Episode 288: How to Build a Personal Brand People Actually Trust | Goldie Chan | Branding Expert, Writer & Speaker
Goldie Chan is a branding expert, writer, keynote speaker, and founder of Warm Robots Agency. Known as the “Oprah of LinkedIn,” she joins Kara for a rich conversation on personal branding, introverted leadership, creativity in business, and what it takes to build an authentic digital presence. They explore everything from standing out in saturated spaces to surviving cancer, setting boundaries, and embracing being ‘uncool’ online. Goldie shares lessons from launching her agency, her LinkedIn Top Voice journey, and the power of branding for introverts. If you're thinking about how to show up, grow your platform, or build influence with purpose, this one’s for you.
“I’m a big fan of vouching for others behind closed doors. Doing so in a room full of powerful people can change lives. ”
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Follow along using the Transcript
Chapters:
(00:00:04) - Introduction to Goldie Chan and Her Journey
(00:00:51) - Navigating Cancer and Business Challenges
(00:02:26) - Finding Balance and Setting Boundaries
(00:06:59) - The Birth of Warm Robots Agency
(00:11:49) - Building Genuine Brand-Audience Relationships
(00:28:25) - Personal Branding for Introverts
(00:42:51) - Rapid Fire Questions and Conclusion
So many people who are at that top tier in corporate who are building and making and doing and so many of them just throw themselves towards burnout because they're creative and they're excited. They're interested and they want to do things. And I think so many people need more breaks where they're fully offline.
That's Goldie Chan. I'm Kara Duffy, and this is the Powerful Ladies Podcast.
Welcome to the Powerful Ladies Podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited that you're here today. I have so many questions for you because you are such a multifaceted, interesting, doing so many things person. Before we dive in, let's tell everyone your name, where you are in the world, and let's list a few of the incredible things you're doing.
So hi everyone. I'm Goldie Chan. I am currently located in Los Angeles, California. You caught me Right after a trip, I just did the Santa Fe in Nashville, so I'm happy to be back home for a little bit before heading out again. In terms of what I'm doing, so I am a LinkedIn Top Voice. I am an ex senior contributor for Forbes. I run an award winning, branding and marketing agency. I am currently an author on the way to my first book that's coming out at the end of 2025 on personal branding for introverts. In addition, I am also a global keynote speaker, which is why I am buffing all over. the world and I am a cancer survivor.
And you just had a birthday and a big cancer recovery celebration. So how many, how many years have, has you been in post diagnosis now?
Oh gosh. So I got diagnosed in 2022 and it's now 2024. And I spent most of 2022, 2023 going through chemotherapy and going through treatment. And now I'm doing very well.
light treatment to keep me cancer free. So it's been an, it's been an interesting and very big and very life changing journey.
Yeah. I think anyone who is thinking about how you're doing all of these things and your brand personality and running a business When you are the entrepreneur, you don't have always backup support.
You don't have PTO. You don't have the same sick leave that other people get when you got that day, were you freaking out when you got the diagnosis, obviously about your health and your personal wellbeing, but were you, how did you, I would immediately jump to, how do I run my business and fight this with everything I have.
Right? So I think there were. And it's funny because I have, I call her my cancer bestie. I have a friend who she never stopped working. So she and I got diagnosed around the same time. She never stopped working. She was an executive at a large tech company. And she, Essentially what would be on zoom calls, leading zoom calls with a trash can next to her.
And she would be like, excuse me, just you know, vomit a little in the trash can. When I got diagnosed, I obviously had a lot of emotional things to deal with. A lot of considerations. I folded up shop completely because I knew what I needed to do was focus on my health. I obviously had not planned that at all.
I wasn't excited about doing it, but to me, it felt like the best thing to do at the time. And so I told all of my clients, all my projects, if it can't wrap up in a month, I can't do it. And I'm also going to hand you off to other people who I know are great and brilliant. So I folded up my agency and all of my projects within the course of 30 days, which was wild.
And then. I immediately started treatment and I'm, I'm glad I did because I certainly in the throes of chemotherapy and radiation and surgery, I didn't have the energy or mental capability to do very serious business projects or lead my team at my agency. So. It was a really hard decision, but it also felt like it was both a hard and really simple decision, if that makes sense, to Stop at a time when I knew I needed to stop for myself, and I don't regret that at all.
I think I stopped. It was an incredibly difficult thing. I think it would have been way more tough if I had been working the same 8 to 10 hour days. If I had been trying to still travel, if, if any of those things had, you know been in place. I think it would have been so much harder on me. So I essentially took six months off of work and I had been really just going full force, complete stop, took six months off, didn't work at all.
And I only very lightly restarted in January of 2023. And that was also its own thing of getting back into it, you know, getting back into trying to do work period, getting back into telling people I'm available to do work. Do you have anything for me? And then also having a little bit of what do I want to do?
Yeah. Well, it puts everything into a whole new perspective. And, you know, so many people are trying to find that balance and scale back and work and use their time in what really matters to them because it's so easy to get sucked into the wheel that we already know. Have you found yourself stepping into new boundaries or is it easier to say no thank you and delete things now than it used to be?
I think I used to have definitely more of a lack mindset, more of a, you know, if I don't do this now, it's never going to come across again. And now I think it's very clear to me, usually when I want to work with someone or brand and when I don't, and so it definitely is a lot easier for me now to say no to opportunities, either with my agency or through myself that I'm not as interested in anymore, and they're no longer aligned.
And I don't feel as much the need to say yes to every, every single thing that comes across my plate.
I'm going to go back to starting warm robots, which is your branding agency. Yeah. Where did that come from? How did you choose to make the leap and go all in?
So it's funny. I say that I had a fake agency before I had a real agency. So, which some people who are listening to this might, might understand it, might sympathize with. So I, when I was starting on LinkedIn, it's very interesting. In 2017, I was in between jobs. So I just let left a head of marketing position, which is my entire career had been behind the scenes. I had been really just somebody who was really managing all those marketing and branding teams internally.
And, and I took a month off. I just was burned out. We've all been there. I took a month off and I said, I'm going to take a month off and then I'm going to find a new job. And in that month off, I started making videos on ClinkedIn. And because I was making videos on LinkedIn, I essentially over the course of three to four months, I blew up.
But also during that time, people saw that I existed and I was talking about branding and marketing. So I started getting clients and I thought I should have an agency for this. So, so I started warm robots. And then, you know, I got the paperwork done a little bit after I started using the name Worm Robot, so it was, it was a little funny to kind of catch up with the fact that I had an agency before I had an agency, that people wanted to hire my agency that didn't exist people wanted to hire me to work with, which is the start of Worm Robots, and Worm Robots itself is, because I'm a huge nerd, is actually a reference to Battlestar Galactica and Android human Noida robots.
So I saw that you were speaking at Comic Con recently. So did that just make your nerd heart explode? Like, could you, were you like, this is exactly what we've been doing all of this work for?
Yes. So I spoke at, oh gosh, I actually spoke, I think I was on three different things at Comic Con. So it was. It was just a very busy time for me.
I'm very thankful to be speaking there. One of the other things that I do also on the side is I'm an Archie Comics writer. So I was there speaking about not only running my own business, but also writing for Archie Comics, which is in and of itself a really interesting and fun thing. But yes, I I was very happy and thankful to be speaking at San Diego Comic Con.
It's something that I've gone to as a fan for so many years. So it's very cool to have this year be a year where I'm, I was speaking there.
There's so much power today in San Diego. You know, what you can learn online, and there's been such a democratization of business and knowledge and the things you need to make whatever idea you have come to life.
You have thrived in this environment of sharing what you know and connecting with people. And I love that your brand started on accident, the agency, because I think so often people have an idea. They, they. Make it a business before it's kind of birthed itself, if that makes sense. Yes. And like, start it as a project.
Like, let's take some of the pressure off. Like, let's, filing papers should not be your first step. Let's make sure someone cares. Like, let's make sure things are flushed out. And I think sometimes people go right into the acting like, oh, let's do business. Like, oh, we bought a space and we have filing cabinets and.
Oh gosh. Yeah. Whenever I hear that, I get a little nervous. Unless somebody is, of course. They already have done a bunch of other businesses, so they know that it's a proven entity. They can establish a business. But when folks go straight into, say, renting physical spaces or investing tens of thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars into an idea or property, That really hasn't been proven or there's no, especially business that hasn't been proven and maybe they don't have the right backing yet.
That always makes me a little bit nervous. It's, I think it's always nice to do a little bit of a trial run before you invest so much money. I think there's so much you can do these days. That you can do from smaller rented spaces that you can do, even if you are thinking about, say, creating content to start, that you don't need a content studio that you can do so much on your, on your mobile device, right?
Yeah. So, there's so much you can do.
What do you think most brands are missing when it comes to really building a relationship with their audience?
I think what a lot of brands are missing in terms of building the right audience and building that, that conversation is exactly that word is conversation.
I think a lot of brands skip out on conversation and instilled said that they they take their little speaker, their bull horn and they're yelling. In a unilateral direction at their audience, as opposed to having a conversation talking back and forth using active listening discovering what it is that their audience and or potential customers really want to be hearing, want to be seeing, et cetera.
When you look at what you're doing now, and we go back to eight year old you, is she surprised that this is your life today? Or is she like, yep, we knew it. This is what we've been working on the whole time.
I think eight year old me would be surprised. I think a lot of the things that I'm working in didn't exist when I was eight years old or like didn't exist as a, as.
As a fully fleshed out industry the way it is now. So I think there would be a lot that eight year old me would be really surprised about. I mean, I feel like every single day we have a new social media app, or we have a new platform, or we have new this And it's, it's all very, it all moves so fast. I think what eight year old me would not be surprised about is the fact that I'm still teaching today.
I do quite a few courses on LinkedIn learning and I, I jump in and I teach and mentor whenever I can. And I think that's the one thing that eight year old me would not at all be surprised about. I think eight year old me would be over the moon that I write comics and I do other this other nerdy stuff.
And, and I feel like, I feel like me running a business would not necessarily be very surprising to me as a young person, to be totally honest.
There's been a lot of things you've been talking about picking a brand color. You for a very long time have had a brand hair color. How has that been intentional and how has it changed your connection with people and ability for people to find you?
So I think it's so funny that I have now a color that's associated with me especially since I used to go through a rainbow of hair colors. So I've had. red, I've had peach, I've had every shade between brown and black and silver and blonde. I've had just a multitude of colors and it's really amusing to me that I think I was, I was on blue and then I did green and then I blew up on LinkedIn.
And when I blew up on LinkedIn, people started using the green heart emoji to denote me on the platform and all of these very amazing personal brand things that I was just very surprised by. It's definitely changed how people are able to say, Oh, it's you, you're the one with the green hair. And it almost makes it easier to also start conversations with other people.
It makes it easier to say, okay, this is Oh, this is Goldie. Who's Goldie? Goldie's the one with the green hair. And it's funny because it seems simple and it seems reductive, but it's actually kind of nice that people are able to find me in a crowd, so to speak. So when I used to have more of the lime green, tennis ball green hair, as I call it it was funny because I would literally be, I remember I was at the Adobe Max, one of the Adobe conferences.
And I was sitting in a dark audience and I happened to use a hair dye that also glows in the dark. And literally somebody was coming back from the restroom and they're trying to find the group of us in the crowd. And they found me from the back of my head, because I was a little glowing eight ball, just like a little glowing tennis ball that they could navigate at this conference and find me.
And I, and I've had people, Stop me at Disneyland. I've had people I remember I was in the tube in London and somebody tapped me on my shoulder and they're like Bowlby and it was wild to me that people find me all the time because of my hair color and I kind of like it. I think it's, it's fun. I think, I think it's silly that people, people can find me.
And also I think out of all the colors that I had, what's really great is green actually is my favorite color. So it is fun that it happened to land on when I had green or when I have green, it's very dark teal green right now. When I have. Green hair color that people associate my favorite color with me
When you stand out among so many other people who are sharing knowledge in the same space because this is a battle I have with my Marketing and branding team all the time.
I'm like guys do not like me look like a regular coach, please You're killing me like it's I know that those things work But like we can't copy paste what other people are doing and I know so much of your You Branding and strategy when you're working with people, it's like pulling out what makes them the unicorn that they are.
And that's a word I use. I have the unicorn tattoo. I used to put a unicorn on my resume and CV and people are like, why are you doing that? That's so immature. I'm like. They might not remember my name, but they'll be like, what was the one with the unicorn on it? Because it, it doesn't, like, I have to surrender.
I don't care. It's not about who I know. It's about who knows me. And I think that's what your hair points out. Like, look, all these people actually know me and which allows so many other opportunities. How do you, maybe not how do you, but like when you're looking at a brand or even a thought leader you're working with, how are you helping them to really understand what their magic is?
Cause I feel sometimes it's so far away from how they're trying to pitch themselves. How do you get them back on course with, this is really your secret sauce.
So I always start with one point and I will, I will give this to you, to your audience, anybody who's listening to this, please start with this.
This is the point I actually start with. So I do a, I do a three keywords exercise. And so my three keywords exercise that I always start with is I like to think about hard keywords, which are nouns and our, our jobs are, for example, for me, it might be writer, it might be marketer, it might be speaker. And then I think of soft keywords, which are ways to describe someone.
So. I'm going to do only positive ones. So we might have warm thoughtful, inspiring, um, interesting, right? So there's all these great words you can do on the soft side and also the hard side. And what I do with my clients is I have them start with creating a list themselves of 20 to 30 words on either side of either soft keywords or hard keywords.
And then going through that list and you only get to pick three and you have to pick one from at least each column. So you have to have at least one, one job title or one hard adjective or hard noun that you would like to be known for. And then two soft adjectives that you'd like to be known for. And the reason why I have people do this exercise is because if you ask them just to come up with three, they'll do the first three that come to their mind.
But as they go down the list, and I've, I actually once had a client do 50 words for each, which they were very upset with me for, but when you do that many, you start to come up with really interesting ways to describe yourself. You start to explore things that you maybe have not thought about telling people publicly, because you're so used to being known as say, for example, a product manager.
Yeah, right. You're so used to being known as, as a very specific role or type of person. And the more you go down this list, this mental activity that you do yourself, which is great introspection. The more you go down that list and the more you're thoughtful about yourself, the more you can dig out and find some of those really interesting tidbits.
that before you just left buried because people wanted to know those, those immediate hits, right? I call it like the best hits. It's like, if you're going to go listen to, I don't know, Elton John, you want to hear, you want to hear his best hits. So I think it's helpful to go beyond the best hits and think about really critically, is there something else that you really have been wanting to be known for, but you haven't expressed that.
I like that wanting to be known for a component because. So often I think a lot of brands and businesses rush their messaging,
right?
They're like, oh what just get it out there. We need to start selling and there's such a power of like really Diving deeper like doing the 50 words sitting on it like asking the people who really know you we're such bad Mirrors to ourselves that and we leave our magic on the table all the time, I think, and you had done a post or a video about in the direction of like, we don't want customers.
We want fans. We want like the real relationships. We want to have like just our specific people because so often everyone's like, Oh, everyone can buy my shoes. And I'm like, You didn't make it for everybody.
I think in a best case scenario, right, and I will use that shoe example because I think that's great, is that your shoes become very popular with an incredibly niche audience, a very segmented, targeted audience.
But then the general population, and I will give you a great example of this, crocs. With crocs, there was one that was one particular croc, I remember it came out a few years ago, was literally a grassy croc. It had fake astroturf. became incredibly popular with a specific subset of fashionistas and then expanded out to the general public where people wanted to use and have those shoes.
Same thing with Nike basketball shoes, you had these shoes that were really popular with a very specific sports demographic and then that expanded out to the general public. So I think that there are so many interesting examples where if you niche down that and I agree with you completely if you niche down first with your audience, you clearly define them.
You know who you're trying to sell to instead of trying to sell to everyone. That's so much easier and better. And at the end of the day, because you're, you're so successful with the niche audience, it might expand the influence of your brand. So it becomes popular with the general audience.
I'm so glad you mentioned that because people do get so afraid.
They're like, Oh, we're limiting our ability to sell and have these different markets and like, just be strong, build a foundation with one first. Because once you have a foundation, you have so much more power to be influential and do a AstroTurf croc if you want to, or you can play with other communities to like get different exposure and PR and things like that.
But every brand I've ever worked for that was struggling. It was because they had stopped focusing on their core audience and started caring about money and like width instead of depth.
I think it's a great way to say it. Width instead of depth.
So many of my clients are losing their mind because what we feel is modern digital marketing Is changing so often that they're kind of just throwing their hands up and be like, screw it.
I'm just going to go back to emails and I'm not going to do anything on any social platform because every time I try and I get a routine, it changes. Obviously that's not my opinion, but how, like for all those people who want to be more present on marketing, want to be showing their brand, how do you encourage them to balance how rapidly it's changing?
the balancing of following trends and being authentic to the stories that they're telling.
Yeah, I think it really depends on the person and their style. So one thing that, that I personally don't do is I'm not usually a trend follower. And this is going to sound so cheesy. So forgive me, everyone who's listening, but I'm a trend creator.
I like to either create a trend and be before something is cool. I like to be uncool online. And I think the perk of being uncool online is. If you are first to being uncool and that becomes cool later, sometimes people remember that. And when I'm talking to clients, I like to tell them it's okay to be uncool.
It's okay to be at the forefront of a trend and starting it before instead of following it, following behind. That being said, of course, and I'm sure you feel the same, you've had this too, is I definitely have clients who want to be in the middle of the pack on a trend, right? They want to be in the middle as it's happening and not on the tail end, because nobody wants to be on the tail end of a trend.
Everybody wants to be in the middle of the pack of a trend. So I have clients like that who, we work really carefully to identify what those trends are very early on so they can move quickly on it so they can be middle of the pack. Because once there is a trend that exists, if you need a little bit of time to think about it, you will no matter what be already in the middle of the pack.
As opposed to jumping right onto it. As it, as it happens. So, a lot of times when I'm talking to clients or I'm advising folks on this, advising brands, It's a lot of, if you want to be the kind of person or brand that follows trends, you need to notice them as soon as they happen and you need to have a plan in place to move quickly.
So if that's a social media trend and you need to make content, you need to know who your content team is.
Yeah.
Right away. And you need to be able to execute on if it's a video, is your video team ready? Are they able to ideate and come up with something within the next couple of days within the next week?
Trends on social media are so fleeing and so fast. That it's hard to capitalize on a lot of things as at the time that we're recording this one big trend that's happening is very demure, very mindful and a lot of brands have hopped on that. And to be fair, a lot of brands hopped on it very quickly, which is great.
However, if you're hopping on it just now, It's already at the tail end of that particular trend. You're already at the, I think of it as a bell curve, right? You're not getting, you're not the middle, you're already at the end of that trend. And that trend will potentially continue to develop, potentially not.
And that's the hard thing I think about social media is some trends are, are cyclical and come back. Some trends truly are a one time, you just have a big burst and you need to be in on that burst. So it's really dependent also on what kind of trend it is.
And I think there's so many brands that don't need to be, like when I hear about brands wanting to jump on trends all the time, it gives me a little bit of an anxiety.
Yeah. I'm like, do you have the money? Do you have the team? Like, what are you actually focusing on?
Yeah, I think, I think for moving quickly with good content, right? Yes. I think that it's so hard if you don't have the right resources in place to be able to do that, to execute properly, which is why I always say when I'm talking to brands, I'm talking to clients about this is you need your teams on standby.
They need to move lightning fast. If you want to be the kind of person that follows or is in the middle, that beautiful middle of the bell curve on trends, Then you need to move so, so fast.
I want to pivot towards your book. And the first question is, do you consider yourself an introvert? Yes.
So I think that surprises a lot of people because I do quite a bit of public speaking.
But I definitely consider myself an introvert. In fact, there's many different kinds of introverts that exist out. And some of us, there's a term that I really have been loving lately and I'm, I'm definitely dropping this into my book, but loud introvert. And that is an introvert that gets really excited about a very specific subject that they love and they, they want to talk about.
And I think that that is true of a lot of introverts out there that people categorize. I think the great fallacy of introverts is that people say all introverts are quiet and shy. And that's the defining characteristic of every single introvert that's ever existed. And I don't think that's true. I think that there's a huge diversity of people who are introverts and they may come across differently than just what you imagine to be just quiet and just shy.
So I definitely consider myself an introvert. Yes.
I'm really excited that this is the topic you chose for your first book. I work with a lot of creative entrepreneurs, whether they're artists or designers, or just hang out in that creative space. And so many of them are introverted. And it's caused me to do a lot more research about how to how to optimize, how to motivate, how to work in that space, because there is the social tax that comes with things.
And so you, how you build a brand or a marketing plan or even a sales strategy and probably the sales part is where I think a lot of introverts want to hide the most. Yes. It's like a completely different business model because someone's selling the same thing, introvert, extrovert, completely different strategy.
The introvert will most likely give up and do something else that sounds more fun faster.
Yeah, I think that I think that sales definitely is one area that introverts tend to struggle in. As well as, you know, I'm an introvert that loves public speaking, but there's certainly a lot of introverts out there that don't like public speaking and don't like putting themselves out there.
And the reason why I wanted to focus on this book and focus on personal branding, which is my wheelhouse, my area of expertise. is that I think that introverts can have a really beautiful textured personal brand. They don't need to become extroverts in order to show up as themselves in order to have a personal brand in order to have a really robust career.
I think that, I think that introverts can maintain that magic that they have on their own. That is their personality. And And really accentuate and really put forward some of their strengths.
It's, it's true. I, I just, I'm such a believer that to have all the things right, to have it all in, in whatever level you want more money, more freedom, more fun.
And it comes back to just being more authentic to you. And there's always a roadmap to win exactly the way you are. And I think that sometimes the way we have talked about business in the past 10 years in particular, it's been very masculine, very aggressive, very extroverted, very more, more, more, more, and whenever people argue with me about what to do on Instagram, I'm like, time out.
Young Pueblo has only posted text in a still photo or graphic for how many years now? He's doing just fine. Right.
And that's somebody who is. Ahead of the curve, right?
Mm-Hmm. . And,
and I think a lot about if you want to be ahead of the curve, if you wanna be doing the uncool thing, if you. want to be different than other people, that's definitely a, a strategy and a tactic in and of itself.
And I think to me, a lot of, when I work with clients, I definitely don't push them towards let's just chase trends because that's, yeah. Super tiring. Is it? Is it a strategy that works? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It is. But I think it's more interesting to instead of chase trends to think about how can I move ahead of the trends?
How can I become the trend itself? And And I do think that there's always a way to break the system and try something new, even on established platforms, even on platforms where you think, for example, on TikTok, you think this is the format we're only going to do dances. We, this is how you blow up on TikTok.
And there's, there's so many people on TikTok who, and now that, you know, that's an older stereotype about TikTok, but now there's so many creators on TikTok and so many brands on TikTok. Who do so well without ever dancing, right? Yeah. Without ever doing a very stereotypical TikTok style of content.
The punk rock group in the 90s child really is loving your push to rebel against whatever doesn't suit you.
And I, I think that also people get in, you know, I talked to brands, I talked to big fortune 500 brands about this. Sometimes they get a little nervous. Because it's unproven. And I think, I think that I get that nervousness. I understand it, but with the greater risk comes greater reward. So if you have five campaigns that fall flat because they're ahead of the curve and people don't like them, but you have that one campaign that does exponentially well and you are at the front of the curve and then everyone is copying you.
Everyone is. is looking at you for guidance. That's all you need is you just need to have one out of every three or five do well. And once again, this strategy is not for everyone. So when I work with clients, a lot of times we temper this with, okay, we're going to do some experimental, but then the majority is going to be very safe content, very evergreen content.
And that's where I like to live. I either like to live above the bell curve in the uncool zone, or I like to live in the evergreen zone. I like to live in, it's not chasing trends, it's just very much year after year. I hope when my book comes out at the end of next year, It's valid in 2035, right? It's 2050.
We'll just keep going. I think some of the social media platforms I mentioned there may not exist anymore, but I like to hope that all the principles that I talked about in it will still be valid. And I think there's Definitely something to be said for evergreen, which is the other side of uncool, right?
I just love to live in the uncool zone. You can definitely be creating content that, that also is very meaningful. And also, you know, not to bring this into the subject, but long tail SEO, right? That is optimized in the, in the long run for SEO. So. Where, while it might not get you those customers tomorrow, because it might not give you that virality for tomorrow.
It might give you that great SEO over time where you can continue to pick up those customers for years and years.
I just did a, an assessment of like people complaining about Peloton and it's going downhill. And I was like, guys, time out. When we look at Peloton sales, if we remove 2020, they're growing.
Like, I think sometimes we get so hung up on tomorrow, the impatience of it, that we have to go viral. It's the only way we're going to sell anything. I'm like, if your sales strategy is going viral, we have some big issues because that's not a sales strategy. That's a, that's a cherry on top of something that's already really strong and successful.
And yeah. I've even had clients who have, who have gone viral and it's been extraordinary. And then they're rushing to change their entire business model, being like, this is going to happen every month. And I'm like, I don't think so.
Well, I think a great example of this too is Stanley tumbler cups, right?
Which if you ask somebody about Stanley tumbler cups two years ago, it's a good brand. And I think a lot of people would know what it is. They would, there was a strong brand recognition there. But people wouldn't say, Oh, it's the cool thing to have that wouldn't be on the table, but now that it's blown up and there was that one viral video, it's definitely changed the entire trajectory of the brand.
It's selling. I remember seeing pictures of it's selling out in certain color combinations at Target and people are chasing after limited edition Stanley cups and things like that. I think what they did. Well, is they leaned into that moment and they address that moment well, in a way that is very on brand for them.
And not at all cheesy or inappropriate. And then from there, they said, and now what? And not just, let's go back to now burning Stanley Cups. different areas and we're going to build our entire brand around burning cups and different things. What they took away I think was smart. It's okay, well now that we're getting this, this attention, how can we migrate this attention into different ideas?
Yeah, and it feels and this speaks I think to who they occur on the outside as a brand is like just very steady Like there's a yeah, they had a strong foundation. They had a heritage already Yeah, so I am impressed that they were able to expand the color assortment distribution as fast as they could to react and I I Of all the brands that are chasing moments.
They have right now. I do feel good about that one being able to You know Go through this motion and have a slow build off of it versus the fall after. And I know too, there's probably on their marketing team, they're saying like, what a huge win that someone was arrested with a car full of Stanley cups.
Like. That's PR you can't create on your own.
Yeah, that's, I think that they're getting a lot of very interesting PR right now. And I think, I think that they're doing the right thing in terms of trying to, at least from what I've seen from the outside, that they're trying to continue to develop a good product, a stable and steady product that their customers will appreciate and really that's.
The only thing that's changing is, is colors and there's an entire, it's fascinating to me, there's an entire cottage industry now around Stanley Cup attachments. Yes. Right? And so you can, you can get a lip gloss folder for your Stanley Cup, which maybe previously this existed on Etsy or as a custom crafted item.
But now there's entire, You know, manufacturing facilities. I'm sure that are dedicated towards making attachments for Stanley Cups because people now see this Stanley Cup as an accessory as a purse, which is fascinating.
They don't give girls pockets. So what are we supposed to do? No, you, then you
put pockets on your Stanley cup and it's yeah, it is definitely, it's definitely always interesting to do when you see a brand blow up and do well, and then you see the cottage industry that arises around that brand, that secondary market around whatever that big brand moment is.
It's also interesting. And that's also a way for a newer brand to get in on a moment is to be part of that secondary market. I think is also quite smart. You know,
I also love that you talk a lot about the opportunity to be creative in your marketing. I think so many people forget that marketing isn't only science.
Like the SEO side, science, the funnel side, science. But when it comes to the content that you're making and the words you're using, there's such an opportunity to be creative. And I. Would love to channel some entrepreneurs into putting their creative energy into their marketing versus making more things because they usually don't need more things, but they're abandoning that creativity and marketing.
What's your opinion on that and where would you encourage people to go?
Yeah, I think that I think that marketing, there's such a, there's such an earnest energy to copy. What works already. And you're just copying and then you end up with just a copy of a copy of a copy. I think about the very old school game of telephone where somebody whispers something to someone else and then they whispered and then by the end it's a very different message and that's, that's Sometimes what happens also when you copy everyone's campaigns and you're just copying is that becomes a less good transcription, a less good version of that original idea.
So I think it's always more interesting to be the original version that everyone is copying or just to have more original ideas and marketing. Just because what we're seeing is just so many repeats so much repetition. And I also get as say, entrepreneurs are small businesses. You think, well, I don't want to risk.
I don't want to risk doing something new, but there's ways to risk that are very low budget risks. There are ways to risk that are low resource risks, right? So creating content yourself partnering with other small businesses to, to try a new trend, et cetera. There are a lot of other ways to, To jump in that are not, say, spending 300, 000 on a new TV campaign.
Final question before we jump into some rapid fire ones. Yeah. What are things you think people are sleeping on? This can be about business, about marketing, and just about life in general. What are people sleeping on?
Oh gosh people are sleeping on not taking enough breaks.
Truth. Yeah, that's this. I just paused there. I think I know so many, so many business owners who are so burnt out. So many people who are, who are at that top tier in, in corporate, who are entrepreneurs who are building and making and doing, and so many of them just hurdle themselves to really just throw themselves towards burnout because they're, because they're creative and they're excited and they're interested and they want to do things.
And I think so many people need better breaks. So many people need more breaks where they're fully offline. They're not documenting a week in Bali and it's a hundred percent documented on social media. I have, I have entire. trips and entire life experiences that I never share online. And I do that very purposefully because that allows some privacy and privacy is very good for anyone who's a leader, who is usually a public figure.
All
right. So rapid fire round. Yes. When you hear the words powerful and ladies, what do they mean to you?
Oh, gosh. Powerful means someone who has influence over others to change things. And together powerful ladies. I mean, can I shout someone out and say Kamala Harris? Yeah. I would say that's one of the top powerful ladies.
I think of other ones would be Ava who's an amazing director producer. I think about women who are Powerful change makers.
When you look at your journey, how have other powerful women supported you? Encourage you open doors for you.
I think a lot about some of my mentors in my life who have vouched for me behind closed doors.
I'm a big fan of vouching for other people behind closed doors because it means more vouching for someone in a. Someone powerful vouching for someone behind closed doors and a room full of powerful people can change lives.
We ask everyone to rate themselves on the Powerful Lady scale. If zero is average everyday human and 10 is the most powerful lady you can imagine, where would you rank yourself today and on an average day?
I'd like to aspirationally be a seven or eight just in general. And an average day varies, right? I think some days, some days I'm a four or five. Those days are rough. And then some days I hope on those really spectacular, amazing, glowing days, I hope I'm a 10.
We also ask everyone, how can we help you? This is a powerful, connected community.
What's on your to manifest to wishlist? Who do you want to be connected to? How can we help you?
What do I want to manifest? What I want to manifest, I think in the next year. Is going to Japan. I'd love to do it. I have been putting off for a while, so that's what I'm putting out in the universe. I want to manifest that.
Okay.
Love it. When everyone now who is obsessed and on team Goldie, where can they find you, follow you, support you, hire you, all the things.
So you can always go to my website, GoldieChan. com. I can find me on LinkedIn, LinkedIn. com slash in slash Goldie. And I am on almost every single social media network that exists.
So you can also find me there. And if you Google me, I believe I am truly the first five pages of Google search. So
perfect. Well, thank you so much for taking your time out today. I'm so glad that we got connected and just thank you for all the work you're doing. Like it's part of what brings me joy of having this podcast is getting to meet incredible women like you who are just.
Doing the things and taking care of like their corner. I feel like so many women see what needs to change and see how we can be inspiring, empowering people. And it's an overwhelming to do list. So it's like we're dividing it and conquering it. And just, yeah, thank you for showing us the way of how to just crush it.
And. Things you care about.
Thank you so much for having me.
All the links to connect with Goldie, access all her socials, her LinkedIn learning courses, and her warm robot agency earner show notes at the powerful ladies. com. Subscribe to this podcast. Wherever you're listening and join us on Instagram at powerful ladies connect directly with me at Kara Duffy. com or Kara underscore Duffy on Instagram.
I'll be next week with a brand new episode. Until then, I hope you're taking on being powerful in your life. Go be awesome and after something you love.
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Instagram: @goldiecylon
Website: www.goldiechan.com
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Created and hosted by Kara Duffy
Audio Engineering & Editing by Jordan Duffy
Production by Amanda Kass
Graphic design by Anna Olinova
Music by Joakim Karud
