00:00Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for being with me today. I'm really excited to talk
00:14to you about one of the topics I get asked about all the time, which is how can I grow
00:20my presence? How can I accelerate and amplify the efforts that I'm doing on digital platforms?
00:27And I always like to set the stage by saying I would not even consider this my main lane
00:33of expertise. Our company, C-Suite Coach, focuses on training and development. However, working
00:40with digital skills has really grown my business in a tremendous way. So for any business owner,
00:46I always say for a CEO, you don't have to be the one that does it all, but you have to
00:52at least have an understanding of everything. And everything plays a part in how your business
00:58grows. So this is a topic I'm really passionate about. I'd like to kick off by just introducing
01:02myself. I'm Angelina Darasaw, founder and CEO of C-Suite Coach. We've been in business
01:08for seven years. Thank you. Thank you so much. And again, I really do credit leaning into digital
01:17skills to help grow our business. We also work with a lot of small business owners. So one
01:22of the programs that we've done has worked with small business owners to train over 100,000
01:27black and Latino small business owners. So really proud of our work. Now, when I get the question
01:33all the time, what should I be doing? Where do I lean in on digital platforms to grow my business?
01:39I always say, before we even go to tactics, you need to know the basics. So what are the basics?
01:47The very first one is you have to bring value. So you cannot do anything without leading with the
01:55value that you're bringing for your customers and for those who are trying to serve. You also want to
02:01make sure you have a goal in mind. So what are you trying to use these platforms to do? It shouldn't
02:06just be about engagement or vanity metrics like likes and follows. You want to have a goal that's
02:12going to be meaningful to your business. You also want to align with known brands. Choose the right
02:18platforms because there's so much in an ecosystem when we think about digital marketing for your
02:23business. So you want to choose the right platforms. And then last, or you want to be creative. I'll
02:29talk about how to get creative. You want to be very authentic to yourself. No one can do it like you.
02:35What do they say? You can give them the recipe, but the sauce won't be the same. So you want to make
02:40sure that you're authentic to yourself and then be consistent. Rinse and repeat. So let's talk about
02:45bringing value. This is a quote from my mentor in my head, Oprah. And she says to me all the time,
02:54she says, let excellence be your brand. When you are excellent, you become unforgettable. So the thing
03:02that really that you need to begin with is knowing what is your value proposition. What are you
03:07bringing that's different? We certainly have opportunity and space for everyone, but there's
03:14also a lot of competition out there. So how do you make sure that people really understand and you
03:21yourself understand clearly the value that you're bringing and what you're excellent at? One of the
03:26questions I like to ask all the time is, what is your superpower? So if you don't know, start to ask
03:32people in your circle around you, what is my superpower? And also, when we talk about having a goal in
03:39mind, it's important to be thinking that your offline strategy and your online strategy should be
03:45connected. So again, it's about driving value back to your business, to your bottom line. That's where
03:51when we think about things like the likes, the follows, it becomes less important unless that's
03:56something that you're actually monetizing. So some of the goals that you can be thinking about, you
04:01want to think about building more awareness. I always say, if a tree falls in the forest and no one heard
04:07it, did it fall, right? So similarly, if a business launches and no one knows, did it launch? You have to
04:14make sure that people know what you're doing. And that can be uncomfortable for some of us, but we have to
04:19build awareness. We have to gain interest, make people want to actually engage with our products, our
04:25services. And then you want to close the deal. Don't just get people interested. Are you closing? Are you
04:31doing anything that drives to a conversion? And then you want to get folks so excited about what you do, they're
04:36telling everyone. You have referrals, advocates out there speaking on your behalf. They're saying, we went to the
04:43coaching booth that they had in the eSuite and it was so good. We want to bring more people back, right?
04:48That's what you want. People promoting and amplifying for you. Okay. Align with well-known brands is
04:56something else that's a great tip if you're just getting started. So when I was graduating college, I, you
05:04know, I'm very, I think, street smart being from New York, but I did not graduate cum laude. So I had to think
05:11of ways to make myself stand out. And so what I did was I thought about what did I have that was
05:19different from other folks. And I had very great internships. I had interned at ESPN, Bloomberg, HBO,
05:27Fisher Price, and Haynes. So not a lot of people coming out of college had that, those sorts of
05:31internships. Have you all heard of any of those brands? ESPN, Bloomberg? Okay, yes. Okay, good. And so
05:37what I said is on this black and white piece of paper, the resume, how do I make myself stand out?
05:43Well, these brands are so big and they have known logos. I went ahead and I put color logos of these
05:51companies on my resume and I got a lot of calls, callbacks. And that's how I ended up getting my
05:57first job. So what I learned was when people don't know who you are yet, me coming out of school, they
06:04didn't know Angelina Darasaw yet, but they knew ESPN, they knew HBO. So I could get credibility
06:11and social proof by sharing how I'm affiliated and connected with those known brands. So that being
06:18said, one of the things we share whenever we're doing a capabilities deck or if you went into the
06:23coaching booth and you saw our banner that we had, we'll put the logos of companies that we work with
06:29and that helps gain credibility. And that gets other people interested to know more about what
06:34you're doing. So on your website, something that we do is we do testimonials, case studies there with
06:41clients. On your newsletter, we just launched a client corner where we'll highlight different
06:46clients and how we're working with them. So when you think about your digital ecosystem, you want to
06:51make sure that those known brands that you're affiliated with pop out as well until they just know your
06:57brand and, you know, then you can replace some of that. Now, it's a very complicated ecosystem. Just
07:04on this slide, I've listed so many different parts that are a part of that picture of what does it mean
07:11to be in digital marketing. There's so many different areas you can play. And this is where choosing
07:15platform becomes really important because not all the time do we have all the personnel, all the time,
07:22or all the budget that we need to do everything. Because I'm so good at my craft, remember,
07:28excellence, the value you bring, then that's going to open doors for me and I can walk through that
07:34with my excellence. So I say that to say, we said it already, crowded spaces, right? A lot of competition
07:41out there. You have to get creative about how you're going to stand out. What is that thing going to be
07:46for you? I've seen on TikTok, for example, wrapping chefs. They're cooking and they're wrapping at the
07:52same time. There's a lot of fun, creative things that you can do. Wendy's put out a mixtape. They
07:58got beef with Burger King, okay? So, like, you can get creative. What are you going to do for your brand
08:04that makes you stand out in crowded spaces? A quote from another one of my besties in my head
08:11is Bosoma St. John. She talks about there's nothing more bad ass than being who you are. I'm a force of
08:19nature in stilettos. So I also want you to think about how do you make sure you're showing up as you?
08:25What worked for someone else? When you see Bosoma in a room, you always know her because she's always
08:30showing up as herself. And that's been consistent with her since she became known to many of us,
08:36right? So you have to think about what is that for you? How are you going to be authentic to
08:42yourself? And that's why where the tactics post this amount of times, do this, may not always work.
08:48You have to come up with your own rules that fit your brand. Another video. Watch it later. It's
08:55really funny. So you can trial a lot of things on platforms as they're just getting started. And DJ
09:02Cavalett had viral moments. If y'all remember, another one, another one. We the best. Don't let
09:10the door close on you. We walk through the doors. Like just great sayings. It's very funny. And so he
09:16was able to use Snapchat to gain a huge following. And really it cemented him. We knew who he was a
09:24little bit, but that cemented him. So you can definitely use these platforms to grow your brand.
09:30And also he put out merch. He started monetizing that. So something else that you can be thinking
09:36about are when I'm growing my brand, there's dollar opportunities that are often associated with it.
09:43Then last but not least, I want you to think about being consistent. So some of us may wake up and think
09:50about this every day. And there are some of us with everything you have, you have also so much on your
09:55plate as a business owner. It's hard to find the time. But I put a little scale here. If you're on
10:03the one to two, three, what is a brand? I never think about my brand. You're on the lower side of
10:08the scale. I want you to challenge yourself to move the needle and just take one action to get yourself
10:14being more consistent and working with it on a regular basis. Really where you're trying to be
10:20is that everyone clearly understands the value, the excellence, your superpowers of your work. And
10:27they're bringing more clients to you because they understand that really clearly. So you have to be
10:32consistent. And it's those small actions every day. Maybe that video doesn't go viral like DJ Khaled's.
10:39Okay, that's okay. But it's those consistent steps that will lead to your overnight success that we know
10:46takes time. So that being said, I know I'm holding you between the rest of your concert experience.
10:53I want to thank you for your energy, your attention, and being with me here today. And I wish you all the
10:59best of luck.
11:07And there is our contact us page. So thank you all.
11:16I don't think we have any time for questions, but I will be available with. Oh, we do? Okay. I did. Okay. We
11:26have time for questions. Questions. Awesome. Thank you.
11:38Yes.
11:38Yes, absolutely. So I spared you some of the slides in the interest of time, but there's actually
11:49research. Inc. magazine put out an article about how you can actually build opportunities in your
11:57career. Right now, employers are leveraging Google to do research on you before they hire you and make
12:03hiring decisions. So being aware of even your own digital footprint as an individual is also linked
12:10to your financial opportunities, right? Employers are looking at that before they hire you. Also,
12:15we pivot in life, right? You might be doing one thing now. We talked about this a lot in the
12:20eSuite today and want to do something else later. Having a brand of excellence is what helps you to
12:27transfer opportunities. So if you're moving from being full-time to being a business owner or being
12:33from an executive to being on a board, your resume of excellence, not the actual paper, but what people
12:39say about you and see, and you thinking about it really intentionally helps you drive opportunities.
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