- CEO Story: Back in 2007, Nicole was fascinated by how social media has changed the business. So she worked for a big bank working on their internet, with things going slow, and a win-win for Nicole on having a good backbone of a Fortune 500 client in her resume. But She does a lot of work for small business owners which she loves doing.
- Business Service: Helping people grow online. Website redesigning with the integration of e-courses, client portal, capturing client’s information, and creating invoices within the website. With integration with social media and email.
- Secret Sauce: Listening to clients and translating the complex to simplicity.
- CEO Hack: App mention: Toggl – time tracking tool. It helps you track your time, understand your profitability, and serve as documentation.
- CEO Nugget: Impression is everything. We don’t realize that we don’t always get second chances, all those little details just add up to the success of your business.
- CEO Defined: Figure out the direction, and the expectations of the company. Empower your team, and give them the tools they need.
Website: sociallight.net
LinkedIn: @nicolekrug
Twitter: @SocialLightLLC
Facebook: @sociallightdc
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrPUCuwCm0m2dG3z69FuTwg
Check out one of our favorite CEO Hack’s Audible. Get your free audiobook and check out more of our favorite CEO Hacks HERE
Transcription
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00:19 – 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.
00:49 – Gresham Harkless
Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Nicole Krug of Social Light. Nicole, super excited to have you on the show.
00:58 – Nicole Krug
I am thrilled to be here. I always loved helping small businesses and other entrepreneurs grow. So this is awesome.
01:04 – Gresham Harkless
Yes. And that's why I explained you're definitely in the right place to do that. I love all the awesome things that you're doing. And of course, before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Nicole so you can hear about some of the awesome things that she's working on. Nicole founded Socialite in 2009 to help make the Internet a friendlier place by providing the tools and training small business owners need for success online. Through Socialite, Nicole helps clients hone their digital marketing skills to bring more exposure to their brand while boosting the bottom line. Nicole, excited again to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
[restrict paid=”true”]
01:37 – Nicole Krug
Let's do it.
01:38 – Gresham Harkless
Let's make it happen then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit here a little bit more on how you got started. Want to call your CEO story?
01:47 – Nicole Krug
Sure. So I started my career, my early career in public relations, because I was fascinated by just kind of the sociology of what makes somebody do something. And then back in the day, when I'm talking like 2007, 2008, when social media came up, that was like a whole new trend. Right. And I was fascinated by how that was changing business. I had been recruited to the Internet department of a large bank, where I started focusing on social media.
They were pretty slow to adapt, so as we worked on gaining executive buy-in, my husband was finishing his graduate studies, and we were in the process of moving. Eventually, when they were ready to proceed, they invited me to stay on as a contractor, which was a great way to help establish a strong foundation for the company.
But I knew this move had been coming so I started, so I started taking on smaller businesses doing social media. So while the bank talked about everything and you know, we had to do risk and legal and customer service scripts and all that, the small businesses were actually out there doing it. So I love that I have that big Fortune 500 company on my resume, but it's actually the small businesses that are moving things forward and making a difference that I love working with.
03:03 – Gresham Harkless
Nice. I absolutely love that. And especially because I think so many times when you know, someone might be listening to this or seeing all the awesome things you're, you've been able to do, you don't see all the behind-the-scenes things of the slower than molasses, you know, pace it took for you to kind of get that big Fortune 500 company. But also I imagine the, you know, opportunity, a lot of the creativity, a lot of the people that are a little bit more trailblazed were probably those small but, you know, mighty organizations that were able, able to kind of innovate at a faster pace.
03:32 – Nicole Krug
It is, I mean, if you can believe it, I wrote 45 pages on the risk of Twitter and this is like back in the day before Twitter had the expanded character count. I mean there's so like in big companies there's so many stakeholders that have to get involved and buy off that often things get watered down from their original mission. And small companies, especially in unregulated environments, which is most of what I like, I mean you just get out there and do stuff, you know, and the whole fail fast, you, you see what works, you dump it. You go by, you know, the bank's slogan is We don't believe, we don't lead and we don't bleed. So they're not going to move terribly fast at all.
04:10 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, I absolutely love that slogan to kind of get out there and try things. I think, you know, there's such a misconception. I think you could probably definitely see this from a social media perspective, but just from a business perspective that a lot of the most successful, you know, small but mighty organizations are those that are able to fail fast. They try things and see what works. What does work they double down on?
04:29 – Nicole Krug
And sometimes it's super simple. I mean I have clients like we try fantasy football promotion periods.
04:34 – Gresham Harkless
Right.
04:35 – Nicole Krug
Or March Grant like, you know, sometimes it's like put up a funny picture and just do a caption, you know. So like these are things that, you know, they're silly but they start to get the brand, you know, like the personality behind the brand. But sometimes that's like that type of just little silly thing can be hard for a big company. And so small, you know, mobile nimble companies are actually often the innovators until they get bought up by Google and then they have to follow the rules.
05:01 – Gresham Harkless
Right, exactly. Until they get bought up by those Fortune 500s. Right. But I love that you talked about, you know, when you get started, you know, the sociology part, and then you brought up that personality. Because I say so often we forget about the human aspect of business. But I think that's one of the beauties of the work that you do you, I think seem to bring that to light for these organizations where they can do fall, you can do fun and creative things and you know, fantasy football, whatever it might be, but it kind of speaks to that, you know, that brand. But that human aspect sometimes is missing from the larger brands.
05:32 – Nicole Krug
Well, it's true. And especially if you are, you know, if you are a CEO of a large organization, you know, you are, you are definitely a spokesperson. Right. But people aren't necessarily expecting to work with you. If you are more an entrepreneur or you're a CEO of let's say a 10-person company, you are very much behind that. Like people want to talk and touch and well, let me not touch.
But you know, they want to see you, they want to interact with you. And so in especially things. And I will say for somebody like me who works in digital marketing, I mean we are a dime a dozen. I'm not going to lie. There are a million people who do what I do.
And so people are choosing to work with me because of me, because of, you know, because they hear me on a podcast, like what I have to say somebody referred, whatever it is, I'm not going to say my team doesn't have anything else to do with it because they're fabulous. But you know, it is a lot of like you really need when you're a small business owner and entrepreneur, it's hard to separate the personal brand from the business brand because they're so integrated and so you need to put those impressions out there.
06:32 – Gresham Harkless
Nice. I absolutely love that you do that you work with your clients because I think we're getting further and further away from the kind of like I call it the siloed approach, where this is personal, this is the business, this is a relationship, this is not. It ends up being so integrated that as you said, especially if you're working for one of those nimble organizations, then you end up being like the spokesperson, you know, for the organization. And I think that is so important to kind of make sure that we understand that and understand how best we can kind of leverage that opportunity that comes with that.
07:02 – Nicole Krug
It's true. So I love that I could go down this rabbit hole because I get asked all the time like, well, should I friend my clients? Or this, you know, like, where's that? There's, there's so there's minds, don't get me wrong, landmines to avoid. But it is, I mean, at this point there, you can't, you can't, you know, wear your buttoned-up suit 9 to 5 and then go to the clubs and party and not expect anything. What was it just the, the Prime Minister of Sweden that got, you know, the whole club thing, I mean, it is. Well, we'll go there. Politics, right? But there's no hiding anymore.
07:38 – Gresham Harkless
Exactly, exactly. As we have these, these 24-hour, you know, broadcast systems right in our pockets, you have that opportunity to kind of see and connect with people for better and sometimes not for better, you know when things happen. So I wanted to kind of drill down a little bit more. I know we touched on a little bit. So could you take us through a little bit more on what it looks like working with you, how you're serving clients, and how you and your team are making that impact?
08:01 – Nicole Krug
So what we really do is we help people grow online. And so my sweet spot, so to speak, is I have so many people that have been around for, let's say five years and they come to me and they say, I am tapped out on what I can do myself. I hear so often. I have this website that I put up to have something when I first started, but it's ugly, it's functional or it just doesn't, you know, it's not representing who I am now. So we do, I mean, we do a ton of redesign and that's something, but we also, you know, we integrate things.
Do you want to have E-courses? Do you need a client portal? Do you need a better job of capturing clients' information? You know, do you want to run your invoices off your website, whatever it is? So websites are still the anchor. Yes, I know. We're like, we're getting into AI and digital and all that. But websites are still the anchor in a lot of ways. But that also means it has to integrate with social media and email. And your website has to be set up so you get found on Google, which has.
So I have some people that, you know, we are there, I hate to say agency, we're a lot friendlier and customizable than many agencies, but we can do a lot of that capabilities. But I have some people that come in for a project, maybe that is to, you know, they want to rank better on Google or maybe they need help doing a strategy. So we have, you know, different parts and plans to help people at different levels continue to grow.
09:24 – Gresham Harkless
Nice. I love that. And it kind of sounds, for, you know, for lack of a better term, you kind of meet people where they are. Let me, let me ask you this. I almost feel like I was going to ask you for your secret sauce, which is kind of for yourself, the business, or a combination of both. But I've always felt like people that have a really good mastery of what it is that they do are like that five-year-old and asking why, why, why?
Not to just keep asking it to bother you, but to have a great understanding. So I almost feel like you have the ability to be able to translate the complex to anybody and everybody to meet them where they are. Do you feel like that is, you know, part of or an ingredient in your secret sauce that makes you unique?
10:02 – Nicole Krug
It's very much so. So I've been, I've been told we're like an easy button for small business owners, like when it comes online. Because so much of what I do is I listen to what they're saying, but especially like when it comes to like the words they're using are not the same words a developer is going to use. Or I get, I get, I need a designer for this. I'm like, no, you don't. You know, like some of those things.
And because, and I do a lot of saying, well, we could do it that way, but a best practice really is right. And so in some ways, I'm too honest for my own good. And I tell people like I do, I say, you know, I'll take your money if you want to do that, but you would be better spent that way. And yeah, I might lose out on a couple thousand dollars, but I've had clients since 2013, you know, and not just one. Like I have five clients from 2013. And so it's, that builds that loyalty and it builds a huge piece of referrals.
10:54 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, absolutely. And it's like kind of that gentle redirection. But I think like I've talked about before, it really speaks to that human aspect. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want 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?
11:12 – Nicole Krug
So this is going to sound weird, but I'm going to say the time tracking tool Toggle and it sounds like so little. Right. But I use it. I have all my team using it. And yes, it helps make billing easy, but the real value of it is looking back at the end of the project because I think so many of us underestimate the time that it's going to do simple tasks. And so everything from like doing your client work or just doing admin, stuff like that, you know, we talk about outsourcing, right?
If it's taking you six hours to do your billing all the time, like maybe that becomes valuable to give your accountant, like get an accountant in or somebody that's going to do your bookkeeping. Right. But I think that also helps you understand, okay, did I quote a project correctly? Do I need to kind of or you know, did I think it was going to take 15 hours where it took 35? And so I'm making pennies on the dollar. And so the use of the time tracker is kind of simple in itself, but I think using it to look at the big picture, really helps you understand your profitability and kind of a cost-benefit analysis of what you're going to your money.
12:18 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, I absolutely love that. And what would you consider to be what I like to call a CEO nugget? So this is a little bit more word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It's something I like to say you might tell your favorite client or if you have to do a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.
12:32 – Nicole Krug
I think what we forget and kind of going back to social media and being everywhere, but how much people make judgments within 30 seconds of their first impression. And because of this integrated digital world, you know, first impression might mean meeting you at a networking event, it might mean going to your website. It might mean that I follow Gresh and Gresh shared a Nicole post and you came about me like there are so many ways. And while words matter, we make every decision on visuals, right? We process visuals so much faster.
And you know, like Harvard did this study that pretty websites inspire more trust in a company than the ones that are. And now that doesn't mean, you know, we're all supermodels out there, but it does mean we need to understand the impression that we're giving and carry that through a lot of different things.
And because especially in the mobile world, and I mean, impression is everything. If you load it on a mobile phone and it takes five seconds to pull up your website, that's an impression that you're slow and people, like, they go on their way and they don't come back. And so I think it's. We don't realize that we don't always get second chances. And just like all those little details add up to the success of your business.
13:52 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So now I wanted to 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 the show. So, Nicole, what does being a CEO mean to you?
14:03 – Nicole Krug
I think as a true CEO, not just, you know, you're on a consultant and you're calling yourself a CEO, right? But as a leader of an organization, it is your job to figure out the direction and to say the vision and the expectations of the company. And then you have to make sure that everybody on your team fulfills the promise. Because I gotta say, like, the best marketing campaigns in the world will not save you if your customer service sucks.
So your job is to be very clear on expectations. You need to empower your team, whether that means to stand on their own feet or whether that means you need to give them the tools they need to actually do the work. But at the end of the day, it also means you have to take responsibility for what's happening in your company. It’s important to be actively involved and understand the process to maintain its value. You can't just pass the responsibility along or assume everything will work out on its own.
14:59 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Nicole, truly appreciate that definition and that perspective. And of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I wanted to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course, how best people can get all of you to find out about all the awesome things you do.
15:15 – Nicole Krug
Well, for my two cents, like, I will give anybody half an hour because quite frankly, if I could make money just brainstorming, I'll like, that's the most fun for me. But I was like, first of all, even if you can't afford me, like, I want other entrepreneurs to succeed. So I am more than happy to give people a half hour to talk through whatever they want to talk through, no strings attached. But my website is sociallight.net. I assume we will probably have that in the show notes, but you can also find me on LinkedIn very easily and I hope I can help.
15:48 – Gresham Harkless
Absolutely. And to make that even easier, we're definitely going to have those links and information in the show notes as well. But truly appreciate you for giving so much and providing so much insight. You gave us a little bit more than 30 minutes and I love that and I appreciate that because it's so important to kind of help arm these small businesses, these business organizations, and everything in between with the tools they need to support to succeed. So thank you so much for doing that and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
16:13 – Nicole Krug
Thank you. It's been a pleasure and same to you.
16:15 – 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.
00:19 - 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.
00:49 - Gresham Harkless
Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Nicole Krug of Social Light. Nicole, super excited to have you on the show.
00:58 - Nicole Krug
I am thrilled to be here. I always loved helping small businesses and other entrepreneurs grow. So this is awesome.
01:04 - Gresham Harkless
Yes. And that's why I explained you're definitely in the right place to do that. I love all the awesome things that you're doing. And of course, before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Nicole so you can hear about some of the awesome things that she's working on. Nicole founded Socialite in 2009 to help make the Internet a friendlier place by providing the tools and training small business owners need for success online. Through Socialite, Nicole helps clients hone their digital marketing skills to bring more exposure to their brand while boosting the bottom line. Nicole, excited again to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
01:37 - Nicole Krug
Let's do it.
01:38 - Gresham Harkless
Let's make it happen then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit here a little bit more on how you got started. Want to call your CEO story?
01:47 - Nicole Krug
Sure. So I started my career, my early career in public relations, because I was fascinated by just kind of the sociology of what makes somebody do something. And then back in the day, when I'm talking like 2007, 2008, when social media came up, that was like a whole new trend. Right. And I was fascinated by how that was changing business. I had been recruited to the Internet department of a large bank, where I started focusing on social media.
They were pretty slow to adapt, so as we worked on gaining executive buy-in, my husband was finishing his graduate studies, and we were in the process of moving. Eventually, when they were ready to proceed, they invited me to stay on as a contractor, which was a great way to help establish a strong foundation for the company.
But I knew this move had been coming so I started, so I started taking on smaller businesses doing social media. So while the bank talked about everything and you know, we had to do risk and legal and customer service scripts and all that, the small businesses were actually out there doing it. So I love that I have that big Fortune 500 company on my resume, but it's actually the small businesses that are moving things forward and making a difference that I love working with.
03:03 - Gresham Harkless
Nice. I absolutely love that. And especially because I think so many times when you know, someone might be listening to this or seeing all the awesome things you're, you've been able to do, you don't see all the behind-the-scenes things of the slower than molasses, you know, pace it took for you to kind of get that big Fortune 500 company. But also I imagine the, you know, opportunity, a lot of the creativity, a lot of the people that are a little bit more trailblazed were probably those small but, you know, mighty organizations that were able, able to kind of innovate at a faster pace.
03:32 - Nicole Krug
It is, I mean, if you can believe it, I wrote 45 pages on the risk of Twitter and this is like back in the day before Twitter had the expanded character count. I mean there's so like in big companies there's so many stakeholders that have to get involved and buy off that often things get watered down from their original mission. And small companies, especially in unregulated environments, which is most of what I like, I mean you just get out there and do stuff, you know, and the whole fail fast, you, you see what works, you dump it. You go by, you know, the bank's slogan is We don't believe, we don't lead and we don't bleed. So they're not going to move terribly fast at all.
04:10 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, I absolutely love that slogan to kind of get out there and try things. I think, you know, there's such a misconception. I think you could probably definitely see this from a social media perspective, but just from a business perspective that a lot of the most successful, you know, small but mighty organizations are those that are able to fail fast. They try things and see what works. What does work they double down on?
04:29 - Nicole Krug
And sometimes it's super simple. I mean I have clients like we try fantasy football promotion periods.
04:34 - Gresham Harkless
Right.
04:35 - Nicole Krug
Or March Grant like, you know, sometimes it's like put up a funny picture and just do a caption, you know. So like these are things that, you know, they're silly but they start to get the brand, you know, like the personality behind the brand. But sometimes that's like that type of just little silly thing can be hard for a big company. And so small, you know, mobile nimble companies are actually often the innovators until they get bought up by Google and then they have to follow the rules.
05:01 - Gresham Harkless
Right, exactly. Until they get bought up by those Fortune 500s. Right. But I love that you talked about, you know, when you get started, you know, the sociology part, and then you brought up that personality. Because I say so often we forget about the human aspect of business. But I think that's one of the beauties of the work that you do you, I think seem to bring that to light for these organizations where they can do fall, you can do fun and creative things and you know, fantasy football, whatever it might be, but it kind of speaks to that, you know, that brand. But that human aspect sometimes is missing from the larger brands.
05:32 - Nicole Krug
Well, it's true. And especially if you are, you know, if you are a CEO of a large organization, you know, you are, you are definitely a spokesperson. Right. But people aren't necessarily expecting to work with you. If you are more an entrepreneur or you're a CEO of let's say a 10-person company, you are very much behind that. Like people want to talk and touch and well, let me not touch.
But you know, they want to see you, they want to interact with you. And so in especially things. And I will say for somebody like me who works in digital marketing, I mean we are a dime a dozen. I'm not going to lie. There are a million people who do what I do.
And so people are choosing to work with me because of me, because of, you know, because they hear me on a podcast, like what I have to say somebody referred, whatever it is, I'm not going to say my team doesn't have anything else to do with it because they're fabulous. But you know, it is a lot of like you really need when you're a small business owner and entrepreneur, it's hard to separate the personal brand from the business brand because they're so integrated and so you need to put those impressions out there.
06:32 - Gresham Harkless
Nice. I absolutely love that you do that you work with your clients because I think we're getting further and further away from the kind of like I call it the siloed approach, where this is personal, this is the business, this is a relationship, this is not. It ends up being so integrated that as you said, especially if you're working for one of those nimble organizations, then you end up being like the spokesperson, you know, for the organization. And I think that is so important to kind of make sure that we understand that and understand how best we can kind of leverage that opportunity that comes with that.
07:02 - Nicole Krug
It's true. So I love that I could go down this rabbit hole because I get asked all the time like, well, should I friend my clients? Or this, you know, like, where's that? There's, there's so there's minds, don't get me wrong, landmines to avoid. But it is, I mean, at this point there, you can't, you can't, you know, wear your buttoned-up suit 9 to 5 and then go to the clubs and party and not expect anything. What was it just the, the Prime Minister of Sweden that got, you know, the whole club thing, I mean, it is. Well, we'll go there. Politics, right? But there's no hiding anymore.
07:38 - Gresham Harkless
Exactly, exactly. As we have these, these 24-hour, you know, broadcast systems right in our pockets, you have that opportunity to kind of see and connect with people for better and sometimes not for better, you know when things happen. So I wanted to kind of drill down a little bit more. I know we touched on a little bit. So could you take us through a little bit more on what it looks like working with you, how you're serving clients, and how you and your team are making that impact?
08:01 - Nicole Krug
So what we really do is we help people grow online. And so my sweet spot, so to speak, is I have so many people that have been around for, let's say five years and they come to me and they say, I am tapped out on what I can do myself. I hear so often. I have this website that I put up to have something when I first started, but it's ugly, it's functional or it just doesn't, you know, it's not representing who I am now. So we do, I mean, we do a ton of redesign and that's something, but we also, you know, we integrate things.
Do you want to have E-courses? Do you need a client portal? Do you need a better job of capturing clients' information? You know, do you want to run your invoices off your website, whatever it is? So websites are still the anchor. Yes, I know. We're like, we're getting into AI and digital and all that. But websites are still the anchor in a lot of ways. But that also means it has to integrate with social media and email. And your website has to be set up so you get found on Google, which has.
So I have some people that, you know, we are there, I hate to say agency, we're a lot friendlier and customizable than many agencies, but we can do a lot of that capabilities. But I have some people that come in for a project, maybe that is to, you know, they want to rank better on Google or maybe they need help doing a strategy. So we have, you know, different parts and plans to help people at different levels continue to grow.
09:24 - Gresham Harkless
Nice. I love that. And it kind of sounds, for, you know, for lack of a better term, you kind of meet people where they are. Let me, let me ask you this. I almost feel like I was going to ask you for your secret sauce, which is kind of for yourself, the business, or a combination of both. But I've always felt like people that have a really good mastery of what it is that they do are like that five-year-old and asking why, why, why?
Not to just keep asking it to bother you, but to have a great understanding. So I almost feel like you have the ability to be able to translate the complex to anybody and everybody to meet them where they are. Do you feel like that is, you know, part of or an ingredient in your secret sauce that makes you unique?
10:02 - Nicole Krug
It's very much so. So I've been, I've been told we're like an easy button for small business owners, like when it comes online. Because so much of what I do is I listen to what they're saying, but especially like when it comes to like the words they're using are not the same words a developer is going to use. Or I get, I get, I need a designer for this. I'm like, no, you don't. You know, like some of those things.
And because, and I do a lot of saying, well, we could do it that way, but a best practice really is right. And so in some ways, I'm too honest for my own good. And I tell people like I do, I say, you know, I'll take your money if you want to do that, but you would be better spent that way. And yeah, I might lose out on a couple thousand dollars, but I've had clients since 2013, you know, and not just one. Like I have five clients from 2013. And so it's, that builds that loyalty and it builds a huge piece of referrals.
10:54 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, absolutely. And it's like kind of that gentle redirection. But I think like I've talked about before, it really speaks to that human aspect. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want 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?
11:12 - Nicole Krug
So this is going to sound weird, but I'm going to say the time tracking tool Toggle and it sounds like so little. Right. But I use it. I have all my team using it. And yes, it helps make billing easy, but the real value of it is looking back at the end of the project because I think so many of us underestimate the time that it's going to do simple tasks. And so everything from like doing your client work or just doing admin, stuff like that, you know, we talk about outsourcing, right?
If it's taking you six hours to do your billing all the time, like maybe that becomes valuable to give your accountant, like get an accountant in or somebody that's going to do your bookkeeping. Right. But I think that also helps you understand, okay, did I quote a project correctly? Do I need to kind of or you know, did I think it was going to take 15 hours where it took 35? And so I'm making pennies on the dollar. And so the use of the time tracker is kind of simple in itself, but I think using it to look at the big picture, really helps you understand your profitability and kind of a cost-benefit analysis of what you're going to your money.
12:18 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, I absolutely love that. And what would you consider to be what I like to call a CEO nugget? So this is a little bit more word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It's something I like to say you might tell your favorite client or if you have to do a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.
12:32 - Nicole Krug
I think what we forget and kind of going back to social media and being everywhere, but how much people make judgments within 30 seconds of their first impression. And because of this integrated digital world, you know, first impression might mean meeting you at a networking event, it might mean going to your website. It might mean that I follow Gresh and Gresh shared a Nicole post and you came about me like there are so many ways. And while words matter, we make every decision on visuals, right? We process visuals so much faster.
And you know, like Harvard did this study that pretty websites inspire more trust in a company than the ones that are. And now that doesn't mean, you know, we're all supermodels out there, but it does mean we need to understand the impression that we're giving and carry that through a lot of different things.
And because especially in the mobile world, and I mean, impression is everything. If you load it on a mobile phone and it takes five seconds to pull up your website, that's an impression that you're slow and people, like, they go on their way and they don't come back. And so I think it's. We don't realize that we don't always get second chances. And just like all those little details add up to the success of your business.
13:52 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So now I wanted to 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 the show. So, Nicole, what does being a CEO mean to you?
14:03 - Nicole Krug
I think as a true CEO, not just, you know, you're on a consultant and you're calling yourself a CEO, right? But as a leader of an organization, it is your job to figure out the direction and to say the vision and the expectations of the company. And then you have to make sure that everybody on your team fulfills the promise. Because I gotta say, like, the best marketing campaigns in the world will not save you if your customer service sucks.
So your job is to be very clear on expectations. You need to empower your team, whether that means to stand on their own feet or whether that means you need to give them the tools they need to actually do the work. But at the end of the day, it also means you have to take responsibility for what's happening in your company. It’s important to be actively involved and understand the process to maintain its value. You can't just pass the responsibility along or assume everything will work out on its own.
14:59 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Nicole, truly appreciate that definition and that perspective. And of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I wanted to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course, how best people can get all of you to find out about all the awesome things you do.
15:15 - Nicole Krug
Well, for my two cents, like, I will give anybody half an hour because quite frankly, if I could make money just brainstorming, I'll like, that's the most fun for me. But I was like, first of all, even if you can't afford me, like, I want other entrepreneurs to succeed. So I am more than happy to give people a half hour to talk through whatever they want to talk through, no strings attached. But my website is socialite.net S O C I A L L I G H T net. I assume we will probably have that in the show notes, but you can also find me on LinkedIn very easily and I hope I can help.
15:48 - Gresham Harkless
Absolutely. And to make that even easier, we're definitely going to have those links and information in the show notes as well. But truly appreciate you for giving so much and providing so much insight. You gave us a little bit more than 30 minutes and I love that and I appreciate that because it's so important to kind of help arm these small businesses, these business organizations, and everything in between with the tools they need to support to succeed. So thank you so much for doing that and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
16:13 - Nicole Krug
Thank you. It's been a pleasure and same to you.
16:15 - 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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