Your branding is what makes you unique. But in a world with vast information online, how do you stand out and establish your personal branding? Marketing strategist and Creative Brand Coach Heather H. Bennett joins us in this episode to talk about redefining your purpose, mission, and strategy. She sits down with Rosie Zilinskas to share her views on the importance of personal branding in helping you cement your place in your career, business, and industry. Tune in as Heather answers all things about personal branding, one question at a time.
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In this episode, we’re going to be talking to Heather Bennett, who is a branding expert. She is a marketing strategist, author, board director and personal brain coach with over twenty years of experience marketing brands. Drawing from her background in research and development, a University of Illinois MBA, and Northwestern University Social Media Marketing certification, she coaches her clients to create strong, authentic and unique brands through her business Creative Brand Coach. She is the author of Amazon’s bestseller, Fun and Fulfilling Careers One Question at a Time. Heather is going to explain all things about personal branding, so let’s jump right in.
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Heather, thank you so much for being here. You and I have been talking for about a year. I know that you are the Founder of Creative Brand Coach and that you wrote a book. Before we get into your book, I want to start asking you. Heather, what is branding? What does it mean? What does it do for people?
Rosie, thank you so much for having me on your show. I’m very excited to have this conversation with you. There are two things. In general, branding is what we think of about something. It is all the aspects that make it unique even in its set of other objects or things like it. When you think of ketchup. Ketchup is ketchup. However, you have Heinz ketchup. That’s a specific type and that’s a brand. It separates it from all the other ketchup out there.
That’s an example of that, but the branding I think you’re most interested in is personal branding. That’s for people and individuals who specifically used for their careers and businesses. That level of personal branding is what people say professionally about you when you leave the room. That is one way I’ve heard described it. I view personal branding as all the aspects of you, your experience, your skillsets, what you represent and who you interact with that explain who you are compared to everyone else who does similar work to what you do. The importance of personal branding is that it allows you to stand out from everyone else in your career, business and industry.
Branding is something that anybody in corporate can have. Specifically, we’re here to talk about women in corporate, how to move up the ladder and how to advance in their careers. Is personal branding something that’s just for entrepreneurs or is it for women in corporate?
You hit on the fact that it is for everyone who’s in business or working on their careers. One of the biggest misconceptions I come across with people when it comes to personal branding is they believe it’s only for influencers, people who are famous or celebrities. That’s not true. The personal brand is what you bring to work with you to every project, every client’s site and every interaction. Now more than ever, it’s so important to have a strong personal brand in a corporate setting, especially if you want to make those bigger leaps to advance in your career or to be recognized in the industry.
This personal branding helps with being recognized in your industry as a key opinion leader or as a key thought leader. It will give you the opportunity to be recognized via awards, to be asked to speak at conferences, to co-author papers or to be the person who’s put on a specific project because you’re known for being good at what you are.
Being known for being good at what you are is the key, specifically for women in corporate. We talked about branding and what it is. We know that corporate women can use that. I got your book. I read it and I’m going to show it. Your book is fantastic. This book is Fun and Fulfilling Careers One Question at a Time. I’ve always known about branding for years but for a lot of people, branding is still a little bit elusive like, “What is it exactly? What am I supposed to talk about myself when I’m talking about my branding?” I’m pulling up page 17 of your book, which is the crux of the entire book. I fell in love with this page.
Every way you spend your time influences who you are and how you show up for people in the world. – Heather H. Bennett Click To Tweet
For those that aren’t watching this on video, there is a rectangle in the middle and it says, “Building blocks to a personal brand,” which is awesome. You then have four other rectangles around it. One of them is self-awareness. The second one is experience, then you have a growth mindset and strategic planning. The reason why I love this is because it’s so visual and so easy to understand. I read your book and I did the exercises. It’s the simplest and most straightforward way that I’ve ever seen someone describe personal branding. First of all, congratulations on your book. It’s fantastic. Second of all, page 17 is the crux of the whole book. What prompted you to write this book?
A few years ago, it was at the seven-month period where every one of my clients, my colleagues and friends were all saying, “What you do and the work that you help people with in understanding their personal brand, and how to apply it to their careers and for success in their business is not expected. It’s not usual. It’s done in a methodology that most people have not seen before. Could you write it down?” I was being asked repeatedly. It kept coming up and it wasn’t me saying anything.
It was people out of the blue coming to talk to me saying, “You need to write a book because the way you do this is so straightforward, realistic and easy. You take something complicated that seems like it would be overwhelming to do and make it easy for everyone to do. This doesn’t have to be a difficult process if you break it down into simple steps.” That’s why I call this building block because it’s breaking it down into those simple ways and steps to get to what your personal brand is.
Let’s talk about those building blocks. I know there are four of them. Do you think you could describe each one in maybe a sentence or two of what it means? Let’s start with self-awareness.
I love that we’re starting with self-awareness because that’s the best place to start. These logically go in order. You’ll see when I talk about it why they go in order. First, be aware of who you are and what you bring to the table. That is your skills, talents and personality traits. This section at the beginning of the book lets you look at yourself and figure out who you are, what’s important to you and what you bring to the table. That’s why I start there because if you know who you are, you know how to describe yourself to others and how to communicate who you are.
The next part is to focus on your experiences. That goes back to work experiences, volunteer experiences, your hobbies and all of these things. Every way that you spend your time influences who you are and how you’ve shown up for people in the world. With the consistency there, that will start showing that thread of your personal brand going through the experiences as you look back.
The growth mindset is at this point, you normally start realizing what you’ve enjoyed and what you haven’t enjoyed in a work, in a career or a job. You’re now ready to start looking for that next role. To get there, you have to have a growth mindset. You have to be willing to understand that the next role may require you to learn a little bit and get out of your comfort zone. Maybe do a little more research or interview people in that job. That’s what the growth mindset is for. That’s the step where you start doing the work to get to that next level.
Finally, strategic planning. At that point, you start doing the work. You know what you need to prepare but now, you’re actually setting that plan in place. Who do you need to talk to? What are those exact steps? What research do you need to do for the industry? How are you going to plan it out over the next 3, 5, 6, 7 and 10 months to get to that next role? What do you need to change about your life? What do you need to communicate? It goes that entire time you’re bringing your personal brand. It’s almost like a ribbon that goes through all of these different steps to get you to that next role or that next job.
You explained it perfectly. As you said, they are building blocks because there’s no possible way you can get to the strategic plan without being self-aware. You can’t get to the growth mindset without going through your experience. The way you laid it out is beautiful. It is very easy to understand and very simple to go through. I’m glad that everybody was harping on you to write the book because you did a great job. I know that you’re going through a lot of different exercises in the book. What was your thought process in laying out the exercises for each section?
The exercises are based on a couple of workbooks that I use with my clients to guide them through this process. Those were done several years ago. I’ve been using those for a while and gradually adding on more exercises. With the exercises in the book, I started with those and then started to see what I needed to add to make sure it was more of a complete storyline. There was more information and value coming out at the end of it.
In the beginning, the exercises tend to be with a lot of self-reflection because it is that self-awareness. The second part talking about the experiences is going back through your history and what you liked, what you didn’t like, what environments you thrived in and which ones you felt stifled or held back in. With the growth mindset, it’s starting to do that research. What are my options? Given the skillset and experience that I have, what are my options going forward? Let’s test drive a few of these and figure out. At the end of that section, the individual will start to see where they want to go. You then need to create that strategic plan. The exercises in that section are designed to set up those action steps. They’re going to take you to that next level.
I know that a lot of women that I talk to are not necessarily aware that they’re stuck. They are working hard. They know they want to move up the ladder but they don’t know how to move up the ladder. They don’t know that they’re stuck. For example, a lot of women may not apply for jobs because they don’t have the confidence to apply for a job.
There’s that statistic that men apply for a job having 60% of the skills, and women wait until they have 100% of the skills. How could your strategic plan or your entire process help women that are wanting to move up the ladder but they’re stuck? They’re doing all the right things and they can’t move forward. How do you think this could help them?
You’re busy. We’re all busy in our careers. We’re moving along. We’re getting our project done. By being forced to stop, step back and look at where you are and what you’ve done, there’s a whole section I have on being proud of what you’ve accomplished. Recognizing what you’ve accomplished and not saying, “I did that.” No, that’s a big deal. Recognize that because then you start understanding that during that project and that award that you’ve won, why did you win that? You did all of these things. Isn’t it interesting that a couple of these things are in a job description for a job that you would love to have? That would be an excellent opportunity for you.
Growth requires you to learn more and get out of your comfort zone. – Heather H. Bennett Click To Tweet
If we don’t have all of that top of mind and right in front of us, we tend to forget what we’ve accomplished and how we’ve gotten there. By remembering that, then you start seeing the opportunities open up because you say, “I do know how to do that or I’ve done something similar that would apply.” They’re not as afraid to apply for those jobs that they feel they don’t have exactly 100% for.
One of the things that I usually tell people that are trying to figure out what to do or how to keep track of things is to have a personal folder with your name on it and throw a note or a copy of the project that you’re doing. When you go to write your performance review, then you have that folder with all of the records that you worked on throughout the year. The other thing is women are afraid of tooting their own horns, recognize their accomplishments and talking about their accomplishments with their managers. As you said, when they don’t recognize themselves for all of what they’ve done, they are not able to articulate it to their managers.
If you can’t articulate your value, then how is your manager going to do it for you if you don’t know how to do that? Is there may be a specific building block that would help or exercises that would help recognize how a woman can talk better about what they’re doing like tooting their own horn or singing their own praises? Which section do you think we could point people to that could help them do that?
I would say probably in the strategic planning section and some of the work a little bit earlier. What I’m specifically thinking of is working on their elevator pitch.
Let’s talk about the elevator pitch.
What’s important about the elevator pitch is it’s like a perfectly constructed poem. You only have so much time and you have to get your point across during that time. Who you are, why you’re worth talking to, how you can help people and what your ask is. By focusing on making that very powerful and strong, it will force you as a person to list what you’re great at, what your accomplishes are, and why they should be listening to you. It’s a real confidence-builder in creating a powerful elevator pitch and practicing it. Use your friends, use your family or say it in front of a mirror until you get so comfortable and confident that you’re representing who you are at your core. You’re representing who you are authentically in your personal brand.
For those that don’t know what an elevator pitch is, why don’t we go back and explain what is an elevator pitch. How do they start putting an elevator pitch together?
An elevator pitch is what you would say if you were to meet someone networking. When you’re at a conference, a luncheon or in a room about to start a leadership development training at your company, and you don’t know everyone in the room. An elevator pitch is a simple way to communicate who you are. It’s a nice formula. You say your name and your title or what you do so that they understand who you are in the context of the networking event. A lot of times, it’s a specific organization. You say why you’re there, “I belong to this organization or I work in this department because…,” so that they have context as to who you are.
The next thing would be, you say what you’re good at. You say why it’s worth talking to you, “I’m a bestselling author of a book that launched last year,” or “I’m one of the people who worked on the award-winning project that happened last year for this client.” They have some idea of your accomplishments, why you’re important and why you’re good at what you do.
The next thing you would say is how you can help other people. Say, “I help clients. I help our customers. I help the finance department accomplish these tasks.” Finally, the last thing would be interesting. I’m going to give an example that is specific to a corporate setting. Normally, your ask would be, “I’m looking for a job,” or “I have a book that I’m selling or a product that I’m selling.”
In a corporate setting, often your ask is much more subtle and much more important to the business that’s being done in the corporation. It could be, “I’m looking to get to know people in other departments of the company so that I can do my job better.” It’s something as simple as that. The more people you know across the corporate environment, the better you are going to be able to get the job done because then you’ll know who to go to when somebody asks a question that’s outside of your knowledge base.
That is a great point because if you are in sales and you are trying to understand something about compliance because you’re selling something, you need to understand something about the compliance perspective of it. If you don’t know anybody in compliance, then who are you going to go to? Even if you don’t know the specifics about compliance but you know who to go to and who the resources are, you start learning a little bit about the particulars of compliance in order to make you a better salesperson. That’s great to be able to network within your organization across other departments because the more you know about what other departments do, the easier it is for you to do your job.
Another component of branding is the salary like the gender gap. I was so bummed because I read an article that was saying that the pandemic has eroded all of the gains that we’ve made over the last decade in the gender gap. I was so bummed. I’m like, “How is that possible?” It is what it is and we’re back at it and we’re working towards eradicating the gender gap. Confidence is one thing to talk about salary. Another statistic that I read is that women over a lifetime can make up to $2 million less than men by not negotiating. Would you say that when you work on your personal brand, that gives you the confidence to maybe negotiate salary? Would you say that’s a benefit to personal branding?
I think the confidence starts even before that because when you’re preparing and getting to know your personal brand, you’re starting that process of understanding who you are, what you bring to the table and how you can make a difference. That’s creating your elevator pitch. Now, you’ve got your elevator pitch, which is how you will get your next set of interviews. Between that, it is making sure you have a great LinkedIn profile, you have a resume, and you’ve got your business cards that you’re handing out.
A major life change is a good time to step back and think about what's important to you. – Heather H. Bennett Click To Tweet
There are all those steps in between to get to that interview. During that interview, you’re going to have to be selling yourself. The interview process is much more complicated and longer, which is good because that means the job is going to be a better fit when you get to it. Take the time to work on your personal brand before you get to all of those interviews and that final process where they do give you a package and say, “We want you. Here’s what we can offer.” At that point, you’ll be confident enough to know what you’re worth. You have done the research to find out what the salary is for someone in this position.
Having done that research ahead of time and knowing why you’re valuable and why you’re worth getting this job will give you the confidence to stop when they give that package to you and say, “I’m going to think about it,” and then come back with what you feel you need to negotiate. It’s a good point though. That’s a big sticking point for women in terms of changing that gender pay inequality.
I heard that in Colorado, I don’t know if they put it into law yet, but they’re trying to put it into law where if you are posting a job, you’re supposed to post the salary range as well. That’s a huge and great step towards eradicating that pay gap. If you know what the salary range is, at least you’re not going to have such a disparity between men and women as far as how much they make. That’s good news about Colorado. If all the states in the United States follow that, that’s going to be fantastic for gender equality.
I also had read that for women or I should say for girls, their confidence peaks at age nine and then it plummets. I was like, “Oh my goodness. That’s so disheartening.” The other thing that I want to talk about as far as branding is it doesn’t have to start when you work. Branding can start in college and even in high school. Even those girls that are ambitious could start working on their personal branding in grade school. What do you say?
A lot of what your personal brand comes from what is important to you, what your purpose is, what your mission is, and what you’re passionate about. All of that starts much earlier on than people would acknowledge. At the beginning of my book, I do a lot of exercises that ask people to step back to their childhood and understand what they naturally gravitated for, what they enjoyed, and what made them excited and passionate about. Whether it was a sport or an activity or what they like to read or what they like to do with their free time because that tends to indicate where their purpose and mission are going to be long term.
At the very least, middle school is one of the best times to start that. Right when that confidence level is starting to go down, that would be a good time to push in and take the opportunity to mentor a girl. Try to give them opportunities to learn about the executive functions and why it’s important to have an elevator pitch, to know what you stand for, to know what you’re looking for, to have the confidence and to be able to communicate that.
For all the women that are reading, if they have daughters or nieces, it’s always important for us to be in the second half of my career. That’s the reason why I started all this. I wanted to start giving back to women. I realize it’s not just women in corporate. It’s younger women in college and high school. The more we can all pull each other up, the more we can eradicate this gender gap overall. Hopefully, at some point in our life, we can do that. It’s important for women to know. Also, branding is not subjected to just corporate. It could be an entrepreneur or whatever job you have.
I heard someone say a long time ago, “I’m the best janitor ever out there.” This individual had such pride to do a great job as a janitor. That was his brand and the pride and the joy of doing a good job. Personal branding doesn’t have to be specific to one segment of anything. It could be applicable to pretty much every single job or schooling, grade or whatever your stage in life is. As far as continuing to move up the ladder, let’s say I do the work and I have my personal brand. I’m good to go and I get my new job. I start my job and it’s a couple of years in. At what point do I revisit this process?
Bare minimum, this process should be revisited anytime you’re making a major change or you’re considering a major change because, at that point, there’s more information. I’m originally a scientist. It’s something like, “What’s the data? What’s the research behind it,” as you’ve experienced more. To your point, I love your file idea. The idea of as you’re working on projects or working with clients, to capture that information so that when you get to a point where you have to stop, step back and look at what’s going on with your personal brand and your career, you have that ready. Anytime there’s a career transition or a major life shift like all of a sudden, you’re moving across the country or you have changed your housing situation, it is a good time to step back and think about what’s important to you and how to apply that to your career and job going forward.
It’s almost like every year when the year turns, everybody starts thinking about their goals for the year and you have to revisit them. We all know that people that have written goals advance in their careers faster than people that don’t have written goals or who have never thought about their goals. It’s because when you’re intentional about doing your brand, writing your goals, knowing what you want to do and trying to get to the next level, things move a lot quicker than if you’re just there and not engaged in your work.
You’re like, “I’m not going to worry about it. I’m here 8:00 to 4:30 or whatever and I clock out.” It’s completely two different mindsets. People that are working on their brand have that growth mindset, whereas people that don’t even think about it are almost in the fixed mindset camp because they don’t think about the growth.
The bare minimum is when there’s a major transition but ideally, you should be doing this type of exercise at least once a year. I have a couple of the exercises in it. Time mapping and timeline planning are great exercises to keep you on track for meeting those goals. When you write them down and they are visually in front of you, it’s so much easier to accomplish them.
I remember throughout the book, you have all these different quotes from different people. The quotes are applicable to the exercises that you’re doing. I liked that as well. Heather, tell me a little bit about your background and how you even got here. You said you’re a scientist.
I started out doing research and development in biology for Unilever. It’s a large consumer brand company. I got to know a lot of marketing people. In working on brands there. I fell in love with the concept of brands and how having a powerful brand could serve the people who use the products and help them. I went back and got my MBA at the University of Illinois. It was a great experience. I had so much fun.
Promoting yourself and being confident in who you are is a muscle. The more you practice it, the better you will get. – Heather H. Bennett Click To Tweet
At that point, I went into consumer products marketing for Kraft and a couple of other companies. I love that work. There’s always a part of me that’s going to love looking at shampoo bottles on a shelf. I could do that for hours and find it fascinating. A lot of what I liked about that were the same things that I got from my research and development. I love collecting data. I love testing things. A lot of marketing is doing A/B testing, figuring out what works, doing market research and understanding what that target market needs.
At that point, I was working full-time in corporate but I was getting these side hustle gigs helping people out with their startups or they were having issues with their product’s company and there were problems. They referred to me by friends or neighbors or whoever or major career decisions. I’m like, “I don’t have a background in HR. Why are you coming to me?” What I started seeing is by applying the lens of brand marketing to the person and helping them understand their personal brand first, then we would go after those business problems.
Only by understanding who they were, why they were doing what they were doing, and what was important to them, then I could help them with things like, “Your finance situation is a little off here. We need to work on that,” or “There’s a problem with how you’re sourcing your products,” or “You’re not working well with your employee. There’s an issue there. Let’s fix that.” It all had to start with who they were and their personal brand and what they were bringing to the business and the situation.
That all makes a lot of sense. Going back to the shampoo bottles. You said that you love looking at all the shampoo bottles and it all has branding. Branding or even shampoo bottles, if you notice, there’s almost a gender gap in the branding there. All the girl’s shampoos are pink and purple, and all the beautiful signs. All the men’s shampoo bottles are all so manly. Even that has some distinction between men and women. It’s an example that branding matters because a woman is probably not going to buy a shampoo that’s manly smelling. You need to cater to yourself. You need to create a brand that fits you, that you’re comfortable with, that you love. When you love what you stand for, then you’re able to advocate more for yourself and you’re able to advertise.
One of the things that I always say is you need to go talk to people and tell them what you’re up to. I had this coworker years ago. He would say, “I manage up. I make sure that I let my manager know what I’m doing and what I’m up to,” because it was important for him to promote himself for his brand. Talking about managers and branding, do you have any experience on how a manager could become a better manager by developing their brand so that they can develop their subordinates? Do you have any insight on that?
We’re at a point where there are a lot of questions about the employee-employer relationship. The sense that loyalty is gone in the workplace. No one sticks around forever until they hit their pension, their 10-year mark or 15-year mark anymore. With that question is a concern over how to keep employees engaged so that they stay with companies. As we all know, the cost of getting a new employee is way higher than retaining the ones that you already have and a great talent. I would say not only retaining but developing.
To answer your question, that’s the key. As a manager, if you show that you are taking the time to develop your skills and improve your skills and be a better manager, that opens the door for you to talk to the people who work for you. Talk about how you can help them develop, how you can help them to be their best self, and to understand how they can be the best employee they can be, not only for you but for themselves and their career. By developing them, you’ll end up getting a much better team. Loyalty and engagement will increase. Employee retention is all over the news now. How do we retain our employees? By telling them that they’re important enough that we want to develop them. That’s an excellent step forward.
It’s by making your employees aware that you care about their success, that if they succeed, you succeed. I’ve heard throughout the years where people say, “I come up with the idea and my manager takes the credit.” That’s awful because when I used to be in management, I would be the first one to praise my co-workers. I always called them my coworker because they’d say, “It’s always my boss. This is my boss.” I’m like, “No, I’m not your boss. I’m your co-worker because we’re on the same team. We just have different jobs.” I thought it was so awful for someone to say, “My manager takes all the credit.” I’m like, “Why would they do that?”
It’s like if I give you the credit that you deserve, it makes you look good, which makes me look good. I was like, “I’m not going to take credit for all your hard work.” I do think that still in this day and age, people leave bosses, not jobs. I don’t know that it’s necessarily that the bosses don’t want to develop their people. It’s that, number one, they don’t have the time because they’re busy doing their jobs. The second thing is they don’t maybe necessarily know how to develop people. The third thing is sometimes people don’t want to be developed. They want to be left alone, “Don’t talk to me.”
There are a bunch of different components there. The point is that even if you’re not looking to move up the ladder, even if you’re happy in the position that you are in, you can still create your brand, develop your brand and help others that are around you. Not just above you or below you but co-workers in general. You can talk about the brand. You can tell them about Heather’s wonderful book because this is a great book. It has everything well laid out. Heather, what’s next for you? What are you working on now? How can people find you? Tell us a little bit about what you’re up to now.
I am thinking about employee engagement. I am thinking a lot about what personal branding looks like not just for job seekers but for job keepers. In terms of what’s resonating with me now, going forward, I think there’s an opportunity to think about leadership and development at a more strategic level. I’m in the middle of a board certification class for board governance which will make me very well-prepared to sit on boards of directors.
I’ve sat on the board of directors before but I wanted to take it more seriously because of how important it is at this point for leadership to increase that employee retention and employee engagement. That’s why I’m looking forward to an opportunity to do that. Where they can reach me, I’m on LinkedIn at Heather H. Bennett. It’s the easiest way to find me. On Twitter, I’m @CreativeBrandCH. My website is CreativeBrandCoach.net and HeatherHBennett.com.
Before I let you go, Heather. I want to ask you one last question if you could share. Could you provide two actionable recommendations that people can do today to start working on their brand?
One thing I would say is to look at your calendar for this month and the year, and write down how you’re spending your time. Put down the major ways that you are spending your time and think about each of those commitments and responsibilities, and whether you want to still be doing those in a year. That’s a simple way to start with that.
The second thing I would say is probably to work on that elevator pitch. It’s so actionable if you work on it and start now because promoting yourself, speaking and being confident in who you are and what you’re asking for is a muscle. The more you practice it, the better you’ll get. Those would be the two I focused on.
Heather, thank you so much for stopping by and talking to us about such an amazing topic. It’s very necessary for everyone to know what a personal brand is. You explain it very well and simply. I have raved about your book. I was talking to someone and I showed them your book. I was like, “This is a great book.” I highly recommend it. Thank you, Heather, for being here. I appreciate it. Thanks, everyone.
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That was such a great conversation with Heather Bennett. I do believe that Heather’s book, which is Fun and Fulfilling Careers One Question at a Time, is one of the must-read books about branding. She goes through the various steps in-depth and she has some exercises, so I highly recommend this book. I’m going to recap the two things that Heather gave us as far as tips on what you can do to apply to your career. The first one is to look at your calendar and identify any major commitments that you’ve been spending time on, and figure out if you want to be doing those same commitments a year from now.
The second thing is to work on your elevator pitch. Heather said, “Promoting yourself and being confident in who you are and what you are asking for is a muscle. The more you practice, the better you will get at that.” I hope you got good value from this episode. Please let me know if there are any other questions or anything specific that you would like to know about branding. I’m picturing having Heather back on our show in the future so that she can go a little bit more in-depth into some of the components that she has about branding. With that, we are at the end of time. I hope you have a great day. Remember to be brave, be bold, and take action. Until next time.
Heather H. Bennett is a Marketing Strategist, Author, Board Director and Personal Brand Coach with over 20 years of experience marketing brands. Drawing from a background in Research and Development, a University of Illinois MBA, and a Northwestern University Social Media Marketing Certification, she coaches her clients to create strong, authentic, and unique brands through her business, Creative Brand Coach. Heather is the Author of the Amazon Bestseller, Fun and Fulfilling Careers One Question at a Time.
