This week’s episode of Good Girls Get Rich is brought to you by Uplevel Media CEO and LinkedIn expert, Karen Yankovich. In this episode, guest Rhonda Swan and Karen Yankovich discuss the importance of your personal brand.

Rhonda is the founder and CEO of one of the top global PR and branding firms. She works with CEOs, authors, and conscious entrepreneurs to grow their personal and professional brands. After spending 15 years working in PR and marketing for multimillion-dollar brands and startups, Rhonda is disrupting the industry and helping her clients get featured in Top Tier Publications. In addition to her extensive PR and marketing experience, Rhonda is a trained business coach and holds an MBA in Business & Marketing.

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We want to hear your thoughts on this episode! Leave us a message on Speakpipe or email us at info@karenyankovich.com.

About the Episode:

Branding is everything. In our media-filled world, how are you going to stand out if you don’t have a strong personal brand? And if you have a strong personal brand but no PR, what good is that brand?

Rhonda Swan understands that a good personal brand and good PR go hand in hand. One without the other is pointless.

Want to build your personal brand? Want to have good PR? Then listen in to Episode 211 with guest Rhonda Swan!

Episode Spotlights:

  • Where to find everything for this week’s episode: https://karenyankovich.com/211
  • Introducing this episode’s guest, Rhonda Swan (2:15)
  • The importance of personal branding (7:06)
  • What shifted when Rhonda moved from corporate to entrepreneur (15:35)
  • Rhonda’s journey of rebuilding (20:33)
  • How Rhonda started helping others with branding (22:11)
  • The importance of PR (26:08)
  • Entrepreneurism is a journey (30:33)
  • Women Gone Wild (34:00)
  • What’s next for Rhonda (35:54)

Resources Mentioned in the Episode:

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Read the Transcript

Karen Yankovich 0:00
You’re listening to the good girls get rich podcast episode 211

Intro 0:05
Welcome to the good girls get rich podcast with your host, Karen Yankovich. This is where we embrace how good you are girl, stop being the best kept secret in town, learn how to use simple LinkedIn and social media strategies and make the big bucks.

Karen Yankovich 0:22
Hello there. I’m your host, Karen Yankovich. And this is episode 211 of the good girls get rich podcast and this show is brought to you by she’s linked up where we teach women simple relationship heart based LinkedIn marketing a system that gets you having conversations consistently with the kinds of people that can change your business, change your life, change your bank balance forever. Our goal in our she’s linked up programs is to create more wealthy women of influence. And this is all about using digital marketing with that human to human touch, right digital marketing with the human touch. So if you’ve listened before, if you love what you hear today, you know, we’d love to hear from you. So please subscribe to good girls get rich on Apple podcasts or wherever you’re listening, leave a review so we can get a sense of what episodes are landing with you and what you most want. You know what you’re most like to hear from me. And of course, I’d love for you to share this episode on social media and use the hashtag good girls get rich tag me so that I can share your posts with my audience. And then we all get more visibility Right? in the show notes. There’s a link for SpeakPipe where you can leave an audio message I love your audio messages. I respond personally to every single one of them. Maybe there’s a maybe you want to leave us a review there. Or maybe you want to give me an idea for a guest I should interview or, you know, maybe have a topic you want to hear me talk about right? So just go to Karen yankovich.com/ 211. And you’ll see the blog for this page, you’ll see the link to SpeakPipe. You know, I can play that listen to it and I will respond to you every single time. So last week I teased this episode a little bit because last week we talked about in episode 210. We talked about if you’re not standing out you’re invisible. And I heard that quote in an interview that Rhonda Swan did on her podcast with Kelly O’Neil who is a friend of mine that introduced me to Rhonda and I knew I had to have Rhonda on the show. So I think you’re gonna love this interview today with Rhonda swan. And I’m just gonna dive right let you dive right into it and not waste another second. I am here today with Rhonda Swan and Rhonda is the founder and the CEO of one of the top global PR and branding firms. She works with CEOs, authors, conscious entrepreneurs to grow their personal and professional brands. And after spending 15 years working in PR and marketing for multimillion dollar brands and startups. Ron is disrupting the industry and helping her clients get featured in the top tier publications. In addition to her extensive PR and marketing experience. Rhonda has trained a trained business coach and holds an MBA in business and marketing. She has lived in coverage in print and broadcast outlets around the world featured in Forbes entrepreneur, ABC, CBS Thrive global and many, many more. Her dedication to supporting other female business owners led her to found a movement dedicated to helping women rise all over the world, the women God wild series, and it’s become a best seller in multiple categories worldwide, including billboards on Times Square in New York City. And besides one his own show, the Rhonda Swan show where she interviews thought leaders and entrepreneurs. Rhonda also is hosting the unstoppable show with a new to the street media, which is a broadcast on national television to an audience of 300 million households. She’s a mom, a wife, and is a world traveler. And for the last 13 years while she’s doing that for 13 years, and now she’s living in Bali. So we’re on opposite sides of the world. But we are here together to chat with you today. So Rhonda, that’s amazing. And I’m so happy to have you here.

Rhonda Swan 3:40
Hey, Karen, thanks for having me. It’s kind of cool. It’s my 6pm mature 6am across the world. And here we are being clearly communicating to our audiences.

Karen Yankovich 3:50
Right. And what I love about this, like Ron and I met through a business group where we have mutual business colleagues, and I mean, isn’t it I just I just want anybody that’s listening to kind of just soak that in for a second because so many people don’t like they need to think outside of the box a little bit. Right. And you’re in Bali. I’m in New Jersey, and we’re talking as if you’re next door, right? And it’s and it the world is so it’s so cool right now that we can do these kinds of things.

Rhonda Swan 4:16
Yeah, it is actually, it’s really kind of interesting, because I was a corporate executive, and for about 10 years. And in 2004, I witnessed a woman put a baby in daycare. And I said, I’m never gonna do that. And here I am trying to you know, run this big global enterprise with one of the largest fortune 100 companies in the world. Fortune 100 Actually, I quit my job. And I started working on the internet. And this is in 2004. So you have to think right think back. Email was just getting cool. We all have

Karen Yankovich 4:49
we’ve probably met at had AOL then. Right?

Rhonda Swan 4:51
Yeah, exactly. internal emails for companies. There was zero social media. None, no social media. And so I said Uh, well, I’m gonna figure out how to, you know, build this online business thing. And or build a business at least online. And the interesting thing about it is that this is now something that I have done for 18 years before social media. So here you and I are communicating and podcasts weren’t even a thing YouTube wasn’t our Facebook was none of that stuff. And we still built a seven figure business because of very one thing is that we just started to tell our story, and started to connect with people, right, and this is what you and I are doing, right? We’re just connecting with each other. So we can talk a lot more about that. But it’s so cool. When I go wow, 18 years ago, and I left San Diego, it’ll be now 15 years that I left San Diego to travel the world, my family on November 25. Oh, wow.

Karen Yankovich 5:49
Wow. That’s so cool. Well, let me ask you something. Before we get into what we want to talk about what you talk about, when you think about back to your journey, you know, one of the things that I had my journey was similar in but in that though, that I did both, I did raise a couple, you know, one or two, I have four kids. So two of them I raised while I was working full time in a corporate job. And I mean, it sucked. It just did. I mean, I miss things I didn’t want to miss and, you know, whatever it is what it is no regrets. I did what I thought was the right thing at the time. And and they’re great, they’re doing great. But my younger two, I did the same thing of like, this is it like I made more for me, I couldn’t do it, I was leaving the house at you know, 6am not getting home till you know, six 7pm It was crazy. But always, always kind of in some kind of a marketing component, I think about back to the earlier days of my marketing career. And we didn’t really care about the people that we were buying from right like the copy guy that came in once a month to see if we needed supplies or whatever, we didn’t really care what you had for lunch. He was married. Like, it just wasn’t something that that was talked about. But then as the internet kind of became more ubiquitous in everything we did, and sort of certainly was our marketing. That’s, I think, where it shifted and where we needed to have personal brands, as we were stepping into a role as a business leader. Right. So tell me a little bit about you. I mean, I don’t know, I’m I know, I’m a lot older than you. Do you remember the transition from that? Like, are you gonna do you understand what I’m saying? Oh, we’re gonna have to we’re gonna have to reveal ages here because I don’t think that’s okay. 73 sister. Okay, so I’m more than 10 years older than you know, you are not I am. I am. I was born in 1960.

Rhonda Swan 7:27
This is even cooler, right? This is the goodness and no one can see our faces right now. So yeah, we both look. So yeah,

Karen Yankovich 7:36
we are we are as young as we feel. But you know what, I think that is also another that’s a whole nother conversation when it comes to personal branding age. So age no longer matters. And I talk about that a lot with LinkedIn, when people are worried about like, Oh, should I put when I graduated high school? Like, what do you think people don’t know how old you are? I don’t, I guess there’s still ageism, somewhere in the you know, in the world. But I feel like we can rise above that. If we take control of our personal brands.

Rhonda Swan 7:59
Yeah, that’s it. Let’s do that. Okay, so this is really cool. Because, you know, that’s really the biggest step that I took. So when I quit corporate, you know, I said, what, what is it that I knew I was in pharmaceuticals? And so I said, What is it that I did there that I could bring into this new business? Now this again, before social media, and I was working with Perry Marshall, I decided I’m going to figure out Google AdWords, like, how can I figure out Google AdWords and at that time, you know, this is like, we were trying to find things to sell there. Like three line ads, if you remember, like how Google ads right come through. Yeah, yeah. So I found a personal development company. I was working with Robert Kiyosaki, Bob Proctor Jim Rohn, like the legends, and I started about a trifecta decorating. Yeah, oh, it was amazing. I grabbed all of their personal relevant products, and I was reselling them, say you want to change your life, you know, these are the best products you could ever have. Well, then There ended up being a company that turned out I don’t even know what an MLM was, or a network marketing company. They ended up being a network marketing company. And I said, Okay, so this is the deal if I can represent a product and I can inspire people right to want to buy these products, why would they buy this from me like so I got a three line Google ad, and they’re literally responding to the storyline Google ads so you had to get really clever with the word so I would use like CEO income for working from home don’t believe me? Don’t click Live because back then it was the click but this is where it gets funny because this is when you get really super clever and why the personal branding is the most vital piece and this is why Branson’s in front of Gary V’s in front of their company right every big company are building their own personal brands with CEOs are building their brand. And so what i did is i i I started making this it was like before websites were that cool and there was no video there was no YouTube. So I found this and some of you that are older than you might know this Karen, you remember audio acrobat. Do you remember that?

Karen Yankovich 9:58
Oh my gosh, yes, I know the name but I can’t even figure I can’t even place it.

Rhonda Swan 10:01
Okay, off the top of my audio Acrobat was a way that you could either do audio or video to have this really crazy embed code, right? And it was like this weird box was not clear was not high quality whatsoever. So I said, Okay, how do I go from being? What I did in my pharmaceutical company, where I was face to face with doctors, right? And it was like, I would come in with my shenanigans, I would dress up funny on golf week, I would, you know, do stuff. It’s Super Bowl, because you have to get through the gatekeeper. Right, you have to get through the gatekeeper, the exciting, right, you have to have something that’s inspiring or unique for them to go, oh, yeah, go talk to our doctor. So I would have like madness with this stuff with pharmaceuticals, which is why, you know, rose to the top very, very quickly. So when I went into digital marketing was like, how do I go from a click into getting them to actually trust me to buy something, right. And so I put this really bad flat website up, I had, you know, pictures, and I told my story. I’m a corporate executive, I have a master’s degree. And, you know, my husband thought I was insane. Doing this, and I’m like, I have a master’s degree, this is the deal. I want to not put my kid in daycare. And I found a way to do it. I’m selling these amazing products with these guys and change your life. And you can make money doing it too. Like it was so crazy. And here, you go from a corporate executive, right working for GlaxoSmithKline, which is rather elite and really snobby. I have a master’s degree in business. And all I have though, was the vision and a vow that I was never going to put my daughter in daycare. So I say this because I want everyone to hear this. The moment you really find your why it doesn’t matter what you do, or how you do it to get there. You just do it. And my ego. I left my ego at the door. And I said, Look, man, I met this woman who was you know, she was like, 35 she had four kids. And she goes, these these personal products are changing my life. I met Bob Proctor, I’ve met Kiyosaki. I’ve met Jim Rohn. And all of our events. They’re unbelievable. You represent the best people like his this for real, but I believed in it. And so what I did is I put this flat s website sorry for Can I swear your show? Yeah.

Karen Yankovich 12:08
I wish you guys can see her. This is one thing that I wish I was doing video because she’s like, so animated right now.

Rhonda Swan 12:15
Let me tell you, maybe you can hear me. So I so I did this sorry to put this website up. And I get this audio acrobat. And so I do this video. It was really, you know, one of those. I didn’t even know how to record it. To be honest, it was probably on a you know, computer phone, or computer camera. And I was like, Hi, my name is Rhonda. I was a corporate executive. And I, my life changed for personal development. I listened, Jim Rohn and Bob Proctor, these guys have changed my life. And if you’re looking for a way, if you’re that same person as I am, and you want to be with your kids, you can actually learn from these guys. But you also represent them, you can sell their events, you can sell their stuff and make money like and it was so scratchy, right? It was this big, huge embedded code. And I put this on the website, pictures of me and my little story. And this is the kicker. And this is where I want everyone to hear because they’re like, oh, things are so hard. And the marketing is hard. I put, don’t believe me Don’t call. Because there was no other way to communicate. I did not have set up emails like that. I didn’t want an 800 number. They paid six bucks a month for that these people would call and say and I would go Hi, it’s Rhonda, listen, this is the deal. This is what I got going on. If you’re really serious, leave me a message. I’m gonna call you back. Right. So I’m gonna get to the point here about personal branding because this is where I realized what people loved about me in pharmaceuticals was because I am animated and I’m fun and, and my energy was, like exuberant, they just wanted to talk to me. And that’s what I did. And I brought into the digital marketing space now. I didn’t know anything about it. I started working with Perry Marshall was the godfather. And he was talking about being unique. I was like, What can I do? And so that’s what I did. And from there I continued to go okay, wow, these people are calling me because they’re like, Who is this lady? Right I was the first with a you know, with a video. And then I was like, so excited about quitting Korbinite pictures of me with like some of the top people in the world in these industries going I quit cold turkey. And because of that, it started to inspire people. And then of course from there it just became that personal brand and it wasn’t anything special like yeah, I didn’t even have a logo then I still don’t think I have a logo to for myself. It’s just my name. It was my story. And that’s why corporations companies, entrepreneurs are doing so well. When the CEO has a personal brand and a personal story. People buy from people they don’t they don’t care about your products or services. Right you can have a widget and have

Karen Yankovich 14:46
Yeah, no Yes. Yes. And we can’t Yes we care about the people we want. You know at the end of the day we wanted to business with the best in the business. Right so so if you are not taking and and the the most beautiful thing about all this is you can control this you You can take control of this, this is not something that you’ll be like, Oh, well, you know, she’s naturally thin and you know, blonde or whatever. And I’m never going to be that way. Like, this is not that everybody can do this. Like, there’s no like genetics involved, there’s none of that. It’s you, everybody can do this. And everybody, everybody must do this. And I’m not saying you must create, you know, create a multimillion dollar business. I’m not saying that at all. But know that if you can either take control of your brand and take control of what people find when they put your name in Google search, or not, you know, I mean, and it’s your choice Either way, and it’s you know, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. I love that story. So, okay, so then tell me a little bit then about like, when people look at that, right, they think, okay, Sunshine roses, it’s all good. She had this this great path, and she’s, you know, listen, I can tell you’re smart and energetic and, and you are, you’re a hard worker. But what is it? What does that real entrepreneur life look like for you? What changed in your life when you shifted from corporate to entrepreneur?

Rhonda Swan 15:55
Okay, so this is a really good one, actually, because you’re right, it’s I’m really good at, you know, just saying, I’m an entrepreneur, I’m going to get through everything anyways. So you know, just let it be. However, when I tell people that, you know, I quit my corporate job, I called 3000. Leads didn’t make a sale. You know, even though I was doing all the right things, I didn’t make a sale. And I What had happened is that, I realized that I was bringing in a very negative mindset. First off, I was putting dollar signs on people’s foreheads, you know, trying to get them to buy stuff from me. And then when I realized there’s just real people that wanted to life, you know, wanted to be with their kids, and they wanted to real life, then it shifted. So that was one thing. And so I started to store it, I had a lot of $47,000 month after six months, I retired my husband after a year, like, wow, life was good, you know, and it was and I was building and building and building, we bought a big house and all that fun stuff. But what happened in 2007, and 2008, is what may have happened to a lot of people now I’ve been traveling the world, but it wasn’t because we had the golden spoon or you know, whatever you want to call it, we actually invest in a lot of real estate, because we did really well financially, and we lost everything. My whole company. Yeah, it was the whole purpose when I quit was to raise a daughter 30 days before my daughter was born, we found out that our developer that we’d invested in fraud had taken our name, signed our names on $26 million dollar homes. And after eight months, I was pregnant the whole time. He had sucked out all the construction loans, you know anything about real estate, you get a construction loan first and then you sell the houses while the loan the banks are going to hit guys, the all the construction loans about let’s start selling these houses. And we’re like, no, they’re not even built. They’re like all the money’s out of the home. So here we are. 33 years old, just got our first million dollar house because we were doing so well. Baby is on their way. And we find out we’re losing it all. And I mean, when I say losing it all, we took out nest eggs, IRAs, everything that we had, and we put in all the cash that we actually had. So we’re like, well, we have a business, right? We’re gonna keep making money, we’ll be fine. And sure enough, I was so stressed out, I found out like No, guys, you like, This is really bad. The banks are after you, you have to file bankruptcy, you have to sign everything off, and they’re gonna take all of it, they’re gonna take your house, they’re gonna take those car, they’re taking everything. My daughter was born 33 days early, because I was a complete disaster. And try to go from being on top of the world, right? Teaching people prosperity, consciousness, building your brand, being excited, telling your story, doing all this great stuff to going, how do I get in front of a camera? How do I talk to these people, because I’m destitute. I am a new mother, I build ice quit corporate, just to raise her. And now I don’t even have enough money $25 to pay my Skype credit, because that’s how we were calling people at the time. And you want to talk about shame. And, you know, embarrassment. I mean, our friends were like, get a job get a job like you guys, you’re my husband’s a robotics engineer, for God’s sake. Right? He wasn’t a robotics engineer. I was a corporate executive. Frickin unfortunately, in our company, we did well in corporate, but we got the taste of being entrepreneur and the life. And even though we were 10 times harder, right, right. Corporate, y’all. If we really knew, did we sign up for it? Hell yeah, I would sign up for it. And so when we find that out, it was like a boy, you know, like now what do we do? Now? How do we go for me, this example the people. And then of course, you’re raising my daughter. And it was like, to the point where it was so close. I was so ready to call my boss. And I’m holding my little girl and I’m sitting in her room and I painted like little chair of angels on the ceiling, that had prosperity, abundance, all these little beautiful flags and names and I looked at her and she’s brand new, and she’s 15 now, and I’m like, I made a vow to you. I’d never put you in take care. Like I’m not doing it. Not doing it. And because of that, I got really clear. That was I don’t care I’m put my ego at the door. We fire sailed everything in our house we lived in the house was like a beautiful house, I sold my China, I sold my furniture, I sold everything. And my family left with $12,872.62 with a vision and about a never put my daughter in daycare. And so that will be 15 years this November 25. And so, yeah, so we like to talk the story like, oh, that entrepreneur journey, it’s been so amazing without it started because we are in the worst point we could have ever been.

Karen Yankovich 20:32
So can I ask what your next step was? Yeah, like, what was the next step towards you know, rebuilding?

Rhonda Swan 20:38
Yeah, that was the hardest part. It was like, Okay, are we gonna look at ourselves and be like, down? Are we gonna go, Let’s just tell people what happened, and be really human beings, and just say, Look, our minds and our bank account haven’t changed. Just because our bank accounts change doesn’t make us to the people. We are right. We still know what we’re talking about. We still have the right business, because we knew what we were doing. So that didn’t change us. And the money in my bank didn’t make me a better mother, a better leader, a better influencer, a better supporter, a better wife. So like, oh my god, it has nothing to do with the money. And because of that reason, we just stayed super clear and humble, like, Hey, we got a business. We just got our asses handed to us. But this is what we did. We sold everything. TV, I mean, you name it, like people think I don’t have any money. I’m like, look around your house. You got a frickin $5,000 TV that you look at every day, like I don’t sell stuff I sold it. And how

Karen Yankovich 21:37
do you do it? You got to do

Rhonda Swan 21:39
right when we did. And then that’s when we started to travel the world. And we bought a one way ticket to Hawaii, stayed in a hut, ate rice and avocado bowls, that we were in Mexico. And we’d stayed in these really small, tiny places as a family and just got real, and people couldn’t. They just they couldn’t get enough of it. They’re like, Oh, my God, I’m like you how do I do that? I want to lose it all too. So like, you know, and it was like,

Karen Yankovich 22:04
I don’t think there’s other ways to do this. Right? There’s other ways to do this. We don’t have to do that. Right? It’s it? Oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh, well, that well, let me ask you this then. So when you at some point, you shifted, though, to helping people with their branding with PR with So so how did that come about? Yeah,

Rhonda Swan 22:22
I mean, that’s that really was the base in order for us to, to start being more present. The brand had to be everything, right. So that’s when I got very clear. I know how to build a brand online. I know how to, you know, tell the story. Now let me help other people do it. And that’s when I shifted about two years ago, about a year in, I shifted to starting to teach people I was building doing branding workshops. I was doing weekly workshops, and I was helping people build sales funnels. I was the first woman that made a million dollars the funnel, and it wasn’t a name, then, you know, Russell Brunson wasn’t around, which is a friend of mine. I was a chapter in his book, and I told him the whole story. He’s like, you build funnels before? I didn’t call them funnels? Yeah. Because I didn’t know what they were. But you know, this is, but that’s the reality. So that’s what happened. I started teaching people. And then we were building little micro funnels and, and so what I realized is the most important to be differentiated in any market is you. And it’s what you offer, it really isn’t your services, certainly, you can create a bit of a USP and make your services unique. But there’s billions of people that have done it. You know, it’s just another launch. Right? So how do we build a better mousetrap? We put a great sexy brand on the front. And so that’s what we started to do. So now since then, it’s been now 15 years, we started our company, unstoppable branding agency. Yeah, we help clients to not only clarify their brand message, image strategy, but our main focus is a high level of PR, you know, so we work in tier one, tier two, we create the whole Google imprint. So you are like a rock star online. So when your clients are searching for certain things that you do keywords, you show up, you know, like you’re the one that shows up a post somewhere else.

Karen Yankovich 23:59
Right. I think that’s so important. You know, a lot of the a lot of the women that listen to the show are in some kind of many women, especially now like post pandemic or in some kind of transition, right, what we thought we were going to be 2019, what we thought we were going to be doing in 2022 and 23 are not necessarily what we now want to be doing right, we’ve we’ve, like you said, you expect you said, I don’t want to put my daughter in daycare, and a lot of these, a lot of women have realized that they don’t have to go back to what they thought they had to do. Right. So So now they’re smart, successful, busy with a lot of expertise, but maybe not a lot of experience in what their next chapter is. Right. So. So to me, I think one of the best ways to continue to grow their brand and to stay on that, that high vibe level right where they don’t have to go back to the beginning because they’re now you know, they’ve now decided career path B instead of career path A they’ve still got 2030 years of expertise in this. I think one of the best ways to do that is PR is to get placed in media because that gives you the credibility that helps substance initiate your brand while you are building this new chapter. And that’s, that’s not everybody that I work with. But I am seeing that more and more often, especially now, like a lot of women or even men, too, are shifting what they are shifting how they want to show up for the next chapter, you know, and I think we all underestimate how much the media needs us, right? There’s news 24/7, they are looking for smart people that they can count on. And they can trust their information, and they can use as a source for their stories. And when you build those, for me, it’s about building those relationships. When I talk about using LinkedIn to build relationships, one of the types of relationships that I always encourage, and it’s baked into everything that I teach, and I am not a PR expert, but I, to me, what I feel like I am, if I’m gonna use my word expert, expert in is helping you build relationships with the kinds of people that can help you get to whatever, achieve whatever goal you’re looking to achieve. And one of those categories has got to be the journalists that write about what you do. And when you start to meet those journalists, and build relationships with them, and they start featuring you are quoting you, I feel like not only does the rest of the world see you differently, but you start to feel differently, right. So tell me a little bit about how, you know, how you position your clients, and how you how you help them shift the mindset around the importance of this, of this piece of their business and a brand.

Rhonda Swan 26:20
Yeah, certainly. I mean, there’s, there’s let me clarify a few things. There’s earned media, and there’s paid media, right. And there’s nothing’s wrong with either one of them. They’re both great. Not everyone is in a position to get earned media. And not everyone’s in a position to pay for paid media. But I always recommend for certain clients, depending on where you are, you know, what you do. Investing in media is, I think probably one of the smartest things you can do and because what it does is it helps you begin to anchor it early on in your in your career, anchor in your keywords, your name your company, so that other people are talking about you, right. And so there’s an investment that you make, it’s like a marketing investment that you make. However, you made a very good point, when you and have relationships with journalists, with other partners and other people that have either blogs or other you know, different types of publications, and you are a value provider. That is probably one of the smartest things that you can possibly do, because now you are becoming a value based provider. Right? So they’re always looking for content, they’re always looking for something that you can help inspire their, their audience. And so we position our clients, I, you know, I typically have to say, look, let’s just Google your name. And I want everyone to do that. Google your name? Yes, yes, yes. What are you looking at? Right? So I’m gonna give you some education, because I’m always very big about education, because there’s a lot of so called professionals in the industry versus especially PR, that are selling things and they’re not educating. I never want to take money from someone unless they are educated. And then they decide, first off, Google your name. What do you see? Okay, so on Google, there’s the Google bars, your search bar, and you’re gonna see tabs underneath. And the first one is all okay, all is your stuff. It’s your websites, it’s all the things, your social media, that should be all your stuff. And normally, we’re gonna look how good I look, we see all those things, right? Then there’s images, and there’s a lot of images, if you are on blogs, or wherever you’re at, then there’s one tab that most people don’t look at. But the ones that are looking for the right people do. It’s called news. And the News tab is what is taught being talked about you, right, it’s third party validation. It’s are you newsworthy. So if you’re in the News tab, that means someone else that’s not you. That’s not your all section is talking about you. Okay? So if you search in your, your all has nothing, then you need to do some work there. Because right there, and then that showcases, right, right, right? It’s not you. Now, the other is looking on the right hand side of that search section. And looking to see if you have Google verified panel, right, a Google verified panel is what shows up on the right hand side, if you’re looking right now and you’re searching your name, you see a big white space. It’s because you’re not newsworthy enough for Google to go Whoa, check them out. We don’t create panels, we do the work that allows Google to see you as a credible source, meaning we write a lot of articles about you. So you fill the News tab, right? We the write them, we pitch you. Usually they’re tier twos, but certainly they can be tier ones if you qualify. And that way. Now Google’s like what sparks there’s someone else talking about the person again, now their websites connected the same name. So make sure you own name.com, please own it. You want to own your name.com and they’re like, oh, that name. Now all that bio is matching in what they just said about them in an article. All the elements start to come together and Google gets sparked and creates a panel for you books, articles, right, Spotify, whatever it might be podcasts. And that right there is now when someone’s searching for you like okay, now that’s credible and This is when now you start to get ratings, your website gets a domain rating that is ranked that says, well, they’re high value and high qualified. So these are all the elements that we work in for PR for our clients. But the most important thing is becoming valuable, right? And doing that legwork. So if you are talking to journalists, give them you know, pitch them and say, This is what I do. I’ve got this amazing article, you might want to, you know, share this with your readers, and give them something don’t go, Hey, I’d love you to put me on here because I do this. They will ignore you.

Karen Yankovich 30:32
Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And you know, it, I feel like So listen, I feel like there’s a journey, right? There’s a journey as an entrepreneur, and I think where I, where I step in with this PRPs is earlier in the journey, right? Like earlier in the journey, you know, I like to say, I want to help you like flip that funnel, right. Like I’m all about the funnels, but you know what, let’s look for some the high ticket stuff first, like, we’re gonna as we think we need to sell the $6 stuff before we sell the $6,000 stuff, and we don’t So, so the publicity, right? The the credibility that publicity gives you helps you get those $6,000 clients to $10,000 clients helps you get to those 2030 $50,000 months, so that you can then hire somebody like Rhonda. Right, yeah. So because in the beginning, you know, it’s you can’t you can’t you have to think about where you’re putting your budget, right. So I do, it’s so important. It’s and it’s all part of that journey, right? It’s all part of the journey of continuing to build your brand and stepping into if that’s if that’s the journey, you choose stepping into a brand that is becoming more and more well known more and more profitable, you know, and more of a moneymaker. It doesn’t you don’t have to do that way. But it’s it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work to do it.

Rhonda Swan 31:38
It will there is and that’s what I mean, obviously, I always tell people, you either have time or you have money, they have money anymore. But in the beginning, I’ll tell you, in the beginning, you can research my name, and you know, research around this one, I was writing value based articles on my blog, like high value based, like people, I was teaching people everything. And I became a resource for their marketing, I became a resource for funnels for things to do. I just started writing blogs. And then of course, when YouTube and you know, Instagram and Facebook came out, I was doing the same thing. And I still do the same thing. Right? I constantly give so much value in all of my platforms, that now of course, I have tons of PR, because I own a company that does it. But I have a friend. Right, right. I was writing this stuff. And people go, Well, that was amazing. And I would say, Hey, I just wrote this blog, you might really love it, use it, feel free to use my content, and they would look at my stuff, quote me. And they have content. So I was writing stuff for years. I mean, I’m talking about yours. If you’re new writing, that’s what I was doing. And I’ll tell you what, now I’ve got articles everywhere, because I just give value. And then people quote me, right? And they put me on their blog, and I said, Hey, I’m gonna write this article, I see you talk about this, can I link to you? Boom, now you’re getting link juice. Google loves that. Right? Link? Right? Mother’s linking? So it’s just, it’s time or money? Yeah,

Karen Yankovich 33:03
yeah. Well, and you know, I think I think that even just like you talked about Google yourself, even just when you Google yourself, and you, I had a conversation one time with somebody that I was that hired me for something. And I remember it was sitting in his office, and he looks at me, he’s like, do you know that when you put your name in Google, like, there’s 10 or 20 pages, I was like, Yeah, that’s what I want to have. That’s what I want to happen for you, you know, it’s created that that right there helps you create your brand helps you land more business. So yeah, all the things underneath of that is important. But just the fact that as you do more of this, when people throw your name in a Google search, you know, I have an you know, a name that is not, not a lot of other people have, right, so, so I don’t have a lot of other people doing that. But if you have a common more common name, the best way to, to be to show you know, to to come to get a higher ranking than them is to just have more stuff. Right? Just have one right and and and there’s just there’s so many ways you can do that. Alright, so we could we could talk about this forever, but I want to just kind of dive in a little bit to something that you’re doing. Because I know that one, you know, listen, this podcast is called Good girls get rich. I support women. And really, I want them to be more wealthy women in the world period, the end right? So if I can help that, I’m here to do that. I know that you’ve just found it women gone, the women Gone Wild book series. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Rhonda Swan 34:19
Absolutely. Yeah, women God while it’s women Gone Wild, the feminine guide to fearless living wild means we attract integral wealth. So w is well, AI is intuition. We tap in to our intuition. And L is leadership. and I are I’m sorry, D is diversity. So a full wild woman embraces wealth. She taps into her intuition, her leadership and her diversity. And I the book came along, because I was sitting at a table with about 10 Women at one of my events here in Bali, and we were helping each other build our brands and I said, wow, we’re sharing best practices. And you know, this great conversation like why is And it’s done more often. Why are these seats at the table with more women? And they’re like, you know, I’ve grown up and it was so hard with women and it’s just like, unless they become confident or really love themselves, you know, they’re it’s like a cutthroat world. And I knew it because I was corporate executive, right? I was crab Crab bucket mentality, man, I’m the one going to the top and I’m pushing you down. Like that was my man mentality. And so that’s where the book came from. And I said, look, let’s let’s launch this book. And I took 25 authors, we launched the book, it did so well. And then we launched the wild series, so we just launched wealth. We have the intuition book launches in next year in 2023. Leadership and diversity are the years beyond and it’s about women. It’s a women coming together, you know, bringing their magic you know, letting their guard down, and more importantly, supporting each other and learning from each other not pushing each other

Karen Yankovich 35:52
down. Oh my gosh, I love that. So what’s so so this so the book series is what’s is what is on the horizon for wild right now. Oh, look at that. Okay, so we’ll get a link to all of this in in the show notes. This has been so good right to tell tell like what’s next for you what’s happening in your world?

Rhonda Swan 36:09
Well, a lot is happening a lot of Yeah, new levels for me, you know, I’m always looking ahead. And I just got picked up in June to host a show that we film at NASDAQ market site in New York City. It is filmed it’s called New to the street unstoppable show I bring entrepreneurs private and public companies tell their story. It broadcasts on Fox Business on Newsmax and Bloomberg TV throughout a million households. We have billboards in Times Square and you know, they get commercials and all this crazy stuff. So I go back to New York City every three months. That’s kind of my new passion along with the book you know, to how do I tell more stories get people in front of the right audiences? How do I inspire them to tell that story and and learn about the story behind the brand?

Karen Yankovich 36:55
Beautiful? Well, we will put links to all of to your shows and all of your stuff in in the show notes to this. How can people get in touch with you if they want to hear more about working with your media company?

Rhonda Swan 37:04
Yeah, easy. My company’s unstoppable branding agency easy. My name is Rhonda swan. If you just search it you find me everywhere social media. I’m really heavy on Instagram. So Rhonda with an H R H O N da Swan, like the bird.com is also my website. So it’s super branding agency, Rhonda Swan, you’ll find me I want to give as much value based content as I possibly can. And really hit Yeah, he’ll be happy to just help people elevate or just find that that passion inside of them.

Karen Yankovich 37:33
Awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for inspiring things so inspiring. And I’m gonna check out more of your stuff as well. Yep. Awesome.

Rhonda Swan 37:40
Thanks again. I always say this to everyone. If you’re going to create a brand, create a sexy brand, and if you’re going to be anything be unstoppable.

Karen Yankovich 37:49
On that note, see you back here. Thanks so much. Thanks very well. I hope you love this interview with Rhonda I hope you enjoyed Rhonda as much as I enjoyed Rhonda, her energy is infectious. And I think you should be following her everywhere listening to her shows, and again, sharing this episode tagging her tagging me and making sure that you are becoming more visible and you let your letting her know that you are appreciate what she puts out there and be a part of her world. And of course, I love that you’re part of my world. So I would love when you do this when you’re tagging both Rhonda and I I can promise you that I will share this on my social media, I know Rhonda probably will as well. And that gets you in front of our audiences right now. That’s that rising tide that lifts all boats. So we do this work to support you. And I love it when you support us by sharing the episodes here that you enjoy. And you can share it again on any of them. You know, make sure you tag me though. So I know that you shared it. And then I can help you by sharing with my audience, right. So I’m here for you if you want to know more about what it’s like to build relationships in your world with people like Rhonda Swan, and people like the other guests I have on my show and just to how to use LinkedIn marketing to really boost your visibility, your credibility and your bank account. Then let’s talk just go to Karen yankovich.com/call. Get a spot on my calendar. We’ll talk for a couple minutes. And we can you know, we’ll just check and see if we think that this is something that that this marketing strategy that we teach is something that could work for you. If we think that’s the case, we’ll let you know what that looks like. But in all cases, I make sure that we’re providing value that you get a lot of great tips in these calls. And frankly, if you’re not a call person, then DM me, DM me and let us know you know we can we can talk to you that way I’m starting to I’m starting to open my mind to the fact that conversations don’t necessarily have to be on the phone, even though that’s I guess That’s old school. I’ve had some really brilliant conversations via DM recently and I’m trying to continue to stay open to that so you can DM me anywhere. You know, LinkedIn is probably the best way to do that or just get on my calendar, Karen yankovich.com/call. And let’s start the conversation. The bottom line is this can be simple for you, and I’m here to support you and your business.