Jeremy Weisz 7:46
If you stayed there, what do you think you’d be doing?
Marina Byezhanova 7:48
It gives me shivers to think about it about it. In light of the war. I went to visit Ukraine a few years after we came in 98. I went to visit I believe, in 2005, after I graduated university, and I felt that it didn’t fit in, the country was culturally going through a huge transition. And I couldn’t find my tribe. In Canada, I found my tribe among entrepreneurs. At the time in Ukraine, entrepreneurship was all just, you had to be some kind of a crook to build a business. Right? So I didn’t see myself there. I don’t know Ukraine, as it became later on. So could it be possible that I would become an entrepreneur there? Later on in life? It’s a possibility. I know that right now, as it stands, would I have left if I had kids would I have left the country to save the kids? If I didn’t have kids, I would be helping the causes. And I would be helping in the war. And it would be helping raising funds and doing a lot of the culture on mission and spreading the word work, which partially I do right now too.
Jeremy Weisz 8:57
I don’t know, Marina, if courage is the right word, but like, I can’t imagine living in a country and then taking my family to another country. What was it like for your family? Why Canada?
Marina Byezhanova 9:15
It was coincidental. My elder sister decided she wanted to study at McGill University. She knew somebody that was studying there. And so she decided that that’s where she wanted to get her grad degree. And as I told you, we felt at the time that we were completely isolated from the world. So my parents said if she leaves we’re never going to see her again. It wasn’t this open border traveling as it is right now. Or was up until the war and so we followed, but I have to say to Jeremy, yes, immigration is very hard and leaving and uprooting your family. It’s all very hard. But I have developed out completely different level of appreciation for people who have to do it not by choice. For us. It was a choice. It’s still hard, but it was a choice. But people for example, right now in Ukraine is only one of the countries of course, we see you know, refugees from all over the world that are leading great lives. I just met somebody, I was giving a talk in another province, I went to a Ukrainian store and met a woman there. She had a business in Ukraine, she was an entrepreneur, successful business, lived in a very prestigious area, near Kia big house, had it all had a business had her family, her kids. And now she’s working in the store in the middle of nowhere, Canada, but she didn’t choose it. She’s grateful because she’s safe, and her kids are safe. But that is a whole other world of, courage, as you said, that is required to lift or something like that.
Jeremy Weisz 10:35
I want to talk about Brand Of A Leader and what you do. But I know you talk about personal branding. And I’d love to hear your philosophy on how people should think about their personal brands, because you talk about when someone’s talking about their personal brand, you’re not even talking about that person’s business, you’re talking about who they are. And that’s kind of what I wanted to start with. I learned this from you. Actually, why don’t want to start with your superpower, right? So talk about how you think about personal brands.
Marina Byezhanova 11:07
Well see personal branding is fascinating. And you can see now that I started talking a bit more about my story, why I’m so fascinated about the topic, personal branding is all about identity, and how we express our identity to others through words. So step one is we have to understand who we are and what we’re all about what our identity is. And then through the process of personal branding, which is given awards, really, that’s what we’re doing. It’s not an external process, it’s completely inside out. And it’s rooted in authenticity, as you said, radical authenticity is what would we’re on a mission to inspire people to embrace, meaning I was on the phone with somebody today. And he said, Okay, so let me sum up what you do. You take someone, and then you help them look like the smartest, best person in their field, the most intelligent that are not right. And I said, right, if they are, if they are, we help them express it through words, and then market that messaging? If they’re not, no, we cannot help with that. So really, it’s completely connect that to identity, understanding it and then expressing it.
Jeremy Weisz 12:13
I’m curious, and we’ll get into exactly what you do and how you help people. But I’m curious of an example, where someone may be thinking and starting off with, okay, we’re gonna build me up into the smartest, whatever person, but when you kind of uncover who they are, it goes in a totally different direction, which is still good direction. What’s a good example of someone coming in, they thought it was gonna go one way, and then it just kind of goes off in another tangent.
Marina Byezhanova 12:48
So often, it will happen during the discovery call when they come to us, and they say, here’s what I want you guys to do. And this is the example I want you to position me as the best person in X Y, Z, and then we say we don’t do that. And they get very confused. Because I can tell you that vast majority of other personal branding agencies, that is the angle and that is the focus. The reason for that is that most people in the personal branding space, those are marketing agencies that are now offering personal branding as a new service. So they are in the headspace of marketing, how to market use the best XYZ. Personal branding at its core is something different, as they explained to earlier. So it happens to us during those discovery calls. When they say a cup, we say a couple of things. Number one, your personal brand is an expression of who you are, and not what you do. And the reason for that is that as entrepreneurs, we only work with Gen X entrepreneurs and CEOs. And as entrepreneurs, we know that we pivot in life. Right? What you do today, Jeremy is not what you have always done, and who knows. Right? And you might not completely pivot away from rise 25, but you might also get involved in something else. And so if your brand is only connected to what you do and express in that, then when you pivot, then what you don’t have a personal brand anymore. Kind of doesn’t make sense, right? And if you think from corporate branding standpoint, you understand that brand is about feeling it’s about expression of something deeper, the essence it’s not about social media posts and pretending something right, if you think of Nike and the feeling and what it stands for, and just do it. And then they’re also selling sweaters now, right? Is the afterthought. So very similar. So with clients, the surprise typically comes during the discovery call, and that’s when they might realize no, I do want somebody to make me shine more than I actually really am internally. But once we get in the process, what happens that is that even though it’s still might pivot from what they expected, we go so deeply into understanding the person that the end result is typically, a big aha moment and big internal success and win.
Jeremy Weisz 14:57
Yeah, you hit it on the head because my background is in Bio-Chemistry as a chiropractor, so not doing any of that anymore, but I’d love to talk about, I was looking through your site, I’m gonna pull it up here for a second. But I want to talk about Sun Ah Brock. So I was looking through if you’re watching the video part, here, you can see I’m on brandofaleader.com. So if you want to learn more, you obviously can go to the website, and it talks about what we do, we’ll get into a little bit which is architect your brand, build a scaling strategy and CO create and CO execute content. But when I was looking through all these past current clients, Sun Ah Brock stuck out, what did you do with her?
Marina Byezhanova 15:48
Sun Ah is a really interesting case study, I will call her and I think relatable to very many people because she is the kind of entrepreneur that really does not seek out little limelight on the spotlight. She doesn’t want to have a spotlight she as much as in her business, did not want to be on websites, social media pages, and everywhere else, not something that she would be looking for or seek out. And so for her, all entrepreneurs we’re hearing now you need a personal brand, you need to put yourself out there, but she never felt that desire, like that slight narcissism that some of us share, and then we enjoy the limelight. She doesn’t. She’s more introverted. She’s a very social person more introverted, as well. For years after hearing her personal story through Entrepreneurs Organization of which we were both members of time, I heard her personal story of being born in South Korea, abandoned at the age of three, adopted by a family in Canada that brought her here and not an amazing adoption. She never went to university because that wasn’t even on her radar and she had to make money. And then despite all odds, sign it builds an immensely successful Interior Design Studio is just killing it in her space. Right now she has built in the largest community of interior designers in North America. And so the question Jeremy’s, when we meet people, and we’ll look at their stories, you say, well, how? How was she successful, especially in this field, she did not grow up with, you know, beautiful fancy items around her and said, I want to do Interior Design, right? She didn’t study it. So why was she so passionate about it? And then in connection with that, how did she create it. And so for her, what she realized, as we started working together is that what she was doing for people beyond the interior design, and the beautiful things around, is she was giving them what she never had, which was a sense of a home. So turning a house into a home, and giving it that essence of a home. And then as we started working with Sun Ah, we take our clients through a process of by three deep dives, and started going through the process and getting to know her, we realized that she has that desire to create that sense of home. everywhere she goes. It’s beyond her business. It’s within her company for her employees is for people around her it’s throughout everything that she does. She sees her philosophy is that, things are just things, but it’s the feelings that are created around her and through what she does. And so for her we develop this concept and positioning of interiority, and the meaning that we infused in it interiority is feelings over themes and inner life of spaces. So you see, when Sun Ah came to us, and she shared her personal life story, and there were a lot of moving elements to it very inspiring. And every time we would say, share the story with the world, you should talk about it, she would say, But why, what is my message to the world? Well, now we gave her a message, her message became feelings over things, and creating that, that you know, feeling in the space wherever you are, be at home, at the office, etc. So all of a sudden, that gave her meaning that grounded her story as well, we rewrote her story in the sense of we put it in words, and she has seen an incredible rise in success. As a result, she’s in the process of some fascinating projects that I have to be confidential can disclose, but that will lead to an incredible amount of visibility for her and for her name to be known. Because it just angle then give it purpose and became about a mission, her expression of self and not just her story.
Jeremy Weisz 19:44
It’s really powerful because and I was talking with a group of entrepreneurs about this the other week, which is you really help people discover their mission, in a sense and put it into words and then that mission is a North Star and that guide all decisions and accompany even.
Marina Byezhanova 20:06
Absolutely shipper interiority on her product line. It’s on so many of the things right now that she’s creating because she launched her own product line. Absolutely. And the reaction that we get from people when we build out their personal brand architecture is, number one, how did you get to know me so well, in such a short time period that oh my god, you really know me? And then number two, oh, my God, you took everything that’s inside of me. And you just put it into words, how did you do that? And that’s, of course, an immense privilege to do that. And we have so many clients crying when we read out their bio to them, when we read out their byline. Anybody from our very emotional clients too, the guys who, who don’t feel like they’re Ghanaian, they get a bit also, you know, teary-eyed and emotional because it’s a very personal process.
Jeremy Weisz 20:56
You had another client Divakar, you talked about that.
Marina Byezhanova 21:03
I loved working with Divakar, I worked with him personally, I don’t work with all of the clients personally, of course anymore because we’ve grown, but I’ve worked with him personally. And it’s interesting, we get to meet so many people, and we get to meet them and get to know them very personally, right, we really get to know people on a very deep level. And he was incredibly inspiring. He’s one of these people that, wakes up at 3 am, before we started recording, and we’re talking about being or not being morning, people, he wakes up at 3 am, to study and read, and he’s one of those people, every time I will talk to him, I would feel that I need to read more and educate myself more without him making me feel that way. So on one hand, just an incredibly well read, just consumer of knowledge, somebody you know one of those people who will read about history and will read about archaeology, it means about everything on an extremely deep level knows everything. However, at the same time, usually these people you will find them in academia, people who are just very cerebral, right, researchers, well, he is shark in business, multiple businesses, young guy, but incredible success, a multitude of businesses in different verticals, just incredible, incredibly successful. And so with him, it was interesting, he came to us because he wanted to build his visibility, you know, not people come to us later on in entrepreneurial careers, they’re not looking to build a personal brand, so that they can get more leads, that’s not their focus. He wanted to again, express himself and who he is, but merging with all those different things together. And so for him wanting to merge or this intellectual superiority, by far one of the smartest clients that will work with, with his incredible business success would develop the concept of thought capitalism. And so in essence, we expressed him is a thought capitalist, showing that he’s amassing thought leadership, thought capital, but also, of course, playing with a capitalist, as a capitalist, your money-oriented, money-driven socialist, he is not. And so that is something that really, something that he embraced, we’re hoping to continue in our work together down in the future and down the line, but that was an expression of those very different sides of him.
Jeremy Weisz 23:17
Marina for you, what does an ideal client look like for you, and your company?
Marina Byezhanova 23:22
Very easily defined. So first of all, Gen X entrepreneur or CEO, I have to explain what Gen X is because I realized that those Gen Xers don’t know that they are and they come to us and they say, I know you work with Gen Xers, but would you consider working with me and we say you are Gen X. So it’s 45 roughly years of age plus, before the baby boomers also called the forgotten generation. And we work with people who are coming to us, because they have a story to tell and stories to tell. They’re not sure how, typically, they’re more on an introverted side, or they’re just not spotlight seekers. But they know that they can bring value by putting themselves out there. And it’s typically people who they have a tendency of wanting to shine spotlight on others. But they want to inspire and make an impact on bigger scale, and they feel that this might be the way to do it.
Jeremy Weisz 24:13
Love it. We were talking before we hit record, about building culture. And I’d love for you to talk a little bit about how you think about this and what you’re doing to build a culture.
Marina Byezhanova 24:28
So we’re doing something fairly different at Brand Of A Leader we’re building our team completely on the basis of hiring contractual and freelance employees. Nobody full-time nobody on payroll except for my business partner and myself. But I’d be really honest with you and I’ll share with you honestly and vulnerably where that idea really originated from because it’s very easy for me to danger me to talk about it as this like innovation and we do something new and really most entrepreneurs I talk to and they tell us to this is genius. This is amazing. And this, of course gives us incredible margins, right. And we’re very lean. And there’s a lot of benefits and bonuses. Originally, the idea, however, came from me running my other business, the business that I had prior to Brand Of A Leader, and realizing that I really do not like managing people. And the reason being, I’m really not good at it. And we often hear people focusing on getting better, as they’re improving on their shortcomings and weaknesses. And I realized a long time ago, that what can make me world-class is finding some kind of a workaround around those, and really focusing on my strengths and becoming realistic period those, I’m not going to become a fantastic manager, because my level was low. So what can I do that’s different. And so that was one of the main reasons I realized that I did not want to have a team to manage number one. And number two, of course, as many of us during COVID, we got hit really severely right with the financial repercussions and payroll and having employees and what do you do? And that was really hard to do. So I realized that I wanted to build something different, and said, you know what, if I have just freelancers, and contractors, they don’t have to worry about culture, happiness, anybody’s life satisfaction, right? You can you do the work, it’s transactional. And that’s it. And I realized that was wrong. Because even when people are working through contractual or freelance, they’re still the most important asset you have in the organization. So you still want to make sure that they’re aligned with you and your core values, you still want to make sure that they love the work, that they love, the mission of the company, right, all those different things. And so when I realized that, that there’s no workaround that, and actually, that can become the strength of our organization, if we solve and figure out how to create all that, how to create a culture of belonging, training and development in a world-class professionalism, with people who are not only working with you, but working with other organizations as well. So this is my biggest challenge and opportunity and fascination at the moment is trying to solve that and figure it out.
Jeremy Weisz 27:15
Is there anything that you are doing or you’ve seen others do that has worked in that realm that you implemented from helping with culture?
Marina Byezhanova 27:25
Not enough. So one of the things I’m doing right now is I’ve uncovered that there is incredible academic research on the topic, which of course, as entrepreneurs, we don’t think about academia, newspapers that you could barely read. But I’m in a research program right now at a local university. And so having had access to the database of research, I realized, there’s a lot that we can draw from. And so I’ve been reading some of the studies and I saw that some of the biggest problems that freelancers encounter are lack of belonging, lack of formalized training and having to seek it out versus usually in organizations, where you’re employed full time you get, so I’ve started the research, implementation will come later. And then the transitory part of that will be surrounding myself with mentors or advisors, that have a strong grasp of building company culture. So if anybody listening is fascinated by this problem, and would like to connect and connect as a mentor, or as an advisor, I would absolutely love to discuss and experience share. My goal is to eventually win an award for Brand Of A Leader, being the best place to work with no full-time employees. That will be a creative one.
Jeremy Weisz 28:40
Love it. Yeah. I love how you’re looking at what are the problems that freelancers are thinking about which and then you’ll solve it later, which is going into the lack of training, lack of belonging. So that’s a really interesting place to start. I remember…
Marina Byezhanova 28:57
Challenges because even let’s say, one of the things that you need to have in a business and we’re implementing an EOS structure is well, you have to have regular meetings. But typically employees load meetings, and then they become freelancers so that they can avoid having meetings. So telling people that you have those meetings that are obligatory, kind of goes in conflict with why they chose to freelance, but then as a business, you need it because we’re growing and scaling and we have a bigger team. So how do you find that middle ground that works for everyone that doesn’t create this heavy structure for them? It’s interesting, and from labor law perspective as well, right? Because if all of a sudden, there are all these things, and all these meetings, and everything’s structured, well, then the government says, well, those are employees. And this is what you should be doing as a result. So how do you navigate all of that?
Jeremy Weisz 29:44
It’s a tough question. Yeah, exactly. But I remember, I’ll date myself for a second Marina but I was listening to the audio cassette tape, Marcus Buckingham. Now discover your strengths and talking and I remember a light bulb came on for me, which is, you know, just focus more on my strengths. And don’t just try and boost up. I mean, it’s not bad to try and prove things that I’m not good at, but focus more on the strengths, right. And so it really, even from a kid’s perspective he was talking about in the book, and he does, I believe heavy research, they have a lot of different books. But hey, if your child is amazing at math, and not great at English, just be careful focusing on boosting their English and just not focusing on gain them like a superstar at math. So it really opened my eyes to myself, like, yeah, I should be just focusing more on my strengths. Like you were saying,
Marina Byezhanova 30:42
Yeah, it was a realization for me. And I’ve decided to lean into it for better or for worse, maybe, right, maybe wrong. But that’s what I’m doing.
Jeremy Weisz 30:51
But yeah, he was talking about the research that was kind of backing up what you were saying. I want to talk about business partners, right, and how your partnership came to be currently with Brand Of A Leader.
Marina Byezhanova 31:07
Partnerships are interested in a you talk to entrepreneurs, most of them are gonna say, do not get a partner, I’m sure you’ve heard this a million times, why do you need a partner, you can do it on your own. My current business partner Stefano, he was actually my employee, in my previous business, that’s where we met. And he was absolutely brilliant, one of those that can roll up his sleeves and do anything and the hardest worker, and you can tell when somebody’s really entrepreneurial, and he really wanted and had this idea of, eventually, launching a business together, there was another venture that would try it with my other business partner, and him and that other business, it didn’t pick up. And then when the pandemic hit, and the other business got hit really, really hard, we really got brought on our knees, we went from Hearos. And we’re so amazing, and we’re so successful, and we’re just, to oh, there were some big holes in that business. And so when that happened, and there were a lot of decisions to be made and a lot of realizations, it was Stefano who said, maybe now’s the time to launch the business, we had to start talking about, which was the personal branding agency. And we took the leap, we have a lot of very complementary strengths, things that I suck at, he happens to be good at. And I would say vice versa, which has been incredibly helpful, and making that delineation into what each one of us is responsible for, and not responsible for has been quite helpful in staying in alignment with our strengths.
Jeremy Weisz 32:42
Yeah, and I’m curious, we’re talking a little bit about this, which is, and this comes up all the time, which is, how do you navigate entrepreneurial impatience and still stay happy and satisfied? I think a lot of the people I talked to, it doesn’t matter where they’re at what stage they’re at, I feel like they always feel like they should be further along. How do you deal with that as an entrepreneur?
Marina Byezhanova 33:17
I don’t do well. So I will have no wisdom there. But certainly relatability you know, it’s, I find it incredibly hard. Number one, being impatient by nature, I really have no envy of anybody or anything at all, ever. I’m very proud of not having that trait. But I definitely see myself in comparison and not competition, but in comparison with other entrepreneurs. That is absolutely fine. And of course, being part of Entrepreneurs Organization is phenomenal and fantastic. But I find sometimes it’s also hard because often I’m looking at the other incredible members and feeling like oh my God, I need to have more people on board and I will need to be bigger, and I need to go faster and all these different things. Made even harder when you had another business that was a more mature business. So you’re also comparing to what you had before, as well as comparing yourself to others. And yeah, I find it not always to be really easy. I’m impatient, more often than not.
Jeremy Weisz 34:24
I love first of all, thank you, Marina and I have one last question before I ask it I just want to point people to check out brandofaleader.com to learn more, and you can poke around their site have a really cool content there and information. My last question Marina is you’ve featured people before and I love to hear some of your favorites episodes in the past.
Marina Byezhanova 34:55
People that I have interviewed. I’ve interviewed some incredible people, I lot Just my podcast during the pandemic when everybody was available and sitting at home, and it was really easy to connect with incredible people. I have a hard time singling people out because I want everybody to know how much I loved interviewing them. And every single person I interview, I only interview because I’m really fascinated by speaking with them. So every time…
Jeremy Weisz 35:19
I’ll point out a few of them, so that you don’t have to pick a favorite.
Marina Byezhanova 35:22
But every time I introduce people, I always say, I am so excited to be, I’m like, oh my god, I said every time but I’m excited. But okay, go ahead, point out.
Jeremy Weisz 35:30
So I love you to talk maybe, I don’t know if you remember any takeaways or just any thoughts. You had the Chief Heart Officer of VaynerMedia Claude Silver, you had Sam Horn was a best-selling author and global speaker. So I don’t know if anything sticks out with the Chief Heart Officer VaynerMedia.
Marina Byezhanova 35:52
Definitely. So that was an amazing win. Because first of all, I’m a huge fan of Gary Vaynerchuk. And his business is scaling and pluck into his head HR person was such an amazing and inspiring title was just incredible. What stood out to me is how different of an HR person she was. HR people are usually not a respected and I will say although many might be very upset with me for saying more often than not, it’s with reason. It’s a lot of paper pushing. It’s a lot of procedural it’s a lot of kind of being bothered by people more so than serving people she was a beacon of light are really, truly the opposite of that. And being incredibly just inspiring and leading with the heart and putting culture at the center of the organization. So she was absolutely incredible. Sam Horn was somebody who must have thought Jeremy that I was a stalker, without telling me because I saw her speak at an event. When I was in Amsterdam. It was an EO event. She came up she said she was going to be on Skype or zoom or whatever it was at the time. And I said this is ridiculous. I don’t want to hear somebody on the screen. I’m not gonna hear anything. Oh, this is terrible. And she was the best speaker on the whole event. I was on the edge of my seat taking notes. I got so inspired by her that I started reaching out to her. I messaged her relentlessly. She never wrote me back. And it gives a message and her and asking for a call and telling her how she inspired me. Never response. I think DM thrown in on Instagram, Instagram, DM. She didn’t follow me. Right? So this is like a really inappropriate DM there. I messaged her and they said, Sam, you must think I’m a stalker. I’m just such a fan of your work. Can I interview you on my podcast? And she said yes. And so she got on my podcast. I was just on pins and needles. And when we finished the interview, I said, Sam, I have a very big problem asking people for things. And this is very uncomfortable, but I’m just going to ask and you can say no, and just like shut off the screen and that’s okay. Would you be my mentor? And she’s somebody who charges over 1000 US dollars per hour for a consultation. And she said, I typically say no, I will say yes to you. Here are the reasons why. And yes, and here’s how we will engage. And it turned off my computer after we finished here. I mean, I was just like grinding and were like so excited. So that was just incredible.
Jeremy Weisz 38:14
I love it. Marina thank you. Everyone check out brandofaleader.com and more episodes of the podcast. Thanks. Thanks, Marina. Thanks, everyone.
Marina Byezhanova 38:22
Thank you so much for having me.
