IAM178- CEO Helps Entrepreneurs Create Strong Personal Presence Online

Judy Schramm is the CEO of ProResource, a social media agency that helps CEOs create a strong personal presence online and use social media to advance their business goals. The company has a unique methodology for personal branding that focuses on sharing thought leadership, building an audience, and moving people to action, so clients can grow their businesses faster and make a bigger dent in the universe. Judy’s network includes more than 15,000 followers on LinkedIn and 4,000 on Twitter. She blogs, speaks often at industry events, has written an ebook and many articles.

• CEO Hack: Following people and forming relationships on LinkedIn thus getting newsfeed on things and people you're interested in.
• CEO Nugget: Stop worrying, trust the process and enjoy the trip.
• CEO Defined: Coordinating and orchestrating what everyone else does

Website: https://www.proresource.com/

LinkedIn Playbook for CEOs; https://www.proresource.com/social-playbooks

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judyschramm
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/proresource

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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 0:27

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 Judy Schramm of ProResource. Judy, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Judy Schramm 0:36

It's a pleasure to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:38

Yeah, definitely. It's a pleasure to have you on and what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Judy, so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. And Judy is the CEO of ProResource, a social media agency that helps CEOs create a strong personal presence online and use social media to advance their business goals.

The company has a unique methodology for personal branding that focuses on sharing thought leadership, building an audience, and moving people to action, so clients can grow their businesses faster and make a bigger dent in the universe. Judy’s network includes more than 15,000 followers on LinkedIn and 4,000 on Twitter. She blogs, speaks often at industry events, and has written an ebook and many articles. So Judy, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Judy Schramm 1:20

Yes, I am excited.

Gresham Harkless 1:22

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

Judy Schramm 1:29

Well, this business is actually my fourth. And it grew out of the third business, which was a full-service marketing and PR firm. And what we noticed is that some of our clients were more successful than others. And we took a look at that trying to figure out what made the difference. Was it the budget? Was it you know, did companies that spent more on marketing get better results? Was it people who targeted different markets with a B2B instead of B2C? And what we found out was that the companies that did the best job with relationships were much more successful than the others.

And so what we tried to do is understand how that work, right? What was it about the relationships we discovered that it was the companies that found the right people, and then did the best job of staying in touch with them that got the best result? And so what we decided to do was start a business that focused on helping people build the right business relationships, and stay in touch with people effectively. And that ended up growing into ProResource.

Gresham Harkless 2:40

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Yeah, I love that concept. And that idea, because I often say a lot of times that if you can use the kind of like the digital, all these kind of technological tools, but you can build relationships, you can have that personal relationship and have those connections if you can find that sweet spot. And you can kind of I always say that's kind of the Holy Grail. So it's great that you've been able to kind of see that, but also see how you can help out and build a business around helping others to do that.

Judy Schramm 3:04

Exactly. Yeah. And we started it before social media really took off. But once social media took off, we realized that was the perfect way to build relationships. And we fell madly in love with LinkedIn. And we've been very LinkedIn-centric ever since.

Gresham Harkless 3:21

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, you guys are definitely innovators. So I wanted to hear I guess a little bit more about how you're helping your clients to do this. So what are you doing to help support the clients? What kind of things do you do to help them?

Judy Schramm 3:30

Well, first of all, we help them create a strong personal presence. So we focus on branding, individual branding, and how can you create a brand for yourself in social media that gives people the information you want them to have, so that they're comfortable with you impressed by you, and then ready to take that next step. And the services that we offer include things like LinkedIn profile makeovers, and then blog writing, we help people with video because both blogging and video are really good ways to tell your story.

And then we also do social media coaching so that executives can appreciate once they look good, how they use this to achieve their business goals faster.

Gresham Harkless 4:17

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And it's great that you touch on all those different aspects of LinkedIn. Because LinkedIn, like, you know, most social media networks, there's just so much there's so much to do that. Sometimes people find it and maybe you can let us know if you find the same thing that people get overwhelmed with all the different opportunities they are. So it's great to have kind of like you mentioned a methodology or plan by which you can do that.

Judy Schramm 4:37

That's exactly right. And especially because we work mostly with CEOs and CEOs have so little time. They're typically wearing a dozen hats, and there's just no margin and a lot of them come to social media with the idea that it's going to be very time-consuming that they're supposed to tweet 20 times a day and spend hours on social media, and that's what it takes to be successful. And that's not right.

And so what we do is we help them understand that for someone with very limited time, how they can leverage social media to accomplish what they want to.

Gresham Harkless 5:15

Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me. And as you mentioned it, because there are only so many hours in the day in any CEOs juggling so many different things to be able to do that and do that efficiently is definitely of great importance I imagined to all the CEOs out there. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this is what you feel kind of distinguishes you or sets you apart. So do you have a secret sauce for yourself or your organization?

Judy Schramm 5:35

So yes. Yeah, we do. So first of all, our focus is very different from most agencies, in that we work with individual executives, we don't focus on building the company brand, we work on what the specific individual needs to do to create their own brand and build the relationships that they need to build.

And so we have a process for doing that. That is extremely lightweight for the executive because we know that people who work with us are very time-pressed, and we want them to spend as little time as possible and get the absolute maximum results. And we have developed a whole methodology around how to do that. How to make that happen?

Gresham Harkless 6:15

Yeah,

Judy Schramm 6:16

I'll just share. It's something I use. Because I'm a CEO, too.

Gresham Harkless 6:21

Yeah, I was gonna ask you, could you tell us a little bit more about that methodology?

Judy Schramm 6:24

Yeah, sure. So one of the things that I do is I take advantage of our own services to build my own brand, and to create my own presence on LinkedIn. And so all of these time-saving hacks and the efficiency tricks, we not only deliver them to clients, but I use them myself.

Gresham Harkless 6:43

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And now I was going to ask you, for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app, a book, or maybe it's one of the habits that you have, but it's something that you feel makes you more effective and efficient.

Judy Schramm 6:54

So it will not surprise you to know that my hack involves LinkedIn. So one of the things that are really critical for you as the CEO is to stay on top of what's going on with your clients, your prospects, your partners, your employees, and your media, right? And so what we encourage people to do, and what I do is follow all of those people, companies, and topics in your LinkedIn profile.

And then what you'll find is that when you go to the homepage of your LinkedIn profile, or when you log in, to the app, your news feed is filled with the news that you need about all of the people who matter to you. And it makes it very easy for you to stay on top of changes in your network and changes in business, business announcements, good news, milestones, and awards, but it's also very easy then to reach out to people and congratulate them and stay in touch with them.

Gresham Harkless 8:02

Awesome, awesome, awesome. I love that hack. And especially because you know, at the heart of what you were saying you've consistently said is that it's about building relationships. So you have the opportunity to kind of curate, it sounds like your own feed so that it can be everything that you're looking for, whether it be industry, or like you said, influencers or media people or connections or friends or just people you want to know what's going on. And you're able to kind of build those relationships through that.

Judy Schramm 8:24

Exactly. Because one of the greatest gifts you can give somebody is paying attention to them. The gift of your time. And so when you show people that you're paying attention to them, that really makes them feel good about you and about the relationship. And when you use your LinkedIn newsfeed to do this, you're doing it with very little time and effort. But people feel like you're paying attention to them. And that supports your business relationships and everything you get comes from business relationships.

Gresham Harkless 8:55

Exactly. It's often said and always said in business, you know, your network is your net worth, and being able to build those relationships and connections and build that network and using LinkedIn as a resource to do that definitely seems like a great way to do that.

Judy Schramm 9:08

That is absolutely the case.

Gresham Harkless 9:10

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

Judy Schramm 9:20

I would tell myself to stop worrying. Especially when I was younger, I was a big worrier. It was I thought of all the things that could possibly go wrong and all the things that could possibly go right and I had plans for everything. And it just wasted a whole lot of energy that I didn't need to spend and I think that's true of a lot of CEOs. Have a plan, do the work, and trust the process. Just go for it with gusto and enjoy the trip.

Gresham Harkless 9:49

Yeah, definitely. I think a lot of times because there are so many things to kind of worry about and sometimes even when you're building something completely from scratch, there are so many things you can worry about but you can spend so much energy there, where you could be spending much more of your time on other opportunities or places or maybe even LinkedIn, for example. And then you would have a lot more opportunities to take advantage of.

Judy Schramm 10:10

Yes, that's exactly the case.

Gresham Harkless 10:14

Well, perfect. Well, 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-unquote, CEOs on the show. So, Judy, I want to ask you, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Judy Schramm 10:26

So to me, CEO means you're driving the car. And that's the biggest difference between being a one-person business and a one-person business, you are the car, you know, you're the one who does all the work, and you are the, you know, you make the sales and you do the marketing, and you provide the customer support, and you deal with the bookkeeping and all of those things.

And when you become the CEO, all of a sudden, you're orchestrating what everybody else does. And you're responsible for it, you're setting the direction, but other people are doing the work. And, so to me, it's somebody who's coordinating everything and leading the company where it needs to go.

Gresham Harkless 11:07

Absolutely. That makes perfect sense. And I love that keyword that buzzword orchestrating because a lot of times you are in front of the symphony, you're telling the people that are really good at all the different instruments, how exactly they can use them, and make one beautiful, harmonious sound.

Judy Schramm 11:19

Exactly.

Gresham Harkless 11:20

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, Judy, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to tell us about ProResource or LinkedIn. And of course, how best people can get a hold of you get in touch with you, and find out about your ebooks and all the awesome things you're doing.

Judy Schramm 11:36

Oh, wonderful. Well, we have a lot of free information on the website, ebook checklists, examples of strong LinkedIn profiles, and people who are doing a great job with Twitter. And so that's all at proresource.com. And I am happy to answer questions just reach out to me on LinkedIn, and it's linkedin.com/in/judyschramm, and of course on Twitter at @proresource.

Gresham Harkless 12:06

Awesome, awesome, awesome. We'll make sure to have those links in the show notes just so that anybody can click through and follow up with you, Judy, and contact you. But again, I truly appreciate you for all the awesome things that you're doing and spending some time with us today and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Judy Schramm 12:19

It's my pleasure, Gresh thanks for the opportunity.

Outro 12:22

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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