November 18, 2024 • 54 mins
Kathryn Tague was the Sr Exec Editor of The Good Men Project, the world's leading progressive men’s publication for 9 years, and was the Director of Media Partnerships and Social Media branding, strategy and content strategy for 6 years.
She's been a writing coach, storytelling coach, and book development coach since 2016, with over 100 titles in her editing and publishing portfolio.
Influence Digital Media provides comprehensive branding and digital communication services.
Winning Business Radio is broadcast live Mondays at 4PM ET and Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). Winning Business Radio is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
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Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/winning-business-radio--3075598/support.
She's been a writing coach, storytelling coach, and book development coach since 2016, with over 100 titles in her editing and publishing portfolio.
Influence Digital Media provides comprehensive branding and digital communication services.
Winning Business Radio is broadcast live Mondays at 4PM ET and Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). Winning Business Radio is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
Winning Business Radio Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/winning-business-radio--3075598/support.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are
solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not
those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We
make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services,
or products mentioned on air or on our web. No
liability explicitor implies shall be extended to W four CY
Radio or it's employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments
should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for
(00:20):
choosing W four CY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Churchill said, those who failed to learn from history are
condemned to repeat it. Kevin Helen n believes that certainly
applies to business.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Welcome to Winning.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Business Radio here at W four CY Radio. That's W
four cy dot com and now your host, Kevin Helen.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Thanks for joining in today, everybody. I am Kevin Hallanan
and welcome back to Winning Business TV and Radio on
W four C dot com. We're streaming live on talkfour
tv dot com in addition to at Winning Business Radio
on Facebook, and of course we're available in podcasts after
the live show on wherever you get your podcasts, including YouTube,
(01:13):
I Heeartradio, Spotify, Apple Again, everywhere you can find a podcast,
you will find us. The mission of Winning Business Radio
and TV, as regular viewers and listeners know, is to
offer insights and advice, tell people avoid the mistakes of others,
right to learn best practices, the how tos, the what to's,
the what not tos, to be challenged and hopefully to
(01:36):
be inspired as well by the successes of others who
with those others. They're consultants, coaches, advisors, authors, founders and
owners and entrepreneurs, people with expertise. But you know, virtually
every successful person I've ever had a chance to talk
to has hed some form of failure in their lives
and careers. So while we all have to get our
knees skinned once in a while, I say it every week.
(01:57):
I'm driven to keep those scrapes from needing major, major surgery.
Let's endeavor to learn from history so we don't repeat it.
I've spent the better part of my career equipping businesses
to grow from solopreneurs to small to medium sized businesses
all the way up to the Fortune fifty. I've seen
a lot of those companies win, and to varying degrees,
i've seen some of them fail. I've had the opportunity
(02:18):
to rub elbows with some of the highest performing people
around and with some who probably should have found other professions.
In my own businesses, I've had lots of success, but
some failures too, and I like to think I've learned
a lot from those experiences. So you'll hear from me
my opinions and insights, but more importantly, you're going to
hear from experts, those consultants, coaches, advisors, authors, founders and
(02:40):
owners and entrepreneurs because they have a lot to share.
And today my guest is Catherine Take. She's branding and
digital meeting, a digital communication expert and founder of Influence
Digital Media. Here's your Bile. Catherine was the senior executive
editor of The Good Men Project, the world's leading progressive
men's publication, for nine years, was the director of Media
(03:01):
Partnerships and Social Media Branding, Strategy and Content for six years.
She's been a writing coach, storytelling coach, and book development
coach since twenty sixteen. Although with over one hundred titles
in her editing and publishing portfolio, of those, over ninety
nine percent have been listed on the Bestseller, Best New
Release and top selling Books on Amazon. She works with
(03:23):
high level influencers, entrepreneurs and coaches to bring their stories
to life and and elevate them to the status they deserve.
Influence Digital Media provides comprehensive branding and digital media digital
I said it again, sorry, Digital communication services. Katherine and
her team specialized in growing personal and business brands for entrepreneurs,
multi billion dollar companies, multimillion dollar companies. That was an M,
(03:47):
not a B. Sorry, Offering full service social media content
and branding, from strategy to implementing and analytics. Catherine, Welcome
to Winning Business Radio.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
Thank you for having me my pleasure.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
I appreciate you taking the time. I know you're busy.
I was like listeners and yours to get a census
to where people came from, both personally as well as professionally.
So let's start here. Where'd you grow up?
Speaker 4 (04:11):
I grew up in the Midwest.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Okay, more specifically.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Michigan and Chicago.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
And so in those two areas in Michigan, what ages,
what was it like to grow up there? And when
did you get to Chicago? And what was elected to
be there?
Speaker 4 (04:28):
I was born in Lansing, Michigan. My parents were both
students at Michigan State University. That's where they met, got married,
had me and my sister. They separated and got divorced
before I was ten. My mother moved to Chicago and
(04:52):
she and her new husband at the time had a
house there. Yeah, so we traveled back and forth. Yep.
My dad stayed in the Lancing East Lansing Oakhamist area.
His wife, who he married when I was in my
early teens, was also a graduate of Michigan State University,
(05:14):
go Green Ghost Spartans, So we used to travel back
and forth. We would take Amtrak. Amtrak is still very
popular in the Midwest, not just to move right products,
but to actually move people. It's really common for people
(05:36):
to grab the train in Kalamazoo, especially as where we
used to grab it and take it down to Niles,
down to where Notre Dame is, across to Chicago, Illinois,
different places. So my sister and I used to my
dad would put us on the train in Kalamazoo and
we would ride the train back.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Rails.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Yeah. Absolutely. We each had a little backpacks, obviously before
cell phones or tablets, and so we have books and
coloring stuff and card games and a little bit of
money for the snack car, and the Amtrak station was
in the basement of the building in downtown Chicago that
(06:21):
our stepdad worked in, So when our train would get in,
he would just come down from his office and grab
us and we hop on the L which is the
above ground sort of subway public transportation system that they
have in Chicago, and we would take the L home
and our mom would be there.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
So you had a lot of responsibility. Yes, also fun.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
So fun, so fun. I think we weren't afraid of
things back then the way we're afraid of things now.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Yeah, I agree, good and bad, right, right, So what
were your early interests?
Speaker 4 (06:59):
I was a voracious reader. I was. I was reading
at a college level by the time I was eight
years old. Our dad read to us every night. So
when we were growing up, he worked nights and then
he would sleep during the day. He worked for the
American Red Cross at that time. He was in the lab.
(07:20):
He was the supervisor in the lab, and so he
would come home at night on his dinner break and
he would put us to bed like that was our
time with him, because obviously during the day when most
dads are at work and then they get to come
home and be with their family in the evening. That wasn't.
That wasn't how it worked in our home. And so
(07:40):
he would read to us every night, and he read
us the Tolkien series, He read us C. S. Lewis,
he read us Anne of green Gables, the Laura Engels
Wilder books. So from a very very young age, we
were immersed in these stories, right. Story telling and words
(08:04):
were just absolutely fascinating to me. And I started reading
for myself at a very young age and just consumed
everything that I could get my hands on.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
And that speaks a lot to what you do today,
right or what you have done as well. What's your
educational background?
Speaker 4 (08:25):
I studied political science in college and psychology and sociology.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Michigan State No.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
Southwestern in Georgetown, Texas.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
I gotcha, I gotcha.
Speaker 4 (08:37):
I moved to Texas in two thousand and one.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Okay, And why did you choose those majors?
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Initially? I chose psychology and sociology because I wanted to
understand why people did what they did. It's something that's
always fascinated me, and understanding sort of how our experiences
as children inform who we become as adults. I started
(09:06):
reading about shadow work Carl Jung Jungian philosophy in high
school and was just really fascinated by it and sort
of got into the question of, you know, ethics and
things like that, and so went into that in college
with the plan of then going to law school. Two
(09:29):
semesters in psychology kicked my butt. It was it was
nothing like what I had thought it was going to be.
I wanted to understand people, and it was really clinically focused,
and I noticed that it was heavily focused on treating
(09:53):
sort of the symptoms and not the real cause. And
I had always also been really fascinat ned by politics
and the history of politics and the theory of politics.
I love America and I love being an American, and
(10:14):
I think the system that was created by the Founding fathers,
it was one of a kind at the time, right,
and the ideology that they were building off of, so
you know, the theory of civil disobedience and what it
(10:35):
can look like if you allow people to be in
control of their own lives was always really fascinating to me.
And I had taken some really amazing political science classes
as electives my freshmen and sophomore year in college, and
halfway through my sophomore year, I was sitting with my
(10:55):
advisor and I was like, I'm just not I am
not loving this. I am not in love with my
with my degree plan. Yeah yeah, I went to Southwestern
is a small liberal arts college in Georgetown, Texas, but
it is a Methodist college. It's the oldest university in Texas.
(11:19):
It was actually originally the University of Texas, but because
it's a private college, when they started u T and
that was a public state college, they took the name
away from us. So we feel have been a way
about that still two hundred years later. But you know,
we have this really beautiful conversation and she was like, you,
(11:43):
every elective you take is either history, religion, or political science.
Why aren't you doing something in that field? And so
I met with some of the professors in the you
know department and in the political science department and was
just swept away by it. It was almost like these
(12:07):
doors open and it was just this bright, shining light
and that's awesome. I don't regret that change at all.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Again, it served you. Well, right, we'll get into that.
So tell us about your your family.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
My childhood family, or the family I have now.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Your current family. It's a blended family.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
It is a blended family, and is a blended family.
My significant other and I are both entrepreneurs, business owners.
Thomas Keenan. I think you've had him on your show
before as well.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
All the times I see him at conferences, the same
one where you and I met.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
Yes, yes, yes, and the one will see you guys
at the end of January.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
January three's correct, right.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
We have seven children between the.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Two of us, just the seven, just the seven, just.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
The seven, two sets of twins.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Wow, that's increased.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
They range in age from Our oldest will be fourteen
in January and our youngest, two girl twins turned six
in March, so they'll be seven in next March. And
it is beautiful chaos. It is chaos, is I'm sure
(13:14):
it is. I homeschool my four girls, So I came
into the relationship with four daughters and he has two
daughters and a son. One set of twins is mine,
one set of twins is his, and they are all ours.
And yeah, so we are in north of Dallas and
we are doing the thing with ye seven kids.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
That's outstanding. I've just one more question. This will help
us transition between the commercial and our next segment. One
more question before the commercial break, When did you know
you wanted to be in branding and marketing.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
I didn't. It was something that really came across my space.
My plan had always been to go to law school.
I wanted to practice law for several years and then
teach at a university level and do research. I wanted
to go into constitutional law. I wanted to work with
(14:12):
the Southern Poverty Law Center or the a c l U.
I wanted to defend Americans' rights. That was something that
since I was, you know, even before high school, like
reading about the Civil rights movement, reading about you know, uh,
the women's suffrage as suffrage suffragist movement. Words are hard today.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
The earlier.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
Being you know, understanding like at a core level the
uniqueness of our country and our constitution, and and doing
the research and reading the history and understanding what what
sort of the intention the intentionality that the founding fathers
put into place when they wrote this document that really,
(14:57):
if you think about it, has evolved and adapted with
our country as opposed to other countries where they have
sort of these these rules and these laws that are
set in stone and no way to change them or
adapt them. And I was looking around, like as a
high schooler and even as a college student, and realizing
that a lot of things were happening. This was shortly
(15:20):
after nine to eleven. People's rights were being violated simply
because they didn't know they had them right, and so
I had this passion to educate. Well. Shortly before I
was going to take my l SAT and go off
to law school, I found out I was pregnant with
my oldest daughter. And that changed my life. It changed
(15:42):
my life, and there was that part of me and
even my dad was like, you know, you could still
go to law school, and I was like, I don't
know if I want to do that with a brand
new baby. You know, I had this sort of idea
in my head of what it meant to be a
mom and how important it was to me to be you.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
If I could, if I could enter. You weren't oh no,
i'm pregnant. I can't go to law school. You were,
oh wow, i'm pregnant. Now let me think about what
I want to do? Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
And what I wanted to do was homeschool my daughter.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
I did not want her in the public education education system,
my very little faith in the institutions like that, and
I wanted to be home with her. I felt very
strongly about a mother's role in the home, a mother's
role with her children. I understood instinctively because I grew
up in a broken home, a separate home, right, what
(16:35):
it meant to not have a mom, especially for a daughter.
Because we lived with our dad full time, we saw
our mom intermittently, and I didn't want to be that.
You know, career had always been my first focus. And
then I found out I was pregnant all of a sudden,
like it was this huge identity shift for me, and
(16:58):
so I was home with her for the first like
eighty nine months. I'm so unhappy. I was so unhappy.
It just did not feel fulfilling. And that's not to
say that being a mom sure wasn't fulfilling, But I
had this education, and I wanted to be having these conversations.
And you know, it was twenty eleven, like politics were
(17:18):
starting to fire up and all these things, and I
really felt this need to be involved and to have
a voice. And I was up late one night nursing her,
and I was on Twitter which is now X But
at the time I'm going to date myself, it was
Twitter and I was reading these articles. I was seeing
all these tweets coming through from this magazine, this online
(17:40):
blog at the time called the Good Men Project, and
they had posted that they were looking for a news editor,
a news blog editor, and so I messaged them, and
they're publisher at this woman Lisa Hickey, who is phenomenal
and I am forever grateful for the space she gave
me to learn message me and I just told her,
(18:01):
I said, hey, I have no experience and online publishing.
I have no experience as a as a journalist, but
this is my background and these are my experiences, and
I would love to be a part of this. And
I understand if I'm not a good fit to be
an editor like I didn't. I'd never written a blog before,
I didn't know how to use WordPress any of those things.
(18:22):
But I would love even if it's just like helping
to promote things. And this is way back before social
media is what it is now, or was what it
is now. And she and I got on a call
on Google Meet it used to be called something else
like Google Chat or something like that, and because it's
(18:42):
before zoom, right back when we were still using Skype
all the time. And she said, you know, it's me
and our executive editor and another lead editor and like
two writers and that's it. But if you want to
give it a try, and I was off to the races.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
All right, let's come back to that thought in just
a minute. We'll be right back with Catherine Tag after
this break.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin helenet on
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you succeed in business. Here once again is Kevin Helenett.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
We're back with Catherine Tag of Influence Digital Media. Take
us through that continue the story. So it's kind of serendipitous.
She probably didn't expect they were going to reply, maybe
even maybe they working. Maybe you're thinking they work and reply,
or they going to reply with that kind of gusto,
(20:38):
But not at all.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
I had no idea, like at other than being on
Facebook in college and maybe some you know chat rooms
when I was like eighteen nineteen twenty years old, Like,
social media wasn't a thing when I was growing up,
when we were growing up right the way that it
is for our children. And I was on Facebook in
(21:02):
college back before Facebook was something that anybody could be on.
You had to actually have a an email dot edu
email just to be on Facebook. And it wasn't somewhere
to promote things like when I started with the Good
Men Project at the end of you know, twenty eleven
(21:22):
beginning of twenty twelve. It wasn't something that you know,
ads were not something that most places were running. Print
media was still really really powerful at the time, you know,
magazines and newspapers getting a digital version of that was
something that most people didn't do, and so being able
(21:48):
to get in to the publishing space while they were
making that transition. It was it Like all I can
think about comparing it to is ad agencies in like
the sixties, the fifties and sixties, like when ad agencies
were starting to really blow up.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Right, vision of that, you know, I have a like Maden,
like Madden exactly what I was going to say.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
Yes, yes, and obviously not that cool because we weren't
in an office and we were all sitting on our
couches at home in our sweatpants. But that was the
other thing, right, Like all of a sudden, it was
it was working from home, which up until that point
was something that I'd always thought was kind of a scam, right, like, oh, yeah,
(22:36):
you have a work from home job, is it really
a work from home job? And along with doing the
news blog and learning WordPress and learning HTML and learning
how to edit, because editing and writing are two really
different things. I was a prolific reader. I was a
prolific writer. I'd been you know, writing short stories and
(22:58):
poems and things like that since I was a small child,
but I had never edited outside of school. You know
what I mean, Like they teach you how to proof create,
and they teach you how to but this was like,
this was like real editing. These were articles that we
were publishing on the Good Men Project and then they
were getting pulled over to Men's Health and the Huffington
(23:19):
Post and you know, all of these really really large publications,
and we were just figuring out social media. We understood
that social media would be a huge, huge boon to
us if we could figure it out. And at that time,
because everybody else was figuring it out too, Like we
(23:39):
were having conversations with the Huffington Post marketing team and
with the Your Tango marketing team and the Cosmo marketing
team and Mental Health and Esquire and all these different
media publications right right. And we were never a print publication.
The Good Men Project was never a print publication. We
(24:02):
were strictly online. But these other magazines all had print, right,
and what they were seeing is they were losing subscribers
in the print media space, and so they were in
like this mad dash to figure out online publication, and
(24:22):
they were in a mad dash to figure out social media.
And so we had this really amazing opportunity at the time.
It's probably not something anyone would do now, but back
in twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, we had this amazing opportunity
to learn social media while social media was learning itself right,
(24:43):
And we would get on calls with you know, Facebook's
development team, and they were calls that if you were
listed as a certain type of business where we had
access to these calls. I don't think they do that anymore,
you know, they maybe still do developer calls, but like
(25:04):
we had contacts at Google, we had people who were
like leading the charge to grow these platforms, who wanted
us to utilize them, and we wanted to learn. And
instead of going out and looking for like a marketing
agency or people who knew what they were doing, Lisa
(25:25):
was amazing and she was We were bootstrapping it. At
that point. Ad spend is tiny, you know, we were
getting paid, you know, sixty two cents per thousand clicks,
So getting as much traffic in as possible was priority.
And we would literally talk every you know, every other
day or even every day sometimes, and we were looking
(25:46):
at analytics and we were figuring it out, and we
were looking at Google analytics and comparing it to Facebook analytics,
and we were all over Twitter and we were learning
these things. And I would go to her and I
would say, Hey, I think I have this idea. Can
we try this? And She's like, yeah, let's try it.
And then we would we would pick it apart together
and we would make adjustments together. And so not only
(26:06):
was I learning branding and social media in the branding
and social media infancy, I had a leader and was
in a position with this leader and our leadership team,
and then as a leader myself to be given this
time and space to try new things to strategize, it's
a rare opportunity, really, really like I credit her and
(26:30):
the Goodman Project with so much of my willingness to
think outside the box to being a solution based leader
versus someone I didn't come in and they said this
is how we're doing it, and this is how we've
always done it. They said, we don't know what we're
doing either, let's figure it out together. And being in
that environment, especially when we're talking about learning something like
(26:52):
social media, which is constantly in flux. Yeah, analytics change,
the algorithm is constantly changing, and not having to even
figure it out by myself having this entire team of
people both within the magazine and within other magazines that
we could then connect to and reach out to and say, hey,
(27:13):
this is what we're seeing. Like we woke up to
this and our views are through the roof. What did
we do? We don't know, let's figure it out or wow,
our views tanked, you know. I remember there was a
point in twenty thirteen, late twenty thirteen, early twenty fourteen
that they changed all of the algorithms and they were
no longer they wanted everyone to go to pay to play,
(27:36):
so they were no longer giving us views organically. And
we literally we called it the cliff. And we were
watching other magazines like The Huffington Post, The New York Times,
Cosmopolitan fall off this cliff, and we were just like,
when's it gonna happen? When's it gonna I remember waking
up one morning and going in and looking at our
analytics because at that point I was running the social media.
(27:57):
I was doing our Facebook page, and I went in
and I looked at our analytics and it was literally
a cliff, like we went from here to here within
a twelve hour period, and it was and then we
but we figured it out you.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Know, what are some of those key lessons I don't
mean technically, what are some of those key lessons like
how did you approach it? How did your problem solve?
Speaker 1 (28:25):
You know?
Speaker 4 (28:26):
I think one of the biggest ones is it's nobody's fault.
I think, especially in the larger the larger companies, we
become so disconnected. And I you know that a lot
of the people I work with now in the leadership
mindset space, were so disconnected from the people who are
actually the ones pulling the levers and pushing the buttons.
(28:49):
And when something goes wrong, instead of coming at it
from a problem solving perspective, quite often people want to
come from it from a blame person it.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Yes, they do, and.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
I'm sure you do, especially with the really large corporations,
because people, I mean, when you've got eighty ninety one hundred,
five hundred, fifteen hundred or more people working for you,
you don't know all of them. You can't know all
of them right, and you want to people want to
find who's to blame instead of just figuring out why
(29:24):
did it happen? You know, And so one of the
things that I learned with Lisa and the Goodman project
and the other people on the executive editor team is
that it's not somebody's fault. You know, one of my
best friends now built a nine figure e commerce business
(29:44):
and she's phenomenal, and one of the things that she
teaches when we do leadership trainings together is she teaches
that it's not about blame. It's about working or not working,
because what happens quite up. I mean, people make mistakes.
We're all human. But if you can't pinpoint what's working
or not working, you can't replicate it.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Or a lot of problems are system problems that people
then stumble around.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Right.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
It's yes, there can be people problems. Somebody can make
a mistake, but many of those problems are system problems.
Jim Collins in Good to Great says the same thing,
which if you recall, I believe you've read that is
he says commit can conduct autopsies without blame. It's the
exact same thing you're talking about.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
Yeah, yeah, And I think for me, especially in that
in that time frame, having a leader, having someone who
was essentially teaching all of us how to be leaders
as well, because I've taken so much of what I
learned at the Command project, and not only applied it
in my own businesses, but apply it as a coach
and applying it as a book development coach, and you know,
(30:50):
working with you know, vas and employees and even my
children and in our home are these leadership lessons. And
one of the things that I that I will always
remember her for is she never pointed a finger. She
never blamed. It was always really just let's figure out
what's broken, Let's figure out why it's not working, and
(31:11):
let's problem solve a solution. The other thing, too, is
she there was never this authoritarian sort of like this
is I'm the Boston I said. So, you know, ultimately
at the end of the day, the buck stopped with her. Sure,
and so she did have to make the final decisions,
but she walked into the experience or the meeting or
(31:33):
whatever it was willing to hear what everyone had to say.
And I have definitely taken that forward even into you know,
the online the book publishing space, you know, because I've
I've worked with companies and other editors and publishers who
are like, no, this is just how it is, and
this is just how it's going to be. The flip
(31:54):
side of that is I've worked in some spaces where
they're like, you know, the author is always right, And
I think one of the things that I've learned is
being able to have these sort of open conversations where
everybody comes to the table, everyone voices their wants, their needs,
their feelings, their opinions, and then we get to create
(32:16):
a solution. There is not one size fits all to
anything branding, marketing, social media, book publishing, book writing. There
is no cookie cutter to any of it. And if
we come into any situation, whether it's problem focused or
(32:37):
you know, figuring out what's working what isn't working, and
we're willing to look for a solution versus pointing a
finger and blaming or laying down the hatchet and saying
it's my way or the highway, we're going to move
a lot faster and we're going to have a lot
more success than if we're just you know, iron Cloud.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
In our opinion, you took the words out of my mouth.
You're spot on, all right. We're going to take our
second break right here. We'll be back in about sixty seconds, Catherine.
Everybody will see on the other side.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helenet on
W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com.
Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up
right here on Winning Business Radio.
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Speaker 2 (34:03):
And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin helene
presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in
mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again
is Kevin Helenett.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
We're back with Catherine Tag of Influenced Digital Media. So
take us from first. I want to know what happened,
why you left, and how you got to influence digital media.
Speaker 4 (34:33):
Yes, yes, so we're rolling along. I had my second
daughter in twenty thirteen, and I had become the senior
executive editor at that point, and we were doing, you know,
booming on social media. We had all these amazing media partnerships,
we had grown just unbelievably like what we were able
(34:57):
to create. We were you know, at one point, we
were getting ten million unique views a month.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (35:04):
And I had an editor and a writer who had
been with the magazine for quite a while who came
to me and he was like, I wrote a book.
And I was like, that's amazing. And he was like,
I want you to edit it. And I was like,
I don't know how to do that, and he was like, cool,
I don't either, I've never done this before. Let's figure
(35:26):
it out together. And again that goes back to my
whole life. Really, this amazing opportunity to have people in
my space who were like, hey, we're going to figure
it out. Hey, let's figure it out.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
Let's trust Yeah, I was.
Speaker 4 (35:40):
Going to say, and they're looking at me like, hey,
you're a really good problem solver. Let's will you help
me figure this out. At the time, Amazon KDP, which
is print on demand, and their katib their Kindle direct
platform was called create Space, so Kindle was separate. Kindle
wasn't really a thing. Ebooks were just becoming a thing
(36:01):
at that point, and they had create Space. And so
this author had created his own publishing company because back
then self publishing was something you could do, but there
was a long process to it. So it was actually
easier at the time for him to create a publishing company.
We had a cover maid and we learned create Space.
(36:24):
At the same time, another woman who had written for
me for a long time at the magazine came to
me and she said, I wrote a children's book and
I was like, that's amazing, and she was like, will
you help me get it published? And I was like sure,
but this is becoming a theme. Shortly thereafter, I had
several of my editors in even one of our executive editors,
(36:50):
who were already published authors, were like, you know, the
publishing game is changing. Publishers, even large publishers, aren't really
doing any marketing for you unless you are a big name,
and we need to promote these things ourselves, and we
don't know how to Can you help us with our
social media? And I was like, I don't know. They
were like, we'll pay you I was like, oh, you
(37:14):
can get paid doing this, and you know, all of
a sudden, in you know, late twenty fifteen or early
twenty sixteen, influenced digital media was born. I was editing books,
I was helping people publish books. I was running social media.
I was teaching people social media. I was going into
(37:35):
mid to large businesses that were like, oh my gosh,
we have to learn social media. And I was training
their in house marketing teams because they had marketing teams
in place, but nobody we just didn't know what social
media was capable of at that point, right, we were learning.
We were learning through the elections in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen,
(37:57):
we were, you know, for the first time, really we
were starting to see the power that social media had.
And because we had been so early in the game,
I had this amazing opportunity to build a business around
what the Good Men Project and Lisa especially had given
me the space to learn. Like people were paying thousands
(38:20):
of dollars for me to come in and spend a
day with their marketing team and teach them the things
that Lisa had literally said, let's learn this together. And
it's like, oh, how like talk about I don't even
know what the word would be, like blessing is being
given this opportunity as this stay at home mom. Granted, yes,
(38:42):
with a college education, but when I found out I
was pregnant with em I really thought that was it
for me. And not in a bad way, right, but
like not going to law school, which is all I
never wanted to do, has turned into this business where
I have I am yeah, and I have been on stages,
(39:05):
and I have met people from all over the world,
and I have helped creators and entrepreneurs and leaders and
you know, disruptors and thought leaders bring their stories and
their words, whether it's in the online space or through
books or through podcasts to the world and they are
(39:28):
making ripples and they are changing people's lives. And maybe
it's an eco thing, but I get to look back
over the last decade and say wow, and a hand
in that, and even further than that to twenty eleven
twenty twelve when I started at the Good Men Project
and the stories we were bringing to life there of
fatherhood and husbands and divorced fathers and single fathers and
(39:53):
you know, military personnel and vets and first responders and
like wow, or I could have gone to law school
and just been a lawyer. You know.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
Uh So, I don't think it's an ego thing is
a bad thing. It just makes you feel good. I mean,
I love the comments that I get from clients similar right,
different work we do, but you know, we help them
become more successful, to the sales, to increase sales efforts,
sales effectiveness, blah blah blah, all that, but I get
the same type of comments. I don't think it's wrong
(40:25):
to feel good about that. I think it's great. It's empowering,
it gives us more feeling. I want to keep doing
it right, and we're doing it for others. But it
also you know, we get we get the feedback and
the the well being. I mean to me, it's well being.
I love what I do. Yes, yes, and you do too.
Speaker 4 (40:44):
I do, I do, and and the lives that we're changing,
you know, I there. You know, we all have these
moments I think as business owners, where we go why
am I even doing this right now?
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Yeah, there are days.
Speaker 4 (40:57):
And whenever I reach a point, because it certainly happens,
you know, where things get hard or they're really chaotic,
or you know, you just being a business owner is hard,
and you know where we have those moments where we're like,
I don't want to do this anymore? Why am I
even doing this? Does this even matter? And every single time,
(41:18):
every single time, I will hear from a past client,
you know, one of my authors. You know, it'll be
a quick text, or it'll be a Facebook DM, or
they'll tag me in a post and it's like, I
can't believe it's been five years since I published my
best selling book and you know this, that and the
other thing. And I couldn't have done it without you.
(41:40):
You know, I still have I'm still connected to people
who wrote for me at the magazine ten years ago,
eleven years ago, twelve years ago. Just a couple of
weeks ago, a woman reached out to me and she said,
you know when I when you messaged me because she
had a little blog, and she said, you asked if
you could publish my blogs at the Good Men Pride.
(42:01):
She was like, it blew me away. I never thought
of myself as a writer until you told me I
was a writer. And now she is a world renowned
coach and she speaks on stages and she is changing
women's lives and she told me she was like, I
never I never would have believed in myself and it's
like I could get emotional right now and that for me, like,
(42:23):
that's not that ooh look what I did. It's a
oh my gosh. This woman has stepped into her purpose
and I truly believe she would have no matter what.
But if I could take part in that, if I
could have a hand in encouraging her to bring her
gifts to the world all day long.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
And you actually do you do some women's coaching, right?
Speaker 4 (42:46):
I do. I. I started working with women in the
women's coaching space about seven years ago. It was something
that I had needed. It was something a healing process
that I went through a lot of inner child work.
There was you know, some pain and abandonment stuff, trauma
(43:11):
from growing up the way my sister and I did,
with our parents separated so far apart and our mom
being absent as much as she was, And it was
life changing for me. And I started doing it because
I was having daughters and I did not want my
daughters to move forward with the same wounding that I
(43:31):
had experienced. Not that the homes were the same, but
generational trauma is real and we respond to things certain
ways because of the programming we receive as small children.
And it was life changing for me. And it was
one of those things where sort of with the editing
and the branding and social media, it didn't start out
(43:52):
as something where I was like, oh, I can monetize this,
Oh I could turn this into a business. It was
something that was powerful for me, and I started talking
about it on social media. I had women messaging me
and saying, you know, this is kind of what I'm facing,
this is what I'm experiencing. You know, can you walk
with me, can you sit with me? Can you talk
to me? And I you know, these women just needed
(44:13):
to be heard and they needed to be seen and
I did that. I did that at the magazine. You know.
It was something I didn't even understand what coaching was
at the time. And I had one of my lead
editors write a testimonial for me and he was like,
she's an executive coach. And I was like, what is
an executive coach? He was like, Catherine, you coach all
(44:34):
of us all the time. He's like, we message you,
you talk us through things with our writing, with our partners,
with our kids, and it just turned into something where
more and more women were coming into my space, and
again it was like, wow, I think this might be
part of my purpose to walk with these women, to
(44:57):
speak to these women. There's a lot of of women's
empowerment in the online space, and I tend to have
a little bit of a different view when it comes
to that. The way that I feel about being a
mother and you know, being a provider. I was a
single mom for four and a half years to the
(45:21):
you know, all four of my daughters, so I had
to step into that provider role and so that's given
me a really unique perspective. And then moving into the
healthiest relationship I've ever had with someone who is also
a provider and a protector and kind of having to
navigate what does it look like to have to really
(45:42):
driven successful entrepreneurs in one home, you know. And these
are all things that as I walk through this process,
I learn and I grow, and then I can take
that back to my communities and I can take that
back to my clients and hold space. And it's not again,
it's not something where it's like me coming in and
(46:02):
saying this is how it has to be and this
is the way it's me saying, hey, this is this
is how I navigated it. Right, take the pieces that
work for you, and let's put your puzzle together, because
your puzzle is going to look different than my puzzle.
But I am an expert puzzle maker.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
Yeah. We always say nobody can argue with our experiences, right, yeah, right,
So if people go to influencedigitalmedia dot com, they can
get to socials from there, but on the services tab
there you'll they'll find connection to soul. Yes, that's what
you were just referring to in terms of coaching for women.
Let's get back to influence digital media. Talk about your team,
(46:43):
the work that you do, who your clients are. You
generalized and be a little more specific.
Speaker 4 (46:48):
Excuse me, so I generalized because we have done all
of it. I have several authors who are phenomenal fiction writers.
That has been some of the most some of the
most difficult editing I've done is fiction.
Speaker 3 (47:08):
What's different.
Speaker 4 (47:10):
You really you really have to understand the story arc,
and you have to understand the charactersiod, the period, yes,
definitely the period. And the end goal is different with fiction, right,
the end goal really is book sales, whereas when we're
working with small business owners and entrepreneurs. The goal is
(47:32):
it is one piece of the marketing funnel. Right. The
book is one piece. And one of the things we
tell people all the time, and I'm very upfront about
which makes me kind of unique in the industry, is
there is no ROI on book sales. So you are
not going to make back your investment simply from selling books.
You're just not unless you've got a half a million
(47:54):
followers and you're pushing it really hard, or you're.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
A big name that's already you know, right.
Speaker 4 (48:01):
I do have authors who have that level of following
who do make an ROI in the book sales, But
the majority of people, a book for an entrepreneur or
small business owner is to position you as an authority
in your industry. It is to give you street cred.
It's also to drive people into your network. Right. It's
(48:23):
one piece of the no like trust formula that we
follow for social media and branding. It's how you get
on stages, it's how you get on two podcasts. It
is one more piece of a larger web of networking
(48:44):
and marketing. With fiction, though, you're telling a story, and
now we're telling stories in the non fiction, personal development,
business type books. But it's really just focused around the author,
and so it's very easy to kind of keep track
of who the character is, right because they are the
(49:06):
main character, Whereas when you're talking about fiction sometimes you'll
have three or four main characters and then a whole
host of characters underneath. So it's much more involved and
it's a lot of fun. I've done some children's books.
I enjoy children's books because of the art involved in
(49:29):
it and.
Speaker 3 (49:30):
Because of the big pictures.
Speaker 4 (49:31):
And I'm just kidding, no, the big pictures are fun.
They're very labor intensive. People don't understand how labor intensive
children's books are. There is a much larger team that
has to be involved when we're talking about children's books
or graphic novels, because the layout has to be so particular,
(49:52):
and especially when you're talking about, you know, the digital version,
you have to bring in someone who isn't just a
graphic designer. They actually have to know how to code,
and so that I don't do children's books anymore. Well,
it's very labor intensive. The majority of the people I
(50:12):
work with are small business owners and entrepreneurs. I have
the network in place for that so as we get
closer to the book publication, we have someone to help
with the podcast tour. We have people in network who
if they want to order books in bulk, you know,
if they don't want to go through KDP and they
(50:32):
want to do it on their own website, we know
people who can build the website, build the landing pages,
help them with their CRM. There's a lot of moving
parts when it comes to that. And because I've been
in the space as long as I have, thankfully I
have the network in place that if it's not something
we do in house, it's something that we can certainly
(50:54):
bolt on to our services.
Speaker 3 (50:57):
Listen, we are almost out time. This has been really good.
I've enjoyed this. I've learned a lot here and you
can tell your passion, tell us who in the listening
and viewing audiences should reach out to you and why.
Speaker 4 (51:12):
Small business owners and entrepreneurs who want to position themselves
as an authority and an expert in their space. I
also love working with people who have an amazing course
or they have an amazing offering and they just can't
get eyes on it right. And that's more from the
branding and social media perspective. We don't do social media
(51:34):
management in house anymore. But Caitlin Young, who I think
was on your show, she was as well as social
media doctor. We work very closely with her. She does
all of our social media, she does all Thomas' social media,
and we have multiple clients. She comes onto projects with me.
I go onto projects with her. You know, anyone who
(51:56):
really wants to not even wants to, fields is like
burning passion, desire need to make ripples in the world nice, right,
And one of the things I tell people all the
time because they come to me and they're like, I
don't feel like my story really matters, And I'm like,
(52:17):
you know that starfish story where it's like, if you
can save just one, just one, the ripples from that.
The tiniest pebble dropped in a pond creates ripples that
reach all the way to the other side. So now
if we're all just one little pezzle, the ripples the ripples,
and then they start overlapping, and all of a sudden
(52:39):
you realize that you've published over one hundred books, but
those hundred books have influenced how many thousands of people?
And you start doing the math on that, and it's like, Wow,
I have had a hand in touching millions of people's lives.
Speaker 3 (52:58):
That's awesome and that's a good place to end right there.
That was like a mic drop moment right there.
Speaker 4 (53:03):
I think where it came from.
Speaker 3 (53:05):
That's really good. Thank you for being here, Catherine. We
really appreciate it. Thank you for having me anytime, and
thanks everybody for watching and listening. This is a show
about business and business challenges. If you've got concerns about
the sales effectiveness of your company, whether your sales team
is you or very large, or some between, feel free
to reach out to me Facebook or LinkedIn at Winning
(53:26):
Business Radio. You can drop me a note Kevin at
Winning Businessradio dot com. Our company is Winning Incorporated. We're
part of Sandler Training. We develop sales teams into high
achievers and sales leaders into true coaches and mentors. Hey,
we're not right for everybody, but maybe we should have
a conversation. Thank you to one producer and engineer for
another job well done. Be sure to join us again
(53:48):
next Monday at four pm Eastern. We'll do it all again.
Until then, this is Kevin Helen.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
You've been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host
Kevin Helen. If you missed any part of this episode,
The podcast is available on Talk for Podcasting and iHeartRadio.
For more information and questions, go to Winning Business Radio
dot com or check us out on social media. Tune
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(54:18):
W four CY Radio w four cy dot com. Until then,
let's succeed where others have failed and win in business
with Kevin Helenan and Winning Business Radio
The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are
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(00:20):
choosing W four CY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Churchill said, those who failed to learn from history are
condemned to repeat it. Kevin Helen n believes that certainly
applies to business.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Welcome to Winning.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Business Radio here at W four CY Radio. That's W
four cy dot com and now your host, Kevin Helen.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Thanks for joining in today, everybody. I am Kevin Hallanan
and welcome back to Winning Business TV and Radio on
W four C dot com. We're streaming live on talkfour
tv dot com in addition to at Winning Business Radio
on Facebook, and of course we're available in podcasts after
the live show on wherever you get your podcasts, including YouTube,
(01:13):
I Heeartradio, Spotify, Apple Again, everywhere you can find a podcast,
you will find us. The mission of Winning Business Radio
and TV, as regular viewers and listeners know, is to
offer insights and advice, tell people avoid the mistakes of others,
right to learn best practices, the how tos, the what to's,
the what not tos, to be challenged and hopefully to
(01:36):
be inspired as well by the successes of others who
with those others. They're consultants, coaches, advisors, authors, founders and
owners and entrepreneurs, people with expertise. But you know, virtually
every successful person I've ever had a chance to talk
to has hed some form of failure in their lives
and careers. So while we all have to get our
knees skinned once in a while, I say it every week.
(01:57):
I'm driven to keep those scrapes from needing major, major surgery.
Let's endeavor to learn from history so we don't repeat it.
I've spent the better part of my career equipping businesses
to grow from solopreneurs to small to medium sized businesses
all the way up to the Fortune fifty. I've seen
a lot of those companies win, and to varying degrees,
i've seen some of them fail. I've had the opportunity
(02:18):
to rub elbows with some of the highest performing people
around and with some who probably should have found other professions.
In my own businesses, I've had lots of success, but
some failures too, and I like to think I've learned
a lot from those experiences. So you'll hear from me
my opinions and insights, but more importantly, you're going to
hear from experts, those consultants, coaches, advisors, authors, founders and
(02:40):
owners and entrepreneurs because they have a lot to share.
And today my guest is Catherine Take. She's branding and
digital meeting, a digital communication expert and founder of Influence
Digital Media. Here's your Bile. Catherine was the senior executive
editor of The Good Men Project, the world's leading progressive
men's publication, for nine years, was the director of Media
(03:01):
Partnerships and Social Media Branding, Strategy and Content for six years.
She's been a writing coach, storytelling coach, and book development
coach since twenty sixteen. Although with over one hundred titles
in her editing and publishing portfolio, of those, over ninety
nine percent have been listed on the Bestseller, Best New
Release and top selling Books on Amazon. She works with
(03:23):
high level influencers, entrepreneurs and coaches to bring their stories
to life and and elevate them to the status they deserve.
Influence Digital Media provides comprehensive branding and digital media digital
I said it again, sorry, Digital communication services. Katherine and
her team specialized in growing personal and business brands for entrepreneurs,
multi billion dollar companies, multimillion dollar companies. That was an M,
(03:47):
not a B. Sorry, Offering full service social media content
and branding, from strategy to implementing and analytics. Catherine, Welcome
to Winning Business Radio.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
Thank you for having me my pleasure.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
I appreciate you taking the time. I know you're busy.
I was like listeners and yours to get a census
to where people came from, both personally as well as professionally.
So let's start here. Where'd you grow up?
Speaker 4 (04:11):
I grew up in the Midwest.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Okay, more specifically.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Michigan and Chicago.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
And so in those two areas in Michigan, what ages,
what was it like to grow up there? And when
did you get to Chicago? And what was elected to
be there?
Speaker 4 (04:28):
I was born in Lansing, Michigan. My parents were both
students at Michigan State University. That's where they met, got married,
had me and my sister. They separated and got divorced
before I was ten. My mother moved to Chicago and
(04:52):
she and her new husband at the time had a
house there. Yeah, so we traveled back and forth. Yep.
My dad stayed in the Lancing East Lansing Oakhamist area.
His wife, who he married when I was in my
early teens, was also a graduate of Michigan State University,
(05:14):
go Green Ghost Spartans, So we used to travel back
and forth. We would take Amtrak. Amtrak is still very
popular in the Midwest, not just to move right products,
but to actually move people. It's really common for people
(05:36):
to grab the train in Kalamazoo, especially as where we
used to grab it and take it down to Niles,
down to where Notre Dame is, across to Chicago, Illinois,
different places. So my sister and I used to my
dad would put us on the train in Kalamazoo and
we would ride the train back.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Rails.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Yeah. Absolutely. We each had a little backpacks, obviously before
cell phones or tablets, and so we have books and
coloring stuff and card games and a little bit of
money for the snack car, and the Amtrak station was
in the basement of the building in downtown Chicago that
(06:21):
our stepdad worked in, So when our train would get in,
he would just come down from his office and grab
us and we hop on the L which is the
above ground sort of subway public transportation system that they
have in Chicago, and we would take the L home
and our mom would be there.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
So you had a lot of responsibility. Yes, also fun.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
So fun, so fun. I think we weren't afraid of
things back then the way we're afraid of things now.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Yeah, I agree, good and bad, right, right, So what
were your early interests?
Speaker 4 (06:59):
I was a voracious reader. I was. I was reading
at a college level by the time I was eight
years old. Our dad read to us every night. So
when we were growing up, he worked nights and then
he would sleep during the day. He worked for the
American Red Cross at that time. He was in the lab.
(07:20):
He was the supervisor in the lab, and so he
would come home at night on his dinner break and
he would put us to bed like that was our
time with him, because obviously during the day when most
dads are at work and then they get to come
home and be with their family in the evening. That wasn't.
That wasn't how it worked in our home. And so
(07:40):
he would read to us every night, and he read
us the Tolkien series, He read us C. S. Lewis,
he read us Anne of green Gables, the Laura Engels
Wilder books. So from a very very young age, we
were immersed in these stories, right. Story telling and words
(08:04):
were just absolutely fascinating to me. And I started reading
for myself at a very young age and just consumed
everything that I could get my hands on.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
And that speaks a lot to what you do today,
right or what you have done as well. What's your
educational background?
Speaker 4 (08:25):
I studied political science in college and psychology and sociology.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Michigan State No.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
Southwestern in Georgetown, Texas.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
I gotcha, I gotcha.
Speaker 4 (08:37):
I moved to Texas in two thousand and one.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Okay, And why did you choose those majors?
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Initially? I chose psychology and sociology because I wanted to
understand why people did what they did. It's something that's
always fascinated me, and understanding sort of how our experiences
as children inform who we become as adults. I started
(09:06):
reading about shadow work Carl Jung Jungian philosophy in high
school and was just really fascinated by it and sort
of got into the question of, you know, ethics and
things like that, and so went into that in college
with the plan of then going to law school. Two
(09:29):
semesters in psychology kicked my butt. It was it was
nothing like what I had thought it was going to be.
I wanted to understand people, and it was really clinically focused,
and I noticed that it was heavily focused on treating
(09:53):
sort of the symptoms and not the real cause. And
I had always also been really fascinat ned by politics
and the history of politics and the theory of politics.
I love America and I love being an American, and
(10:14):
I think the system that was created by the Founding fathers,
it was one of a kind at the time, right,
and the ideology that they were building off of, so
you know, the theory of civil disobedience and what it
(10:35):
can look like if you allow people to be in
control of their own lives was always really fascinating to me.
And I had taken some really amazing political science classes
as electives my freshmen and sophomore year in college, and
halfway through my sophomore year, I was sitting with my
(10:55):
advisor and I was like, I'm just not I am
not loving this. I am not in love with my
with my degree plan. Yeah yeah, I went to Southwestern
is a small liberal arts college in Georgetown, Texas, but
it is a Methodist college. It's the oldest university in Texas.
(11:19):
It was actually originally the University of Texas, but because
it's a private college, when they started u T and
that was a public state college, they took the name
away from us. So we feel have been a way
about that still two hundred years later. But you know,
we have this really beautiful conversation and she was like, you,
(11:43):
every elective you take is either history, religion, or political science.
Why aren't you doing something in that field? And so
I met with some of the professors in the you
know department and in the political science department and was
just swept away by it. It was almost like these
(12:07):
doors open and it was just this bright, shining light
and that's awesome. I don't regret that change at all.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Again, it served you. Well, right, we'll get into that.
So tell us about your your family.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
My childhood family, or the family I have now.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Your current family. It's a blended family.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
It is a blended family, and is a blended family.
My significant other and I are both entrepreneurs, business owners.
Thomas Keenan. I think you've had him on your show
before as well.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
All the times I see him at conferences, the same
one where you and I met.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
Yes, yes, yes, and the one will see you guys
at the end of January.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
January three's correct, right.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
We have seven children between the.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Two of us, just the seven, just the seven, just.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
The seven, two sets of twins.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Wow, that's increased.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
They range in age from Our oldest will be fourteen
in January and our youngest, two girl twins turned six
in March, so they'll be seven in next March. And
it is beautiful chaos. It is chaos, is I'm sure
(13:14):
it is. I homeschool my four girls, So I came
into the relationship with four daughters and he has two
daughters and a son. One set of twins is mine,
one set of twins is his, and they are all ours.
And yeah, so we are in north of Dallas and
we are doing the thing with ye seven kids.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
That's outstanding. I've just one more question. This will help
us transition between the commercial and our next segment. One
more question before the commercial break, When did you know
you wanted to be in branding and marketing.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
I didn't. It was something that really came across my space.
My plan had always been to go to law school.
I wanted to practice law for several years and then
teach at a university level and do research. I wanted
to go into constitutional law. I wanted to work with
(14:12):
the Southern Poverty Law Center or the a c l U.
I wanted to defend Americans' rights. That was something that
since I was, you know, even before high school, like
reading about the Civil rights movement, reading about you know, uh,
the women's suffrage as suffrage suffragist movement. Words are hard today.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
The earlier.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
Being you know, understanding like at a core level the
uniqueness of our country and our constitution, and and doing
the research and reading the history and understanding what what
sort of the intention the intentionality that the founding fathers
put into place when they wrote this document that really,
(14:57):
if you think about it, has evolved and adapted with
our country as opposed to other countries where they have
sort of these these rules and these laws that are
set in stone and no way to change them or
adapt them. And I was looking around, like as a
high schooler and even as a college student, and realizing
that a lot of things were happening. This was shortly
(15:20):
after nine to eleven. People's rights were being violated simply
because they didn't know they had them right, and so
I had this passion to educate. Well. Shortly before I
was going to take my l SAT and go off
to law school, I found out I was pregnant with
my oldest daughter. And that changed my life. It changed
(15:42):
my life, and there was that part of me and
even my dad was like, you know, you could still
go to law school, and I was like, I don't
know if I want to do that with a brand
new baby. You know, I had this sort of idea
in my head of what it meant to be a
mom and how important it was to me to be you.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
If I could, if I could enter. You weren't oh no,
i'm pregnant. I can't go to law school. You were,
oh wow, i'm pregnant. Now let me think about what
I want to do? Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
And what I wanted to do was homeschool my daughter.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
I did not want her in the public education education system,
my very little faith in the institutions like that, and
I wanted to be home with her. I felt very
strongly about a mother's role in the home, a mother's
role with her children. I understood instinctively because I grew
up in a broken home, a separate home, right, what
(16:35):
it meant to not have a mom, especially for a daughter.
Because we lived with our dad full time, we saw
our mom intermittently, and I didn't want to be that.
You know, career had always been my first focus. And
then I found out I was pregnant all of a sudden,
like it was this huge identity shift for me, and
(16:58):
so I was home with her for the first like
eighty nine months. I'm so unhappy. I was so unhappy.
It just did not feel fulfilling. And that's not to
say that being a mom sure wasn't fulfilling, But I
had this education, and I wanted to be having these conversations.
And you know, it was twenty eleven, like politics were
(17:18):
starting to fire up and all these things, and I
really felt this need to be involved and to have
a voice. And I was up late one night nursing her,
and I was on Twitter which is now X But
at the time I'm going to date myself, it was
Twitter and I was reading these articles. I was seeing
all these tweets coming through from this magazine, this online
(17:40):
blog at the time called the Good Men Project, and
they had posted that they were looking for a news editor,
a news blog editor, and so I messaged them, and
they're publisher at this woman Lisa Hickey, who is phenomenal
and I am forever grateful for the space she gave
me to learn message me and I just told her,
(18:01):
I said, hey, I have no experience and online publishing.
I have no experience as a as a journalist, but
this is my background and these are my experiences, and
I would love to be a part of this. And
I understand if I'm not a good fit to be
an editor like I didn't. I'd never written a blog before,
I didn't know how to use WordPress any of those things.
(18:22):
But I would love even if it's just like helping
to promote things. And this is way back before social
media is what it is now, or was what it
is now. And she and I got on a call
on Google Meet it used to be called something else
like Google Chat or something like that, and because it's
(18:42):
before zoom, right back when we were still using Skype
all the time. And she said, you know, it's me
and our executive editor and another lead editor and like
two writers and that's it. But if you want to
give it a try, and I was off to the races.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
All right, let's come back to that thought in just
a minute. We'll be right back with Catherine Tag after
this break.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin helenet on
W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com.
Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up
right here on Winning Business Radio.
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To Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene presenting exciting topics
and expert guests with one goal in mind to help
you succeed in business. Here once again is Kevin Helenett.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
We're back with Catherine Tag of Influence Digital Media. Take
us through that continue the story. So it's kind of serendipitous.
She probably didn't expect they were going to reply, maybe
even maybe they working. Maybe you're thinking they work and reply,
or they going to reply with that kind of gusto,
(20:38):
But not at all.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
I had no idea, like at other than being on
Facebook in college and maybe some you know chat rooms
when I was like eighteen nineteen twenty years old, Like,
social media wasn't a thing when I was growing up,
when we were growing up right the way that it
is for our children. And I was on Facebook in
(21:02):
college back before Facebook was something that anybody could be on.
You had to actually have a an email dot edu
email just to be on Facebook. And it wasn't somewhere
to promote things like when I started with the Good
Men Project at the end of you know, twenty eleven
(21:22):
beginning of twenty twelve. It wasn't something that you know,
ads were not something that most places were running. Print
media was still really really powerful at the time, you know,
magazines and newspapers getting a digital version of that was
something that most people didn't do, and so being able
(21:48):
to get in to the publishing space while they were
making that transition. It was it Like all I can
think about comparing it to is ad agencies in like
the sixties, the fifties and sixties, like when ad agencies
were starting to really blow up.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Right, vision of that, you know, I have a like Maden,
like Madden exactly what I was going to say.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
Yes, yes, and obviously not that cool because we weren't
in an office and we were all sitting on our
couches at home in our sweatpants. But that was the
other thing, right, Like all of a sudden, it was
it was working from home, which up until that point
was something that I'd always thought was kind of a scam, right, like, oh, yeah,
(22:36):
you have a work from home job, is it really
a work from home job? And along with doing the
news blog and learning WordPress and learning HTML and learning
how to edit, because editing and writing are two really
different things. I was a prolific reader. I was a
prolific writer. I'd been you know, writing short stories and
(22:58):
poems and things like that since I was a small child,
but I had never edited outside of school. You know
what I mean, Like they teach you how to proof create,
and they teach you how to but this was like,
this was like real editing. These were articles that we
were publishing on the Good Men Project and then they
were getting pulled over to Men's Health and the Huffington
(23:19):
Post and you know, all of these really really large publications,
and we were just figuring out social media. We understood
that social media would be a huge, huge boon to
us if we could figure it out. And at that time,
because everybody else was figuring it out too, Like we
(23:39):
were having conversations with the Huffington Post marketing team and
with the Your Tango marketing team and the Cosmo marketing
team and Mental Health and Esquire and all these different
media publications right right. And we were never a print publication.
The Good Men Project was never a print publication. We
(24:02):
were strictly online. But these other magazines all had print, right,
and what they were seeing is they were losing subscribers
in the print media space, and so they were in
like this mad dash to figure out online publication, and
(24:22):
they were in a mad dash to figure out social media.
And so we had this really amazing opportunity at the time.
It's probably not something anyone would do now, but back
in twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, we had this amazing opportunity
to learn social media while social media was learning itself right,
(24:43):
And we would get on calls with you know, Facebook's
development team, and they were calls that if you were
listed as a certain type of business where we had
access to these calls. I don't think they do that anymore,
you know, they maybe still do developer calls, but like
(25:04):
we had contacts at Google, we had people who were
like leading the charge to grow these platforms, who wanted
us to utilize them, and we wanted to learn. And
instead of going out and looking for like a marketing
agency or people who knew what they were doing, Lisa
(25:25):
was amazing and she was We were bootstrapping it. At
that point. Ad spend is tiny, you know, we were
getting paid, you know, sixty two cents per thousand clicks,
So getting as much traffic in as possible was priority.
And we would literally talk every you know, every other
day or even every day sometimes, and we were looking
(25:46):
at analytics and we were figuring it out, and we
were looking at Google analytics and comparing it to Facebook analytics,
and we were all over Twitter and we were learning
these things. And I would go to her and I
would say, Hey, I think I have this idea. Can
we try this? And She's like, yeah, let's try it.
And then we would we would pick it apart together
and we would make adjustments together. And so not only
(26:06):
was I learning branding and social media in the branding
and social media infancy, I had a leader and was
in a position with this leader and our leadership team,
and then as a leader myself to be given this
time and space to try new things to strategize, it's
a rare opportunity, really, really like I credit her and
(26:30):
the Goodman Project with so much of my willingness to
think outside the box to being a solution based leader
versus someone I didn't come in and they said this
is how we're doing it, and this is how we've
always done it. They said, we don't know what we're
doing either, let's figure it out together. And being in
that environment, especially when we're talking about learning something like
(26:52):
social media, which is constantly in flux. Yeah, analytics change,
the algorithm is constantly changing, and not having to even
figure it out by myself having this entire team of
people both within the magazine and within other magazines that
we could then connect to and reach out to and say, hey,
(27:13):
this is what we're seeing. Like we woke up to
this and our views are through the roof. What did
we do? We don't know, let's figure it out or wow,
our views tanked, you know. I remember there was a
point in twenty thirteen, late twenty thirteen, early twenty fourteen
that they changed all of the algorithms and they were
no longer they wanted everyone to go to pay to play,
(27:36):
so they were no longer giving us views organically. And
we literally we called it the cliff. And we were
watching other magazines like The Huffington Post, The New York Times,
Cosmopolitan fall off this cliff, and we were just like,
when's it gonna happen? When's it gonna I remember waking
up one morning and going in and looking at our
analytics because at that point I was running the social media.
(27:57):
I was doing our Facebook page, and I went in
and I looked at our analytics and it was literally
a cliff, like we went from here to here within
a twelve hour period, and it was and then we
but we figured it out you.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Know, what are some of those key lessons I don't
mean technically, what are some of those key lessons like
how did you approach it? How did your problem solve?
Speaker 1 (28:25):
You know?
Speaker 4 (28:26):
I think one of the biggest ones is it's nobody's fault.
I think, especially in the larger the larger companies, we
become so disconnected. And I you know that a lot
of the people I work with now in the leadership
mindset space, were so disconnected from the people who are
actually the ones pulling the levers and pushing the buttons.
(28:49):
And when something goes wrong, instead of coming at it
from a problem solving perspective, quite often people want to
come from it from a blame person it.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Yes, they do, and.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
I'm sure you do, especially with the really large corporations,
because people, I mean, when you've got eighty ninety one hundred,
five hundred, fifteen hundred or more people working for you,
you don't know all of them. You can't know all
of them right, and you want to people want to
find who's to blame instead of just figuring out why
(29:24):
did it happen? You know, And so one of the
things that I learned with Lisa and the Goodman project
and the other people on the executive editor team is
that it's not somebody's fault. You know, one of my
best friends now built a nine figure e commerce business
(29:44):
and she's phenomenal, and one of the things that she
teaches when we do leadership trainings together is she teaches
that it's not about blame. It's about working or not working,
because what happens quite up. I mean, people make mistakes.
We're all human. But if you can't pinpoint what's working
or not working, you can't replicate it.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Or a lot of problems are system problems that people
then stumble around.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Right.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
It's yes, there can be people problems. Somebody can make
a mistake, but many of those problems are system problems.
Jim Collins in Good to Great says the same thing,
which if you recall, I believe you've read that is
he says commit can conduct autopsies without blame. It's the
exact same thing you're talking about.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
Yeah, yeah, And I think for me, especially in that
in that time frame, having a leader, having someone who
was essentially teaching all of us how to be leaders
as well, because I've taken so much of what I
learned at the Command project, and not only applied it
in my own businesses, but apply it as a coach
and applying it as a book development coach, and you know,
(30:50):
working with you know, vas and employees and even my
children and in our home are these leadership lessons. And
one of the things that I that I will always
remember her for is she never pointed a finger. She
never blamed. It was always really just let's figure out
what's broken, Let's figure out why it's not working, and
(31:11):
let's problem solve a solution. The other thing, too, is
she there was never this authoritarian sort of like this
is I'm the Boston I said. So, you know, ultimately
at the end of the day, the buck stopped with her. Sure,
and so she did have to make the final decisions,
but she walked into the experience or the meeting or
(31:33):
whatever it was willing to hear what everyone had to say.
And I have definitely taken that forward even into you know,
the online the book publishing space, you know, because I've
I've worked with companies and other editors and publishers who
are like, no, this is just how it is, and
this is just how it's going to be. The flip
(31:54):
side of that is I've worked in some spaces where
they're like, you know, the author is always right, And
I think one of the things that I've learned is
being able to have these sort of open conversations where
everybody comes to the table, everyone voices their wants, their needs,
their feelings, their opinions, and then we get to create
(32:16):
a solution. There is not one size fits all to
anything branding, marketing, social media, book publishing, book writing. There
is no cookie cutter to any of it. And if
we come into any situation, whether it's problem focused or
(32:37):
you know, figuring out what's working what isn't working, and
we're willing to look for a solution versus pointing a
finger and blaming or laying down the hatchet and saying
it's my way or the highway, we're going to move
a lot faster and we're going to have a lot
more success than if we're just you know, iron Cloud.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
In our opinion, you took the words out of my mouth.
You're spot on, all right. We're going to take our
second break right here. We'll be back in about sixty seconds, Catherine.
Everybody will see on the other side.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helenet on
W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com.
Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up
right here on Winning Business Radio.
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Speaker 2 (34:03):
And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin helene
presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in
mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again
is Kevin Helenett.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
We're back with Catherine Tag of Influenced Digital Media. So
take us from first. I want to know what happened,
why you left, and how you got to influence digital media.
Speaker 4 (34:33):
Yes, yes, so we're rolling along. I had my second
daughter in twenty thirteen, and I had become the senior
executive editor at that point, and we were doing, you know,
booming on social media. We had all these amazing media partnerships,
we had grown just unbelievably like what we were able
(34:57):
to create. We were you know, at one point, we
were getting ten million unique views a month.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (35:04):
And I had an editor and a writer who had
been with the magazine for quite a while who came
to me and he was like, I wrote a book.
And I was like, that's amazing. And he was like,
I want you to edit it. And I was like,
I don't know how to do that, and he was like, cool,
I don't either, I've never done this before. Let's figure
(35:26):
it out together. And again that goes back to my
whole life. Really, this amazing opportunity to have people in
my space who were like, hey, we're going to figure
it out. Hey, let's figure it out.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
Let's trust Yeah, I was.
Speaker 4 (35:40):
Going to say, and they're looking at me like, hey,
you're a really good problem solver. Let's will you help
me figure this out. At the time, Amazon KDP, which
is print on demand, and their katib their Kindle direct
platform was called create Space, so Kindle was separate. Kindle
wasn't really a thing. Ebooks were just becoming a thing
(36:01):
at that point, and they had create Space. And so
this author had created his own publishing company because back
then self publishing was something you could do, but there
was a long process to it. So it was actually
easier at the time for him to create a publishing company.
We had a cover maid and we learned create Space.
(36:24):
At the same time, another woman who had written for
me for a long time at the magazine came to
me and she said, I wrote a children's book and
I was like, that's amazing, and she was like, will
you help me get it published? And I was like sure,
but this is becoming a theme. Shortly thereafter, I had
several of my editors in even one of our executive editors,
(36:50):
who were already published authors, were like, you know, the
publishing game is changing. Publishers, even large publishers, aren't really
doing any marketing for you unless you are a big name,
and we need to promote these things ourselves, and we
don't know how to Can you help us with our
social media? And I was like, I don't know. They
were like, we'll pay you I was like, oh, you
(37:14):
can get paid doing this, and you know, all of
a sudden, in you know, late twenty fifteen or early
twenty sixteen, influenced digital media was born. I was editing books,
I was helping people publish books. I was running social media.
I was teaching people social media. I was going into
(37:35):
mid to large businesses that were like, oh my gosh,
we have to learn social media. And I was training
their in house marketing teams because they had marketing teams
in place, but nobody we just didn't know what social
media was capable of at that point, right, we were learning.
We were learning through the elections in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen,
(37:57):
we were, you know, for the first time, really we
were starting to see the power that social media had.
And because we had been so early in the game,
I had this amazing opportunity to build a business around
what the Good Men Project and Lisa especially had given
me the space to learn. Like people were paying thousands
(38:20):
of dollars for me to come in and spend a
day with their marketing team and teach them the things
that Lisa had literally said, let's learn this together. And
it's like, oh, how like talk about I don't even
know what the word would be, like blessing is being
given this opportunity as this stay at home mom. Granted, yes,
(38:42):
with a college education, but when I found out I
was pregnant with em I really thought that was it
for me. And not in a bad way, right, but
like not going to law school, which is all I
never wanted to do, has turned into this business where
I have I am yeah, and I have been on stages,
(39:05):
and I have met people from all over the world,
and I have helped creators and entrepreneurs and leaders and
you know, disruptors and thought leaders bring their stories and
their words, whether it's in the online space or through
books or through podcasts to the world and they are
(39:28):
making ripples and they are changing people's lives. And maybe
it's an eco thing, but I get to look back
over the last decade and say wow, and a hand
in that, and even further than that to twenty eleven
twenty twelve when I started at the Good Men Project
and the stories we were bringing to life there of
fatherhood and husbands and divorced fathers and single fathers and
(39:53):
you know, military personnel and vets and first responders and
like wow, or I could have gone to law school
and just been a lawyer. You know.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
Uh So, I don't think it's an ego thing is
a bad thing. It just makes you feel good. I mean,
I love the comments that I get from clients similar right,
different work we do, but you know, we help them
become more successful, to the sales, to increase sales efforts,
sales effectiveness, blah blah blah, all that, but I get
the same type of comments. I don't think it's wrong
(40:25):
to feel good about that. I think it's great. It's empowering,
it gives us more feeling. I want to keep doing
it right, and we're doing it for others. But it
also you know, we get we get the feedback and
the the well being. I mean to me, it's well being.
I love what I do. Yes, yes, and you do too.
Speaker 4 (40:44):
I do, I do, and and the lives that we're changing,
you know, I there. You know, we all have these
moments I think as business owners, where we go why
am I even doing this right now?
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Yeah, there are days.
Speaker 4 (40:57):
And whenever I reach a point, because it certainly happens,
you know, where things get hard or they're really chaotic,
or you know, you just being a business owner is hard,
and you know where we have those moments where we're like,
I don't want to do this anymore? Why am I
even doing this? Does this even matter? And every single time,
(41:18):
every single time, I will hear from a past client,
you know, one of my authors. You know, it'll be
a quick text, or it'll be a Facebook DM, or
they'll tag me in a post and it's like, I
can't believe it's been five years since I published my
best selling book and you know this, that and the
other thing. And I couldn't have done it without you.
(41:40):
You know, I still have I'm still connected to people
who wrote for me at the magazine ten years ago,
eleven years ago, twelve years ago. Just a couple of
weeks ago, a woman reached out to me and she said,
you know when I when you messaged me because she
had a little blog, and she said, you asked if
you could publish my blogs at the Good Men Pride.
(42:01):
She was like, it blew me away. I never thought
of myself as a writer until you told me I
was a writer. And now she is a world renowned
coach and she speaks on stages and she is changing
women's lives and she told me she was like, I
never I never would have believed in myself and it's
like I could get emotional right now and that for me, like,
(42:23):
that's not that ooh look what I did. It's a
oh my gosh. This woman has stepped into her purpose
and I truly believe she would have no matter what.
But if I could take part in that, if I
could have a hand in encouraging her to bring her
gifts to the world all day long.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
And you actually do you do some women's coaching, right?
Speaker 4 (42:46):
I do. I. I started working with women in the
women's coaching space about seven years ago. It was something
that I had needed. It was something a healing process
that I went through a lot of inner child work.
There was you know, some pain and abandonment stuff, trauma
(43:11):
from growing up the way my sister and I did,
with our parents separated so far apart and our mom
being absent as much as she was, And it was
life changing for me. And I started doing it because
I was having daughters and I did not want my
daughters to move forward with the same wounding that I
(43:31):
had experienced. Not that the homes were the same, but
generational trauma is real and we respond to things certain
ways because of the programming we receive as small children.
And it was life changing for me. And it was
one of those things where sort of with the editing
and the branding and social media, it didn't start out
(43:52):
as something where I was like, oh, I can monetize this,
Oh I could turn this into a business. It was
something that was powerful for me, and I started talking
about it on social media. I had women messaging me
and saying, you know, this is kind of what I'm facing,
this is what I'm experiencing. You know, can you walk
with me, can you sit with me? Can you talk
to me? And I you know, these women just needed
(44:13):
to be heard and they needed to be seen and
I did that. I did that at the magazine. You know.
It was something I didn't even understand what coaching was
at the time. And I had one of my lead
editors write a testimonial for me and he was like,
she's an executive coach. And I was like, what is
an executive coach? He was like, Catherine, you coach all
(44:34):
of us all the time. He's like, we message you,
you talk us through things with our writing, with our partners,
with our kids, and it just turned into something where
more and more women were coming into my space, and
again it was like, wow, I think this might be
part of my purpose to walk with these women, to
(44:57):
speak to these women. There's a lot of of women's
empowerment in the online space, and I tend to have
a little bit of a different view when it comes
to that. The way that I feel about being a
mother and you know, being a provider. I was a
single mom for four and a half years to the
(45:21):
you know, all four of my daughters, so I had
to step into that provider role and so that's given
me a really unique perspective. And then moving into the
healthiest relationship I've ever had with someone who is also
a provider and a protector and kind of having to
navigate what does it look like to have to really
(45:42):
driven successful entrepreneurs in one home, you know. And these
are all things that as I walk through this process,
I learn and I grow, and then I can take
that back to my communities and I can take that
back to my clients and hold space. And it's not again,
it's not something where it's like me coming in and
(46:02):
saying this is how it has to be and this
is the way it's me saying, hey, this is this
is how I navigated it. Right, take the pieces that
work for you, and let's put your puzzle together, because
your puzzle is going to look different than my puzzle.
But I am an expert puzzle maker.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
Yeah. We always say nobody can argue with our experiences, right, yeah, right,
So if people go to influencedigitalmedia dot com, they can
get to socials from there, but on the services tab
there you'll they'll find connection to soul. Yes, that's what
you were just referring to in terms of coaching for women.
Let's get back to influence digital media. Talk about your team,
(46:43):
the work that you do, who your clients are. You
generalized and be a little more specific.
Speaker 4 (46:48):
Excuse me, so I generalized because we have done all
of it. I have several authors who are phenomenal fiction writers.
That has been some of the most some of the
most difficult editing I've done is fiction.
Speaker 3 (47:08):
What's different.
Speaker 4 (47:10):
You really you really have to understand the story arc,
and you have to understand the charactersiod, the period, yes,
definitely the period. And the end goal is different with fiction, right,
the end goal really is book sales, whereas when we're
working with small business owners and entrepreneurs. The goal is
(47:32):
it is one piece of the marketing funnel. Right. The
book is one piece. And one of the things we
tell people all the time, and I'm very upfront about
which makes me kind of unique in the industry, is
there is no ROI on book sales. So you are
not going to make back your investment simply from selling books.
You're just not unless you've got a half a million
(47:54):
followers and you're pushing it really hard, or you're.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
A big name that's already you know, right.
Speaker 4 (48:01):
I do have authors who have that level of following
who do make an ROI in the book sales, But
the majority of people, a book for an entrepreneur or
small business owner is to position you as an authority
in your industry. It is to give you street cred.
It's also to drive people into your network. Right. It's
(48:23):
one piece of the no like trust formula that we
follow for social media and branding. It's how you get
on stages, it's how you get on two podcasts. It
is one more piece of a larger web of networking
(48:44):
and marketing. With fiction, though, you're telling a story, and
now we're telling stories in the non fiction, personal development,
business type books. But it's really just focused around the author,
and so it's very easy to kind of keep track
of who the character is, right because they are the
(49:06):
main character, Whereas when you're talking about fiction sometimes you'll
have three or four main characters and then a whole
host of characters underneath. So it's much more involved and
it's a lot of fun. I've done some children's books.
I enjoy children's books because of the art involved in
(49:29):
it and.
Speaker 3 (49:30):
Because of the big pictures.
Speaker 4 (49:31):
And I'm just kidding, no, the big pictures are fun.
They're very labor intensive. People don't understand how labor intensive
children's books are. There is a much larger team that
has to be involved when we're talking about children's books
or graphic novels, because the layout has to be so particular,
(49:52):
and especially when you're talking about, you know, the digital version,
you have to bring in someone who isn't just a
graphic designer. They actually have to know how to code,
and so that I don't do children's books anymore. Well,
it's very labor intensive. The majority of the people I
(50:12):
work with are small business owners and entrepreneurs. I have
the network in place for that so as we get
closer to the book publication, we have someone to help
with the podcast tour. We have people in network who
if they want to order books in bulk, you know,
if they don't want to go through KDP and they
(50:32):
want to do it on their own website, we know
people who can build the website, build the landing pages,
help them with their CRM. There's a lot of moving
parts when it comes to that. And because I've been
in the space as long as I have, thankfully I
have the network in place that if it's not something
we do in house, it's something that we can certainly
(50:54):
bolt on to our services.
Speaker 3 (50:57):
Listen, we are almost out time. This has been really good.
I've enjoyed this. I've learned a lot here and you
can tell your passion, tell us who in the listening
and viewing audiences should reach out to you and why.
Speaker 4 (51:12):
Small business owners and entrepreneurs who want to position themselves
as an authority and an expert in their space. I
also love working with people who have an amazing course
or they have an amazing offering and they just can't
get eyes on it right. And that's more from the
branding and social media perspective. We don't do social media
(51:34):
management in house anymore. But Caitlin Young, who I think
was on your show, she was as well as social
media doctor. We work very closely with her. She does
all of our social media, she does all Thomas' social media,
and we have multiple clients. She comes onto projects with me.
I go onto projects with her. You know, anyone who
(51:56):
really wants to not even wants to, fields is like
burning passion, desire need to make ripples in the world nice, right,
And one of the things I tell people all the
time because they come to me and they're like, I
don't feel like my story really matters, And I'm like,
(52:17):
you know that starfish story where it's like, if you
can save just one, just one, the ripples from that.
The tiniest pebble dropped in a pond creates ripples that
reach all the way to the other side. So now
if we're all just one little pezzle, the ripples the ripples,
and then they start overlapping, and all of a sudden
(52:39):
you realize that you've published over one hundred books, but
those hundred books have influenced how many thousands of people?
And you start doing the math on that, and it's like, Wow,
I have had a hand in touching millions of people's lives.
Speaker 3 (52:58):
That's awesome and that's a good place to end right there.
That was like a mic drop moment right there.
Speaker 4 (53:03):
I think where it came from.
Speaker 3 (53:05):
That's really good. Thank you for being here, Catherine. We
really appreciate it. Thank you for having me anytime, and
thanks everybody for watching and listening. This is a show
about business and business challenges. If you've got concerns about
the sales effectiveness of your company, whether your sales team
is you or very large, or some between, feel free
to reach out to me Facebook or LinkedIn at Winning
(53:26):
Business Radio. You can drop me a note Kevin at
Winning Businessradio dot com. Our company is Winning Incorporated. We're
part of Sandler Training. We develop sales teams into high
achievers and sales leaders into true coaches and mentors. Hey,
we're not right for everybody, but maybe we should have
a conversation. Thank you to one producer and engineer for
another job well done. Be sure to join us again
(53:48):
next Monday at four pm Eastern. We'll do it all again.
Until then, this is Kevin Helen.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
You've been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host
Kevin Helen. If you missed any part of this episode,
The podcast is available on Talk for Podcasting and iHeartRadio.
For more information and questions, go to Winning Business Radio
dot com or check us out on social media. Tune
in again next week and every Monday at four pm
Eastern Time to listen live to Winning Business Radio on
(54:18):
W four CY Radio w four cy dot com. Until then,
let's succeed where others have failed and win in business
with Kevin Helenan and Winning Business Radio
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