The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Branding Queens by Kim D Rozdeba

Episode Date: September 27, 2023

Branding Queens by Kim D Rozdeba Branding Queens is a collection of stories about twenty women entrepreneurs who, against all odds, built famous brands that were beloved by millions of customers worldwide. Building a brand isn't easy. Establishing an iconic brand is one in a million. Add the fact of being a woman in an unfortunately still male-dominated business world, and you'd think it was almost impossible. Branding Queens celebrates the branding accomplishments of these self-made women who persevered in a man's world to create an enduring brand dynasty. Branding Queens focuses on five cosmetics and beauty brands, four women apparel innovators, three media moguls, three manufacturers of vacuum cleaners, airplanes, and toys, two bakers, one winemaker, one direct marketer, and a real queen. Branding expert Kim D. Rozdeba unravels these fascinating stories with a clear perspective on creating a brand in twenty different ways. You will learn how these women marketed hope, health, dignity, confidence, beauty, empowerment, and happiness through their products and services. To help uncover the secrets to these women's success, Kim assesses how the branding queens approached each of five branding components-Commitment, Construct, Community, Content, and Consistency (the 5 C's). These women lived life to its fullest by following their passions and purpose. Their stories are just as big as their brands. Branding Queens will inspire you, empower you, and encourage your entrepreneurial spirit. About the author Kim Derrick Rozdeba has spent thirty years shaping and managing brands. Branding is his passion, so no surprise in his spare time, he writes about the topic in a blog and recently in his first book, Branding Queens. One day it occurred to him how little was written about branding from a gender perspective, especially from an entrepreneurial woman brand leader. Exploring the idea, he realized this was an untold story of a long list of women he found so inspiring that he decided then and there to make these inspirational women the subject of his first book. When he isn’t investigating what makes some brands iconic and others wither away in time, he works in the corporate world supporting a global brand as head of communications and public affairs. Kim enjoys long reflective walks, gourmet cooking and quaffing stellar wines. He resides in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, with his wife, Brenda, and has three adult children.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com.

I need to hire, like, an opera singer to come in and do that bit for 15 years, 10 years or something we've had to do it. I need to hire an opera singer to come in. Like one of those ones that's got the horns on her head that's always in the comics that you see. And she just sings that. But that might be weird.

I don't know. I'd probably have to pay her too. So it's cheaper just for me to do it, folks. Which is why it sounds as cheap as it does. But I do love that you run up to me at shows and go and i'm like security run hey and then i have my team tackle you and throw you to the ground and and uh you can talk to secret service after that no i don't i'm not that sort of person anyway guys we have uh amazing authors on the show uh for 15 years we've been bringing you the most brilliant minds the billionairesaires, the CEOs, the newsmakers, the Pulitzer Prize winners, the great authors, all that sort of good stuff. And then little old me was on the show too. I'm just the guy with the mic. And they put the name in the title. I paid extra five bucks for that. So there you go.

Our amazing author that we have on deck today, who's going to blow your mind, rearrange your mindset, change your life, and make you think of things in new ways that you have never thought of before, joins us on the show today. And I put so much pressure on him for just making this whole bit up. And he's just sitting on the other side going, what the hell did I get myself into? I just wrote a damn book for hell's sakes. But no, he is going to do all that, and I assure you he will. His newest book just came out May 11, 2022, Branding Queens. Kim Rosdiba joins us on the show today. He's going to be talking to us about his amazing book and what went into it.

We'll be talking about branding, marketing, all that sort of stuff we talk about in the Chris Voss Show, building brands, books, et cetera, et cetera. He is an author, blogger, and branding guru. He has guided some of the Fortune 500's oldest and most iconic brands. His are three decades of strategic planning, branding, and executing multimillion dollar advertising and marketing campaigns, PR PR and corporate communications in the agriculture, pharmaceutical, petroleum, airline, telecommunication, and automotive industries. He recently published his first book, Branding Queens, which is about 20 incredible women who built a global brand dynasties and his goal is showing up is to share his branding knowledge with those eager to listen and learn which we all are now on the show kim welcome to the show

thank you very much and i think you could be my pr person there you go i i've had a few people uh say that i should walk around and be their town crier like i introduced them as they you know the medieval sort of sense where anytime they walk into the town square i hear ye hear ye kim rozdiba has entered the square all children one and women children one and all come around and listen to the wise men uh so give us your dot com kim so we can find you on the interwebspace so it's really really easy. It's rozdeba, R-O-Z-D-E-B-A.com. There you go. So let's ask you, give us a 30,000 overview of this book. Sure.

It's about 20 women who started a business from ground zero. Each is a story of its own in the book. So the nice thing about it is you can read one each night and learn about an incredible woman, how they started an iconic brand and throughout it, I try to frame it under the understanding of what is a brand and how do you build a brand? There you go so uh what motivated you want to write this book about these 20 women so do you know the champagne uh yeah i do i think i i think i've gotten

mucked up on it before okay do you know what voove uh translate in english is um i didn't alcoholism okay it's okay no it's widow so on the label it says widow clico i never knew that and i when i discovered that i'm going why would somebody put a widow on a label of a very nice champagne? There you go. And then I discovered that Nicole Barbara Tico actually was the person behind the brand. And she built this brand to be an international champagne. So that was the start. And I'm going, but why did she put widow on it? Did she have to?

This is going back to 1810. That was the first time she put out her product into the marketplace. And I'm going, why? Why would she put widow? Was it because it was legally required at that time. I mean, women were second-class citizens. They had no rights. Was it sympathy? So this was my journey to find out why she did this on a brand. And you'll have to read the book to find out why. You have to read the book to find out. There you go. Good tease.

Good tease. I love it. We love the teases on the show because then people have to go buy the book to find out. There you go. Good tease. Good tease. I love it. We love the teases on the show because then people have to go buy the book to find out. You know, honestly, I've been on quite a few journeys drinking champagne as well, but that's another story. You know what I mean? We've all had those nights there at the clubs or whatever. In fact, we used to throw incredible champagne parties at my house that were pretty interesting. So give us a bit of your background. I kind of alluded to some of it in your biography read, but tell us in your words, kind of what some of your upbringing history is, kind of what shaped you as a person, et cetera, et cetera. So I grew up Vancouver Island. And for those that don't know the geography in Canada, that's the furthest Western you can go in Canada.

It's right off of Vancouver. There's an island. That's where I grew up. I went to University of Toronto, which is the center of the universe in Canada. I went to U of T. But before that, I actually went and did a year traveling around Europe. I'm going to age myself by telling you that I actually traveled $10 a day.

That would be impossible today. I don't even think you could do an hour in Europe for $10. But I was there for a year and i started to really really look at people uh and look at cultures and i have used that that one year of learning about people still today so i went to university uh i took a whole bunch of courses in business uh economics. I ended up working in a marketing in a large petroleum company downstream. And then I went from there to an advertising agency because I really enjoyed the communications and understanding consumers. And I was at Ogilvy, one of the, I guess it's the seventh largest in the world. Good place to start a career.

And I was there for a little over 10 years. And then I went from there to a smaller agency. And then I went client side again after that. And since then, I have been fascinated by brands. I have a blog that I write about everything about branding. There you go. And you're here. I was going to say your boots give you away as a Canadian.

We love our Canadian friends. And Go Rush. But in South Park Boys. Or not South Park Boys. Trailer Park Boys. Trailer Park, yep. There you go. Kind of mixing the two brands that probably should be mixed.

But, yeah, I'm a big Trailer Park Boys fan. In fact, everyone says I'm Ricky. So I don't know. I don't know. There you go. What are you going to do? I'm still trying to get over that. At least I'm, at least I'm not, I don't know.

There's some jokes there, but we're just going to leave it on the table. Uh, so what made you choose these 20 women? What was the, uh, what was the, you know, the, the basis the basis for okay why are these women stand out why are they um why are they the branding queens so yeah i had to come up with some sort of criteria because there's a lot of women out there that have been successful building brands and building companies in particular so it had to be somebody that that went beyond just one country uh had to be somebody that went beyond just one country. It had to be someone who had built a cult-like following. So it had to be retail. It had to be something that would connect with the consumers, the general consumers.

It had to be, there had to be enough evidence that this person was involved with the branding, that they were not just sort of the administrator and they hired all these people, that they actually were directly involved with creating the brand. And then it had to be successful, and it still had to be successful today. So that was the criteria I used, and that's so I found it goes back 200 years. Really? It's the oldest brand, which is Vive Glicol, to the youngest one, which is 20 years old, which is Spanx. Yes, Spanx.

Which is Sarah Blakely. That's a hell of a story, man. That's a hell of a story. But it's everywhere now. I mean, it is rocket ship to fame if you're if you're familiar with that story yeah um so uh in the book you feature a lot of different people you uh five cosmetic and beauty brands uh four women apparel innovators three media moguls three manufacturers of vacuum cleaners airplanes toys two bakers one winemaker

one direct marketer, and a real queen. Do you want to tease out who the real queen is? Queen Elizabeth the second. Ah, I've heard of her. Yeah. God save the queen.

Well, he's kind of fucked that up, but recently, man, I would have, I would have killed to have sat down with her and just been like, and just been like, Hey, tell me about Churchill. Tell me about like all the secret stuff that you you want to talk shit about behind people's back because you're just like you know that guy was a buffoon or you know tell me all the dirty laundry that you've seen over what 11 president of the u.s presidents seven yeah seven to ten prime

ministers or i don't know how many because i don't care um americans uh and uh you know just just her journey of life you you have to you have to look at her life and go what is it like to live a hundred years through some through the most tumultuous you know hundred year century of of uh or centuries of of time and god i would have loved but i i didn't i wouldn't want the pr i'd want to hear like the shit the dirty laundry well yeah but the consistency of that woman's uh representation and how she represented herself in the public every single day is incredible i mean i always sort of, when you talk about personal branding,

I kind of like go, do you really need to be a personal brand? Because that's like being a box of cereal. You have to be so rigid in being a brand. And I would say she was, is probably the rigidest brand I've ever seen in the sense of being consistent always of how she looked how

she presented herself I mean she only actually communicated 15 minutes every year and that was in her holiday address outside of that she did very brief little introductions or you know congratulations or welcome but they were very brief and they were scripted that's all we know of her yeah and it i mean it's pretty smart it seems like the more people you the more information you give people the more they can sometimes turn into ugly stuff i was listening to uh the sam harris podcast recently and they were talking about how as a politician if you if you take a side, good or bad, you're just going to get thrown stuff. So sometimes it's better just to ride down the middle or just not say anything at all. Because if you give people ammo, they'll shoot guns at you, basically.

And yeah, so controlling the PR, pr managing it and everything else um but any other uh teas out so the book maybe you want to tease out or stories that you found that were fascinating that surprised you yeah so i'll kind of maybe frame it because i had to frame the book into i call the five c's of branding and And I did it intentionally in the sense of, could I find each of these women? Could I actually rate how well they did under the five C's? Quickly, I'll just tell you what the five C's are. First one is commitment, which is your purpose, your values. It's your principle, your vision. The second one is construct, which is your logo, your color palette, the tonality. Is your brand fun?

Is it a luxury brand? The next one was community, which is your customers, your employees. The following was content, which is all of your advertising, marketing, PR, everything, you know, your social media. And then the final one was consistency. And I kind of looked at these to see if I could rate them and say, you know, but I couldn't. It was all so subjective in the sense of they all had all five and all of them had them at a very high degree. So it would have been really difficult to try and say, okay, this one's better than that one. But early when we were talking, one of the things that seemed to come out most often,

and again, when you're starting a brand, you have no money. You're living day to day, right? And so you have no ability to spend money on advertising and get awareness. So you had to build it yourself and free advertising. So public relations became really important. And for many of these women, they were brilliant. Absolutely brilliant at getting journalists to write write about them and they still are writing about some of these uh women today there you go i i we were talking about the pre-show i women are great at pr i think like 95 96 percent of pr agents are women they're great at spin they're

great at marketing um you know it's it's kind of inherent back to where's the equality in that business. I don't know, whatever. There's no quality in the universe. So these are, these are not only great stories about women, but you've incorporated basically great branding lessons in here where people can learn branding and the importance of branding and branding examples. What is branding? We, we talk about that. We kick it around. You always and branding examples. What is branding? We talk about that. We kick it around. You always hear it everywhere. What is branding?

So I've kind of adapted a quote from Maya Angelou. And this is my definition of a brand. A brand isn't about what it says or does, but how it makes its customers feel. At the end of the day, all of the transactions, all of the different communications that you or I are being consuming of a brand, that experience, it's all about at the end of it, it's that feeling that you have with that brand. Do you like it? Yeah.

Does it emotionally connect with you and appeal to you um you know i i i uh it just about anything you take and utilize like i'm i'm loyal to some brands i love the crap out of them i'll buy just about anything they do you see that in the apple brand a lot yeah people are incredibly loyal to that brand even though it's good very expensive they just put out i think one of the most expensive phones and people like i'll buy it and you know i know people they buy they buy every new apple every year i i don't know they must be richer than i am um there's there's ones that stand in line yeah they stand in line for hours to buy it and uh well i have a lot of money i'm not standing in line for anything and uh

i'm an android fan anyway but uh uh but no the the brand loyalty that's out there and the feeling you get you know i i recently went out to a couple weeks ago i wanted to dinner to this beautiful uh place on the water at a beautiful lake here in utah and i can't think of many places that are here in utah that are on the lake. You know, you can sit right next to the water and sit out and enjoy the scenery of a beautiful lake and canyon and then get a fine food. You know, usually you can get a burger or something at most joints. But it's fine food, but the service was atrocious.

I mean, it was just, it was just atrocious. Like one of the things I asked for was a side of fries. They totally forgot about it. And then I asked other people and I just had a horrible experience. Well, the food was good. The ambience was wonderful. So I wrote them a note, uh, and said, you know, you really need to train your servers and you need to get it right. Cause this is stupid. In fact, I quit the dessert and waved off getting dessert and went up to Sundance and got my dessert, ski resort. And then I just came back over the weekend because I'm trying to enjoy the ambience before it's gone.

So I'm like, fuck it, if the service sucks, at least get this ambience. It's getting cold here in winter winter and they actually listened to my advice and they totally changed my experience to where uh this they they got some professional waiter in there uh he knew exactly what he was doing they had people rotating through the table checking on stuff making sure your drink was full you know that, all that sort of good stuff. And I had a great experience, just an awesome experience. And so I bring that up because it's interesting to see the dichotomy that it was, and I won't get into the details, but it was just such a horrible service and horrible experience in the one hand.

And then in the same frame or atmosphere, having a totally different experience and make me emotionally love the brand and, uh, and, and change. And you're right. It comes down to that feeling.

If I feel good and I have a great experience, but it's gotta be like the full thing. You can't, I see, I seem to see a lot of brands nowadays that are like, well, we gave you great products or services. Shit.

And you're like, I, you know, you don't understand. It's not giving me the full feels, if you will. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. No, absolutely. I mean, you can have the greatest product,

but if you don't know how to actually use it or if there's a problem with it and you can't fix it, it's useless. Yep. Right? Yeah. And you've actually,

the damage to the reputation of what you're going to talk about because what you're going to sit there and go oh that was a horrible experience i'm not going to share that with anybody that's the first thing you're going to share but you're also going to share the most the best experience you've had too definitely i mean i i never shut up about stuff that i love like my people on facebook are like he's talking about that that same company again what an idiot well instagram look at instagram today i mean that is a marketing dream to be able to have you know your customers your customers, your loyal customers, your advocates out there pushing your product every day. That's all free. Yeah. It's all free. Yeah. Like, I think that's why I'm going to have my Facebook people think I'm an idiot. Cause I'm like,

you should really be getting paid for that, man. Um, you, you love it. I mean, there's, there's certain products I can't live without in, the reputation of their um domain is so important to me um now let me ask you this you brought up instagram it seems like everybody now has become a brand in themselves obviously the chris fosh show is a brand but we we were like sitting out and going we're going to be a brand we're just like i don't know this idiot's got something to say so we'll give him a mic. And we couldn't figure out what to call it. We're just like, call it after the idiot with the mic. So that's how the Chris Voss show got started. But that and probably some narcissism or something, I don't know. Clearly people have seen that over 15 years, my dark triad traits.

But basically, you see this on Instagram. Everyone's a brand. Everyone's brand building. Women are really this on Instagram. Everyone's a brand. Everyone's brand building. Women are really big on Instagram brand building. You see a lot of sexual nature being sold over there, hotness, even in business brands. I'll see that translate into LinkedIn, et cetera, et cetera. But everyone's a brand now. You're a brand. I'm a brand.

We're a speaker. We're authors. We're podcasters. know all that all that sort of stuff and then we have to establish the whole brand matrix of you know whatever that looks like on the website etc etc is it is that is that a is that a true analysis am i reading the tea leaves correctly yeah i i i think we're we've used the term brand very loosely when we talk about personal branding i i the example i used of queen elizabeth ii is is true i mean oprah winfrey is a brand martha stewart is a brand I a brand? I'd like to think I'm not. And the reason I don't want to be a brand is I'm bigger than a brand. In essence, I have lots of different interests. I'm working on a book that's a cookbook. I'm working on another book that is a photo book, a journalistic kind of photo book.

And when you're a brand, you have to be something to somebody. You're solving a problem. And are you entertaining? Famous people become brands. They actually start with being famous and then they actually take it and they commercialize it by becoming a brand but when you become a brand you get into trouble because particularly famous people they're more than just what their one thing is that they're they're promoting or what they're doing so you

know if you want to go into one genre singer for example and you say oh you know what i don't want to be a country singer anymore i'm going to go do this and i can tell you your your your audience is going to say no no we want you to be a country we don't want you to be that over there so so you you give up you give up. You give up your freedom. Oprah Winfrey always said, like she said, I'm not a brand. I do not want to be a brand. Until one day she realized that one of the key attributes of being a brand is being consistent. And that's why it's one of my Cs. If you're consistent always, and she has always been very consistent, she finally realized that, yes, I guess I am a brand.

Well, obviously she is because her face is all over the place. And anything she touches turns to gold as well. But you give up. So if you're a person that you're selling yourself, if you're a consultant or your service that you're giving to others and solving their problems, then yeah, you probably have to be a brand. Yeah. But I wouldn't over-engineer it because branding is really complex. Yeah. is really oh it's really complex yeah and well i i would let me debate you on that and push back on a little bit that you that you were not a brand uh you know oprah does a lot of things and i i get your i get your context about how you know if you're a country singer you know you may be locked in like you know one of my favorite one of my favorite uh a good example is uh

this is going to date me in the 80s alda nova uh he put out two hard rock pseudo almost heavy metal but really hard rock hard hitting uh albums and somehow he just was like hey i want to go mainstream i don't want to i want to i don't want this niche. I want to be on all the FM radios, which he kind of was. But he wanted to go big. And so he put out a third album that he tried to, he stepped out of that whole thing. And people like me in his audience, I especially remember it, go, what the fuck did you just do?

But there are people too that can transcend brands like i think taylor swift has put out some makeup or some perfume i'm not a swifty so i i think i just heard this a little bit you know she's she's been able to do things uh so is oprah um who's in who's a country star that, uh, Dolly Parton, like she just put out a heavy metal album. I think people buy anything she does, but people, but people, my argument for this debate is people buy you and you are the brand.

And so people will say to me, you know what, Chris, I, I don't like some of the things you say, or sometimes you're controversial or sometimes you just, I'm not really controversial. I challenge what people will think. I'm the out of the box guy i'm the red pill guy so i'm i'm going

to try and not go with everything all the time and go okay well we're all marching this way i'm going to be like the guy who goes why the fuck are we marching this way and people are like hey you're out of line it's like that's that's what i do but people know that's my brand and they know i'm going to be trying to be honest integrity truthful what you say consistency now and people like me and they just want to go they just go hey i want to see what this idiot boy is going to do because he always is up to something interesting and i think people that might follow you as your brand or what i i'm accusing you being a brand uh is is that they like you and your character and your consistency and they don't care if you do a book or you do a cookbook or whatever it is they're just like i like this guy i like his morals his ethics his his uh his

professionalism his you know whatever it is that appeals to them and they're going to follow you to the ends of the earth i don't know that's my argument no i i don them, and they're going to follow you to the ends of the earth. I don't know. That's my argument. No, I don't disagree. I'm not going to argue on that in the sense of your values because we all have our values. And that's your backstop, right? That's where your foundation will be.

But I'm not sure it's really that important just for an everyday person to be on instagram i mean we can all be on instagram and we can be famous and we can be liked but i don't know if you need a logo you need a publicist you need you need to have you know a website you need to have all the different things that you would normally have as a brand. I think people have kind of thought of becoming a brand and that's their whole positioning. There's a great quote and I don't know where it came from but I've heard

it a couple of times. Brands want to become more human. Humans want to become more like brands. There you go. There you go. And we can go down, I mean, if we want to, we can talk about social media, its whole positioning wants us to be brands so that that's content for them. They want us to be always out there promoting ourselves. I mean, again, I don't know if it's true or not. That seems somewhat dark, but I don't know if we have to be all brands.

Do we have to be ourselves? Yes. Do we have to be true to ourselves? Absolutely to be ourselves yes yeah you know do we have to be true to ourselves absolutely but do i need a logo do i need do i need to be on social and all the channels do i need to have a website do i need to do a blog do i need to do a podcast every day it's you know i don't know i think a good resume is is probably the best thing for most people there you go but even like linkedin being on linkedin how you present yourself when we talk to that's right the things but i get your point do we have to be a brand no we can just be freaking human beings and just kind of walk around

and just be like you know i'm gonna live my best life um but it seems like um social media in this dark pandora's box that's been opened has kind of turned everybody into some sort of branding thing well you know everybody's a blogger everybody's got to have some sort of opinion on some stupid thing today you know go on to facebook you know whether it's whether it's telling me what you ate for breakfast and posting a picture of it you're you're framing a brand i think but you're right we not everybody has to do it, but it seems like everyone's doing it, just like you said. Yeah.

And we're judging each other so drastically. Yeah. All of this, what is really evidence, right? Mm-hmm. That doesn't disappear. Yeah. And even if people aren't communicating a brand, I've seen people basically communicate, like, it, it, uh, you know, and even if people aren't like communicating a brand, I've seen people, uh, basically communicate, you know, like you say, consistency, I think is what I keep coming back to is. And when you see people break out of their consistency and do something that's the, the, uh, alternate of the brand or the opposite of their brand like you're like wow i kind of trusted you

and you're you're really that person i see you now uh and i don't know that i don't know that i really want to buy it because you basically you know like you see a lot of hypocrisy um do you want to talk about brand hypocrisy do we want to wander into that and no and no okay we'll just leave that off the resume uh one thing you talk about in the book, because that's, I mean, that's a whole different thing we can get into about brand hypocrisy and how, you know, not walking your brand. That's a whole other show. You mentioned the book or you talk about the book. Are women better brand builders? Women consume over 75% of brands.

I think they control, what is it, 95 or 90% of household spending. So are women brand builders? So what I've found, and again, going back to the 20 branding queens, is women are more empathetic and empathy is really important when you're building a brand. If you want those feelings of being connected to a brand. Right. Yeah. So that's a starting point.

And the other part is, is they do understand other women. And no surprise, when you listed a lot of these brands, they are targeted to women so i mean it was natural for them to to communicate and to solve a problem but they had i mean we talked a bit about spanx uh with sarah blakely she had a problem you know she had a problem and she solved it and she built a brand there's yeah there's no guy coming up with spanks like we just we're just like what we have holy underwear we've been wearing for 15 years uh what was spanks let me tell you a side story here because when she was trying to get a um uh prototype so she went to all of the there's actually all in north north car I think it's North Carolina, where all of the hosiery manufacturers are.

And she went, and she was at the time, she was a salesperson. She was a very good salesperson. She actually was, she trained people because she was so good. And she thought, okay, I'll be able to talk my way into one of these manufacturers to get them to do a prototype. And she came back, failed. Not one of them said, I ain't interested. But a week later, she gets a call from one of them. And he says, hey, I've reconsidered.

I'm willing to help you. And she goes, why? And he goes, I was I've reconsidered. I'm willing to help you. And she goes, why? And he goes, I was telling my daughters at dinner, and they said, dad, you're crazy. Call her. Wow. You know, and her story reminds me of the story of, I don't know how much of it is true or whatnot,

but basically back in the day, bras were made by men and designed by men who have no idea what what it's like to wear a bra and the hosiery is same thing the hosiery what she what she discovered was they had this um cutout template of the different sizes and of course they're just going lengthwise there's no width um dimension attached to this so it was pretty archaic in the sense of there's like four sizes well we know there's not four sizes of people out there there's not i'm one of them. That's several sizes. So, so getting back to it, they, they had this ability to understand their target audience very well. They wanted to solve a problem.

That's what brands do. They solve problems. There you go. Uh, one of my, one of my friends, uh, Kara Golden, uh, she's the founder and CEO of Hint Water. She went into this where, you know, she wanted to drink something healthy and something that maybe had some fruit in it, but, you know, still like water, but, you know, more enjoyable than just plain old water, but also healthy for you. And, you know, she was addressing a market where it was, you know, Coke and Pepsi and, hey, would you like five pounds of sugar with your drink there? You know, that sort of thing. And, you know, all the ingredients you can't really read.

And so she come up with, tried to do different ways to build a brand that had, that was talking about water. And, you know, this was something that she wanted as a woman, you know, to drink healthy and, you know, lose weight and, and, you know, just, just live your best life and not be drinking, you know, five pounds of, of sugar in every, in everything, or, you know, drinking diet cola that's got rat poison in it. You know, that sort of thing. And so, and so she created that, but you're right. Women are probably better at, like I said, PR agents and other things because they can connect that emotion. And they can take and put it into the language. They put it into the marketing.

Put it into the PR spin. And their emotion. Because, you know, they're very emotional based. And so they can, they're more connected to their feelings. We're men, you know. I mean, we have feelings, but, you know, we're mostly stoic by nature. So we're just like, whatever. There's another really important element to this, and that's listening.

Listening to your customers. I remember, you know, I will build it and they will come. Right? I will build it and they will come. That's a male approach to marketing or to building a product. Ford, I'm going to give you, you can choose whatever color as long as it's black. The IBM way. Right?

So no, they understood who they were communicating with. And, yeah, they listened. They didn't know. But here's the other interesting thing. None of these women had any formal education to build a brand. They were not, how do you become an entrepreneur? You just do it, right? Just do it.

And they understood that they knew nothing and that's probably the best way to go in because you learn and you learn from others you listen you you surround yourself with good people nothing's worse than if you think you know everything and you're going to solve it all because you're going to eventually run into a a situation that you can't uh and you know you don't have anybody else around to help you because you know everything. So why would anyone else want to help you? So they actually started, absolutely, they still had an understanding of where they were going because most of them, people said you were crazy. It's not going to work. And they had to have that persistence

and that belief in themselves. But at the same time, they learned from others all the way through the journey. And they had to learn about marketing. They had to learn about production, distribution. They had to learn about employees. They were continuous learners. I mean, look at Martha Stewart today. She has reinvented herself every couple of years.

Yeah. I'm just thinking of pies right now. I'm so hungry. Just Martha Stewart. I'm thinking of her pies right now. Anything she cooks, she's got such a great personality too. And it's always so warm and wonderful. And you just want her to be your mom or grandma where you're just like,

mom, are you making me a sandwich? And she, you know, especially when she makes desserts. Oh, my God. All right. We need to get off this because clearly Chris is on his intermittent fasting thing with the food. You know, I saw one other cool female brand that I saw that was really unique was, you know, you talked about the black colors of the, you know,

there was the IBM man and, of course course the Fords and probably the Edsel. A woman probably should have got involved with designing that because that thing was ugly as hell. But one thing I saw, it was a great story where a woman, in the proliferation of where more women are single now than ever. In fact, Morgan Stanley says by 2030, 40, what is it? 45% of women between childbearing age 25 to 44 will be single um that they don't have you know a man around the house to help do uh you know the honeydews you know fix stuff with the tools and stuff and so she went down to home depot and wherever i don't know if it's home depot but you know the store and none of the tools

appealed to her right and she's like you know these the store and none of the tools appealed to her. Right. And she's like, you know, these are all masculine looking tools and colors and tools. And so she said, well, you know, there, I think I see a lane here for, for an innovation. And so she came up with a tool line that was more marketed towards women. Women have smaller hands than men. So, you know, they don't have, you know, how they grip the tools is important.

And then she made them all pink, which I thought was brilliant. And, and, and so now, you know, she's hit that lane where, you know, she can make these tools that women will use around the house and stuff that is more related to that. And we've seen the proliferation, you know, we joked about the, the black colors, you know, the old IBM guy where everyone had to wear a black suit and tie to the, to the IBM.

Uh, you know, we've seen the proliferations, everything's got 50 million shades of color now, you know, it used to be when I was growing up, it seemed like there was, I don't know, that ugly olive green thing that your refrigerator was and the ugly orange and the red shag carpet or that dog poop colored shag carpet, you know. And now everything comes in 50 million colors. So God bless it. It's definitely improved. That's diversity. There you go.

Diversity of colors and, you know, everyone's got different flavors choices personalities and you can find what emotionally identifies with with you i mean i've had i've had employees come to work in my office i'm like hey can i paint my office and i'm like no and they're like it just doesn't make me feel well and i'm like i'm not paying you to feel well i'm paying you to do your job but then i finally had to relent and go okay fine if it makes you happy you can paint your office so have you ever seen a pink cadillac yep and when you see a pink cadillac what do you think i think they work for that uh that one multi-level marketing organization mary k mary k cosmetic there you go she's one of the ladies in in the in the book so she did exactly similar to

your story she took the color pink and she owned it uh as one of her colors and that was her signature color but brilliant to get cadillacs painted pink because they didn't come in pink uh and she would be out there giving these away or giving leases, I think, in some cases to some of the sales, the top salespeople. And that was a successful person. Oh, yeah. When you saw the car, you knew that there was a successful Mary Kay salesperson. And I've never been to a Mary Kay thing. I've never been associated with the brand.

I've never used the product at all. I just know that from the public forum of seeing those cars and being like why are these pink cars around and of course what an iconic sort of um success image you know where you're saying hey this person is successful they've earned this and and done well and you can too if you want to you know sell well for mary k and just brilliant from those sort of marketing levels. So I've got another story, a color story. So this is Olive Ann Beach.

So beach aircraft. They're small planes. They're still flying today out there. They've since been bought out by another company. I'm not sure who owns them now, but they're still flying. These are beautiful little planes and when she her husband passed away she took over the business. It became an international business before she sold it and she retired. But she had what they called the beach blue, and she had this, it was her favorite color.

And so she had had interiors of a lot of these planes, and they were very high-end planes. Executives would fly on these planes. Doctors, lawyers would actually fly them themselves, but there were also the others that were you would be you would have your own pilot and so she had this this blue color uh in her plane and she had logos and so when uh cadillac because she used to buy cadillac every every couple of years and she would get them to paint it her beach blue color because it was her favorite color. Anyways, one day she got an order from Cadillac, I think about 10 planes or something.

And she was asked, they had asked in the specifications that they had to remove all of the beach logos off the plane. Now, there's beach logos all over. Dials have beach logos on them. There was all over the plane, there was all of these different logos. They had to remove them for the 10 planes that they bought. So the next time she went to get her Cadillac painted in a brand new color, she said, and I'd like all the Cadillac logos please removed from my Cadillac. Wow.

Wow. Great story. That's interesting. Yeah. Branding is everything when it comes down to it. So as we go out, this has been a great discussion, Kim. As we go out, give us your final thoughts, final pitch on the book to readers out there to pick it up. So it's a really easy read book. If you're an entrepreneur, I think any entrepreneur would gain knowledge from reading this. Not only will they gain not only knowledge, but they'll actually gain

enthusiasm of learning from how these other women started actually from ground zero. And they built these iconic brands. And they, sure, did everything work? No, but they learned and they actually went in with an open mind. So these are short stories. There's 20 of them. As I said, you could probably read one each night before you go to bed if you've got that time. And you'll also learn about branding as well. But I think if you are thinking about becoming an entrepreneur, after you read these 20 stories, I think you'll be inspired to want to be. There you go. And like I say, women are the driving force of purchasing. I mean, they really are. Women control or influence 85%

of consumer spending in the United States, includes 91% of new home purchases. I learned that as a realtor, you do not sell the man, you sell the woman. The woman makes the decision on buying the home. The man just has to pay for it uh women's purchasing power ranges from 5 trillion to 15 trillion annually uh and their emphasis has grown as they've gained economic power like the morgan stanley i cited earlier uh the reason morgan stanley did that report was to tell people hey uh women spending more money on consumer goods and stuff is just going to keep increasing. And, um, you need to bring products to market that, uh, the services of market that, that bear that sort of thing. And, uh, so yeah, if you're an entrepreneur, this is a really important thing to understand

because, you know, most times, uh, in a household, a woman is control of the consumer spending. She's the one buying on Amazon. She's the one that going to the store still usually buying groceries, clothing. You know, she's even sometimes buying the stuff for men, targeted to men, you know, because I've had plenty of girlfriends say, hey, I bought this for you. Wear this. And I'm like, no. So there's that.

Even women's economic influence increased with age. Women 50 and older reported to control $15 trillion of all spending. So, yeah, you definitely want to market to the purse strings. I'll give you just another stat, though, that's somewhat depressing. First of all, entrepreneurs, it's about 50-50. Women entrepreneurs out there as men entrepreneurs. But when you look at venture capital, I've got a figure from 2021, 2%. 2% goes to women startups out there. It's a grounding error.

Yeah. So there's still work to be done to try and level the playing field for allowing them to get ahead and to build brands. Because today, you need to get that depth very quickly, particularly if it's a digital platform. You need investment dollars to get that platform up and running and get the base that you need quickly. There you go. There you go. Well, Silicon Valley has gotten some crap for that. And I know they've tried to balance it or they say they're trying to balance it. I don't know. I'm not in Silicon Valley, so it's not my problem.

But yeah, there's definitely some interest there. But yeah, as a business, you know, I would love to be able to sell women's brands to women. They're so loyal to them. It's incredible. Between makeup and perfume and all the things they buy. And they're usually incredibly brand loyal, I think, aren't they? It seems to me they are. Yes.

I mean, they love those purses and those shoes is Christian Dion. I, you know, I don't even understand at all. I'm an alpha man. I don't, I'm still wearing the same underwear from 10 years ago and the same shorts from 10 years ago. And until they, until they fall off me in public and I'm like, I should probably start wearing these, uh, or the judge says, so, uh, I'm, I'm still just doing my thing, but I'm happy.

And that's what matters. Thank you very much, Kim, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. It's been super insightful and everyone should pick up your book. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebspace. Sure. It's rozdeba, R-O-Z-D-E-B-A, at.com. There you go.

And you can also find me on LinkedIn too. Thanks for this fun conversation. We really appreciate it. I enjoyed it. Thank you. There you go. Thanks to also find me on LinkedIn too. Thanks for this fun conversation. We really appreciate it. I enjoyed it. Thank you. There you go. Thanks to our audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss,

youtube.com, Fortress Chris Foss, linkedin.com, Fortress Chris Foss, and Chris Foss1 or else. I don't know. It just sounded funny at the time. It's a callback joke. Thanks for tuning in, folks. Be good to each other.

Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time.