Brand U - Building Your Personal Brand as a Marketing Leader | Kip Knight | CMO Coaches Founder

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1:37Learn more at typeface.ai.com. Welcome marketers, advertisers, and those who love them to CMO Confidential. CMO Confidential is a program that takes you inside the drama, the decisions, and the politics that go with being the head of marketing at any company in what is one of the most scrutinized jobs in the executive suite. I'm Mike Linton, the former chief marketing officer of Best Buy, eBay, Farmers Insurance, and Ancestry.com, here today with my guest, Kip Knight. Today's topic, brand you, building your personal brand as a marketing leader. Now, Kip is the founder of CMO Coaches, which provides executive coaching and hands-on leadership for senior marketers.

2:25Previously, he was the CMO of Taco Bell and president of H &R Block U.S. Retail. He currently works with several startups and as a coach and as a business advisor. He's coached over 200 CMOs. And full disclosure, Kip and I worked together at P &G a little bit ago. I've been an instructor in CMO Bootcamp. So I consider him, and he is without a doubt, a CMO confidential OG. This is his fourth appearance on the show. Welcome back, Kip. Mike, pleasure to be here. Looking forward to a great conversation today. All right. Let's just jump into it. Let's start with the fundamentals. You know, when you talk about personal branding and a personal brand, why do you think it's so critical today?

3:13Well, Mike, we've both worked on a bunch of brands. and great brands are never accidental. And I think great personal brands are also never accidental. And one thing I hope the listeners get out of today's conversation is really think seriously about what is your brand out there in the marketplace? And again, using development of brands as a criteria, two critical things you've got to have on any brand you work on is trust and authenticity. and think about people you admire in the business world or cmos that you admire do you trust them like i do and do you think they're authentic i do and think of ones that you are not so such a question so i'm gonna say badgering the witness i well i'm gonna i'm gonna ask one i think i know the answer to so i feel somewhat sorry for elizabeth holmes but would you trust Elizabeth Holmes.

4:09No, I would not. Do you think she was all right? Yes, Elizabeth Holmes is the bad blood protagonist

4:19who was the Theranos woman. And currently serving now the time in a federal penitentiary. So the Elizabeth Holmes syndrome is when you're trying to be something you're not. Mike, if you start addressing like Steve Jobs on every one of these podcasts, I'd be very concerned because you're a very unique brand. I'm a very unique brand. And so I would encourage everybody to think about what is it that's going to make you unique as a CMO? And that could be any number of things. It could be, you know, what types of situations do you thrive in? Do you prefer a startup? Do you prefer a corporate environment?

4:52Do you like a turnaround? Do you like a particular category? Do you want to work internationally? These are all things that will help determine your brand and also what you're going to be famous for. Hey, let's, let's take a minute. You know, there's always been, um, you know, personal brands have always existed regardless or not any era of social media and AI where you can find anybody and job search can be done with a bot is in your mind is personal branding more important now than it was 20 years ago, or is it at the same level? Oh, absolutely more important because uh first of all um there's the opportunity to become better known i mean think about it when we started i know you don't like to talk about that many years ago but when we started mike if you wanted to be a well-known uh head of marketing uh you know there were some opportunities maybe at a ama conference or you can get interviewed by ad age but that was it think about today i mean you've got your own podcast for god's sake you can do blogs you can I know anything can happen.

5:56Anything can happen. And so in that crowded space, it's both an opportunity and frankly, a threat. Because if you're a shrinking violet as a CMO and you're hoping to go out and do great things and attract companies to want to hire you, they've got to know your brand. They've got to have brand awareness. They've got to have brand regard. And they've got to have a willingness to say, hey, Mike Linton seems like exactly the guy we need. Let's go talk to Mike. So, yes, you absolutely need to lean in on that. So this says the power of the brand, which we've had other guests on the show reference, in the age of AI, it's more important than ever because the bots are doing a lot of the searching.

6:35And if your brand is not actually consistent and available, there's a chance you won't get found. Am I shorthanding this correctly? Well, also, don't forget, it's competitive marketplace out there. I mean, it's not like there's only one candidate for a CMO position. Companies will typically, well, they'll start with maybe 20 candidates, and they'll narrow it down to the top five, and then the top two. You've played the game before. So to all of the aspiring CMOs out there, I would say, what is your game plan? I mean, I don't want to use politicians as an example, because you know how that will go.

7:10But politicians are absolutely aware of social media's power. and if you look at the most recent election results, you can see if you do that well, you have frankly an unfair advantage over some of the other candidates that are vying for the same position. Okay, let's go to the, we taught a seminar a little bit ago to a bunch of marketers where we talked them through the personal brand development framework. Why don't you talk about how our listeners should go about developing their own brand framework? Well, it's, as you know, there are three components to it. There's self-assessment, there's brand positioning, and there's brand activation.

7:51So let's break those down individually and do a little back and forth as to what we think of those. So let's start with self-assessment. One of my favorite expressions in coaching is you can't read the label from inside the bottle. I mean, it is impossible for you to know how other people - And it's really cramped in there. Yeah, it's really, really correct. And so if you look around as to, well, how do you read the label on the bottle? Well, there are plenty of resources out there. If you work for any kind of company that has any type of HR system, you're gonna have 360s, you're gonna have performance reviews, you're gonna have team feedback.

8:28So you should be getting a lot of information even without trying as to how are you currently perceived. One-on-ones with your boss. Hopefully if you've got a great boss, they're gonna be honest enough with you to tell you not only what your strengths are, but also what your opportunities are. And finally, and coaches love this, there's so many different assessment tools out there. There's Working Genius and DISC, Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, lots of others. I will put in a plug for Working Genius. I think that is one that does a great job helping identify what are your superpowers, your one or two superpowers that you should really lean in on and be known for.

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10:07now back to our conversation with kip knight i want to jump in on the self-assessment thing um you know because one of the things i think people do is they're not objective on their self-assessment and they will give themselves the benefit of the doubt on every edgy thing but when they get actually in the game and and we talked about how competitive it is for the really good jobs, that lack of objectivity will likely not help them at all. So how do you, you know, you talked about these tools, but how do you recommend people really do an honest, deep self-assessment? Well, I'll give you an acid test on it.

10:50I used to always write my annual review in draft form and give it to my boss. I wanted to be the first writer of history to say this is how I did. And you know, you're doing a pretty good job when your boss is, I think you were too hard on yourself. And Mike, I know you're the same way. If you are an athlete and you're looking to break like, you know, the four minute mile or whatever, you wouldn't be, you know, giving yourself a pat on the back. If you went out there and just had an okay workout, you want to push yourself to the limit. You want to find out what you're capable of doing. I think you've got the same, you've got to be the same way in yourself.

11:25You've got to know what you're really, really good at. And the same breadth, you've got to know what you suck at. You need to know the areas in which you're going to need help on. And you've got to have the willingness to turn to others and say, I am not that good at this. Help me, please. And let me say something like give a couple objectivity examples. If you are managing one person, yes, you are managing people, but you're not really managing people. You're managing a partner. Don't fool yourself that you're going to win the game versus somebody who's managing a department of 10 when you have one.

11:58And also say you're buying, you know, search words and you have a$10 million budget. They up your budget to 20 million and they promote you a level. It's a promotion, but it's not really a skill set development thing. You're still essentially doing the same job at scale. And I think a lot of people will say this is a proof point that I am fantastic when in truth, they haven't proved much different than they had before they they did what they did next well mike let me debate you on that one a little bit because i i think different strokes were different folks when we were at proctor they had people that had been there literally their entire year they've been an entire career 40 years in the same role and to be candid at first i was a little bit snobbish about that i thought wow what happened to them but then i came to appreciate some people are just really love a certain niche and they're really really good at it and there's nothing wrong with that.

12:53I buy that, but if you want to get promoted, and if you want to get promoted, that's not, that is not your ticket to fame. Yeah, that is not your ticket to fame. I did this for 10 years, and then they doubled it instead of four people. I managed to say, that is not your ticket to fame. Right. I'm in agreement that if your goal is to do this one job fantastically for your whole career, then that is a totally great thing. But don't expect that someone's going to come and raid you for the C-suite out of that job, unless it is already at a very, very high level. Well, and to put a pin on the self-assessment, that's maybe the first question you got to ask yourself.

13:33Exactly how ambitious are you? Because if you're super ambitious, but you don't have a strategy to go along with it, then you're setting yourself up failing. Well, and I guess the other thing I would say is you have to do the work to develop the true proof point. Right, exactly. You know, because people aren't going to hire you based on your belief, they're going to hire you based on the proof point of what you've done. Right. Let's flip this over. So we've talked about the framework and the need to go get this framework and self-assessment and then a full understanding of what you are selling to the buyer who is hiring you.

14:10Let's talk about how you arrive at work, executive presence, confidence. You know, a lot of people either think they have imposter syndrome or really do. Talk about, you know, executive presence and how that fits into personal branding. Okay, but before we move on to that, I'm going to go a little bit deeper on some of the strategy that I think a person needs to develop. Okay, let's go. So we've got this thing called brand positioning that we work on as marketers, but I think you've also got to think of yourself in terms of brand positioning. And that is taking all of that data you get from your self-assessment and figuring out what is it that you are really, really good at.

14:54And let me give you a personal example. I'm going to turn around and ask you the same thing. I'm really good at generating new ideas. I mean, you give me a problem and I would generate a half a dozen, I think, great ideas right off the top of my head. What I'm lousy at is filtering those ideas. You are. Which of those ideas, if anything, are worth doing. So part of my self-assessment is knowing when to lean into what I'm really good at and knowing when to turn to other people such as yourself and say, Mike, I've got some thoughts. What do you think? And then we go from there. And Mike, I know that you've got a similar, you know, you've got some superpowers, but you've also got some kryptonite there.

15:32Yes. You know, people have traditionally hired me for driving change and building brands, businesses and teams. and they usually don't hire me on a stable business to squeeze another couple points out of it or for my super attention to detail. Well, and for all the basketball fans out there, I think the most famous example, you know, Michael Jordan, greatest basketball player of all time, but he also played professional baseball. He wasn't that good at it though. So my point is after the self-assessment, you've really got to figure out what do you excel at? What can you do better than anybody else?

16:07and how do you invest in yourself to make sure that that's what you're famous for. Okay. So closing off on the framework thing, let's go. Is there any more points on framework you want to add? No, I think that'll do it for now. All right. Let's go to the whole thing about executive presence and how that fits into your personalized or your personal branding effort. so um improving one's executive presence or improving one's confidence in their ability to lead is the number one request we get not only from cmos but frankly even more often from their boss um and that's not totally surprising because frankly who wants to work for for a weak leader who wants to follow somebody into battle and they're going well i guess we got to do this let's go.

16:56I mean, you want somebody who is fired up and ready to lead and ready to make some tough calls there. So let me make an assumption. Let me make an assumption that anybody that wants to be a CMO and a marketing leader has got the IQ. Okay. That's like table stakes. Right. I think I'm going to push people on to think about and really work on are two things that I've worked on for a number of years. I'm still working on them. And that's your EQ and what I'll call your CQ. Now Now, your EQ, everybody knows, is your emotional intelligence. And I would define that simply as, how good are you at reading the room and working with others and resolving differences of opinion and all that?

17:38How empathetic can you be to your team? But the one that I think is even more important today than it's ever been is the CQ one. And that is this hunger, this curiosity, that if something like Gen A comes along, do you say, any other fad? I'm going to just let that go. Or do you lean in on that one and go, wow, I've got some work to do here. I've got to really lean in. And Mike, you've done a number of podcasts on this. How do you get started on that? How do you make sure that you don't wake up in a year and you feel like, you know, you're still working with a slide rule and everybody else has got a laptop?

18:11So it's that combination of IQ and EQ and CQ together that I think are going to make for the most powerful CMOs as we go forward. And that curiosity to understand not just what, but how and why, that should be relentless in a marketplace where technology and consumers are changing at speed. And I also want to talk about this executive presence thing where a bunch of people don't actually absorb the total leadership mandate. It's like going to the dentist. You don't want to hear your dentist go, you know, you're my third patient. I'm really, I'm starting to get good at this. Or the pilot say, this is my first time I've flown the airliner.

19:00I'm like, just get in and play and act like a leader. Don't, don't be so timid. You actually don't play the game. I agree with that. But, but in the same breath, I would tell folks it is perfectly okay. In fact, it's a smart move to admit when you don't know something, you know, you probably have bosses i have too and you knew they were in trouble you knew they didn't know they didn't have the guts to tell the team hey we are in trouble you know first we need to define reality and then we need to figure out how are we going to win this because right now we are not in a winning position if you can show some vulnerability you will be amazed at the loyalty of your team because they'll realize at that point you're all in this together everybody on the team's important and needed and how do we go forward and figure this thing out?

19:50Is that really vulnerability or is that truth telling? It's like, we've all had bosses where the business is getting slaughtered and they will say, well, they'll find that two or three data points that show we're not getting slaughtered and ignore the 75 that show we are getting crushed. And they'll focus on those three. Talk about the difference between vulnerability and honesty and truth telling. Okay, well, let's use a live example that unfortunately, I think a number of CMOs are already familiar with. Let's say the business is not performing. And let's say that there's been a decision made that you've got to have a 10 % reduction in headcount.

20:31But because you're the marketing department, it's going to be a 20 % reduction in headcount. Now, as the leader, you could put on the brave face and tell everybody it's going to be fine and not to worry about it, I got your back and all that. You're not serving your team as a leader if you do that. I think when I say showing vulnerability is to go to them and say, we are in a tough situation. I can't tell you what's going to happen. I can't make any promises. But the only thing I can assure you of is I'm going to be as transparent as I can be. And I'm going to try to make sure that everybody lands in a decent place.

21:05And unfortunately, I've had to do this same thing. I'm sure you have as well. But the leaders that I hate, the worst ones are they send out the email that basically says you're all fired. And the other end of the spectrum is when your team honestly can feel the emotional pain that you're going through with them when you're trying to make these tough decisions. So that's to me. And I think one of the things that I would opine here is that the reason this is important is this kind of stuff follows your personal brand around. And it will become a defining component of your brand, how you handle the toughest situations.

21:47And your team will not remember a lot of specific things. They will remember the crisis moments very clearly, and that will follow your brand around. Correct me if you think I'm wrong on that. It goes back to the thing I started out with. It's all about trust and authenticity. if they felt like in in the in the toughest time that you were in could i trust you as a leader and were you being authentic as a leader and the answer to both those is yes then i think you're going to make people feel like you had their back if the answer to either of those is no then you are you're going to be one of those people that people talk about i'm glad i don't work for fill in the blank anymore yeah because that does really follow you around and speaking of fill in the blank let's talk about you're a big believer in role models and and thinking about like superpowers and role models and that curiosity to find examples everywhere in the marketplace talk about that a little bit well it's funny as you go up the the pyramid and you get to higher and higher levels you forget what it's like when you're just starting out and and Mike you and I can remember like when you when you're invited to the 11th floor of procter and gamble to meet that's the top floor with automatic doors and guards and all kinds of stuff yeah i mean it was like going to the vatican if you were catholic it's it's a religious experience um but you tend to forget all of that and and it was funny when i was president of hnr block i would pretty much spend the entire tax season going around all these different offices and when i first started doing I ask people, why are you so nervous?

23:30They go, because you're here. And then you realize, oh, I'm the role model now. And that is something as a leader that you've got to constantly keep in mind because they are studying not only everything you say and write, but everything you do. I mean, every, the body language, the emotions, are you in a good mood or a bad mood? Are you consistent? Are you authentic? Et cetera, et cetera. And so the one way I like to define company culture is it's the stories they talk about when the leaders are not in the room. And if you've got a strong company culture, it's stories about how the leaders stepped up and did what they needed to do and led them through adversity and watched everybody in terms of making sure they were taken care of.

24:15The bad culture is it's food fighting every person for himself. It was just not a fun place to work. Unfortunately, you and I have had both those experiences, places where the culture was amazing and a positive and places where the culture was toxic and made it really difficult to want to attract anybody to come join that team. Yeah, one of my things is once you hit a certain level, surely VP or higher, you're always on. If your team runs into you at the grocery store or anywhere else, they still are looking at you, even if they're your friend as a leader, and then a friend, but you always have to be on.

24:56And I think the leaders I've really respected have always been on. Yeah, and what you don't want to be, I knew a boss one time that people would call, and this is when people had secretaries and admins, but they would call the admin and say, how's the weather today? And that was code for, is he in a good mood for it? And if they said, it looks like it's stormy outside, it might rain, then maybe you want to reschedule that meeting. Right. I have Barry Barry and I can't make the meeting.

25:30So, so how do people find role models? It's, it's, they find role models in their company and who they work for and everything else. How do they find role models in other places? Well, I'm always a big fan of bios. I don't know if you do a lot of reading either autobiographies or biographies about various business leaders. I find those to be very instructive. And one thing, whether or not you're reading about a Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Michael Dell or any number of business leaders out there, it was not all up and to the right for them. They've all had serious setbacks. They've all had career setbacks.

26:10They've all had unpleasant surprises. And the thing you learn from reading about these biographies is what values did they hold to and what got them through the tough times? Because, and Mike, you've been through these as well. Our careers are surely not up and to the right. There's a lot of down and down and to the right steps as you look at them really closely. And it might have been Benjamin Franklin, but I think the expression of crises does not build character. It reveals it. So it's like in training. I mean, the more you can kind of think through in advance, okay, if this happens, this is how I think I would respond as a leader, as opposed to hitting the panic button.

26:58And you can't fool your team. I mean, if they say you're in full panic mode, there's not a whole lot you can do after that. So keep in mind, you're always 100 % under inspection by your team, and they're going to mirror whatever emotions and whatever leadership or lack thereof that you're demonstrating. Anything more on role models or should I move to the next question? question um well one last thing um i've been fortunate enough to have some some great role models i've also had some bosses that were so bad they were very instructive because i go i will never do what that person exactly i had a little book i'll never do this so yeah and and those are important too you got to keep that in mind i hope you're not at anybody's little book i hope i'm never one of them i hope i'm never one of those bosses but the ones i admire people like bill Cobb and Peter Hurl, and you and I both work for Bill.