right? Always loved being in front of the camera, kind of lights me up. I always loved the idea of even editing and putting that content together. So video has always been our main focus. We do have an editorial piece of what it is that we do and events. So how do we pair online with offline is really what we really pride ourselves in doing. And so one of the things that Taquan Allen, who's been working with me for, oh my gosh, so much time now. Our production director has been absolutely wonderful. And even when we first began, we were trying to figure out where this needs to live. Where does it need to live? How do we tell the story in a place that it makes sense? Can we go viral?

And one of the things that was most important is that why don't we just find the people that make the most sense for us? It doesn't have to be a million people. It just needs to be the right people. And how do we create a space that they can come to? We could have done one of two things in life. You can wait or you can build. And I think it's the same energy. I could have waited and sent audition tapes into MTV or Netflix or whoever it is or and asked for permission, or I could just slowly have built it myself. And so some of the women who have watched us, have watched us since its inception, and we're really successful in building it independently.

Now, do we use other social media platforms to support our conversations? Absolutely. We're on anything that you can follow us on. To be able to do that, we're not on everything, but we're on a lot to really allow for our audience to find us where they need us and then bounce it back to our platform. So we see social media as tools that you use in order to help us gain more visibility. But our goal is always to have a home where all of our content lives, regardless of what Mark Zuckerberg chooses to do on day to day or not be a prisoner of an algorithm, and just really have our own space where we can hold our own content and conversations.

Alaina Kearney:

So you mentioned something before about generating revenue. That's the million dollar question with social media. Everyone wants to know how are you making money? How are you doing it? How has your business model allowed for you to monetize? Because starting a network, especially when you started, you started it I think in what, 2013? Something like that?

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Yeah, 2014.

Alaina Kearney:

2014. So that was before TikTok or maybe right as it just got started, before Instagram. Well before Instagram. How do you-

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

All around the same scenarios. And I have to tell you, it was difficult. And still to an extent it's a lift. It's not an easy thing by any stretch of the imagination. We did before we made. So we did so much before we made a dollar. And as frustrating as that may have been to my team, as frustrating as it may have been to myself, and to my finances because it is self-funded, I knew that we had to produce content and produce content and create consistency and loyalty, and build a voice of our own before we could ask brands to support what we've got going on.

We are now on the hunt for brands that work and it's more quality versus quantity. Because we're self-funded it doesn't take a lot to keep us going. So being able to select which brands make the most sense, which partners make the most sense for what we got going on. Traditional advertising on our platform is something that advertisers is what we look for. We also really pride ourselves on content creation, which is the ability to help brands create unique content. User generated content is big and huge right now. User generated content in UGC and being a third party that can create that, that tells organic stories by remarkable women for remarkable women is a very unique place to be, right?

Larger agencies, larger brands don't necessarily have the teams to be able to be taking smartphones out and talking about pizza slices and those types of things or best ways to work out. We can do that and be a little bit more flexible with deadlines, trending topics. We can get a call today and get a piece of content out within the afternoon where usually that's part of a larger ad deck that was pitched. And then it took time, and then we were figuring out what to do for summer and the winter. You don't have the time in such a digital landscape to do that. So we are able to be flexible with larger brands and give them the content they need in the moment.

Alaina Kearney:

I mean, it's so smart and it's so exciting. It's so exciting that there's something out there that can really showcase the voices of people that you might not hear about all the time.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

You might not hear. Most likely you don't. And I think that there's something, if I can just say... Again, I grew up on these talk shows and when I grew up on talk shows, and I'm again aging myself for those that are listening and even watching, it was not only Oprah, but it was Sally Jessy Raphael, and it was Donahue, and it was Montell Jordan. It was all of these people... Montel Williams, I'm sorry. It was all of these different people that were creating these stories and telling these stories. And the people that sat on their couches weren't famous. The people that sat on their couches got notoriety after they sat on the couch. Now in the talk show space...

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:16:04]

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

... notoriety after they sat on the couch. Now, in the talk show space, you don't get to sit on the couch until you're famous. And so, there needs to be a place where these stories are being told. There's a huge group of people who are doing remarkable things that don't have places in an organized place to tell their story.

And so, we're really filling that talk show void that was in the '90s and in the '80s that really allowed for people to really focus on educational entertainment. We were educating people about what's going on in the world, what's going on in their state, what's going on around the country, and then elevating their voice from there. So, it's really exciting. It's like a treasure hunt, really.

Alaina Kearney:

Absolutely. So, I think I've read you've had over 1,000 different guests on your network.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Yeah. I'm a crazy person.

Alaina Kearney:

I'm curious, what does the behind the scenes process look like? I mean, for me, I interview eight guests a year, and I can barely take the eight guests I have. So, how do you do the research and figuring out how to keep the conversation engaging? I mean, because sometimes it's hard to engage with people if they're not super engaging back with you.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

It is. I'm a little spoiled because of the way my energy works, and I'm slightly nosy. I'm just inquisitive. I'm nosy. I'm like, "Tell me more." And I genuinely care. And as do you, I can just tell. And when you're sitting with somebody and you genuinely care, the conversation goes in such a great way.

If you're waiting for a commercial break or you're not really engaged, and we all know the difference. We know the difference between somebody who sits with us and really wants to hear what we have to say. And somebody who's just like, "Okay, what do you do again?" And it's really not interesting.

And I have to be really honest, I do research on the people that I talk to, but I really let them talk to me. I let them tell me what they want to tell me as opposed to what I need to know. What do I need to know if they don't want to tell me? Right? And I think that it's really about, how do I give them space? There's no one who stopped working 40 hours a week to work 90 hours a week that isn't driven to do so.

And can I give them an opportunity to finally tell people why they decided to do that? To finally be honest about what's driving them, to write their notes down in the middle of the night, or to write a plan down in a napkin when you're at a bar. Why are you choosing to do that? You're driven to do that. And I don't think there's enough places that talk about that drive. I don't think that there's enough places that reward you for that ambition, and I just really want make sure that, that happens.

And so, the prepping is more just out of curiosity. I'm a very curious person. I want to see how things work. I was teasing with a friend. I was like, "I don't really do anything. I just talk about what other people do." And that's really super fun. But, yeah, it really comes down to me just really caring about what the other person thinks, why they think it. And that's why the content that I put out is just so authentic, in my opinion, and just comes off that way.

Alaina Kearney:

And it also feels like ... I mean, I've watched the network. I've watched you on social media. You don't come off scripted in any way. You come off so elegant and poised.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Thank you.

Alaina Kearney:

And I feel like for me, it takes me a while to be prepared. I'm not that great on my feet. I need to really prepare and practice. So, how do you think you've gotten so good kind of on your toes like that?

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Fair. Again, I'm a natural extrovert, but I don't prep, which is a kind of crazy thing. Even when you emailed me and you're like, "Well, I'll send you the questions." I'm like, "Say what you want." Like at the end of the day ...

And I really pride myself on that. I mean, I think that I get more nervous when I have to prepare. Teleprompters are a tough go for me. I'd rather just sit and be natural. I also believe everything that I say. I might not know everything, which is I'm very comfortable in the fact that I don't know everything. I know what I know, and I know what I don't know, but I'm coming to you always authentic. It's better when I'm not scripted because it's coming from my heart and it's coming from the position that I'm in.

I'm, again, a forever learner and a forever student. And so, the content that I share online or otherwise is really coming from a place of like, "This is what I feel in this moment. I know that other people feel the same way. I'm not trying to convince you, but I'm trying to support you." And it's just been really fun to be that and do that, and to be that space, and to really share, I guess, my enthusiasm. You'd think that a lot more people online or otherwise they're ... They're just not. They're just not positive people.

One of the things that somebody had asked me before was like, "How are you so positive all the time?" And I'm like, "I'm not." Positivity for me is a practice. It's something that you work on as if you were going on a treadmill every day. Life is not good all of the time, but it's how you react to what life is that makes a difference. And I'm strong in my positivity. I work on it every day, and that's the content that I share.

Alaina Kearney:

It seems like some people who come online and they're really positive come off inauthentic. It doesn't seem real. And the other problem is, especially with social media and people who are trying to build their brands. I mentioned this briefly before we started, but sometimes people risk sounding corny or cheesy. I mean, I think we've all seen the influencer flop. We've all been there.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

What do they call it, cringey?

Alaina Kearney:

Yeah, it's cringey. So, how do you advise people to be authentic and self-aware while also being cognizant of what they're trying to showcase?

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Yeah. I think it's practice. I mean, I think that if you look at any major, let's call them GOATs, right? Greatest of all time athletes. Serena Williams and Simone Biles, let's just say. Serena at her height, and Simone now, they still practice. They practice every day. They are gifted. They are the winners in most cases of everything in which they touch, but they still practice religiously.

And I think that if you want to find your voice, you have to practice using it. And I think that a lot of people just assume that because it's social media, because people are influencers, because they're in the comfort of their own helm, in their pajamas, et cetera, that it's easy. It's a heavy lift. You're giving off yourself. And if you don't know who you are, it's hard to give off yourself. It's hard for you to find your voice when you are not familiar with it, when you're not even comfortable in it.

And the majority of people can tell when you're pretending. The majority of people can tell even if it's comforting that you're not being authentic. It's exhausting to give off yourself, and not everybody is equipped to be able to do that. And I think that if we have a little bit more patience with ourselves, the influencers and content creators that we love, if you go back to their first video, it's probably not as fluid. It's probably not as comfortable.

The more that they practice and hone in, they say, "That didn't sound like me." Or, "Oh, I don't want to sound like that again." And you have to give it a try, and you have to do it. So, if I do anything, I practice talking on a regular basis. So, I'm constantly communicating. I'm constantly working on my voice, and hopefully that's helped, and it resonates with people when they see me.

Alaina Kearney:

I'm just thinking about myself here because I'm like, "Oh, I could learn so much from her about this podcast." I'm like, "Oh."

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Thank you. I love it.

Alaina Kearney:

But even for me, when I prepare, my preparation is that I pretend like the person is sitting there and I read the questions to them, and I just keep repeating it over and over again in hopes that it becomes more fluid. And then when I'm having the conversation, I have my questions that I know I'm going to try to ask, but a lot of times the conversation doesn't flow in the way that you initially thought.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Never.

Alaina Kearney:

So, I guess for me, I have trouble kind of pivoting. You have to do a lot of pivoting in your role. So, I guess for me, that's where I get tripped up in the pivot.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

I guess a piece of advice if you're asking is use the questions as a guide, not as a rule. So, allow for my answer to be the next question. Allow for it to be a conversation, because I think that, that's what people love more than all things.

I mean, the real true interviewers, I love Oprah. She leans in and she listens. I love Howard Stern. I love Howard Stern. And it's a very interesting space because they're two different types of interviewers, but they listen to what the person ... "Oh, really?" And they ask a question based on the answer. And that's really part of it. It's really part of being a participant, not just a moderator.

And those conversations are just always so great. I mean, both of them are legends in what they do. There's a reason why they've been asking that for so long. Larry King is also another one. Again, when you're part of these ... Barbara Walters, good, bad, or indifferent. They lean in, and they're inquisitive, and they understand what it is.

Now, we can argue about their content and about certain things within the history of what it is that they've done. No one is perfect. I truly believe that, but I do think that there's something to using the answer to lead the conversation.

Alaina Kearney:

And that's a lot harder than it appears.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

A lot. 10X harder.

Alaina Kearney:

Because I feel like I'm always thinking about the questions that I have, what they're saying, and then thinking of the response. It's tricky.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

It's a dance. I mean, that's really what it is. It's an absolute dance. And just allowing yourself to be part of that dance though, that is also led and followed as opposed to it just being an interaction. And those that I believe lends to just a really fun conversation and memorable moments that are really evoked by both people paying attention and wanting to be there.

Alaina Kearney:

So, I want to go back to This Is It for a little bit.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

For sure, please.

Alaina Kearney:

You started that from the ground up. You had to build an audience. You then had to build an audience on all of these social platforms. And as time went on and more social platforms started to come up, you had to put content out on those channels and then build audiences. How did you do that? And I saw now, I mean, I love watching you on TikTok. I mean, might be ...

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Okay, that was scary.

Alaina Kearney:

I might be slightly addicted. I love it. You have 57,000 followers on TikTok.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

I do.

Alaina Kearney:

And I know it's not all about the followers, but I mean that's kind of impressive.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

It is very fun.

Alaina Kearney:

And three of your videos had over 1.2 million views. Two of them were almost close to two million.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

I know. Isn't that kind of fun?

Alaina Kearney:

How do you do that?

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

That is kind of fun.

Alaina Kearney:

Tell us your secret.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Right. Well, I think it's just existing. I think that existing sounds kind of downgraded, but it's just doing ... To your point, you mentioned the authenticity. You mentioned kind of listening and feeling at home. I'm comfortable with who I am, so I kind of let people into whatever conversation that I'm having. I'm honest.

One of the other things is that very few people put out positive content. And so, I think that by the time they get to me, they're thirsty for it. They're thirsty for a different perspective. They're thirsty. I believe that the majority of people are tired of being angry. I think they're tired of fighting with each other. They're tired of fighting with their neighbor. They're tired of being mad at strangers. I think they're just tired. And I think that what we need to do is to be able to share a little bit more of that educational entertainment, more of that fun.

And so, I allowed myself to put myself into a space that I truly didn't think we belonged. I mean, when it was Musical.ly and then it became TikTok. And again, my daughter is 13 years old. My son is six. My daughter was watching these Musical.lys, and her and her friends are doing these dances and lip-syncing. I'm like, "I do not belong here. This is not my space. I do not belong in this space."

And then I started following hashtags and hashtag over 40, no judgment, hashtag mom TikTok, advice for women, all of those kinds of things. And I was like, "Oh, these are my people." And these accounts that I followed, did they have millions of followers? No, but they were the right room for who it is that I was. And so, I started just being really authentic to who I was as a person.

And I say it in my recent book, and I say it always is that you don't need a million followers to make a million dollars. You don't need everyone following you in order for your message to resonate with the right people. And so, I just showed up as myself and the community that was there that wanted that kind of content was able to find me. And I think that, that was just really, really important. I put out content that our community on this as it network already would have enjoyed and hoped that some of them were online.

Now, we don't do really much with X or really much with Twitter. Right now, the commentary isn't as positive as I would like for it to be. So, we're not building off of that platform, but I've found really great friends and a really great audience on TikTok. And so, we're just pouring into them more often. And then Instagram and Facebook, those are the top three for us. We're threading every now and then and that kind of thing.

Yeah, I think that it's just a lot of trial and error, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs don't give themselves enough time to try things out to see if it will work. I'm okay with us not going viral on Twitter or X, I'm okay with that. We don't have to be on everything in order to service our community. We just need to find the right things.

Alaina Kearney:

So, one of the things you talked about in your book was about building a community. That community is more than what you may think of as a general community. When you're putting out content, you are not just putting it out there, you are engaging with people. You are creating a space for them to be themselves. How did you go about building community on all of these different channels? Is it the same community that's following you on each of these places, or did you have to start from scratch and build your people from there?

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Yeah. I think that the fundamental is this kind of universal group of people. I'm 46 years old as this is being recorded, so I fit into the demographic of women between the ages of 30 and 55, which tends to be our most, the women that tolerate me the most.

And because we're just shared in our life experience, we're shared in what it is that we're going through. So, it's easy for me to talk to them because they're my friends, they're the people I went to college with. They're the people I've played field hockey with. They're the people that I see and go to happy hour with or brunch. They're the people that I hang out with, so it's easy for me to start a conversation with them.

I think when people are planning and creating their platforms, one piece of advice is to speak to yourself. There is another version of you, various versions of you, as opposed to fighting against or trying to claw and find who you aren't to participate and pay attention to you.

Try to speak to you. Who would you be going out with on a Friday night? Who would you be hanging out with? Who are your classmates? Try to speak to them. It's an easier lift, because as I get older, I don't age out of my own community. I just continue to talk to them. And so, it's a lot different now than when you were hired as a host. You aged out of a program.

Now, when you create your own program, you just take your community with you. And so, things that affect me, early menopause, or taking my kids to summer camp, or not feeling so pretty today, or being insecure, imposter syndrome, all the things that affect me on a day-to-day basis, those are topics for me to talk about to a community that sees and hears me because they are me. And so, that's just a different way of looking at it. I think a lot of people are like, "Oh, I don't know much about this and I'm going to start a channel about it." What are we doing? Start a channel about what you know, and talk to an extended version of who you are.

Alaina Kearney:

I've never heard that advice before actually, and it's so interesting because there's so many versions when you talk a lot about personal branding, that is your shtick.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

That's my thing.

Alaina Kearney:

That is your thing.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

That's my thing.

Alaina Kearney:

Personal branding. I was thinking about my own personal brand, what does that look like for me? And people are dynamic, and it's kind of hard sometimes to figure out, "Okay, what is your personal brand?" Because you have multiple hobbies. You have your career.

PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:32:04]

Alaina Kearney:

... hobbies, you have your career, you have your kids or your pets or whatever. There's so many facets to different people. So when you're figuring out what your personal brand is, how do you determine what that looks like for you when people are so dynamic?

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Yeah. And I think that the beautiful thing is that so is everybody else. I think that what we think is that we have to be this one thing because everybody else equally has pets, everybody else equally as a spouse or equally as work or equally as a partner or equal. All of those things. And I think that it's all based on how you deliver and departmentalize those things. And the book also I share about the aisles of a department store or the aisles of Target and what does that really look like? I love Target. Sorry, because I don't know if it's sponsored post, but I love Target, so I love to shop in that way. I spend too much money that I adore to spend all that money, but I do. I spend too much money when I go in, but I'm never confused when I go in there.

I'm never like, "Oh my God, this is so overwhelming because everything is in an aisle," and so they sell everything from baby food to lawnmowers, but you're never like, "It's too much. I've got to leave." You're just, "Point me in the direction of the baby food. Point me in the direction of the lawnmowers." If we start to create our personal brand where we departmentalize our lives when we say, "Okay. This is the lane or aisle for my parenthood, this is the lane or aisle for me as a fashionista, this is the lane or aisle, me as a business woman." No one equally including myself, gets overwhelmed. A lot of us will say, "I'm so much. I'm all over the place," which is what a lot of women say, "I'm so all over the place." You're not.

Alaina Kearney:

I think I said that before when I walked in this room today.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

You're like, "I'm so all over the place." No, you're not. Your life has different facets and you have different aisles of your target and it's just about departmentalizing it so you can deliver it. And you can walk me through your store in a way that gets us all what it is that we want. And I don't think anyone teaches you how to do that. We just teach you to pick one major and stick in one major and do one thing. No one lives like that. So once we embrace all that, we find that more people have more to them as well.

Alaina Kearney:

My biggest fear is that if I come online as in one way, let's say I go on and I'm starting to talk about leadership and then all of a sudden I'm talking about my pets or something. Are people going to watch me for the leadership part? Are they going to care about my dogs or are they going to care about this other part of my life? How do I know that it's going to translate for them?

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Sure. I think that it's about being honest, say lover of leadership, pets and life, whatever it is.

Alaina Kearney:

I like that. Okay.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

But be honest. I love my dog and I'm a good leader. No one's going to be like, "That sounds crazy." They're not. They're just going to be like, "Okay. On here she's going to talk about leadership one day and we're going to see her walk. Her dogs equally talking about leadership on that day." And I think that when we try... I think again, it's aisles of Target. They never ever claim to only sell one thing. They tell you, "You're going to walk in here and you're going to get a lot of stuff." Figure it out as you go. We want to be like, "I'm going to spoonfeed them who it is that I am," and then be like I never know if you like dogs, this is so off brand. Tell them that you love dogs from the moment that you meet them. So there's no surprise as it relates to them.

And I think that that comes with being honest with your community and not trying to spoonfeed who you are. We are all very complex people. We are all very layered people. So give people an opportunity to know all that you are. I would limit it just from a personal consumption space to about three key elements that you want to be able to share with your community. I also equally think not everybody is worthy of who you are, all of you. So to overshare with people sometimes gets dangerous and exposes you to energy that you don't need. So if you're looking to build a brand, concentrate on three verticals, you know what I mean? For me it's women empowerment, it's business and it's personal branding or it's fashion or whatever it happens to be or lifestyle. Just having a good time. You can feel that in my platform. You can feel that in what it is that I put out into the world. It doesn't limit me. It frees me to be all that I am.

Alaina Kearney:

Does everyone have a personal brand or... Okay, everybody has it. They might not know that they have it, but they have it.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Yeah, they might not know that they have it and they might not know how it affects them. Personal branding by my definition is what people say and think about you in your absence. So everybody has a way in which others think and feel about them being cognizant of that. And that doesn't mean you have to fake and that doesn't mean you have to pretend to be someone else. It just means whatever it is you want in life should equate to the brand that you put out into the world. So if you want to be seen in a certain type of way and work in a certain type of arena or industry, then your personal brand should match.

If it fights up against it, then it doesn't allow for you to be your best self. It doesn't allow for you... Like Prime example, if you're an accountant and you are a casual person and you don't want to work for the big five and you don't want to wear Navy every day and you don't want to be in a glass conference room downtown and in that space, then you can be an accountant for a really cool urban advertising agency and wear jeans all day or work from home and be able to figure it out. You can still be an accountant. It just fits your different brand. It doesn't have to fight against who you are naturally.

And I think that especially those that are having a hard time with the job hunt and having a hard time finding their place, what they've chosen to do is fighting against who it is that they are or the industry in which they look to support in what it is that they're doing is fighting against who they are. I think that people do so much of a better job when they're happy and personal branding to me is very selfish. I shop a lot. I consume a lot and we all know what it's like to interact with professionals who do not like their job. So for me, I want to find more people who are aligned with what they do so they can create and produce better products and better experiences, so everybody can consume more things and more things. I don't think that we realize the trickle-down effect of not having joy in who it is that we are and not being in a good place and loving what we do and being able to convey that through our personal brand.

Alaina Kearney:

So do you think your personal and your professional brand are one in the same or are they separate? Are you these two different people?

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

I think they're one in the same. I think that the way you show up for yourself, in my opinion, the way you show up for work now, do I use the same tone and voice when I'm talking to my West African parents than I do with my girlfriends from college that I do when I'm doing this interview? Not necessarily, but the fundamental and foundation is the same. The dialect might be different, but who I am as a person is the same, loyal, authentic, trustworthy, all the things are the same. There's no faking. They're showing up in different situations in different ways. But who I am is the same. And I think that that's where a lot of people are missing. It's exhausting to pretend to be someone else and you will get got at a certain point, and I think faking it... One of the things I say we grew up on, or at least I grew up on the term, fake it till you make it.

Alaina Kearney:

I read that in their book. That was excellent.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

And that was the thing. It's like fake it till you make it, fake it till you make it. And then it was so ingrained in us. And that is a lie. If I teach anybody anything is like don't do that. Do not pretend to be someone else. Come exactly as you are to the situation, learn and grow and become what you need to be within the situation. But for you to literally start a relationship pretending lying... Don't pretend to be a manager when you've managed no one. Don't pretend to be a director when you've directed nothing. It really puts you in a position where you are lying at the onset of a relationship when you can just simply say, "I don't know that right now, but I'm definitely willing to learn." I'd be like, "I'll hire you tomorrow." As opposed to you pretending to be someone and then disappointing me. The learning curve is off. I'd rather you say, "I don't know that, but I'd really love to work with you and learn."

Alaina Kearney:

And I think too being, you talk about this also in your book, but the self-awareness piece, for me, I realized, and this was a couple of years ago, but I'd first gotten this job and I love dogs. Big pit bull advocate. I've had tons of pit bulls in my life. I love them. Volunteer for the Humane Society, all about that. And I would share a lot of posts on social media of dogs needing homes. And what started happening was I was getting messages from people saying that they were looking to rehome their dog or they had an issue with training. And it was so weird to me because I'm like, "Why do they think that..." I have no idea.

And I would say, "I am a great connector. I can connect you to just about anybody, but don't have the answer." And that was the first time I was like, "Wow. This is so interesting." The way that people are perceiving me is by what I'm putting out there and sharing. And that is such a weird concept to grasp because that's a very small sliver of who I am and what I'm about. And then also then I'm finding myself like, "Okay. What rescue can I get involved with now so that I have some credibility now."

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

An obligation to my audience to be able to figure it out. But that's it. I mean, you are what you put out into the world. You are what you share. And I think, again, the internet is a living, breathing thing. I see it that way. And the more you feed her, the nicer she is to you. What you give her is what she shares on your behalf, and it's a choice. Again, Mark Zuckerberg isn't saying you have to post today or you have to post that picture. And I think that what I love to teach in personal branding is that we have the responsibility to ourselves to put out what we want for people to see. That can be anything. I don't really care, no judgment on what everybody wants to share. It's up to them, but understand the consequences of that. Understand the power of that.

So when you came across their feed, when again, their feed, they're consuming and they see you, they're associating you with the pit bulls and the dogs because that's what you're choosing to share. There's so much more to you, but if you don't share it, how would I know it? How would I know that? So it's just us being an active participant in what our footprint looks like online and really saying, "Okay. If I wasn't part of the book..." Also, I ask people to audit their online footprint, ask them to Google themselves because that's after I meet with somebody. Again, personal branding is what people say and think about you in your absence.

After I meet you at the cocktail party, at the networking event, at the concert, I'm going to Google you. And that's a natural reaction for the inquisitive. It's just to say for the curious, "Okay. Who was that person? Let me learn more." And if you're telling me that you're a leader and all I see is dogs, is this the right person? Does that connect? The goal is to ensure that the information that you put online is consistent with the brand that you're building.

Alaina Kearney:

So when you're trying to brand yourself, there's so much content out there. How do you set yourself apart from a lot of people who have similar goals and objectives as you probably do? For sure, it's really hard. Yes, everybody is authentic and unique to themselves. I get that, but there's still a piece you're going to have as somebody, let's say there's another three other accounting marketers who are also in the leadership space who also love dogs, whatever, and they have a similar community and similar objectives. How do you figure out what's unique to you?

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Yeah. I believe we all have our own unique equation. I believe that who you are, what you want and why you deserve it, and how you utilize that together to tell your story. I also think that we live in an abundant space where there's 6,000 versions of potato chips and 7,000 different bottled water. I feel like if we were to get the analysis paralysis and stop moving forward because there is another version of us somewhere, we are never going to move forward. We're never going to share what we've got going on. I have a colleague that I love so much that also equally does personal branding. Her delivery is much softer than mine. It's quieter. It's a little bit more poised, a little even more structured than mine. Those that work with her would not necessarily feel as comfortable working with me, and that's okay.

And there's a reason why that's so good. I think that primarily in women in business and just small business in general, it's like somebody already does that. In interviewing over 1,000 people in one week, I would have a woman that has a bakery and then she would see that a bakery was just on and say, "Do you still want to interview me? You just had a bakery on." I was like, "They don't have your grandma's chocolate chip recipe. They're not located in center city. They're not all of these things." And I think that what keeps us from moving forward is not really understanding and celebrating our uniqueness, just really being so fixated on what others have versus what we bring to the table. I know that that's hard. I know that that's difficult. I know that we're tempted to just hide.

But really even going back to my TikToks, the way that I deliver the same news or the same subject matter is different than the way somebody else does it. And maybe my temperament is consistent with what somebody needs in the moment. And maybe the way in which I read something, or the way in which the music that I add, or even the subject that I talk about, and just really being confident in the fact that your uniqueness is enough and really trying to find the right rooms for who it is that you are.

The other reason, big reason is that a lot of people are doing the right thing in the wrong rooms, which is big for me and my personal branding education, is that you are in the wrong rooms doing the right thing and thinking that their reaction to you is your truth. When if you were in a different room, they'd be like, "Oh my gosh, I love what you're doing." So many of us spend years trying to convince people as opposed to spending the same energy trying to find our people.

Alaina Kearney:

How do you know if you're in the wrong room?

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

They're not receiving it. They're not buying it. They're not paying attention. They're making you audition. They're making you tap dance. They're making you dance for your food every day. My mom, a beautiful West African woman, she always used to say, "Stop going to the same well looking for different water." It's a definition of insanity. Stop doing the same thing over and over again looking for a different result. And we do that. We're like, "Okay. If a TikTok just sounds like this instead, or if I just change the font on the PowerPoint," they're not going to buy it. Let's find our people. My cookie's too expensive. Come on. Maybe you're advertising to people who have no money for that cookie, who aren't looking for that premier space. They're looking for fast grab and go cookies. Let them have that. Let's go find a more premium experience.

Maybe you're more for special events. Maybe you're doing more weddings. Maybe you're doing more corporate giving. Corporate gifts, that's a more expensive cookie that requires a more expensive experience where you are selling them hot out of the bag, right out of a food truck. And that's your experience owning who you are and your brand position and what you bring to the table is what I want people to sit down with themselves and really begin to be like, "Okay. Where do I want to be? What stories do I want to tell? What personality do I have?" Because there's a lot of people who want to be that grab and go, and that's their personality. And there's a lot of people that are like, "Absolutely not. I don't want to be in a festival selling cookies. I want to softly wrap it with a ribbon and hand deliver it right out of the oven." That's a different. Same cookies, different experience.

Alaina Kearney:

And having the confidence to be able to feel like an authoritative figure in whatever space you're in.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

And own that. I don't want to sell cookies at a festival. I want to sit down and have a luxury experience. Owning that is difficult when all you feel you can do is sell cookies at a festival. So beginning the conversation in a different way and then making...

PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [00:48:04]

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

And so beginning the conversation in a different way and then making sure that your product is consistent with the space that you want, right? So if you're saying you're a premier experience and you're saying you want to charge, I don't know, $10 a cookie, then it needs to be a $10 cookie. There needs to really be able to provide and really put your, I guess, money where your mouth is in that.

Alaina Kearney:

So I think about this often. 10 years ago, I was in a very different place than I am today. And on my Facebook memories, I see things that I said 10 years ago and I'm like, "Oh, delete that." I don't even know. I can't even believe. Facebook, you used to just put everything out there, "I'm feeling blah." And I'm like, "Why would I say that?" But anyway, I think about this in terms of your personal brand. In 10 years, you could be a very different person than you are today. So how do you adapt and rebrand yourself when your goals and objectives change?

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Yeah, I think it's just rebranding of any corporation. Reintroduce yourself to yourself. Reintroduce yourself management, to your community. I think that we think that people who follow us are literally living with us and they know what our objectives are. I didn't know you switched your job. So many people are being treated as they knew you, not as you are. Right?

Alaina Kearney:

Great point.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

So if I met you and you were an assistant, and I meet you five years from then and now you're a director, I'm still like, "Can you get me a cup of coffee?" But, "I'll have my assistant get you coffee." Right?

Alaina Kearney:

Yes.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

And it's not like, "Okay, I'll just have you... Okay, I'll get the coffee." No, I'll have my assistant get us coffee and then I'll just meet you in there. Okay? Cool. "Oh, do you have an assistant?" Just reintroduced herself to me, right?

Alaina Kearney:

Mm-hmm.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

And give yourself an opportunity to do as opposed to being like, "Okay, I'll get the coffee. Why is he treating me like I'm a coordinator? Doesn't he know I'm a director?" You didn't reintroduce yourself. You need to take an active role in personal branding. Again, personal branding is a practice. It's something that you practice similar to positivity. It's something that you have to constantly not only be reintroducing yourself to others, but to yourself. We will retreat back to the muscle that's most comfortable, which tends to be the muscle which we started with.

It is like, okay, all right, so am I a director? Am I CEO? I went from making these T-shirts in my basement, I have global distribution and I still want to press T-shirts in my basement. Is that a scalable skill for me? And how do I come to a meeting and demand to be seen as a CEO when I'm not behaving as one? And so for me, for you, is that one, I believe again, the internet is a living, breathing thing. The more you feed the internet, more of who you are in the moment, that's more of what will show up. Things won't get erased, but when's the last time you went to the second page of Google? So just feed the internet more of who you are in the moment. So when people are Googling you, after you do your audit, see what's out there.

If you've changed jobs three times and that first job is the only one that shows up, that means you need to feed the internet more of where you currently are. And not to overcomplicate it, just put out more posts about what it is that you're currently doing, remind yourself and others what it is that you're currently doing. And then again, when somebody searches you, that's what's going to come up. I would love for this to be a more complicated act, but it's not. It's just put out into the world more of what you want for people to see based on the story you want to tell.

Alaina Kearney:

It sounds like it's more of an evolution versus I'm just going to come out here. And I think that's what it was like for my dog post, I was like, "Oh my gosh, these people do not know who I am." But then it took some time to figure out, okay, who am I, and how do I want people to perceive me and who am I actually? I want to make sure those two things like we had talked about before are aligned.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

And it wasn't this complicated before. Social media was a game. It was a social project. It was something that we got to see our nieces and nephews from all across the country. You got to post a picture of your burger. It didn't have such a magnitude that it has now. It was supposed to be a social experiment and a social project. Now, it's a utility. Now, it's a tool that you use to get what you want. And no one gave us the playbook or the rule book for this tool. And so that's just what I'm trying to do, just really be able to address how we're using social now, how we're using online presence now as opposed to how it originated.

Alaina Kearney:

Things have evolved and changed technologically. We're seeing AI come to the forefront.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

For sure.

Alaina Kearney:

How do you see that impacting your business? What do you see for your future?

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Yeah, and so I'm excited about the future. I personally am a person that goes with advancements. I am not still using the rotary phone and taking a horse and buggy to work. We are moving with technology and if you don't, you get left behind. It was funny, I was asking... My students were asking me a while back, "Did you always know that you were going to do what you were doing?" I said, "The truth of the matter is is that when I graduated, what I was doing didn't exist." And so this notion that we have to have it all figured out, this notion that... I could have never predicted I would own a digital streaming platform because that didn't exist as an option. And so for me to adapt and for me to constantly find tools to better have me serve because that's really what it is.

I serve my community by providing them with inspiring stories and I use that to motivate and inspire them to get closer to their goals. That's all I want. And so the tools change. And as long as I adapt to the tools in order to do better at my job, I think we'll be in a really good space. The story I tell is that during the pandemic, my husband did a lot of home renovations and I was in charge of painting. So he built it and then I painted the thing, whatever that thing was, a lot of built-ins in our home. And the first time I painted it, it was awful. I stepped back and I was like, there were so many streaks, there were so many things. And I asked a girlfriend and I was just like, "I don't know why I thought I was going to be a good painter." And she was just like, "Did you get this tool?" She's like, "I painted the house, but I used this thing." And I was like, "Oh." I'm like, "Okay, I got it." And the room, chef's kiss, as they say, amazing.

Alaina Kearney:

What can't you do?

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Right. Try mel, right? But it wasn't about me. It was the tool that I was using that made it better. And so if you're not able to evolve and use better tools to do a better job then what are you doing, right? I could have painted that wall for days and it not be as good as the new tool that was available to me. So I like the idea of using new tools to create a better product. What I think is going to be interesting is because of AI and because of technology, it's really going to be about personalities and the personal experience will become a premium product.

We already see it with Beyonce tickets and Taylor Swift tickets. These are very expensive things to get because you are witnessing a human doing work. And so what is going to happen is that live events are going to be a premium, live interactions are going to be a premium. Where humans come into play, you are going to have to really see that as a premium experience. And how do we heighten the experiences in which we participate in? We're going to let AI, similar to, like it's faster to get from point A to point B in a car than it is in a horse and buggy. We're just going to evolve in that way. But human interaction, I think is going to be a premium.

So events will be really big. Live entertainment is going to be really big as far as a profit center for people to get involved in. Conferences, trade shows, in-person learning. Where online learning is going to be a standard, when you go and you meet and you learn in-person, that's going to be a premium experience. And so I think that that's really exciting for those of us who educate and those of us who want to fill rooms and provide that kind of "it experiences", as I like to call it.

Alaina Kearney:

But then there are some tried and true tools like your book, SCREAM YOUR DREAM. And I can fully endorse it because I did read it. It is excellent.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Thank you.

Alaina Kearney:

And I'm not just saying that because you're here. It really is excellent. One of the things that makes it really exceptional is the way that you have it written. It's in digestible small pieces so that you have actionable tools that you can really go back to digest. Your table of contents is so, so articulate so you can go through and find exactly what you're looking for if you don't have the time to read the whole entire thing. So talk to us about the SCREAM YOUR DREAM, why you wrote the book, what the general gist of it is for our audience.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

It's 66 lessons to building your personal brand. I have given countless speeches and been an educator, and every single time it's cut the fluff. What do I need to do? I am an avid, I love a good trade show conference, recycled tote bag, logo table block.

Alaina Kearney:

Me too.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Right? Keynote speech.

Alaina Kearney:

Yes.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Logoed pen, like no pad, taking notes. And what always happened is that I would get so inspired listening to that keynote, and the closer I got to the parking lot and the closer I got to my car, the enthusiasm kind of went because I wasn't given action steps. I learned how the person was in their car and then now they're not. They slept in their car, now they're famous, but I don't know how to get there. And so what this was is understanding that digital space is a tool. I wanted to create a tool. This is a tool that you need for the novice person who isn't looking to take over the world, but just looking to be found and to be found accurately. And how can I give really simple, bullet pointed instruction that is like, okay, if you want to do this, this is a really good guide.

And so that's all it really was. I was tempted to write, you know, "When I was 10, and one day I was... " And I was like, listen, they just need to know how to have more people know about them today than yesterday, and what kind of lessons can I provide. So it's the ability to get started, the ability to get organized and the ability to get active really underneath the SCREAM YOUR DREAM umbrella. And it's just super fun. Everything, sections broken down into 22 lessons. It's just easy, simple.

Alaina Kearney:

No fluff.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

No fluff.

Alaina Kearney:

No fluff.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Just do this, post this, be this, figure it out. And if you need me for more, you just let me know.

Alaina Kearney:

I love it. It's such a great book. All right. So lightning round super quick.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Oh, okay.

Alaina Kearney:

All right. Greatest professional mentor.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Oh my gosh. My greatest professional mentor. And it's not in my industry. I think it's my mom. So my mom was an educator, always been. And so she retired as a principal of an elementary school. And she's just one that arrives early, leaves late, knows everybody by name, everybody knows her by name. The nurtured relationships. We would go, we'll still to this day, we'll go shopping in my hometown. And they'll be like, "Ms. Barlatt, Ms. Barlatt, how are you?" Students that she had when they were children. And those relationships are key and showing up for people and really being present. So my mom is all things for me. Regardless of the industry, I think that that's just the way people should behave.

Alaina Kearney:

What app can you not live without?

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Right now, I'm in the TikTok, but I love a good Pinterest.

Alaina Kearney:

Okay.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

I love a good Pinterest.

Alaina Kearney:

Interesting.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

I'm a pinner that doesn't do.

Alaina Kearney:

Okay. Same.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

I'm DI don't.

Alaina Kearney:

Me too.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

I don't make a blanket out of my husband's ties, but I'll pin it.

Alaina Kearney:

Okay.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

You know what I mean? Like I don't make that salad, but I'll pin it.

Alaina Kearney:

Me too.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

You know what I mean? I'm an aggressive pinner.

Alaina Kearney:

Okay. Interesting.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

My style inspo always comes from Pinterest. I love it. I love it. I don't create as many pins as I should, which I'm working on, but I love to have inspiration. I'm a visual learner and so Pinterest is just a soft, beautiful, safe space. I feel like it's not noisy. I used to be a lover of all things. I am a lover of all things magazines. I love magazines and flipping through magazines. I used to just hide in a Barnes & Noble during college and just daydream. And so Pinterest allows for me to have a digital version of that.

Alaina Kearney:

What is your best tip for making videos for social?

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Oh my gosh, just hit record.

Alaina Kearney:

That's it?

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Just hit record.

Alaina Kearney:

Okay.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

That's it. Just hit record. Pick a topic and hit record. Instead of scripting yourself, give yourself bullet points. So this way you can rift. In between each bullet point, take a breath, count to five. This way you can edit in between. And then start over. If you make a mistake, stop, count to five in your head and then start again. This way you have enough time to cut in between. So yeah, so just hit record.

Alaina Kearney:

Who was your favorite interview?

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Oh my gosh, my favorite interview? Under a thousand interviews, and I know that this sounds cliche, but I just love the interviews where nobody knows who the person is. I have to say, I mean, I am willing and open to having as many celebrity interviews as possible, but ultimately I really interview just people doing amazing day-to-day things. The nonprofit that only has two followers, the cookie place that only has 100 people because the majority of people don't get into business to go viral. The cookie person doesn't start an Instagram to become an Instagram influencer. They start an Instagram to help sell the cookies. I just love the hunt of finding really cool people and turning people on to just really great people. And so that's just been really super fun.

I've interviewed so many people, I can't necessarily just say one over another. Maybe if we chat again a year from now, that'll be a different story. But for right now, again, give me the undiscovered, give me the undersaturated person that is doing remarkable things and we'll have a great conversation.

Alaina Kearney:

I'm going to link SCREAM YOUR DREAM so that everyone listening can purchase your book. We really encourage you to do that because it is amazing.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Thank you.

Alaina Kearney:

I'm going to link all your social channels, THIS IS IT NETWORK, and they can find you on literally every platform.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Every platform. You're so lovely.

Alaina Kearney:

Thank you so much for your time.

Cheldin Barlatt Rumer:

Thank you so much. This was so much fun.

Alaina Kearney:

Cheldin took us on her inspiring journey from Sierra Leone, West Africa to CEO and executive producer. She shared how she was able to build community on her network and across her social media platforms. You don't need a million followers to make a million dollars, but you do need to show up in the right places and spaces. She talked about the importance of authenticity, positivity, and embracing different parts of yourself when developing your personal brand and online presence. Join us next time as we continue to explore the principles of leadership with those who have lived it. Until next time.