IAM932- Founder Builds Thriving Brands

Jennifer Mulchandani is the Founder and CEO of Arlington Strategy, a comprehensive marketing agency whose mission is to build thriving brands working to change the world. Since launching Arlington Strategy in 2012, Jennifer has become an active member of the Arlington Chamber of Commerce, is an alumna of Leadership Arlington class of '15 and serves on the Board of Directors for Bridges to Independence. Jennifer and her husband of 21 years have three teenage boys, and when not in a pandemic, her family travels off the beaten path around the world as much as possible.

• CEO Hack: Building intentional moments of socialization
• CEO Nugget: Ask yourself, what problem do you solve?
• CEO Defined: Example setting and defining the mission

Website: https://arlingtonstrategy.com/

Facebook: facebook.com/arlingtonstrategy
Instagram: instagram.com/arl_strategy
Twitter: Twitter.com/arlstrategy
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/arlington-strategy

Full Interview:

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Transcription

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[00:00:08.50] – Intro

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.

[00:00:38.29] – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Jennifer Molchanati of Arlington Strategy. Jennifer, it's great to have you on the show.

[00:00:47.50] – Jennifer Mulchandani

Thanks, Gresh. Thanks for having me. I'm excited for our conversation.

[00:00:50.70] – Gresham Harkless

No problem. Super excited as well. And before I jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Jennifer so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Jennifer is the founder and CEO of Arlington Strategy, a comprehensive marketing agency whose mission is to build thriving brands working to change the world. Since launching Arlington Strategy in twenty twelve, Jennifer has become an active member of the Arlington Chamber of Commerce is an alumnus of the leadership center the Leadership Arlington class of twenty fifteen, and serves on the board of directors for Bridge of Independence. Jennifer and her husband of twenty-one years have three teenage boys. And when not in a pandemic, her family travels off the beaten path around the world as much as possible. Jennifer, great to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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[00:01:31.20] – Jennifer Mulchandani

I'm excited. Yeah.

[00:01:32.59] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's, do it then. So to kinda kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit and hear a little bit more about how you got started. Could you take us through what I call your CEO story? We'll let you get started with the business. Sure.

[00:01:43.40] – Jennifer Mulchandani

I mean, honestly, I wanted, I wanted to not get bored. And, my company was born out of the idea that I had a lot of skills that I had amassed over several positions in my early career, which started in public policy, then nonprofit management, and then, the small business retail community, and it just occurred to me that the best way to, to do my next thing was to be in a consultant type position.

So initially I thought I'd just be a consultant, but then very quickly realized what I wanted was to build my brand and to have, to be able to set the course of how consulting gets delivered, for a variety of clients. So whether nonprofits or businesses or public agencies, since I had that breadth of background, I wanted to serve those various communities, and so I very quickly started working on building a brand. So it started with, I want the next job to be diverse and not single not helping just one company or one business or one or one client, and then it quickly grew from there.

[00:02:49.59] – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I definitely appreciate that, and I think that you know, having that quote, unquote ownership upon, obviously, your business, but also of the path of your skills and also, how you, impact clients is so huge. And I think it's something we often overlook about, you know, owning a business, how much impact you can have in so many different ways.

[00:03:06.30] – Jennifer Mulchandani

That's right. That's right. I mean, it's both it's it's an honor and a joy, and it's an awesome responsibility Yes. All at the same time.

[00:03:13.59] – Gresham Harkless

Exactly. Almost in no one for sure. We see that and feel that on an everyday basis. And so, I know I touched on it a little bit when I read your bio. Can you just take us through a little bit more on how you do that? Could you take us through, how you serve the clients that you work with with Arlington Strategy?

[00:03:26.90] – Jennifer Mulchandani

Sure. And it really, we don't have a cookie cutter sort of product or service line.

[00:03:32.30] – Gresham Harkless

Mhmm.

[00:03:32.80] – Jennifer Mulchandani

I think one of the things that makes us very unique is we design an intervention or a set of services or deliverables that are very custom to the client's needs, and where they are. We meet you where you are. It's not you want service package a, b, or c. So I would say about half of our work is, that consulting, that strategy side, so we might be working with a brand new company that maybe has a vision of what they want to do, or the impact they want to make, but they don't know what they should name themselves, or they haven't done their market research. Maybe they're getting funding and they need to write a business plan, and we can help walk, entrepreneurs through that stage.

We write a lot of business strategies, business, and marketing plans, that kind of thing. And then for more established organizations or businesses, they'll often come to us at an inflection point. So maybe they're launching a new product line or new service or they want to rebrand, we've done quite a few of that in the last year, I think COVID made a lot of people look inward, and their old brand may not be reflective of what they how they see themselves anymore, and so we will walk organizations or businesses through a process and deliver to them whether it's a whole new brand, package, or it could just even be messaging or how they talk about themselves. It's about half our work.

The other half of our work is we become your marketing company. So we will be a long-term partner month in and month out, guiding our clients on strategy, sometimes augmenting their team if they have internal marketing capacity, or, helping build capacity for some of the smaller organizations will even go so far as to help them hire their marketing staff and transition the things that we've built for them. We consider that a great success if we've put ourselves out of a job by enabling a business to grow and succeed in that way. So in that role, we'll run social media, advertising, you know, we'll do all the media buys, PR, email marketing, and all the digital stuff that is so important right now. So it runs the gamut.

[00:05:30.60] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. It sounds like something that's, you know, empowering for, you know, organizations in so many different ways. And I love how you say we meet you where you are because you may not know exactly what to do, especially during transformational times like this where you're trying to understand what might be the pivot to make or maybe what business or different line to start, it's great to be able to kinda lean on your expertise and the team expertise of your team to be able to understand not just what to do, but also have the strategy to make that happen.

[00:05:56.19] – Jennifer Mulchandani

Right. And I think there's a real opportunity for all businesses to even if it's an informal team of advisers, but the role of the external consultant where we get to add value is by more often asking questions than necessarily having all the brilliant answers. So it's people don't know what they don't know, and so our role is really to, you know, challenge in a good way our clients so that they can make a bigger impact.

[00:06:23.00] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. And that makes so much sense. And I love how you talked about that cookie-cutter strategy and how you guys don't focus on that. Because I almost think and correct myself if I'm wrong, by asking those questions, you get to potentially at least maybe not get the answers, but you at least get the brain thinking and the business thinking about what could be that answer, and then you start to get those, I guess, answers in that direction within.

[00:06:44.60] – Jennifer Mulchandani

Yeah. I think one of my favorite, occurrences when we're we're talking with a client, and it can happen at any stage, but when you really start diving in, and we're really about the core mission. And so we we love to work with clients who believe in something more than, the dollars and cents of their business. And when you really can hone in on what drives what gets them up in the morning, what drives them, what mark do they wanna leave, and they're so passionate about it, and we're able to say, like, okay, that. We're gonna capture that, and we're gonna mark it around that. Because when they're trying to market around, you know, all the nuts and bolts, but that isn't where the passion is, It's the lost opportunity. So for us to sort of tease out the mission, whether it's a for-profit business or not, there's a mission at the core of it, and building a marketing strategy around that is super fun.

[00:07:32.00] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. It sounds, like, very exciting. And I and I imagine that you know, even if you have, you know, two businesses that are doing the same quote unquote products and services if they have a different mission, a different way as far as what they're doing, it kinda manifests itself. And, the way that they communicate, but also in the way that they communicate internally or, maybe the products or services they have and and how they branch off to other things. I imagine that it just really gets exciting to have all those different, results of of, cementing that and understanding what that looks like.

[00:08:01.00] – Jennifer Mulchandani

Yeah. I mean, everybody talks about, you know, being authentic in business.

[00:08:04.50] – Gresham Harkless

Mhmm.

[00:08:05.19] – Jennifer Mulchandani

And I think that's kind of at the core of what we try to get to is, you know, to market you authentically is gonna look very different than marketing the next person. And there's so much pressure nowadays, I think, with all the social media and, you know, the rise of video marketing. Everyone sees something happen, and then they go, I gotta do that. I gotta do that thing or follow and they're doing that. I should do that. And it's not always true or appropriate for, you know, the authentic why. So that's important to get to.

[00:08:33.50] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. And it's so important to be able to have, that quote-unquote external, I guess, perspective and the insight and expertise that you all have as well too. So, I know you kind of touched on this a little bit, I believe. That's what you consider to be, like, your secret sauce and that you're able to, like, ask those questions, really drill down. Do you feel like that's what sets you or your organizational part that makes it unique? I

[00:08:54.20] – Jennifer Mulchandani

I think it's one of it's one of the things. I mean, we consider ourselves very values-based, and not in a, you know, just because it's not a plaque on the wall sort of way. But, you know, my me as founder, you know, my background was in public service. It's what I, you know, I wanted when I was a little girl, I wanted to one day, you know, be on either the Supreme Court or be a congresswoman and change the world. And that wasn't my path very intentionally as I grew up but that sort of desire to be in public service is important to me and it's important to, it's, it's, as it's turned out, that's, those are the folks that have been attractive to me as my staff, as we've built out our team of partners. It's that shared philosophy of giving back.

But so the value stuff is really important to us, and our secret sauce. But, you know, the other part of this is we've recruited, a team of people with a lot of diverse backgrounds. So, you know, you go to some and there's the right thing for you know, there everybody has their own thing. Right? This is not to put any other approach down, but we are not an agency where we all grew up in the agency model, or we all grew up in the PR model, or we all grew up as, you know, sort of business management consultants. We have a mix of people who've come through industry, come through agencies, sort of work the others' client behind the, you know, behind the other side of the desk, be it in public service, in nonprofit, and in business.

And so there's this very unique, very deep industry knowledge that we have in a lot of areas because that's our team that's how our team has come together. And I think that positions us when we're working with, you know, a huge plethora of types of industries that we were bringing that real-world experience to. So, there's that, and then there's the we do go deep. You know? We're not, and we get phone calls of folks who, you know, just want to fill in the blank. We don't just do anything. Mhmm. We refer out for that, and sometimes there's a rule for that. But we get our hands dirty. We get into the business, and we like to develop that that sort of partnership, that true understanding because it's based on strategy and it doesn't just option a, b, or c.

You know, to to work with us is to get people who truly and we say this all the time, but we we mean it. We become the champions for our clients. I mean, one of my team members after working for, more than a year on an account, it's a private school, you know, ended up sending her child to that school. I mean, that's not a small undertaking, but that's, like, the true belief that we adopt on our clients. We've become customers, of many, many of our clients because we truly believe in what they're doing. And so I think that's unique, like, where we become personal and, you know, and nowadays too, you measure it by how many Facebook friends I have with former and current clients. It's staggering. It's like I don't think business used to work that way, but it is true meaningful relationships have come out of what we've built.

[00:12:00.79] – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to switch gears a little bit Yeah. And I wanted to 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?

[00:12:11.00] – Jennifer Mulchandani

You know, I don't know if this isn't a hack. I mean, I think the whole world in the last year really had to adopt whole new ways of running teams. And, again, I don't think this is unique, but what has worked well for me is, one, every video meeting, which we're all doing a bazillion of them. You know, it's being very intentional not to just jump into the meeting. You know? It's, we're missing out on human connection and, it is just that, like, you know, how was your weekend? Oh, your hair looks nice. Or I hear your kid's in the background. Well, you're having a good day or a bad day. So that's been important for and it and it's not it doesn't come natural because, you know, we're booked, you know, every, particularly now, you know, with the Zoom culture.

We have way more meetings in our day because we aren't getting in our car and driving across town, and there's not all this natural sort of decompression time happening. And so it's just that you wanna jump meeting to meeting, and so being just building in those intentional moments of socialization or or or whatnot. So there's that. And then it's just on, our team chat channel. We use Slack for our internal communication. It's having a chit-chat channel, and it's and it's seeding it, and it's letting it be an important part of our team building, keeping our culture up.

[00:13:30.79] – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. And so I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client, or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your business self.

[00:13:41.70] – Jennifer Mulchandani

I have framed it in my actual office, not my home office, and it's just it's so basic. But what I tell clients is, what problem do you solve? Market that.

[00:13:54.60] – Gresham Harkless

Mhmm.

[00:13:55.39] – Jennifer Mulchandani

It's it's not losing sight of that. It's so basic, but it's important to remember.

[00:14:00.60] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And so now I wanna ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So, Jennifer, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:14:11.50] – Jennifer Mulchandani

It means leadership. It means empathy. And by leadership, I mean example setting and just really defining the mission.

[00:14:20.89] – Gresham Harkless

I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted 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, of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

[00:14:31.29] – Jennifer Mulchandani

On. Sure. Well, I would like to share that we are, at Arlington Strategy, doing several free, workshops. We deliver them through SCORE, which is a program of the SBA, in partnership with the Greater Washington Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Lots of ways to access, you know, depending on the level of your business, to access some really good, training opportunities on everything from advertising, digital marketing, content strategy, and so forth. We have all of that on our website and our social channels. So that's Arlington strategy dot com. We're on all of the all of the normal channels, and you can get there from our website, of course. We also have a newsletter list where we, make these opportunities available.

So I encourage folks who are looking for that type of inspiration, to sign up with us, and, you know, to always be in touch. We love to connect, you know, even if we're not we're not the the folks that you need in your business right now, we have very good and deep relationships with all types of support, and businesses and are happy to connect any of your listeners or readers who, are looking for looking for that even if it's that just thing, that we may not provide but we know the people who do so we're happy to be that resource for folks. And I just wanna thank you for having me on. This is a fun conversation, and it's always good to sort of step back a little bit and look at the big picture, which is great.

[00:15:54.29] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. No. I appreciate you, for doing that. We will have the links and information in the show notes, and I appreciate you so much for offering so many resources and being resourceful to us as well too. I know you do a tremendous amount in the community, so definitely appreciate you, appreciate your time, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

[00:16:10.79] – Outro

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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