In this energizing episode, Alan McLaren, Co-Founder of STRATA Originals, shares how to build a powerful leadership brand that pulls opportunities to you instead of pushing uphill. If you struggle with team execution feeling heavy and growth stalling despite a strong C-suite, you won’t want to miss it.
You will discover:
– What authentic commenting on LinkedIn does that original posts alone can’t
– Why your personal visibility is the hidden multiplier for company momentum
– How to start building thought-leadership in just 15 minutes a week
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the Start scale and succeed podcast. It’s the only podcast that grows with you through all seven stages of your journey. As a founder, I’m your host, Scott Ritzheimer, and I want to talk about something that catches just about every stage five founder off guard, and that is, you’ve done this stuff, you’ve built your executive team, you’ve got a CFO coo all the C suite and and you’ve wrestled with the idea that your job has fundamentally changed. You no longer in the weeds. You’re no longer there trying to drive everything forward. But you’re left with a couple of questions. First, what do you do? And the second one, and this is something that very, very few people talk about, and that is that you can have a great team executing brilliant, brilliantly on the inside, but if you’re not visible on the outside, they’re going to be pushing a boulder uphill. Now to talk about what that looks like, why that happens, and how we can get over it, you don’t want to hear from me. You want to hear from the guy who’s got this figured out, and that is the one and only Alan McLaren, who’s co founder of strata originals. He leads a learning brand, a learning branding, leadership branding, wow, can’t get it out. Agency specializing in working with CEOs, executives, entrepreneurs and legal professionals with a strategic, intentional and authentic approach. Alan has coached or trained over 600 CEOs just in the past two years. His passion for personal branding comes from over two decades of experience in leadership roles including public companies, partnerships and entrepreneurial ventures. As co founder of infiniticom, a full service marketing agency, he developed deep expertise in public relations and marketing, honing his ability to craft and elevate brands, including those of CEOs and their personal brands. He’s here with us today. Alan, before we hit record, you made a distinction that I think is just a brilliant way to start off the show, and that is that you have you’ve moved away from personal branding and moved to leadership branding, just help us understand what’s the difference define leadership branding, and why is that different from personal branding?
Alan McLaren
So there’s two reasons why we made the move. One was, you know, when something gets popular, then it’s a race to the bottom right. So that personal branding now everybody and his brother’s talking about it, so that people are now saying, Oh, for 2000 bucks, we’ll do this for you, and that for you. And we said, You know what? We need to elevate this conversation. This is a leadership conversation, not a brand conversation. And so when you raise it to the level of leadership, people look at that and go, I’ll invest in my leadership. I’ll invest in my communication, and what we call your leadership signal, because that is something I understand. Personal Branding is something, you know, we all have one, but it tends to be very personal. But leadership tends to be very business wise. That’s why we made the move, and it’s changed how we think about it as well.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that. So what’s the cost of not investing in your leadership brand? I mean, there’s a lot of successful CEOs out there who’ve built successful companies and have done it to a certain extent, invisibly, I know I did in previous ventures. What is that costing us in our organizations?
Alan McLaren
Well, I’ll ask you this way, what does trust cost? What is building trust cost or not having trust? Everybody who has been successful in business has done that by accident or by what is by purpose, purposefully. But if you think about it now, you’re saying, Okay, well, if I invest in trust, any outcomes possible? If I’m not trusted, then it’s impossible. And I’ll give you an example. I have a friend of mine who was in the trucking space, and he moved to M and A, and when he moved to M and A, he thought, who’s going to follow me? Everybody followed him. Why? Because he built trust. He didn’t have expertise in the new M and A world. He had trust in the trucking world, but because he had done that, people move with him. It’s the same in any business where you’re trying to get new employees, or you’re trying to grow your business, or you’re trying to do something political, trust is the name of the game. So that’s one aspect. The other one is you’ll never know if you’re not visible. Opportunities cannot show up on your doorstep because your doorstep doesn’t exist. So that’s the two reasons. I have another story I’ll share with you in a minute, but that’s the two key reasons why it’s important to do that.
Scott Ritzheimer
This is so good, because one of the things that’s happening in Stage Five is especially more forward thinking. Leaders are thinking about what’s next, right? They’re thinking about a move to another industry, a move to, you know, being more of an owner, investor. And this is the exact mistake. I mean, it’s embarrassing how bad I did this coming out of my previous company, but I’ve actually written it about it in my book, and that is the biggest mistake I made while I was CEO of a previous company. Was not making this investment. Because when I moved, no one moved with me, right? I was like, I started from zero and felt the pain of it. So. For those, especially who are thinking of like what they’re going to do after being CEO, that’s such a big point. I want to I don’t like to do this because it’s like every other guest feels the need to talk about AI, and we’ve got a full conversation that we’ve had without talking about AI. But as you’re talking about it, this idea of trust I have seen is, is so important now more than ever, because of the age of AI, because data is there everywhere. But like, what do you trust? And so walk us through maybe a little bit practically, like building a leadership brand around trust, right, both for this stage and for future stages. What are some of the what are some of the biggest mistakes you see folks make when they start off on that journey?
Alan McLaren
Well, they think that leadership or personal branding or thought leadership is just about content. Content is the output that you see, right? But here’s the thing that we see differently. We only do video with our clients. Only video, no written post. I mean, there’s a written post supporting the video, but there’s no post that we do. Why? Because people want to spend time with you, and statistically, you’ve seen that over 567, hours of watching a video with someone, you get to know them really well. In fact, with the work that I do, when someone contacts me, they know me. I don’t know them because they’ve spent three hours with me on video or watching a podcast or whatever it is. So if you think about the first part, the first mistake is thinking is just about doing content. And we say, yes, it’s about doing content, but content that speaks from your strength or your what you call your leadership signal. What does that mean? So in my case, I’m a heart leader. I lead from the heart. So if I start taking data and trying to spew that out, I’m not in my zone. Might think it’s good, but I won’t come over naturally, and I won’t come over authentically. So we work with our our clients to get them in that zone and also to eliminate their shadows. Everybody has them things that they don’t come across well when they talk about once, you find that then the content lands, because it lands based on the trust hormone, oxytocin. I don’t know if anybody knew this. We’ve learned this in the last three weeks. When you watch a video that is from a trustworthy, authentic person, oxytocin kicks into your brain you trust, and ergo, that person is now trusted, so that piece of content is landed and is supported by neuroscience. Imagine what that can happen if you do that 50 times in a year. So that’s the magic behind it, and we just discovered in the last few weeks. So we’re so charged about it that we have that supporting us. So there you go.
Scott Ritzheimer
Amazing. We might have lost like everybody, because I’ve seen so many folks, especially who fall in this category. They they’re wonderful people in person, and then they turn into robots as soon as the camera turns on. And so that’s not a reason to not move forward, right? How do you get past that feeling of talking into a camera as opposed to talking to another human being?
Alan McLaren
Well, there’s a couple of ways. So if you’re doing it on your own, it’s practice, right? It’s it’s practice record videos, until you think that, Oh, that is me. The other one you know that we do is we coach them to do that. We were just with one of our clients online, who is one of the most brilliant orators in the world, getting him in his zone for that particular topic mattered, because I said to him, Well, here’s an example. You could talk about this, and now you look like you’re partisan when you talk about that, as soon as you change the language, you’re inviting people to think about it differently. Ergo, that’s what you want. Your personal brand, your leadership brand, is all about. I want people to think so. If you’re partisan, they’re in their partisan brain. If you’re inviting them in, then that’s what happens. So that’s what we work people on, is coach them on that that’s hard to do on your own, but if you are doing it on your own, practice it till it feels as comfortable as this. If you and I were in a Starbucks, this would be how I would talk to you. I’m not going to have more hands or or trying to do something silly. I’m not performing. I’m trying to be me, and you’re trying to be you. That’s what we try to get people to do, because everybody’s authentic. And the last thing I’ll say on this is, sometimes I get people say, but I’m not really good at this. I’m not comfortable, I’m an introvert. I’m going, Dude, you built a business worth $50 million you had the alligators at your ankles all your life, and you’re going to take this learning opportunity and throw it away because you’re scared. Give me a break. You’ve been scared all your life as an entrepreneur, right? So now it’s time to learn a new skill that is transferable outside of digital too, and that’s why we think it’s so important. It’s not just for video, it’s when you’re doing a presentation to investors, when you’re out there doing an M and A when you’re trying to hire that coo. All of that matters being in your zone.
Scott Ritzheimer
yeah, it’s interesting, and I think especially coming back to this root of trust that. You talked about it really is the core of it. Because you see the CEO’s brand show up in things like investment pitches, in things like the CEO rating on Glassdoor, or whatever. The other one is that I can’t remember off the top of my head to, you know, what’s on the website. And you know, should you choose to this company? I mean, how many people fell in love with Apple because of Steve Jobs? Right? Such a great example of it. I think one of the challenges that folks might have walking into that is like, how do you know if it’s working? How do you measure progress? How do you How does that translate into success in our current world.
Alan McLaren
So what we believe is that this is about relationship building and relationship trust. So you can measure relationship acquisition pretty easily, right? They were in my life. They’re not in my life. They turned out to be a lead. They turned out to be a partner, whatever it happens to be. You can also measure impressions, so on YouTube and LinkedIn you can measure, okay, well, when I started, 10 people saw it after my fifth video, 50 people are seeing it, 100 people, so it’s being served to more people now. So I’m making an impact. The comments that you get, the likes, the shares, and the part that nobody talks about. And this is not a secret, if you’re in any kind of networking event, and in my case, I’m in an organization called YPO, Young Presidents Organization. I go to these events now, and I cannot leave the room without someone going I’ve been watching your videos. I’ve been watching it happens all the time. They don’t engage because that’s not what people do. 90% of people will not engage with your content, but they will view it. So you can measure empirically the KPIs that are there. I measure the relationships. I have them, sit up and I say, okay, these are people. I need to nurture partnerships. Good to know, influencers, potential customers. When you have that and you’re saying, Oh, it’s working, and when it works, and in my case, I’m so lucky, I get leads coming in all the time from places i It’s not linear, it’s abstract, because I’m visible. Stuff comes from everywhere. Someone will recommend me. I don’t even know who recommended me on a WhatsApp group somewhere else, in some country, somewhere else. Oh, you got to talk to Alan. Who are they? I don’t know how I touch them. So all of those things are the magic that visibility creates if it’s done correctly and authentically and big, big piece, don’t sell. Never sell. I don’t sell a thing. I teach. I’m in service of others. I’m doing a podcast guesting thing in a few weeks, and I was specific on the video. I said, No bait and switch. We’re not going to try to sell you a course. At the end, we’re in service to you, and if you like it, you’ll come back to us and go, these are the people I want to deal with. That’s what you do in your business, because that is what differentiates you from everything, including AI.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. So true. So true. Alan, there’s a question that I ask them. I guess I’m interested to see what you have to say, especially in the context of this conversation. But the question is this, what is the biggest secret you wish wasn’t a secret at all. What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?
Alan McLaren
So if you did nothing else today, after this podcast, go on your LinkedIn and start commenting on other people’s posts. What does that do? Well, there’s a reciprocation factor. If I went on your post, Scott and did that say, Who’s this? Alan guy. He’s pretty insightful. You have to say something insightful, not just great video or like, say something insightful, because then Scott will go, that was an insightful comment. He’ll comment back, and then other people will see your comment, because impressions are also measured on a comment. So I did one Gary Vaynerchuk. We’ve all heard of Gary Vaynerchuk. I don’t need to reach Gary Vaynerchuk, but he’s got big following. I made a comment. I had almost 600 impressions on the comment. So what am I doing? I’m building my brand. I’m building exposure and people. Oh, then I watch people connecting from that post. So that’s the secret, and that requires 15 minutes a week, so I’m really too busy. No, you’re not. You can do that. If you do nothing else, do that and you watch it start to build, and you say, Wow, what if I added original content to this? That’s what I would say the secret is.
Scott Ritzheimer
So good, so good, so simple, too. Alan, I love that. Alan, there’s some folks listening and this just the right thing, right time, right everything. And they want to know how they can help improve their leadership brand, and are wondering how you can help in that process. Where can folks reach out to you if they want to find more and get some of the comment content you talked about today?
Alan McLaren
Yeah, and there’s lots. And there’s lots of tools we could help you with that are free just to kind of you can go our newsletter and you get lots of great content there, but find me on LinkedIn. Mention that you you heard me on your show, Scott and Alan McLaren on LinkedIn, and just connect with me. Tell me why you know, so that I know it’s not no one’s trying to pitch me. And I’m happy to help 30 minute conversation for free. Excuse me. Happy to help you, and if you turn out to be someone that we can work with, then we talk about that. That’s fantastic.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, fantastic. Great. Alan, thank you for being on the show. It was just a privilege and honor having you here with us today. For those of you watching and listening, you know your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Alan McLaren
Alan McLaren, Co-Founder of STRATA Originals, co-leads a personal branding agency specializing in working with CEOs, executives, entrepreneurs, and legal professionals. With a strategic, intentional, and authentic approach, Alan has coached or trained over 600 CEOs in the past two years. Alan’s passion for personal branding comes from over two decades of experience in leadership roles, including public companies, partnerships, and entrepreneurial ventures. As Co-Founder of Infinitycomm, a full-service marketing agency, he developed deep expertise in public relations and marketing, honing his ability to craft and elevate brands, including those of CEOs and their personal brands.
Want to learn more about Alan McLaren’s work at STRATA Originals? Check out his website at https://strataoriginals.com/
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