IAM314-CEO and Founder Helps Industry Leaders Become World Renowned Experts

Tara Bradford is the CEO and Founder of Rae Media Group, a strategic marketing communications firm based out of New York City.

She helps industry leaders become World Renowned Experts and has worked with everyone from startup founders to Inc 500 executives. She is also an International Speaker on publicity, social capital, trust, and generosity.

• CEO Hack: (1) Listening to people and Built-in market research
• CEO Nugget: (1) You need to make money if you're going to make a bigger impact (2) Be open to other people coming to your business besides your target audience
• CEO Defined: Freedom

Website: http://www.tararaebradford.com/

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/tara-rae-bradford/

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Full Interview

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:30

Hello, hello. Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I've Tara Bradford of Rae Media Group. Tara, it is awesome to have you on the show.

Tara Bradford 0:39

Thank you so much for having me. Gresham. It's really exciting to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:42

Yeah, I'm super excited to have you on. What I want to do is read a little bit more about Tara so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing.

Tara Bradford is the CEO and Founder of Rae Media Group, a strategic marketing communications firm based out of New York City. She helps industry leaders become World Renowned Experts and has worked with everyone from startup founders to Inc 500 executives. She is also an International Speaker on publicity, social capital, trust, and generosity.

Tara, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Tara Bradford 1:13

I'm ready.

Gresham Harkless 1:14

Awesome. Let's do it. So the first question I had was to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. And what led you to start your business?

Tara Bradford 1:22

Absolutely. I never dreamed I would be a CEO, I never thought I'd be running a company. If you would have asked me five years ago, what my five-year plan was, it was not this. So I started my career as a critical care nurse and spent 10 years working in nursing, before leaving to start a company. And when I decided to start a company, it started out as just a hobby on the side while I was working my day job. And I had a YouTube channel. I was doing some Facebook Live videos, I was doing some social media marketing.

And I didn't really know anything about marketing or publicity. And through that, I actually met a mentor in New York City, who was running a company and said, Well, why can't you do this, and I met some other people here in New York, who were saying, you can make money doing things that are fun for you. And that blew my mind. I was like, Oh my gosh, like fun, sounds easy. And I thought work had to be hard. Like you have to work hard to be successful. And here I was working hard at my job feeling people's lives actually dependent on me.

And then I was thinking, wow, I don't need to have all this stress. And so I ended up starting a coaching practice where I was just helping people achieve their goals really working on their personal brand and communication strategy for how they could pitch themselves for a job promotion for getting into grad school, any interview where they needed to present themselves authentically, but also understand what the other person was looking for, to fill that role. And through that, I ended up getting a lot of publicity for myself. I've been featured in the media every two weeks for the last two years, including Huff Post I met Dr. Oz I was in bustle and glamour and Cosmopolitan and thrive global and a lot of other podcasts and publications. And people started asking me, how are you doing this?

And so I thought, well, I'm already teaching people how to write down their ideas and pitch them in whatever sense that was, I might as well help people write down their ideas for the media and pitch those. And through that, I created my DIY PR program, where I teach other people how to do the same. And really, it became a business development program because traditional PR teaches you how or does this for you where they get you featured in the media, everywhere you have a short campaign, and people see everywhere over a short period of time.

But using my background and understanding of psychology and neuroscience, I think a more effective strategy is the long-term strategy of being top of mind consistently over 12 or 24 months with your audience and nurturing that audience and building trust with them. And that has been the most effective way for me to generate leads for my business and to really scale word-of-mouth referrals and every business owner I talked to when I was starting a business because I didn't know any business owners before I started.

I just started asking everyone questions just like how did you get started? How have you grown your business, they all said, word of mouth referrals, whether they started their company 25 years ago, or five years ago, or one year ago, it was always that key component to their success was people telling other people about them. And so that was my lightbulb moment of well, we can scale word-of-mouth referrals using the internet, and actually have referrals coming in while everyone's sleeping because it lives online.

Gresham Harkless 5:35

Absolutely, and the Internet never goes asleep, so to speak. So you definitely have that opportunity. I love the fact and I know we talked a little bit offline about that long-term approach. Because I always think about it like going to the gym or working out, you can go really, really hard for two months or one month or whatever. But really to see that lifelong impact. And that really builds that foundation, just like you said, you have to do it consistently over a long period of time. And that starts to build that foundation, and things start to go from there.

Tara Bradford 6:04

Absolutely. And one of the things I found when I was talking to people who had been in business for a long period of time is that you lose those contacts that you had, initially, those referral partners that you had, initially, you get busy doing the work, and you let those leads dry up because you're so busy doing the work. And then those people leave that company or move on to other things, they move to a different industry. And they're not your contact anymore, who can send you business because they've moved on to something different.

And then you have to start over building a network and finding new people, if those people are no longer in the industry they can refer to you. And so that created some real big struggles where people thought they might go out of business, or they had to pivot in their business. And it was really a challenge for them. And so the benefit of using these online strategies is that those things never dry up, especially when you're on big platforms like Huff Post, or thrive global, they're probably not going anywhere. So that content is going to live on while you're delivering the service, you don't have to nurture that it's already there.

Gresham Harkless 7:21

Yeah, and you live off into perpetuity just because their platform is going to continue to grow, people are going to be able to search through there and find more information. And they're only going to pretty much expand. So I love that idea in that mindset. And I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. And this could be for you or your organization, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Tara Bradford 7:42

I think my secret sauce is building relationships, and really understanding how to do that. How to approach someone with curiosity instead of an intention to sell them something. Because when you think I go to a lot of networking events, and I see people saying, what do you do, and you can tell that their entire purpose for being there is to find clients. They're like hunting. And I feel like people run away from that. I wonder if those people ever find clients at any of those events because there's so intense about it. And I think when you approach it with curiosity, you don't really know what value someone can bring to a conversation until you ask questions. And you listen.

Gresham Harkless 8:34

Absolutely. And I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And you might have already touched on this. But this is something that might be an app or book or a habit that you have, or something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Tara Bradford 8:47

I think listening is one of the most important skills to develop, especially as someone who's marketing yourself online, you can gather information from so many different places, and you can listen to what people are saying when they share your content. Listen to what people get out of a conversation with you. Even just asking questions that you want to know the answer to. So one of the things that I do, is I get a lot of friend requests on social media. And I don't know if these people are trying to sell me something or trying to hire me for something or if they just want to be around me. I'm not really sure what their intention was to reach out.

So every time I accept a friend request, I always ask someone, what was it about my profile that stood out the most to you? And that's like built-in market research on an ongoing basis. I can do it any day of the week. I have I think 1000 Friend Requests sitting in my inbox and Facebook right now and a few 100 on LinkedIn so I can decide to let those people connect with me and also ask them, What was it about me that made you want to reach out and connect? And they're going to tell you exactly what stood out?

Gresham Harkless 10:12

Absolutely. And I think that's a true definition of a hack because I had to disrupt things and take things in a different direction. I love that hack. And I'm definitely gonna start using that because I've always figured out what's the best way to connect with people to do that. But I love that question because it's a genuine question because it also provides the opportunity for somebody to answer but also that market research that you talked about, so that you say, Hey, this is a really strong name of a program or whatever, just like your imposter program, because a lot of people connect with that.

So now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. Or if you can happen to be a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Tara Bradford 10:50

when I first started, I wanted to help everyone solve every problem. And I didn't even care if I made money, I just want to help people and make an impact and do good in the world. And that's great. But one, you need to make money if you're going to make a bigger impact. Because the more that you have, the more you can give. And I'm all about generosity. And then the second thing is just because you choose one person to speak to when in the media and your marketing and your sales copy. It doesn't mean you're excluding other people. When I first started, I was empowering women, and I still had male clients reach out to me.

And that allowed me to pivot and open up my business to both men and women and to focus instead on characteristics, behaviors, and personality traits, rather than gender, age, or occupation. And so I think what I was told was, you need to choose someone who has a certain age, a certain gender a certain job, they hold a certain job, and that's your ideal client. But I would challenge you to focus on the characteristics, behaviors, and traits of your ideal client, and then be open to whatever job age, gender race that comes to you. Because we all have similar challenges.

Gresham Harkless 12:28

Absolutely, we're a lot more alike than sometimes it seems. But I love that because I think it also and correct me if I'm wrong, it leaves room for that organic growth and drilling down and understanding of your client. Because I even find that sometimes to understand who I want to target, a lot of times, it's just because I've worked with them. And then organically you want to be connected to and attracted to that type of person.

Tara Bradford 12:51

Right. You want to work with people who you like hanging out with. And I had this conversation with someone yesterday, she was saying I'm confused about my brand because I work with real estate agents. And I just had a financial advisor reach out to me and asked me if I would work with him. And she was thinking my whole brand has to go like my whole business has to change. And that just means that your marketing is speaking to those feelings and behaviors and traits of people, we're in the business of serving people. And so it's about breaking down those preconceived notions about what it is.

And being really rigid, you have to be flexible, you have to notice that someone else from a different industry sees the value in what you're doing. And then ask yourself and sit with it and say, What does this mean for my marketing and for my business? It's probably a good thing. It means you're growing, it means reaching more people. And it means that you're ready to scale.

Gresham Harkless 14:02

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, it's not a cause for concern. It's a cause for celebration. So it's a great thing when people outside of who you're trying to lesser target also are attracted to what you're doing because it just means you have a really great message and probably a great brand as well. So now I wanted to ask you what I call my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. The definition of being a CEO, we're hoping to have different quote-unquote, CEOs on the show. So Tara, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Tara Bradford 14:31

Being a CEO, to me means freedom. I have creative freedom, strategic freedom, time freedom, location freedom, financial freedom, and all of these things that I didn't get when I was working for somebody else.

Gresham Harkless 14:49

Absolutely. I love that definition in that perspective because a lot of times you open yourself up to other opportunities. And again, just talking a little bit about that attraction piece where you're attracting the people that do respect and do have that understanding of all the awesome things that you're doing. So they want to reciprocate that. So I think that's an incredible definition. So thank you for sharing that with us. And, Tara, I truly appreciate your time, what I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you can let our readers and listeners know. And then of course, how best they can get hold of you.

Tara Bradford 15:21

Absolutely. There's just one other thing that I want to share because I work with thought leaders. And I think leadership means that you start a movement, you have a great idea. And then you invite other people to come on that journey with you. And share your journey with them so that they feel not only empowered and inspired, but they want to take your idea and spread it to everyone because it's making an impact, you can go to my website at Tararaebradford.com backslash PR hyphen checklist to get my five ways that you can upgrade your online presence in 10 minutes or less right now.

Gresham Harkless 16:03

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much, Tara, I truly appreciate you thank you for all the valuable content and information that you've given to us and I appreciate your time we'll have all those links in the show notes and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

Tara Bradford 16:16

Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure to be on the show.

Outro 16:19

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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