IAM417- Brand and Business Strategist Works with Entrepreneurs to Close Existing Gaps

Katherine McGraw Patterson, known as KP, is a brand and business strategist who works with small businesses and entrepreneurs to close the gap between where they are and where they want to be. A fourth-generation entrepreneur, KP started her first business in Hong Kong in 1999. Since then, she's helped businesses here in the US, Canada, and across the world build actionable strategies that results in revenue growth, increased clarity and focus, and greater satisfaction in their operations.

KP is the founder of WEBO Network, a professional development and networking group for women entrepreneurs and business owners and is the author of a new book on networking, “Lunching with Lions: Strategist for the Networking-Averse” that helps professionals in all industries identify the right groups and connections to achieve their professional and business goals.

• CEO Hack: Quarterly list goals to align everyday activities to the goals
• CEO Nugget: Boundary – to maintain work-life balance
• CEO Defined: Mindset of being intentional, loving and passionate in your business

Website: https://katherinemcgrawpatterson.com/

WEBO Network: https://webonetwork.com/

Amazon: Lunching with Lions: Strategies for the Networking Averse

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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 Katherine McGraw Patterson of KatherinemcGrawpatterson.com. Katherine, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 0:40

Thanks for having me. Gresham. I'm really excited to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:43

No problem, super excited to have you on, and what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Katherine so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Katherine McGraw Patterson, known as KP, is a brand and business strategist who works with small businesses and entrepreneurs to close the gap between where they are and where they want to be. A fourth-generation entrepreneur, KP started her first business in Hong Kong in 1999.

Since then, she's helped businesses here in the US, Canada, and across the world build actionable strategies that result in revenue growth, increased clarity and focus, and greater satisfaction in their operations. KP is the founder of WEBO Network, a professional development and networking group for women entrepreneurs and business owners, and is the author of a new book on networking, “Lunching with Lions: Strategist for the Networking-Averse” that helps professionals in all industries identify the right groups and connections to achieve their professional and business goals. KP, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

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Katherine McGraw Patterson 1:36

I'm so ready.

Gresham Harkless 1:39

Let's do it. So to kick everything off, I wanted to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. What led you to get started with your business?

Katherine McGraw Patterson 1:46

Well, I'm what I call an accidental entrepreneur. I was working corporate on a Friday and on a Monday, I was a business owner, it was not planned. I was part of a startup in Hong Kong. I was the third employee, and within a year, we had grown to about 140 people. And as many of your listeners probably know, and as a startup, you wear a lot of hats. And sometimes it's hard to take those hats off. And so by the time we were 140, I was still the PA to the CEO, I was the Regional Marketing Director, and I was the office manager. And so a day came when I was trying to juggle those hats. Were they all at the same time?

And I was fixing a toilet and hiring a secretary and trying to get a proposal out the door. And about an hour after everything calmed down, and the proposal had gone out. My boss came to me he was Scottish. And he said, there's a $6 million, Anna, in that proposal. And both of us just lost it. And so we scrambled to fix it. And then we sat in his office and had a beer and cried. And I said I can't. This is not working. As long as I'm in the office, I'm still going to be the PA and the office manager. And he agreed. And so we agreed on the spur of the moment that I would work from home and contract back all the marketing services to them.

But oddly enough, Hong Kong is really a small community when it comes to the expat world. And so once people found out that I was working independently, I started to get calls from other architecture, engineering, and consulting firms, which was the industry that I was in at the time. And all of a sudden, I had a business. And so that was in 1999. It's been 20 years. And I love what I do. So it was a good accident. It was a happy accident.

Gresham Harkless 3:29

Yeah, definitely. It sounds like it worked in the way it was supposed to in in perfect way. And, I appreciate you sharing that with us. Because I think a lot of times everybody has a different story when it comes to starting their business. And I think that getting that opportunity to jump out on the ledge, and then all of a sudden, all these people want to hire you for the exact same thing is, it's pretty exciting.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 3:48

It is exciting. And it just goes to show that we're building our personal brand, always. And so even when you're working in a corporate environment, you're building a personal brand. And that pays off in ways that you can't imagine when you're doing it. And so I was only able to succeed in my business because I had a personal brand in the market as somebody who had a specialty, and was really good at what I did, which at the time was mostly proposals and responses to requests for information. So it was a different marketing than what I do now. But I definitely had built a brand and I was able to leverage that into a successful business.

Gresham Harkless 4:27

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I appreciate you reminding us that because I think a lot of times people were like, this is the year that I'm going to start my personal brand, but you've already been building your personal brand from day one. So now you just have to figure out what that is and how you want to maybe direct it.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 4:41

Exactly. And I love that you bring that up because one of the things I tell my clients all the time is you have a brand. And if you haven't been intentional about it, you might have a problem because brand is simply what people know you for when they have a problem and they say this is the solution. That solution is how they perceive you.

And so one of the things I always caution my clients is don't take jobs that you don't really want to take because you run the risk of becoming accidentally branded as a specialist in something that you don't really want to do. And so I encourage people to be very intentional about when they obviously, these are people that are good today, I'm gonna start my brand. Well, okay, great started today. Be very intentional about it. And you may have to undo some previous conceptions about who you are and what you do.

Gresham Harkless 5:36

That makes perfect sense. And so I know you touched on it a little bit, I guess, with some of the things that you do with clients, can you tell us I guess a little bit more about what you're doing with your networking group with your new book, and how you serve the clients you're working with?

Katherine McGraw Patterson 5:49

Yeah, so since 1999, I've only worked with another service provider on small businesses and entrepreneurs and solopreneurs, I specialize in the kind of coach, consultant, professional services, creative range, and people who offer their expertise as a product. What I do today is take all of that experience over the 20 years of serving my clients and my own experience in running my own business. And then, of course, the experience of the three generations in my family before me, and I help those small businesses and service providers with their business strategy from a brand standpoint, it's called operational branding, the idea that everything in our business should align with our brand.

And really what I help them do is I empower them, I empower them to understand their business in a way they haven't understood before. That allows them to really make better decisions about when they have opportunities that arise in terms of marketing are serving clients or services, or adding services or products to their mix. It really empowers them to make the right decision for them. And it eliminates a lot of that overwhelm that so many of us solopreneurs tend to live in. And I have a heart to serve that entrepreneur community. And that's where our vote network came from.

And it came from my own desire to have other voices speak into my business and as a solopreneur. Well, under the seven-figure mark, there's just not a lot of opportunity to mastermind, or to find that peer advisory, there's lots of networking. But I would go to leads groups or networking groups and be like, well, can't we talk about our businesses like I have a problem I need, I need help.

And so we don't network was founded on the premise that of the $12 million women-owned businesses in the US, only 1.7%, I think, make less make more than a million dollars, about 97%, or around the $500,000, mark and 87% are under 100,000. So where is the place for that 87% to get that high-level professional development, when you look, at a lot of the organizations that I found, you had to be making the million or $2 million to be invited to play.

And so we both network, our mission is professional development. We bring in trainers and experts every month to offer, tangible business skills that our owners can take away and put to work in their business right away. And then we're also building community through that shared experience of being a woman business owner through our networking events we have a mastermind program that we run and every one of our events, regardless of whether it's an after-hours or lunch or training has a component of bring your challenges to the table and ask for support and resources from the other members.

And so we have what we call our mini mastermind at every event. And people use it they show up with notebooks full of questions like I need help with and they'll just go down their list and everybody piles on and gives them their advice. And it's just a really supportive, collaborative approach to networking. And it's really it. Well, obviously, when I speak about it, you can hear it. It's my passion. So it's a great offshoot of my own business because my own business supports the growth of small business owners and entrepreneurs. And so this is just a subset of that.

Gresham Harkless 9:12

Nice that makes perfect sense. And I think especially when you're running a business, whether it be solopreneurs, or CEO of 10 employees or 15, or whatever, sometimes you don't have that space or that opportunity, that sacred space, so to speak, where you can collaborate and couldn't have those conversations. So your creating that is huge, because I think a lot of times we need that outlet, especially with how stressful and how many ups and downs can come with running a business.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 9:35

For sure, and not to be crass, but there's that old saying I don't want to poop where I eat. And so sometimes I think those of us who run businesses, we are hesitant to show our vulnerabilities and to the people that we work with whether we could have a whole discussion about authenticity and vulnerability, but the fact is, many of us don't want to show our vulnerabilities to the people who rely on us for their jobs. And so having an outside group that is solely there to support you and your goals and to, to talk through problems or challenges with you is so incredibly valuable because I think that we carry the weight of our of the world on our shoulders as entrepreneurs. And so we all need that support.

And sometimes we can't find it within our own organizations. And so it's really good to go out and plus, that the other perspectives that people bring whether they're in the same industry as you or not, it's really always surprising to me how a mishmash of industries and our mastermind programs really do support each other in a way that you wouldn't get if you were only talking to people who had the same blinders on as you did because they did the same thing.

Gresham Harkless 10:47

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. You definitely need those perspectives and to think outside the box and not even know that there's a box there, sometimes we need. So I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce, and it could be for you or your organization, but what do you feel sets you apart and makes you unique?

Katherine McGraw Patterson 11:05

I definitely think it's my own experience as an entrepreneur for 20 years, and the fact that I have worked as a fractional CMO or CEO for so many of my clients and that I'm a fourth-generation entrepreneur, this is running a business on your own or in a small organization is something I know really, really well. And then I combined that with my background in branding, I got my start in marketing, communications, and brand, strategy. And so I'm bringing lately I've been talking a lot about the big boys, the big huge corporations, they spend millions of dollars on this, this operational branding concept.

And I think it's something that small businesses and entrepreneurs have not overlooked. They think they have to do everything all the time. And I'm on a mission to help them simplify, focus,, and have greater clarity in their business. And so I think that it's all of my experience, and my experience working in a bunch of different companies as a fractional member of their team. And that brand strategy, and it all combined to bring assist a more sophisticated approach to small business and entrepreneurship.

Gresham Harkless 12:13

I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this might be an app or book or habit that you have or something more from your book. But what do you feel kind of makes you more effective and efficient?

Katherine McGraw Patterson 12:24

I am constantly aware of my current goals in my business. This is easier if you are a small business owner and an entrepreneur because obviously the big guys, have many things going on. But for me, I have my quarterly list of goals, I keep them to three or fewer. And that is always at the top of my to-do list every day. And it helps me align the activities that I'm doing every day. So when I go to do a task, my goals for that quarter are right above it. And if I can't draw a straight line between that task and those goals, then it gets put off.

Gresham Harkless 13:00

Yeah, absolutely. And 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 a time machine. What would you tell your younger business self

Katherine McGraw Patterson 13:10

Boundaries. I had a baby a year after I started my business. And I went back to work within a week because I work from home. especially hard for those of us who work from our homes, I think to draw those boundaries, because our office space is right there. And we walked by it and I'll just check my emails quickly or whatever. And it's really easy to give up a lot of your free time and a lot of that recharge time to pour into your business.

And it took me a long time like years, until I was able to create boundaries in my own this simple boundaries. Like I'm not going to check my computer for emails after five o'clock, or I'm not going to answer emails or business-related texts on the weekend.

Gresham Harkless 13:56

I definitely appreciate that perspective. And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question which you touched on a little bit, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Katherine, what has been CEO mean to you?

Katherine McGraw Patterson 14:11

It's that mindset of loving, being intentional, passionate, and directed in your business when you're in your business. So again, I work with a lot of solopreneurs and entrepreneurs and women, especially those who are building a business around other responsibilities children, husbands, community, family, all of those things. The women that I resonate with are the ones that have that CEO mentality that they have created a space in their world for their business, they have created those boundaries, and when they are in their business, they are 100% in their business.

Gresham Harkless 14:43

I love that definition. I appreciate you. I appreciate your time even more. 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 they can get a copy of your book and find out about all the awesome things you're working on and do it.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 14:58

Well, you can find me at KatherinemcGrawpatterson.com. I'm on Instagram and Twitter at Biz Coach Kp and I'm on LinkedIn and Facebook at Katherine McGraw Patterson, I think on Facebook, there's an LLC after that, but I love to connect. So if you tell me that you heard me on the Gresh show, I will definitely connect with you. You can get Lunching with Lions on Amazon, in ebook and paperback and Lunching with Lions essentially tells my story of my own personal fears around networking. So I started my business in 1999, I worked really hard for a really long time not to have to network.

I leveraged those relationships which yes, hello, I know now was networking. But to me that working is going out to those leads groups and events and shaking hands and passing cards and adding a lot of mind junk around that. And so, the Weibo network actually grew out of a personal networking challenge I set for myself when I started my business in a new direction about four years ago. And I knew I had to network in order to succeed and So like any good business strategist, I created a strategy for myself, and networking online was part of that. And we both grew from that. And it's now this big thing with its own legs and it's my own little baby.

Gresham Harkless 16:13

I appreciate it, KP. I appreciate all the awesome things you're doing. We're gonna have those links in the show notes as well so that everybody can follow up with you. But again, appreciate all the awesome things you're doing and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Outro 16:23

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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