𝐁𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡! - 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝® 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐥 𝐂𝐨𝐱

𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝® - the importance of your brand story in all your speaking.

 We're talking with Carol Cox who is an expert in that - and a speaker at the Break Through with Media summit, June 14-16 - and in this conversation Carol shares

• the role it plays in your strategy
• how they came to be a leading expert
• some examples of people using it effectively, and
• more!

We're going even deeper on this at the summit - and all the other facets of your media, speaking, PR and publicity strategy

The BREAK THROUGH WITH MEDIA Summit is a FREE, virtual event, June 14 - 16, offering live interactive sessions with experts in the fields of media like television, podcasting, radio, magazine, and news, speaking, publicity, and PR to help entrepreneurs, authors, and start-ups quickly understand how they can step their brand up to more prestigious, credible platforms, stages, and pages

We want to provide an interactive expo experience for your to get the big picture, see the opportunities for you, and meet knowledgeable experts that can make this the year you have the break through you've been dreaming of.

You can find Carol at: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolcox/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/carolmorgancox
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolmorgancox/

Transcript

September Smith: 0:00

Welcome to the She's All That video podcast. This season of the podcast is all about the BREAK THROUGH with MEDIA virtual summit that we're holding and all about the amazing industry experts that are speaking at the summit who will give entrepreneurs, authors and thought leaders, people just like you, a powerful alternative to the fast-deteriorating tool of social media for your marketing and visibility. The next big opportunity that you need to rapidly uplevel your positioning and your reach is media exposure, TV, podcast, radio news, speaking opportunities, publicity, PR and more. The free BREAK THROUGH with MEDIA Summit provides you with a constellation of experts information and strategy to give you the big picture of how you can get started. Our guest today is a key piece in that puzzle. And that guest is Carol Cox. Carol Cox is the founder and CEO of speaking your brand, a coaching and training company that helps high performing purpose driven women entrepreneurs, and professionals create their signature talks and thought leadership platforms. Carol is host of the weekly five star rated speaking your brand podcast, and during election season serves as a democratic political analyst on TV news. Carol was named one of Orlando's Women of the Year in 2021, and has been featured in Forbes. Through her company and content, her mission is to empower more women to find and use their voice to tell the stories that need to be told and to activate ideas for change. Carol, thanks so much for being here and for being part of the breakthrough with Media Summit to talk about speaking your brand.

Carol: 1:35

Hi, September. Well, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. And as part of the summit, I am so excited to be part of your community.

September Smith: 1:42

Me too. Me too. I just love this whole issue of that the story storytelling and how that is should be just inextricably linked with the story that you tell from the stage your brand. So you did not start out as a story brand or speaking your brand expert. What was your background? And how did that journey get you to where you are now?

Carol: 2:05

Well, probably like many of us out there, I have a lot of different interests and different things that I've done over my career. So I thought I was going to be a professor in academia, I went to graduate school to get a PhD in history. I love history and Women's Studies. And so then, but I left with a master's degree because I got involved in technology. This was during the.com boom of the late 90s, early 2000s. My husband is a programmer. So he kind of enticed me to do some software development projects with him. We ended up doing that for about 12 years, and then just kind of burned out with doing, you know, working on computer code all the time. So I decided I wanted to start a new business. But along the way, I got involved in local politics hence best where I became a political analyst on TV news as well. And then but decided I wanted to switch gears. I love being an entrepreneur. So started speaking your brand in 2015, I knew that I needed to have a well defined niche. And so I wanted to work with other women entrepreneurs, and helping them with their public speaking and thought leadership, because I had seen the power of public speaking in myself in the other businesses that I had run. And I knew that I really wanted to see more women on stages, because so many of the conferences I had attended in tech and in marketing. There were a few women here and there, but not as many as there should have been.

September Smith: 3:13

No, you said you had seen the impact of and the power of speaking on one's business. What were the effects that you had already experienced that made you want to go deeper on this?

Carol: 3:24

Well, there was the kind of the practical aspects, which is just getting more clients for the business that I had at the time, which was around technology and marketing. So I would go and speak at an event. And then people would want to hire my company to help them because I was a credible authority. If you're standing on a stage, you already had that built in credibility and authority. So then they come to you. And now that know, like and trust factor has just rapidly accelerated for you. So there's that part of it. But there was also really kind of the personal development part of it, I felt like I became so much more confident as a person. And definitely, as a woman using my voice, the more that I spoke in public and had this public presence, and I saw that that confidence really lended itself into so many different things that I was doing in my business and in my life.

September Smith: 4:09

Wow. All right. So that in itself is should be incentive to go deeper into this and really think about maybe speaking should be a part of my business as one channel of revenue, but also as a way as you say, to get leads and to get yourself out there and the mindset it gives you so how what point in your journey did the whole issue of story kind of land in there? And in your estimation, why is story important when we're speaking?

Carol: 4:38

Yeah, September so I am a very, very left brain logical, analytical type of person. I love problem solving. This was really why I liked doing software development. So I liked that aspect of it. And so when I was speaking in that part of my business, but then even when I started speaking your brand, I very much like to teach and to train, you know, give me like the three plus says, you know, lesson plans, and I'm gonna teach on it. But then after a little while, I discovered for myself and working with our clients that there's so much information out there, there's so much content. But what I was seeing was that there was a disconnect between Well, why are you standing on the stage sharing this? Like, what? What brought you to this topic? What brought you to the industry? What brought you to your business? I wanted to know that I think that was my love of history, just like figuring out why people do the things that they do. And I thought, well, if I'm curious about this, I'm sure other people in the audience also want to know, like, what was your personal journey to this? So I started integrating though that content more and more into the work that we did with our clients. And I saw the effect that it was having on them going to deliver their presentations. And again, back to this idea that it would, they would get great reviews and great feedback and clients when they would go do their presentations. But then they understood themselves so much better and felt so much more connected to their business in their mission, when they put their own stories into it.

September Smith: 5:58

Oh, wow. So it had did you then when you saw that whole story thing, did you then go and try to study more about how does this all work? Or was this all just very natural for you?

Carol: 6:09

Well, I so definitely I, you know, my love of reading and again, like learning about other peoples and cultures, you know, I was kind of like had paved the way for me, but I did a lot of my own reading and research around storytelling. So both the science and the art of storytelling, I also love cinematography, like movies. And so I studied script writing screenwriting, the formulas that so many movies make, obviously, the hero's journey, but even script formulas and really understanding not only why we like stories, why we're attuned to stories, but what makes a good story, and then how can I bring that into the very practical business things that my clients talk about?

September Smith: 6:45

I remember the first time I heard about story, it was probably some event is like, Oh, come and learn how story can impact your at that time, I was working as an instructional designer. So I was like, story has to be part of it. And my thought was like story. Like, once upon a time, no, I was a bit resistant until I really understood that there is a science to it. There's like cognitive, actually processes happening that fit story facilitates. So you get them telling stories, but being a left brain person, and I'm guessing, working with business people, some of whom might be left brain, how do you help your clients balance that personal aspect? With the ultimate goal, which is explaining why I'm here and probably doing some selling for my business?

Carol: 7:32

Yes. So like all good, analytical, logical people, I developed a framework so that I could give myself that structure and to give our clients that structure as well. So that they understood, okay, so here is, here's what an entire presentation or speech or TEDx talk or Keynote would look like, from beginning to end, here are the different components you want to make sure to include. And so it's not a rigid formula. It's more like a guide to say, okay, like, here are the most important elements now unless like almost like a puzzle, like, let's figure out what are the pieces that are going to fit fit for your particular talk? And how can we make sure that we include these different elements like suspense, obviously, humor, like tying your opening back to your closing, making sure you have audience engagement, making, you can play with the timeline of your story. So you don't have to start at the very beginning where your story starts, start in the middle, or start at the end, and then come back. So those are the different things that we play with within the framework.

September Smith: 8:25

Hmm. So do you find most of the people that you introduce us to when people come to work with you? And I'm guessing they come to you saying, I want to learn how to use my voice I want to get on stage I have numerous obstacles. Are they surprised when that's the thing that you pull out? It's like, well, first, we have to figure out your story.

Carol: 8:43

Sometimes, some of them are more excited about it than others, some of them tend to be a little bit reluctant because they they tend to think either number one, I don't have a story. And I would say we all have, we all have things that have led us to where we are today doesn't have to be a big T traumatic story, like a one day that just totally impacted your life. It could be doesn't have to be it could just be a series of events. And when you're looking back, what is that thread? And then so they think they do they don't have a story. Or some people think that their story is too uncommon that no one could relate to it. And here's the thing, the more specific your story, the better the storytelling is. We often think we should be more generalized with our story. But you should be more specific. I often tell the story in my keynotes about how I was chairperson of my local Democratic Party, and I got the sexist backlash and all these things that happened. And I tell the very specifics of that. And then I asked the audience, have any of you ever been a chairperson of a political party? Now one person raises their hand, not surprisingly. And I see Well, because you saw relate to my story? Yes, because the story is about purpose, confidence, voice, right. That's the lessons that are out of the story, but it's a specific story that the audience then connects to.

September Smith: 9:57

Yeah, that's actually a great example to get across to people, how this can be stitched together. So the people that that come to you and want to work with you to achieve? That's a question I want to ask when did generally speaking, is there? Is there one or two goals that people have when they come to speak to you? Or is it very, very different and very

Carol: 10:19

well, so our signature program is called the thought leader Academy. And I deliberately use the word thought leader, because number one, if you Google thought leaders, what comes back is a bunch of white dudes. Right, and we really need more women to see themselves as thought leaders, and then and to put themselves out there so that we can change his perception. And so I named it that deliberately. But then I also named it that because I really see speaking as being multifaceted. Of course, we're speaking on stages on panels, TEDx talks, keynotes, conference sessions, and so on. But there's also speaking on podcast speaking on LinkedIn live shows that are speaking on presentations to other people's groups. So there's so many different aspects of it. And so I wanted to so when women work with us, they work on their thought leadership message, they really get clarity around that. And they also work on their signature talk, so that they have something that's concrete and tangible, where they we work through our framework, so they can go in and adjust that repurpose it and go and use that in lots of different places. And then, of course, like speaking proposals, and pitching themselves for speaking and speaking fee, so all of that wrapped into really helping them to get better results from the speaking that they're doing.

September Smith: 11:28

That sounds amazing. Do most of them already kind of know where their focus is going to be for that thought leadership? Or does that need honing and teasing out as well?

Carol: 11:38

Well, most of them already have a sense of what their overall topic is, because they've been in business for you generally, for at least three to five years. So they have a good sense of who they work with the kind of work that they do. And so they know that but they what we help them with is honing in kind of what what matters to you the most, where can we find your unique viewpoint? But also what's relevant today, kind of what are the trends today? What do people want to hear speakers talk about that feels fresh and relevant. So taking their topic and adding that to it?

September Smith: 12:08

Oh, that's interesting that you'd be able to actually flag them to trends as well. I mean, I know things evolve and change. But it's that much of evolution that you have to keep an eye on the yearly trends.

Carol: 12:21

Oh, sure. Like, think about just during the pandemic, we had this great, great resignation, you know, all these people wanting to shift jobs, or leave corporate, and so on. So I have a number of clients who do keynotes and we find a way to mention that in their keynote, if it's appropriate, because if you stand up in front of an audience, and they're a corporate, and you don't mention, the two shifts that have happened, and you're using a keynote that you've delivered in 2019, it's gonna seem a little

September Smith: 12:46

weird. pretty stale. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a whole different world. So I can guess, but in your estimation, what is what is the special edge that you bring that clients really benefit from?

Carol: 12:59

Okay, so I will, I will first answer this from myself personally, but then don't answer it on behalf of the company as a whole, because I have other speaking coaches that work with our clients. So I would say for me, I am the type of person where I read so widely, that I know something about almost every single topic and industry out there. But I don't know so much that I'm too close to it. So right, so I can I know the questions to ask the person on the other end, but I do it from the audience's perspective, who doesn't know as much as that person does. So I feel like that's kind of like my special sauce. And then, and then our speaking coaches do the same thing. Because, you know, they very much like, you know, read and learn about different things as well. As a company though, I would say our special edges, the edges that we truly embody and role model our mission, vision and values and our own thought leadership, because that's what we want our clients to do. So we know, it's not easy to be bold with your messaging, it's not easy to be vulnerable with your own story. And so we try to do that in our own content, so that they feel more comfortable doing it themselves.

September Smith: 14:02

Hmm, yeah, that is definitely a double especial edge that people are gonna get working with you in the company. So can you give me an example of somebody that you've worked with recently, or whatever that has had that you were really excited about the transformation that was achieved with them?

Carol: 14:21

Yeah, so I have two women who come to mind. The first is a woman named Tammy Lally, and I helped her with her TEDx talk back in 2017. So this was now quite a while ago, and she delivered at a TEDx Orlando. And after the video was put on on internet on the internet, then the big Ted parent organization picked it up because it was so impactful, and featured it on their homepage and in their email newsletter, and now has over 2 million views. Wow, most TEDx talks, get a few 1000 views or so I think there's 25,000 That used to happen before the pandemic every year. So for one person's talk to get over 2 million views is huge. And the reason that It is so well watched is because Tammy, she shared a very vulnerable, very real, unfortunately very tragic story about something that happened in her family. But she tied it to this bigger issue of money shame. And she did this in eight and a half minutes. Wow. And it resonated so much with people because like commenters have said on her TED page, that she spoke the truths that they weren't able to verbalize for themselves. And that's what transformational speakers and transformational thought leaders do. They say the things that weren't able to say, and they do it in a really real and authentic way.

September Smith: 15:36

Now it was she, when she came to was she already kind of there or this was something new crafted together.

Carol: 15:43

So she knew that she wanted to do a TEDx talk. And then she had applied and got accepted. And she knew that it was gonna be around this idea of money, shame, and what had happened in her family. But we had so much content so much that she ended up writing a book afterwards, because she had a lot of stories, and a lot of examples, but we had to use my framework to get it down into eight in and a half minutes. Yeah. And we did that bit by bit. And she really poured her heart and her soul into it. And now and she's also a money coach. So not only did this talk, obviously have over 2 million views, but she's gotten clients from around the world, she ended up publishing this book as a result of it. So that truly transformed her and her business as a result of doing this. Yeah, she's amazing. And then another client that comes to mind, Jackie Roby, she went through a thought leader Academy, she graduated about a year and a half ago, and she launched her own podcast, and she works in the travel industry. And she used to do sales consulting for travel agencies and travel destinations. And she also does D, I work for them. But she recognized that travel can be used to heal from trauma. And she also helps a lot of travel agencies and travel destinations now recognize that what they can do for people around mental health, mental health awareness, and healing. And so because of her thought leadership, putting this out on her podcast, and on her social media, she has been invited to speak in Dubai, it's been flown over their business classes speak, she's going back again this year. And this is the result of having a consistent thought leadership message and thought leadership platform. And that's really where a so many of these higher profile speaking opportunities then come to you.

September Smith: 17:19

Those are very exciting examples, I could see quite serious, because I love this topic, very much a believer in the importance of this story for when you're speaking. But we got to save some of the jokes. And I'm sure there's a lot that we're going to be getting into when you join us at the breakthrough with Media Summit on your Wednesday, June the 15th. And we're going to be talking about how brandstory is key in as part of your speaking and your media campaign, what's involved in establishing your brand story and speaking it what people need to know to do it effectively, tips, strategies and action steps to make this a powerful part of how you will break through with media this year. So Carol, where can people find you again,

Carol: 18:01

my website is speaking your brand.com. And if you're listening to this podcast right now, you can hop over in your podcast app and do the search for speaking your brand. That's also the name of my podcast.

September Smith: 18:11

Okay, and I will have the links down below in the show notes to make it easy for those people that are doing just that. And if you want to learn more about how you can use this very important skill set to nail speaking engagements, media exposure, PR publicity, and how this can help your business. Make sure you register for the free three day breakthrough with Media Summit, June 14 to the 16th. And come be with Carol and a truly incredible array of other industry experts to help you learn how you and your business can really have the big breakthrough that you need. The link for registration is down below in the show notes as well. You will not want to miss this. Carol, thanks so much for being with me today. And also for being a part of the breakthrough with Media Summit.

Carol: 18:54

Thank you so much September, I'm honored

September Smith: 18:57

See you at the summit. And that was just one of the amazing guests that we have at the BREAK THROUGH with MEDIA Summit, a three day live virtual event happening June 14 to the 16th to give entrepreneurs authors and thought leaders a panoramic overview of the opportunities, the skills required and the services and tools that you can be using media exposure, speaking opportunities, PR publicity and more to have the major breakthrough that you are looking for 20 industry experts three days all available right from wherever you are and it's free. Register at the link below in the show notes. You will not want to miss this!