IAM594- Founder Makes a Difference in the Creative Space

Ashley Graham is the founder and creative director of Your Brandista, a modern-day public relations agency that infuses brand authority through caffeinated strategies and communications. To Your Brandista, every brand has a unique story. Their creative process is to filter the raw, unique details of a brand and incorporate a well-rounded methodology and strategy that brews the brand to stand out in their industry as an authoritative figure.

Known as a “Jill of all trades”, Ashley Graham is a serial entrepreneur who channels her passions, talents, and personal values to make a difference in the creative space. Pioneering the belief of building personal brands, Ashley is on a mission to launch a series of content streams across social media to increase awareness of her brands.

• CEO Hack: InsightTimer App for guided meditation
• CEO Nugget: Avoid the comparison trap
• CEO Defined: Person that better influences those around them

Website: http://www.yourbrandista.com/

Twitter: @yourbrandista
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourbrandista/?hl=en

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Transcription

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 0:29

Hello, hello, hello, this is Greg from the I AM CEO podcast I have a very special guest on the show today Ashley Graham of Your Brandista.

Ashley, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Ashley Graham 0:39

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:42

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

Ashley is the founder and creative director of Your Brandista a modern-day public relations agency that infuses brand authority through caffeinated strategies and communications. For Your Brandista, every brand has a unique story, their creative process as a filter to the raw, unique details of a brand, and incorporates a well-rounded methodology and strategy that brews the brand to stand out in their industry as an authoritative figure.

Known as a Jill of all trades, Jill of all trades. Ashley is a serial entrepreneur who changes her passions, talents, and personal values to make a difference in the creative space. pioneering the belief of building personal brands Ashley is on a mission to launch a series of content streams across social media to increase awareness of her brands.

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

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Ashley Graham 1:36

I'm so ready.

Gresham Harkless 1:38

Awesome. Let's do it. So I wanted to kick everything off, I guess kind of from the beginning and hear a little bit more about your CEO story. When did you get started?

Ashley Graham 1:46

Yeah. So I have been in marketing and PR, essentially for a little over 11 years. I think what's unique about my entrepreneurial journey is I was introduced to kind of my career path very early on, I had a really good influence in high school right before I was graduating my senior year who just, I guess, like recognized a lot of my strong suits and just how I had a natural ability to market. So this teacher was a big influence upon going into my college to pursue marketing from there, which I talk about her specifically in a lot of interviews that I do recently because a lot of what I do, a lot of my messaging and going into the content itself is I'm all about influence and paying attention to either the people or the milestones that we reach that ultimately influence us to keep moving forward.

So that's kind of why I start with, you know, that teacher as an example of how she influenced me to kind of pursue my career in marketing. And so as far as my business, I launched my creative agency back in March of 2016. Since then I've gone through a few different pivots myself, whether it's rebranding or figuring out what my niche is, and my space. So just to give you some context, the business essentially started off what's called Brandesso and so for those who might want to know what the name means it's branding and espresso makes a brand so a lot of my creative messaging incorporates you know, a lot of coffee lingos. That's for the caffeinated strategies and caffeinated communications from comes from.

So I think just being creative and what marketing and PR entails is, it's taking something that you know, is familiar to most people, but finding a unique and creative way to kind of spin to kind of make it your own. So I started a Brandesso back in March of 2016. Back in 2019, I decided to pivot and rebrand under Your Brandista, which is which is essentially a personal brand underneath myself. Yeah, that's kind of a little bit of the journey. Right now, I guess just honing in on Your Brandista, as a mean influence to bring better ways that people can incorporate or enhance their content to ultimately make themselves and influencers an authority figure, whether they're a personal brand or they're in business with the team underneath them.

What they can do when it comes to their internal marketing or external marketing is to be essentially better influenced in their space. So that's kind of my little backstory leading me into it.

Gresham Harkless 4:42

Well, nice. No, I definitely appreciate that I love you know how you started out with the influence that your teacher had because I think so many times, we hear the word influence especially, on social media, but like being able to have, I guess an impact on a person's life and create that domino effect. It kind of sounds like what happened is something that I think that a lot of, entrepreneurs and business owners are trying to do when they're creating their brands is trying to have, you know, such an impact as your teacher was able to have, I'm sure that you're able to have some clients as well.

Ashley Graham 5:12

Absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 5:14

Yeah, that makes so much sense. I know, you touched on Your Brandista, is there anything additional that we can look for how exactly you work with clients or kind of your process that you can throw down on?

Ashley Graham 5:26

Yeah, and this kind of goes and to the reason why I decided to pivot into branding myself to understand in 2019, you know when you're getting started, and this is more of like the branding process, I had these high aspirations to, build a huge creative agency, from the get-go. And in reality, at the end of the day, you know, you kind of have to take stepping stones to get to that point.

So I had branded an entity of a business before I'd even branded myself, which, when I decided, or when I actually recognized the disconnect between the two, I've had a way better response rate is to how people resonate with me and the message that I'm putting out there when I branded the business underneath myself, as an individual versus a business entity.

So a lot of kind of my process now with working with clients on the PR side is, you know, honing in on the aspects that make them unique as an individual. Because there's a lot of entrepreneurs out there, there's a lot of marketing professionals, publicists, whatever, you know, their title is, but it's things about their personality or their characteristics that ultimately makes them different into the process that they bring to whoever it is that they're working with.

So with me having to do that for myself, and they say that, if you're able to do it for yourself, you can definitely do it for other people. And so, you know, in the three, almost four years of running the business, and my kind of stepping into my authority of space and building credibility around myself, I've been able to build a pretty, you know, structured process of how to, frame that for other people.

Gresham Harkless 7:17

Nice, I definitely appreciate that. It's interesting, because, you know, so many times I think, people, and I don't know if you find this with clients, but a lot of people aren't able to articulate those things that set them apart and make them unique for their businesses land alone themselves. So I love how of course, you're taking your own medicine, but also, in order to build and help, so many, you know, organizations and businesses to also be able to kind of drill down and understand themselves and then understand their organizations. And I feel like those two things are probably a lot aligned.

Ashley Graham 7:49

Absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 7:52

Makes perfect sense. And so I like to call it your secret sauce, and I know, you kind of touched on this with yourself and your clients, but what do you feel is your secret sauce? Is that ability to be able to speak to your personal brand and be able to do that and others? or are there other aspects involved in that?

Ashley Graham 8:10

That's definitely one piece of the puzzle. But I think, you know, when it comes to my unique selling proposition, the USP is kind of showing people a different perspective than what they think they may need at that time. I think that that's just something that consultants, once you've been at it for a while you kind of learn how to navigate, like your onboarding process, and really telling the client, we know what they need versus what they think they may need. And it's because, you know, we do it over and over and over again, and the needs and the one kind of changes as you mold in your process. So I get a lot of contacts, from potential clients who may think that they need PR, or they may think that they need, you know, a social media strategy.

In reality, some of them might already have kind of momentum built there, they just kind of need somebody to take them back and kind of show them where they've been thriving, and then maybe where those need for opportunity, and just to kind of like nurture what they've already created. And so a lot of my process obviously is, you know, really focused on the PR and media aspect of it, but it's kind of taking content in the means of how to repurpose it as a means to be part of your kind of like your public relations strategy.

So a lot of the messaging that I put out there is like how to create better content on social media that almost acts as pieces to drive publicity without you having to go into more of the traditional outreach tactics that you know most people familiarize themselves with as being PR. So it's a lot of frameworks are talking a lot about content because the content isn't what drives Felicity.

A lot of what makes my process unique for the clients that I work with is kind of showing them like a, you have all this content that you've, you know, you've been working on for a while. Now, here's a way that you can kind of use it to have a different objective than rather just growing your social media following. So it's almost me kind of coming in as the fixer and showing them the pieces that they've been missing or that they're kind of been blind to because they've been focusing on a lot of the other external factors.

Gresham Harkless 10:36

Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO Hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have. But what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Ashley Graham 10:48

An app that I feel has helped me a lot just gain better clarity, and maybe just comfort in my day-to-day things is there's an app called Insight Timer. And essentially, it's more of a meditation app. So they have guided meditations, they have just soothing sounds, whatever kind of your bread and butter is, whatever makes you relaxed, whether it's guided with words, or just you know, music and audio, that has just been a fantastic app to the kind of get out of the noise, I think that we obtain every single day, whether it's in social media, reading articles about better business processes, or entrepreneurial journey, like when we're in the positions of, you know, running a business we obtained so much.

And I think to kind of keep that moving forward to bring better clarity, is to kind of turn all of that off and focus inward rather than outward. And so doing whatever it is that you can to kind of calm the noise and just get in a peace or like a place of relaxation and inner peace.

Gresham Harkless 11:57

Awesome. Now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. That could be like a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It could be around branding or PR. But what's something you might tell a client or even maybe tell your younger business?

Ashley Graham 12:12

Yeah, you'll start to notice that like, everything that I say, is very connected to influence, and mindfulness and just kind of taking it in word. I think the biggest nugget that I have even reminded myself of from the very beginning until now is avoiding the comparison trap. This goes into, you know, media, social media content, TV, radio, there's so much noise out there all the time. When you're in the entrepreneurial space, when you're looking for inspiration from your mentors or other people in your space that have reached a level of success that you're working towards.

If we allow ourselves to get way too wrapped up in it, we almost kind of lose the magic in what it is that we're building. And so it's almost healthier. And it'll get you a lot, like further I feel is if you kind of put on the blinders and don't pay attention, so much the noise around you and just go inward more and focus on every little step that you can take in your business or as an individual to get you to that level of success without having to compare or internalize it.

Gresham Harkless 13:24

Awesome. Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different, quote and quote, CEOs on this show. So Ashley, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Ashley Graham 13:35

Yeah, so as CEO, what that means to me is being a person of influence that better influences those around you. So again, a lot of synchronicities in what I build into my messaging. But you know, when you're working with others, especially in a creative environment, you know, those other people thrive when you influence them for the better. So I think just having a healthy mindset to influence, you know, either initiative in an impactful and purpose-driven way, will bring you very far as an individual, and as well as the people that are working underneath you. Or around you.

Gresham Harkless 14:16

Absolutely. Yeah. I love that. I love the fact again, kind of going back to the story you told at the beginning of how you got started that I think sometimes we don't realize or we may be underplaying the amount of influence that we have. But whether it be as you said, somebody's working under you, somebody's working beside you, or even somebody you're just talking to that day, we have a tremendous amount of influence. I think if you put that out into the world, it oftentimes comes right back to us.

Ashley Graham 14:43

Absolutely. It's a ripple effect.

Gresham Harkless 14:45

Absolutely. Well, actually, I truly appreciate you for all the awesome things you're doing. I appreciate your time even more. What I want to do is 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 ahold of you and find out about all the awesome things you are working on.

Ashley Graham 15:00

Yeah, so if you want to get in contact with me, I'm on every, like every single social media platform out there even TikTok. Now, if you want to connect with me, I'm under Your Brandista. I have a great initiative that I launched with the rebrand it's a weekly intensive program where if brands just need better clarity, whether it comes to their messaging or initiatives that they can take to basically get and garnish more media attention around them as an individual or them as a business to build that our credibility and authority. I love this program, it seems to be resonating well with the clients who have come on board. And I'm, excited to see how that might resonate with you and your audience.

Gresham Harkless 15:51

Awesome.  I definitely appreciate that. We will have the links and information in the show notes so that everybody can follow up with you. But definitely appreciate everything you said and reminding us to kind of be in alignment in so many different ways in our areas so that we can be of influence in and positive way thank you so much for that message.

Ashley Graham 16:09

Thank you as well.

Outro 16:11

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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