Robyn Young: Brand, sits at the center of your entire business universe. So there's gonna be so many ways for you to reflect this brand point of view once you understand what a brand point of view actually is. It is not your mission statement. The way that people will word salad their way through, “Oh, should I say premium or should I say this word?” It's like who cares? Your customer, I promise you, does not care. They're not even they are not picking apart these statements the way you are. It doesn't really matter. What does matter is that you have the deeper understanding of exactly where you are pinpointing yourself,

Erica Rooney: Welcome to Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors, the podcast where we stop playing small, start calling things out, and actually do something about I'm your host, Erica Rooney, executive coach, speaker, and a little bit of a movement maker, and I'm on a mission to get more women into positions of power and keep them there.

Erica Rooney: If you have ever sat across from an expert who has just handed you a brand strategy with a mission, the vision, a set of values, and maybe even they've given you a content calendar, y'all, and we know that feels like a gold mine, but then you walk away and you feel like nothing has even happened, nothing's changed, y'all, today's guest is one you're gonna wanna listen in to, okay? You got a box that... But like brand in a box, but it ain't really a brand. Now, today we have Robyn Young, and she is the founder at Young and Co. She's an author and a speaker, and Young and Co is a brand strategy and creative studio. Y'all, she's all the way on the West Coast, but this woman has worked with Google, UCLA, Verishop, Industrious, and y'all, founders and CEOs across pretty much every industry you could think of. Now, she has a framework, and it's called the Brand Universe, and that is that your brand is really built from the inside out around a certain point of view that is so specific and so true that competitors can copy your tactics, but they will never be able to copy your conviction. And y'all, if that ain't a tagline, I don't know what is. But Robyn has also spent eight years hiding behind her own agency before she finally stepped out and she built a brand for herself. One income stream turned into five, and y'all, it took her 40 years to feel ready. But here she is, Robyn Young. Welcome to the Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floor Podcast. How are you?

Robyn Young: Thank you, Erica. I'm good. I'm good. Let's do this. I love when you start with a bio. I'm like, “Who is that person?

Erica Rooney: Who is that?

Robyn Young: That's Me,

Erica Rooney: It's me. I've done some amazing things in my life. No, what I love about your bio and the very first thing I thought of, Robyn, because we also have a lot of corporate women who listen to this podcast. We have entrepreneurs and corporate women, but definitely a lot of corporate women, and I hear all the time, they're like, “Oh, I don't need a brand. I work for this company,” or, “I work for that company.” I'm like, “Girl, that ain't your brand?” so I'm gonna kick it off, and then we're gonna talk more about you. But I wanna know, what is your hot take for people who are in corporate America that think they don't need a brand?

Robyn Young: I think that personal brand, as much as that's like, “Ugh,” and people will secretly be gagging as I'm saying those words, it's becoming more native now. People are understanding that whether you own a business or you are someone looking for a job, or you're in a job and you're trying to be competitive, if you are only ever depending on what you do, like your skillset or who you've worked with, you're in the most, competitive space, right? Think about it like a pool. You're in the most shallow part of the pool where everybody else is, and they're... And it's very noisy over there, too, right? So how do you get what what marketers call tread, right? Or moat. It's this idea of becoming sticky above and beyond what you do.

Robyn Young: It's the same whether we're talking about a personal brand or we're talking about a company brand. You wanna create some stickiness, something that separates you from the competition. So if you're only ever depending on who you've worked with, you're putting all your stock into those businesses, and that's all well and good. Maybe that becomes a baseline for you to create a bigger brand. But anybody else who's also worked with big brands, it's like you're, competing with them, too, right? It just doesn't give you much tread.

Erica Rooney: What's also interesting too is my mind immediately went to how many women hang their worth on what they do. And then when that gets ripped away or you change jobs or the world changes, then what, right?

Robyn Young: Yeah.

Erica Rooney: In my world, I call them sticky floors. So sticky, all around, right?

Robyn Young: Sticky. Exactly. I, yes, 100%. I think it's a, I think it's a function of, as Americans, we very much take stock in who we are based on what we do, like the what we produce. And that's, maybe that's why I'm so passionate about brand building is because when you understand what a brand actually is, it, I think it gets a bad rep, right? People tend to think of branding as “Oh, this is a way for a company manipulate what people think.” And I'm like, I don't know how I do branding, but, okay.” What it truly is having a bigger purpose, and it doesn't mean, that doesn't mean, you need to have some social impact component. It just means that there's some bigger vision or mission or idea behind what you're building that makes you, at, the very least interesting, right? What is that, passion? What drives your decisions, right? It's very much like being a person. The things that we develop, our core values, they drive our decisions, right? The principles that we live by are driven by something. When you're in a business, you have to lead several people around what that vision is. So for it to be a, very clear and identifiable point of view, it's what sets your, team free to, move forward without having to check everything with you because you have a deeper understanding in who you are, what your identity is. Again, that functions at an individual level, and it functions at a company level. It's, equally important regardless of how big your business is.

Erica Rooney: Yeah. Okay, so I wanna drop into that moment at the end of the eight years maybe, or maybe seven and a half, year seven and a half, before you really were like, “Okay, I'm done hiding behind my agency.” What was that... Again, in my world it's a sticky floor, but what was that moment where you were like, “Okay, I I build brands for a living. I help people create this magical thing where they can go off, and I'm over here hiding”? I wanna know like what was the moment, and I also wanna know like what, girl, why were you hiding?

Robyn Young: Okay, little backstory here.

Erica Rooney: Talk here, girl. Real talk. I love the pause and the like, “Okay.”

Robyn Young: I'm like, “How'd I get into this?” Okay, so here's what happened. What had happened was I was stuck in my business, and here's what's weird, right? I... We were doing well. I was... I had hit multiple six figures within three to four years of my business, and I stayed consistent with that, but I was stuck. I was stuck in that I, was just on this consistent sales wheel where it was just never-ending. It was just, keep... Keep it going. And I think because of that, it allowed me to just keep, that momentum going without ever taking the time to actually invest in building my own brand. And I just would throw my hands up like, “ Eh, I'll get to that,” right? And I think, what, was the catalyst was I had started a second business doing very high-touch, high-caliber strategy work with an, with a partner. And so secretly I felt that was going to be my exit strategy to my own company. I was like, “I'm just... I need...” I think I subconsciously felt like I needed an out, and I was like, “This is my out,” right? So I started building this second company. We got really lucky on the upfront. We got two projects, boom, right away. And I was like, “Oh, obviously this is the universe handing me a, This is this... Exactly. The path, it's so clear,” right? And so I, hit pause on Young and Co. And was just like, “I'm, gonna put my focus into this. This is my exit strategy.” And then what happened was two... So those two projects, they finished up, and then the next, 10 proposals that we sent out, none of them signed, and I was, like, bleeding cash. And because I had put this on hold and I didn't really have a brand over here, it was just... It's like I had turned off the faucet, and so nothing was And, it was, scary times. Let me tell you what. It was scary times. And there was a moment where I was I think every entrepreneur faces this at some point. There was a moment where I was like, “ Is this it?” “Do I have to go back and get a job? I don't even... I haven't even put a resume together in eight years. There's no way.” And after a few, days of that, I was like, “No, I'm not going down like that. That's not how, that's not how this story ends.” So I finally put myself through my own engine, and I, and Put together the like actually branded the framework, created a name for it, started using some more specific and consistent language around brand universe, trademarked brand universe in my category. Then I started writing what I thought was gonna be a lead magnet, and then I realized it was 137 pages. I'm like, “Oh, that's not a lead

Erica Rooney: That I know Lady Magna girl

Robyn Young: A dang book. Yeah, that's a book. Okay. Okay, so now I'm writing a book I guess,” right? So it, happened organically, and, I'm grateful that I finally had the time to invest in it, because now, oh man, I'm not trying to escape my business anymore. I have consistency in what I do, and it's easier to say no to work that's not a right fit now, whereas I just I used to just say it, yes to everything, 'cause I think I had so much fear. I had so much fear, what if this just ends at some point? What if I have a... What if I have a, lean month or something? I just,

Robyn Young: I would just say yes to everything, and I didn't realize that by doing that, I was also hurting my brand, because people wouldn't know where to place me. I just said yes to everything, right? Anything and everything I could do. So when people, God love them, would refer me work, a lot of times it wasn't the right kind of work. It wasn't... It was misaligned clients. It was misaligned projects. I just wasn't I wasn't using my superpowers to lead what kind of work I wanted. So It becomes a lot easier, 'cause I'm like, “This is what I offer.” And if it's... The one thing that I think is really, important to me is that now I have smaller offerings for people, so if they're early on, I don't mind cultivating that relationship, but until they're ready to hire me, I now have a book, I have a Substack, I have a accelerator, I have other things I can offer people. It it's, more accessible, even if they don't have, personal funding to invest in working with me. I'm like, “That's okay. Let me help you.” I really genuinely feel so passionate about helping small businesses, entrepreneurs, founder-led companies really get to this point of understanding what their real identity is. Because the best feeling for me, what really fills my cup every day is these aha moments that people have when they're working with me. And it doesn't matter whether in, they're in my accelerator, or they're working with me one-on-one, or some of them just reach out to me and they'll say, “Oh my God, your book. My mind is blown. I've never heard somebody talk about brand like this. I just... I wasn't even looking in the right place.” That feeling for me, it's hard to describe. It's hard to describe. It just makes you feel like, I... Yes, I wanna wake up every single day and do this forever.

Erica Rooney: Dream, right? That's why we do it.

Robyn Young: The damn

Erica Rooney: To escape corporate or, not have a boss, although those are two little pros. But oh my gosh, I literally wrote down one, two, three things that I was like, “Oh, this is good. This is good.” But I was like, “How do I start?” And the first one really goes back to your story, and I think it's so common for a lot of women who are climbing the corporate ladder or they're growing their business, in that we don't have time to pause and think about our own brand, because we are so busy working on our own baby or, our corporate baby, or maybe a real baby, I don't know. But how do you encourage people to carve out that time, or what is the trick there? Can you start small? Because it feels like this is a big project, and ain't nobody got bandwidth.

Robyn Young: Yeah. It so the difference is I didn't have a me, right? I didn't I had to build the framework, and that means going through it myself. It was a lot longer than it would, than than it takes my clients. That said, I have very much tried to, build services and products that fit within a founder's busy schedule. So for example, my accelerator is three weeks. It is completely flexible, so there's... It's part masterclass, part one-on-one time with me, part, group sessions, and it's all done on their own time. So as long as they're just doing the work, and that's what the one-on-ones are. I'm there to be their accountability. But you, have to carve out the time. I, think realistically if I had just carved out an hour or two a week, yes, it... Obviously, the less time that you put towards it each week, the longer it's gonna take. So whether it's that you have, you wanna go bonsai over two weeks, 'cause I do that too with clients. But whether you wanna bonsai it out over a couple of weeks and really get to the root, like really clear that space for you to think deep and to really understand, because this is what's so important. People like to put branding under marketing as if it's only a function of external communications, and I'm like, “Whoa, that's dangerous.” Because the moment that you just start walking the walk and you're not talking the talk, that's where trust gets depleted really quickly. So even if I even if I gain you the customer, and then you don't deliver on that brand promise, that's worse. From my point of view, that's worse than having never gained them from the first place because now you gotta you're, working to... Yes, you have a bad reputation, and that person's not coming back, and they're telling 12 of their friends how awful it was to work with you yeah, so I think what's so important is people understand that

Robyn Young: Brand, sits at the center of your entire business universe. So there's gonna be so many ways for you to reflect this brand point of view once you understand what a brand point of view actually is. It is not your mission statement. The way that people will word salad their way through, “Oh, should I say premium or should I say this word?” It's like who cares? Your customer, I promise you, does not care. They're not even they are not picking apart these statements the way you are. It doesn't really matter. What does matter is that you have the deeper understanding of exactly where you are pinpointing yourself, right? And that, and there's a lot wrapped into that. So when I work with clients, we look at the entire landscape. We look at who are your core competitors, where are they positioning themselves, and that opens up opportunity for us to see, okay, where is that blue ocean? Where is all that opportunity? Where are people not even looking right now? 'Cause that can become fertile territory for us to figure out a brand point of view that's already gonna give you some competitive edge, right? So once you understand what that competitive edge is, it's not just testing it out with a cute little, Instagram carousel and calling it a day. It's like, no, this is the stake in the ground you are making. This is the hill you want to die on, and this is the thing that no matter anything else becomes the thing. It's the most important thing. So you reflect it not just in your marketing, in your content, in your culture, in your product innovation, in your customer experience. Anywhere you can reflect it, you wanna throw everything in the kitchen sink at that direction, because that is what will make you truly competitive. That's what will give you a truly ownable brand.

Robyn Young: Make it make sense?

Erica Rooney: It for sure does, but I'm gonna pick your brain on this a little bit because this is real-life Erica stories here in that my audience has always been women. I've always, my first book was called Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors. It was all about shattering limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors to uncover infinite possibilities, right? Now, I'm all into AI, but my second book was called Women, AI, and the Next Great Leap Forward, so there's still that women's thread in there. But I sh*t you not, Robyn, every couple of whatever, years or something, I'm like, “I gotta go bigger. I gotta market to everybody. I gotta market to men.” And then literally I paid, $10,000 to be with my keynote guy, and I... He kept trying to make me realize it on my own that I was going down the wrong rabbit hole by asking me all the right questions, and I just didn't wanna let it go. And this is your whole thing, that, you have to be hyper-niche and focus on something. So talk me out of the spiral that I get into that I know so many other people get into because it feels oh my gosh, I'm pigeonholing myself. All these other people, they speak on only innovation, and so they talk to the whole world, and I just talk to women

Robyn Young: Okay, so this may change.

Erica Rooney: To my TED Talk.”

Robyn Young: I know, for real,

Erica Rooney: Or my therapist couch. I don't know which it is. Both

Robyn Young: Actually just wrote about this on my Substack because I'm like, this is information that needs to get out there.” Okay. So when it comes to what you're talking about is audience, this is very much a... This is very important when you're developing a brand point of view. Now, when we... Sidebar here. When I develop a brand point of view, there's eight different pieces to building it, but these are not, eight questions that you get to answer and then we're done, right? It's not that, 'cause it's not that simple. These are like puzzle pieces, right? If you could think of, the center of gravity and each one of these is like a little puzzle piece, that's how That's the visual that I use in my, book, 'cause I'm like, “These have to fit together, otherwise the logic of your point of view does not make sense,” right? So to your point, the, what I call the aspirational mindset, I don't use demographics when I'm building an audience for something. That's why you feel pigeonholed, because you're trying to build a brand around a demographic. So gender is a demographic. A a title. So anything that's demographically driven is gonna pigeonhole you, right? And it might work for a little while, but again, do you know how many people are also trying to appeal to millennial women between 18 and 25? Or in... Now we're older. More

Erica Rooney: We're elder

Robyn Young: 28 and 45. Right. But do you know how many people are also trying to speak... So it corners you into this really specific place and, the pull that you have to speak to more people is, it's fair, but you, probably have already heard you can't be a brand who speaks to everybody, because a brand that speaks to everybody really speaks to nobody, right? Okay. So here's the thing. You have to be able to divide the world using something different. So we use psychographics. So an aspirational mindset is built on psychographics, meaning, we will look at what does this person value? So there's a really good exercise around this which goes divide the world, right? If you can't divide them by demographic, don't think about demographics. Think instead about what does your person value, and how... And who are you not for? Sometimes it's actually really easy to say who are you not for, and then by reflection say who are you for. Let me give you an example. So I work with businesses across categories, right? Like, how I... And also, across stages of business. I've worked with solopreneurs and I've worked with Fortune 100s, so how would I identify who my audience is? It's actually really simple. People who come in “I just need to make sales. I just wanna... I want, crazy hockey stick growth and acquisition and I'm out,” I'm like, You're not my person.” Blessings to you, but you're not my person, right? Because

Robyn Young: I want the person who's like, “Yes, I want to make money because I have a business and I need to make money,” but it's not the driving force. For me, legacy is the driving force, or community is the driving force, or there's something else. There's a passion in me to build this thing, to build this world. I hear that person talk and I'm like, “Yeah, you're my person,” because you will have the appetite to do the deep work, to create the amazing experience, to, build something that truly is a beloved brand. The other person, they're building a business. That's not the same thing. It's not the same thing. You can be successful and build a business, but that's all you'll ever have. And to be honest, I've worked with plenty of those people. They are almost always so depressed. Like it doesn't matter. They reach their point, and there's just a new mountain. Money will never completely fill up your cup. I will die on this hill. It will just never completely fill your cup, and it doesn't matter how much you make. I make good money, and I was still just “I can't.” I, want... I wanted so badly to just escape it. I have worked with plenty of those people just really want to escape their business because they've lost that sense of purpose beyond just money, beyond just profit.

Robyn Young: Not my person. So-

Erica Rooney: Of a brand talked about in that way because it's almost as if people have been assuming what I wanna be attract to, attracted to, and then saying, “And that is all women.” And while they're not wrong, right? I was trying to think through some things while you were talking, and for me, legacy is also one, but success without sacrifice. I was a chief people officer for years chasing the money, chasing the title, had it all, hated my life. We've all heard that story. But also equality, right? I don't want my daughter to have to claw her way up the corporate ladder if that's what she chooses to do, but I also want her to have these, and my son, so there we go, I got a boy and a girl, have this idea of equal opportunity because I also very strongly believe, and this is the hill I will die on, is that we will never have solid parental leave for women and like FMLA and all of that until we also have solid parental leave for men. Because if they can't be home to help take care of these babies too, it all falls on the woman, and then the problem persists, Right.

Robyn Young: Yeah. It mean it I... Why I like this exercise so much is because I think it does force you to say, “If I can't just have the easy grab of, oh, I'm for women, how else would I position myself,” right? So it may, so a lot of times it will unlock for you, oh, like I need to go deeper. I need to, really unpack, then who am I really for, right? How do I really differentiate? Because the best exercise of making sure that you truly understand who your people are, if you were to go to an event, would you be able to pick them out of a room? Maybe one to two questions, right? 'Cause I'm telling you, within three questions I can tell if somebody's my person or not That becomes the new barometer and that becomes the new audience. And how does that unlock for you something different in which you're going to position your brand around? So that's mindset. The other one that I find really useful, and this is one that I do in workshops frequently, is monster. What are you fighting? What are you fighting? 'Cause I think sometimes people hear point of view, stance, whatever, and they automatically assume, oh, it has to be political. I'm like, nope. I will tell you 99% of the brands I am building are not politically based whatsoever. So it's not. It's not, it, you do not have to be a political brand and, use this strategy. You do have to be a brand that stands for something bigger, right? And it doesn't have to be social impact, right? So what are you fighting? Is it a convention within your industry? Is it something much bigger in the world that you, some sort of wrong that you're trying to right? Okay, great. That tells me a lot about how to position your brand. Now, obviously those are only two components of eight, so it doesn't give me the full picture yet, but those two exercises often give me a lot to work with, a lot to work with, right? And then it's... The interesting part for me, and maybe this is what's curious about my past, before I was a brand strategist I was actually an editor. So my, I think the real benefit a lot of times when, especially when I'm working with, entrepreneurs who have been in business for a while, is just removing the stuff, removing the noise that has developed over years of running their business that's now crowding the purpose because there's just, there's so much out there, and they have, they've allowed things to come in an effort to try to grow their business instead of really being gangster about “This is our lane and we don't leave our lane,” right? I don't like to think of being, of a brand as a box. If you feel that you're boxed in, your brand is not, it's not doing its job, right?

Erica Rooney: If an agency hands you a brand in a box, you should probably run too. So all boxes are bad. Don't get put in a box and don't take a box.

Robyn Young: It should feel like, equally, it should be, it should feel clear. It, like a real brand strategy should give you a really clear idea about where you should and shouldn't play. It's like a compass, right? I also like to describe it as it's like a lane. It's a lane that has thousands of miles in front of you. It doesn't limit your opportunity and potential, it expands it. It compounds it, but it still tells you where the structure is, right? Like, where, what's the... It's the scaffolding, right? That's what's so important to me is a lot of times, like I'm pulling apart things in order for us to say, “Okay, are we this or are we this? Or are we this or are we this?” So it's, there can be, again, depending on how long you've been in business for, there can be lots of things that are competing for attention. But in the meantime, that makes it hard for people to refer you, right? Or to, for you to be beloved because they don't know where to place you.

Erica Rooney: I love this conversation because I think a lot of people, mainly myself, and not mainly, but including myself, when I think of branding, I think of social media. I think of my, am I using my right branding font so someone doesn't yell at me? Is my color the right shade? Am I using them in the right pairings? And that might come from my corporate upbringing where you would, get your hand slapped if you did the wrong font. But hopefully everyone who's listening has come with us on this journey, and they realize that branding is so much more than just a font or your hex codes. And I do wanna take it to social media next because I think a lot of people, it's just about multiplying touchpoints. “I've gotta be in all the places all the time everywhere we go.” And they're chasing the trends, right? Even now, I heard you mention Substack. I'm like, “Oh sh*t, I'm not on Substack yet. Somebody told me I gotta get on Substack. I better do that.” Girl, I ain't got time for that. But what is your thought process on all that, right? For the, person who's been told they've gotta post every single day, they need to show up in all the places, stay on trend. It's what does that do to their brand?

Robyn Young: Yeah. Couple things there. So the first thing I wanna make sure that we understand is branding is not just visual identity. So many people... Yeah, exactly, so so many people get trapped into this, “Oh, my brand is my logo and my colors and my fonts and my da.” And that's all great, it's good. A visual identity is really good, but that's one out of five layers that we look at. The, just to give you perspective on, like, how limited you are if all you're looking at is the aesthetics. If that's all you're thinking about you're just, you're, really limiting yourself. You're, you're in that shallow part of the pool again, right? It just doesn't give you much competitive edge. So first of all, I wanna make sure we're differentiating there. The second thing is when it comes to social media, so you don't have to have this omnipresence, that you don't have to be on all locations. In fact, it, might not make sense depending on what your brand point of view is. It might not make sense for you to be on all platforms. Let me give you an example. Maybe you are the kind of brand... I worked with a brand who their, point of view was all about enjoying slow moments, like embracing, moments that mean something, right? I'm like, “Don't get on TikTok.” it it is a platform that literally does not make any sense for your brand to be on here. Like, why would you do that, right? But if they were focused on the tactics of building instead of the brand they were trying to build, they would've absolutely felt this pull to be there. Now, whereas I was like, “Substack is your place.” Because here is a platform where virtually everyone is going here to spend more time, to read more deeply. This is the place you should be. Again, I know I'm beating this dead horse, but again, the brand point of view can a lot of times give you specificity of where you should show up, right? So even for something like that, it can impact your, marketing tactic or your, organic content, So I, don't personally post every day. I post when I feel like I'm, I feel passionate about what I'm putting out, and a lot of times I'll repurpose content. For me, because I had developed audiences, I feel compelled not to abandon those audiences, but I, but here's how I manage it. I have no more than two to three channels that I'm focused on, and the rest are just presence channels. Meaning, if somebody finds me on here, I still want them to get a sense for what my brand is about, and that's it. I'm not trying to trick the algorithm. I'm not trying to... I don't jump on trends. I don't do that because it's not what I stand for, right? In fact, if anything, I'm like the anti-trend girl. I talk more about movements. I talk more about cultural moments. I don't talk about trends because they're so short-lived. This is not something that you should build your brand around because it, there's no resilience there.

Erica Rooney: At all, period, dot the end. I'm thinking about that, recent trend because I saw a brand strategist post, and it was all about the Netflix documentary one, where everybody just basically walked in and sat down on a chair, and then, you had some text on the screen. I only know one person in my life who actually did that TikTok trend well, and his name is Javi, and that was because he actually was on the Netflix documentary. So

Robyn Young: There you go. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly

Erica Rooney: Good food for thought because also, and maybe you can touch on this, like vanity metrics, right? I ain't gonna lie, I did do a TikTok one time, and I got a million something views, but it was about being in HR, which is fine. It's on brand for me, but do you think... That didn't do sh*t for my revenue

Robyn Young: So here's the rub, right? I think it, I think we've gotten so conditioned because we're, because now we're seeing these people who get these, they have these moments on, right? They get, they get, internet famous, and so they go and sell a course using the tactic, right? But the tactic is very infrequently what actually got them there. But, the tactic is easier to sell because for people it's “Oh, I can get on a camera and yap. I'm gonna be the next...”

Erica Rooney: Yes

Robyn Young: Love to Jessie Jane, but she's not, where she is because she's yapping. Do you know how many... For every one Jessie Jane, there's a million people who have been yapping for years, and they are nowhere. So

Robyn Young: Please, by all means, do not waste your money thinking that all you have to do is get in front of a camera and start yapping. Like, blessings, but you are not going to get there if you're just focusing on the tactic, right? Here's the thing. I think that we become so consumed because we're... It's the easy grab, right? It's the new, it's the new Cinderella story, right? It's easy. And doing the deep work is hard. It's just, it's something that takes more time. And to be fair, it's something that is more of an idea. It's like a clarity and conviction that you have in an idea, in an identity, than it is something that is a tangible piece. That's the hardest part about it is people are like, what am I gonna walk away with? Am I gonna walk away with, new messaging?” I'm like, “Whoa, Before we can even get to messaging, you have to understand who you are, right? I can't just go build you a visual identity, or that's gonna be based on subjectivity or trends or whatever your designer feels he wants to do that day. If you do not have this identity, for real... If you don't have this identity driving those decisions, you are leaving this up to other people to decide, and that is a very dangerous place to be as a business owner, right? So it's... Don't just jump to the thing that everybody's doing. We've all got this conditioning to fit in, right? And I think that's what that is. Trends are about fitting in, right? But the best thing you can do is stand out. If you want true competitive edge, the best thing you can do is stand out, is to look at what everybody in your field is doing and do the exact opposite.

Erica Rooney: Gosh. Yeah.

Robyn Young: At least you'd be an original.

Erica Rooney: And like I would tell people too, just because there are so many people in corporate who listen to this, don't tune out because everything she's saying from the business perspective, which is the lens that like she lives in, right? But from a personal perspective, it's true too. If you harp all of your LinkedIn posts and everything about working at a certain company, and then who knows what they do, right? We've all seen big companies go down for stupid sh*t. Your name is attached to that, right? If you get let go, if you... Who knows what, so don't do that. All right, Robyn, we are getting close to our time. I could talk to you for hours, but I do wanna like rapid fire this at you. AI for branding, yes or no?

Robyn Young: It's a loaded question.

Robyn Young: Listen, if you have strength and identity and you're using AI to just compound that, great. But most people don't, and so they go to AI looking for it to provide you that identity. You will never. You will never have the conviction if you're asking a robot to give you your identity. You just won't. There is no other way around it. You've gotta do the deep work. Sorry. All right? Once you've got that strength and identity, then you can, master, you can train the AI. You can use it as a sounding board.

Robyn Young: It depends.

Erica Rooney: Oh, I love that. No, I think that's a great answer because I do think there's a lot of people who are going out there without a clue in the world of what they wanna do or what they stand for, and then they're just taking whatever comes out. But if you know who you are, what you want, all of those things that we talked about earlier, then you can use it to maybe enhance and split hairs over the word collaborate or convene, Then you can figure that out, okay? Robyn, tell us quickly about your book. Give us the title, where can people buy it, and then what's your favorite chunk in the book?

Robyn Young: Oh, so good. So my book is called Build Your Brand Universe. It's available on Amazon and IngramSpark, and if you're in the, if you're in the LA area, it's actually at several independent bookshops, so you might just check there first too. It is about building a brand ecosystem. So instead of just thinking about your visual identity or even just something that has, some competitiveness to it, right? Like people tend to think of “Oh, it's like bold brand. It's bold marketing.” I'm like, “Eh, but it's not, though.” It's about building this entire brand world in which people can interact with you. Why is that important? Because at any given point, you have only 3 to 5% of the market actually looking for what you do, and this is across the board less of what your industry is, right? 3 to 5% of the market, so that you're only looking for, people who are right now buyers is what I call them, right? But what about the other 95%? What, happens with them? They might be your buyers. They're just not right now buyers, right? But if you can cultivate them long enough, you can actually move them into market, or you can convert them once they're in market, right? So this is not a, this is not a foreign concept if you're, if you understand marketing, like this is a, familiar concept. But for people who aren't, who are founders who don't come from that lane, this can feel like, “Wow, that's, that... What even is that? What does that even mean? What are you even talking about? Exactly. So building a brand ecosystem is how you cultivate them. You find different ways to interact with them. You give them different ways to interact with your brand until they're ready to buy from you, right? And sometimes those different ways that they they interact with you can actually be additional income streams, which is what happened for me. I was Two years ago, I just had branding services. That was it.

Erica Rooney: Agency.

Robyn Young: Agency, I threw everything I had at that, right? But it was me... Even when people were my aligned audience, they couldn't afford the services. It was just, sorry, right? Nothing, right? So I was like, “No, I'm not gonna do it this way. I need to build more into this pipeline.” Not like a funnel. It was more like a flywheel, right? I don't know where people come in and interact with me. Sometimes it's through my Substack, sometimes it's through my books, sometimes it's through a speaking gig, right? But I built this ecosystem that has my distinct brand all over it, right? So it's about building that brand universe, building that brand world. So whether you're building a beauty brand or a CPG brand or a service brand or even a personal brand, you can apply this same framework regardless of what you're building, right? If you want to build an actual brand, like something that is gonna build towards legacy or build towards community, you've got to be thinking about building a brand world. And then my favorite part of the book, I think it's like chapter... I think it might be actually chapter one. It actually, really builds the idea of what is a brand universe, and I use, Inception as like a, an analogy with it. I love that movie, by the way. This idea that you can just build this world, like you can just create your own reality. I think most people just don't... They don't think about it that way. They just don't I, they've thought a lot about what they want their life to look like once they're successful, but they haven't spent a lot of time thinking about, “What would my dream world be? What would that look like?” And you can just do it. You can just create it. You don't even have to have a physical space to do it. That's what's amazing about building nowadays. This can live digitally, virtually. I've seen so many brands that don't... They might have pop-up spaces, but like they... Everything lives online. You still wanna think about creating some kind of experience that's grounded in what your point of view is. So that's the book.

Erica Rooney: I love it. All right, last question, best question is if you were talking to the Robyn, I guess it's eight something years ago, who was hiding behind the brand, right? Hustling for the dollar, taking anything that she could because this is what we're doing, which is not uncommon to a lot of people, right? That's what we do. What piece of advice would you give her today?

Robyn Young: Oh. I think I would tell her that there is no there. You're not ever gonna feel ready. Because I had to wait until I had worked with 100 brands. And even then I was like, “No.” You know what I mean? Eight years, 100 brands. I had been speaking already on brand and I was like, “No, I'm not ready. What credibility do I have?” What can you imagine? What credibility do I have?

Erica Rooney: We do it. We all do it

Robyn Young: We do, right, the imposter syndrome, like just set in.

Erica Rooney: Place

Robyn Young: Here's the thing. Here's the thing. Even now, I look at other people in my industry who I compare myself to, and I'll and I'll be like, “I'm, never gonna be there.” But I know for a fact there are people on this podcast who are like, “Wow, how did she do all of that?” You know what I'm saying? You're always gonna be higher than some and lower than others. You're, so you're never really...

Erica Rooney: Isn't there a quote on that? Comparison

Robyn Young: Comparison's the theft of joy.

Erica Rooney: Something like... That'll work. That'll do it. That's what I'm after anyways.

Robyn Young: Yes. Yeah. You're, there is no, there so don't wait until you're ready. Now this is what I see. I I see a lot of particularly women entrepreneur, women professionals just waiting. It's just like they're, they're, trigger shy. I'm like, “Girl, what are you waiting for? We are in end times. Now is the time.”

Erica Rooney: And tomorrow is never promised. Hello. That's just a fact of life. But

Robyn Young: Right. What do you have to lose,

Erica Rooney: Nothing. Nothing. But Robyn, thank you so much for joining us on the Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors Podcast. Y'all, get her book, check out her website, check out her Substack. I'm gonna at least have to go on to check that out, but I won't create my own, and... At least yet. Robyn, thank you again. It's been such a joy. I just, I, have learned so much, so thank you

Robyn Young: Awesome. Thanks so much for having me

Erica Rooney: If this episode resonated with you, don't let it stop here. Send it to a woman you care about, a colleague, a friend, someone who's been on your mind while you were listening. These conversations are meant to be shared, and you never know what one small shift can unlock for someone else. And if you haven't already, make sure that you're following the podcast. Leave a rating and write a quick review. It helps more women find this space, and it keeps these conversations going. If you're ready to go deeper, come a little closer. Send me a DM. I'll invite you to sit in on a live Her Collective session as my personal guest. No pressure, no strings attached, but you get to experience it, feel the room, and see what happens when women start moving together. Until next time, y'all, keep going, keep choosing differently, and let's smash the ceilings and close the gaps