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About the Guest:

Kait LeDonne

Founder and CEO of Brandwise Media

Kait LeDonne is the founder of Brandwise Media, a personal brand & social media agency based in NYC. Kait has authored the book “The Attraction Magnet: “The 7 Insider Secrets The World’s Biggest Brands Use to Attract Customers Who Can’t Wait to Buy From Them,” and is regularly featured in national and international publications as a commentator on celebrity and corporate brands.

Kait also developed one of the first online courses centered around LinkedIn, The Influence Academy, to teach executives how to position themselves as thought leaders in their respective spaces. To date, over 100 executives have completed the program.

Connect with Kait LeDonne

About the Episode:

Welcome to another episode of Entrepreneur Rx where John had the pleasure of speaking with Kait LeDonne, a personal branding expert and instructor, speaker, and founder and CEO of Brandwise Media. Brandwise is a personal brand consultancy based in New York which does personal branding using content marketing strategies through social media.

In this episode, they discuss her entrepreneurial journey and the influences that prompted her take that path,  what branding is, knowing your audience/market and their challenges, narrowing your niche, and being clear on your corporate values, mission, and vision. They also cover the impact of COVID on branding and culture, how to handle multiple businesses successfully, and why it is important to think of the exit when you start a business.

Entrepreneur Rx Episode 32:

RX Podcast_Kait LeDonne: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

RX Podcast_Kait LeDonne: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

John Shufeldt:
Hello everybody and welcome to another edition of Entrepreneur Rx, where we help health care professionals own their future.

John Shufeldt:
Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Entrepreneur Rx. I hope you had a great holiday and stayed safe. COVID is raging out there as you know. I spent a lot of the holidays in the emergency department and can say firsthand, it's back, it never really left and it's interesting. But putting all that aside, I've got a really cool guest today. Her name is Kait LeDonne. Kate and I first became acquainted and she helped me on branding for a book I wrote. This book, The Entrepreneur Rx, and she was totally amazing. And as we talked about it, I thought, gosh, for those of us out starting businesses, brand and branding is essential, and I literally found what I considered the nation's number one expert in this. Kait, welcome.

Kait LeDonne:
John, thank you so much. So happy to be here and happy to talk to your audience.

John Shufeldt:
Thanks. Well, this you know, it's funny. Branding is not something I knew a lot about. It was kind of an afterthought to me, and it's probably the exact wrong way to do it. And I know you've branded startups before. So before we get there, give folks a little bit about your background so they know to whom they're listening to.

Kait LeDonne:
Sure, so my name is Kait LeDonne, I run Brandwise Media, we do personal branding and social network building for business authors. So of course, that's how we know John. But before that, I was a branding consultant for startups, so started on the corporate branding side and I had worked with a financial company who were really on a tear doing a ton of acquisitions around 2008. And we had a start swallowing up portfolio companies, merging them into the parent brand. And because I can't sit still, much like John, I'm always having like five different projects and businesses going on, I would leave my day job and I would go home and start branding small businesses, at the time, I was in Baltimore, Maryland, in the Baltimore area and then startups. And what I realized was it was so much easier to get very clear on who your brand is for and who that audience is, build up that audience and then serve them products and a brand because you're going to reach profitability so much faster. And so we did that for a number of firms, and we zigged and zagged and got into marketing, which I'll talk a little bit about that journey. But there's a lot of checkpoints in the way that I think John are probably translatable to your audience.

John Shufeldt:
Totally. So quite a while ago I reached out to Ryan Holiday, who is one of my favorite authors after I read his book The Obstacle Is The Way. And I said, listen, and I've written, I don't know, at that point six or seven books and they, you know, they were not flying off the shelves. And he said, John, you're doing it all wrong. Build the audience, write the book. You're writing the book, then trying to build the audience. He goes you're doing it logically but definitely backwards, which is basically what you just said.

Kait LeDonne:
That's right. I think a lot of people think when you're branding a company and I give keynotes on this a lot, a lot throughout the year, and I always start with the saying that branding is to serve, nothing more, nothing less. I think a lot of people think our brand is all about us and features and benefits and unique selling proposition, and there's a time and a place for all of that. And yet if you don't start in a reverse standpoint of who am I serving? What does that person look like? What are their challenges? Who is the hero I'm trying to help through their journey? You're not going to see brand growth as quickly as you can. And this was a lesson I learned not only in helping other companies establish their brand, but when I developed my first product. So I was doing brand consulting and I was sharing with people how to build up their corporate brand and personal brand. And somebody said to me, hey, you know, what you're doing is really translatable for an online course. And I thought, hmm, that sounds interesting. And at the time, I probably had about five thousand followers on LinkedIn and a pretty small email list like two thousand people. But I was serving them up regular content, and I was very curious to do research on what was bothering them. And so I had this kind of baked-in audience of about six to seven thousand people, and I just sent out a message and said, you know, I've been following a lot of you. I've been learning more about what you're challenging or what your challenges are. And I have this idea, I'm going to do six weeks of live LinkedIn coaching, who would be interested? And John, seven people replied back and said, I'm in, here's my credit card, let's go. And that's when I really realized the power of practicing what I was preaching, which is because I was building and researching that audience, I didn't even have the product yet, I just had a product concept and I got it proved and validated through seven beta testers who are willing to pay through their wallet. And so I've experienced it myself, and I've experienced it with a number of businesses that we did their brand with. Get the audience down first, get so laser-focused on who your business is for to the point where you may feel like you're leaving money on the table, like, oh, if I only serve this demographic, I'm going to leave money on the table, that's probably when you've defined it enough because you're going to be open for other business, but you do want to be clear in who it is you're serving.

John Shufeldt:
So it's basically, like you basically did your minimum viable product, you did your MVP with those seven beta users that you tested it out on. And something else you said really struck me, it's, you know, what I tell entrepreneurs all the time, it's what is the solution? What's the problem to which you find a solution? For you, it's who's the hero you're trying to help on their journey through your brand? Does that summarize it?

Kait LeDonne:
Absolutely. Who is the hero and what are they struggling with? And I can tell you between building out products like online courses and services, we're an agency, it is always, just go back to the client and figure out what they want, go back to the client and figure out what they want and then agilely build that. And so we're probably on, I mean, goodness, we worked together for your book launch about a year ago, from then and now we're probably on iteration number 20 of how our agency looks because we're always going back to, as you said, the problem, and as you said, that we look at it as like our hero in their challenges.

John Shufeldt:
Right. Ok, so since this is about entrepreneurs and I read somewhere that you read the book The Alchemist, which I love, and then after you read that cover to cover, you said, OK, I'm following my heart, follow my passion, what was it about that book that all of a sudden sprung you into action? Not that you needed much, I'm sure.

Kait LeDonne:
I'm a Type-A, so I actually have the opposite problem. I can never sit still, which is, you know, something I impart with my therapist at relevant points in my life. But I will say, you know, it's funny you read books or hear things in your life, and sometimes it's the message, and most times it's the timing. And I feel like when timing intersects with the right message, that's when the magic happens. So The Alchemist is something where if I read it, I don't know when I was twenty-two, as opposed to when I was twenty-six, which is when I started my first business, I probably would have enjoyed it for the parable that it is, but it wouldn't have ricocheted my life like it did. When I read it, I just want to give the background to everybody so you can thoroughly appreciate the reason to jump if that is where you are, I was working with a financial firm, compared to my other colleagues and peers who graduated at the same time I did, which was in a financial downturn, you know right after 2008, I was making extraordinary money. And I had this little side business, and my CEO, who was also my boss, brought me into his office and said, you know, we're getting ready to go through our next round of funding and we see something in you and so we want to offer you equity in the company. It was like, you know, if we did an IPO, I'd have stocks, they'd invest, all of this really fun talk. I give that background because the papers were handed to me to review. And then it was Memorial Day weekend. And I read the book The Alchemists cover to cover that Friday and then on Monday. And on Tuesday I went in and I said, not only can't I accept this offer, I'm actually going to leave and start my own business, because when I read that book and I was staring at those papers, I felt like the hero of that story who was really faced with do I want to stay in a comfortable life without any adventure, I might get the crap kicked out of me if I take this adventure, or do I stay here and live an OK known-existence. And to me, I would have paid the same amount of money that that company was offering me to go on that adventure and get the crap kicked out of me than stay where I was and feel like my soul was kind of getting crushed every single day. And so it was totally the right book, right time. It was like the message I needed because everybody else and I'm sure all of you hear this, if you're an entrepreneur or an aspiring entrepreneur, everybody else in my life was saying, you are batshit crazy to do this when you have this amount of money on the table. And I was and it's been great. I would never change a second of any of it.

John Shufeldt:
You know, it's funny because I didn't know you then obviously. But had I known you, I would have said, oh no, if this is where is your heart saying, you've got to follow it. So I totally identify with that. There was a long time ago I had worked, I was definitely well over tired and I was kind of just getting beat up in emergency medicine, and I read this book called Surfing the Himalayas and it's about Buddhism and meditation. And I woke up one day and like a light bulb went out on my head and I was back. I mean, I was back. A couple of years when I picked up this book, I flipped through it, read some again. I have no idea what the hell happened. I have no idea what to get out of that book. But at that point in my life, there was some spark and I'm like, you know, it's like, baby, I'm back, and that was it.

Kait LeDonne:
Yes, you know, the book that I had that experience with in an opposite thing was Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now. The first time I read it, I was like, this is way over my head, I don't know, I'm not there yet. And then a couple of years after that, I picked it back up, read it, and was like, this is remarkable. And it was crazy because the same exact words, but your experience, your time, whatever events are in your life, you're just in a different position, you receive these things differently, which is why I always like to go back and listen to things or read things, you know, two or three times.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, I know. Totally, me too. All right. So I mean, I could have this conversation with you for hours, obviously. But OK, so I'm starting the business. I got this great idea and I want to develop my brand. So one thing I would encourage people to do is, we'll have it in the show notes all links so they can kind of check out your education materials, I've looked at them and they're, I wish I would have looked at them years ago. So what advice do you have? Somebody has this great idea, they're coming out with their MVP, they need to start branding. Go, what do you tell them?

Kait LeDonne:
Yes. So as we already shared, when you're developing your MVP, do not do it in a vacuum, agilely build it with your community. Where do I get that community? Great question. I went online. You know, I started to share about my journey as an entrepreneur, even the fumbling blocks and my thoughts around it, and built that on social media, and then I would just ask people for their time. You know, social's a really great way to get connected to people. And there's also Reddit threads, there's Quora. I mean, there's a ton of areas and platforms where you can just do community research to more or less get formal and informal focus groups. But once you do that, you really need to start niching down on who it is that is the perfect person to receive the solution that you're presenting so you can understand their challenges. So that's number one. We have a perfect client avatar. I have their face on my wall right here, you all can't see, this is a podcast, but they're up there and there is demographic, psychographics, their challenges, where they're let down from our competition, what they really want, what their business looks like, how many kids they have. I mean, we wrote a full-on like novel about this person, so we're very clear on who they are. After that, the key thing that made the difference for me in scaling not only my company, but truly my team and my partners was figuring out what our corporate values were. And I think a lot of people look at corporate values as touchy-feely, light work, whatever, whatever. And I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, we've doubled year, over year, over year. The reason that we've done that is because we have the right team, and the reason we have the right team is because we are so clear on the DNA makeup of those values and who will and will not be the right person for the right seat in our organization. John, I don't know, was that your experience, too? I feel like you're shaking your head, you're nodding.

John Shufeldt:
Totally. It's you know, it's the old saying culture, eat strategy for breakfast, and .... You know, I've had some large companies and you know, the few times that's not true, the times have let the wrong person on the bus, I've always paid for it dearly and the companies always suffer, our customers have always suffered. And so now I'd rather have a position unfilled than to let somebody on the bus who is not the perfect candidate for it.

Kait LeDonne:
And yeah, I mean, we, I mean, down to we give promotions based on culture and value fit. We do a core value shout-out every day. We shout out our clients for core values. We find our best client, share our core values. I mean, it is truly the drumbeat of the organization and we nail that down before we even nail down our vision. The other thing I would say about that, speaking of those things are usually bundled up in the same breath, when you're talking about branding, vision, mission, values, right? We always hear them as like the three, three knights that come in when you're doing your branding. Values were first and foremost, and I recommend them be, first and foremost because they already exist whether you realize it or not and my suggestion is to look at your A players and figure out what are the qualities they share or who would your ideal A players be and what are the qualities they share? And then start there because values will also shape your vision and your mission. When you're speaking about vision and mission, what we did for our company and John, I think you're familiar with this is, we run on EOS, the Entrepreneur Operating System. For those of you who haven't read traction retraction, it's, it'll save you a ton of headaches, it just boils it down into like a six-component core operating system for the business. Having said that, when you go through traction in EOS, they'll have you come up with your 10-year plan, a three-year plan, a one-year plan, and then break that down on 90 days. I say that in the breadth of vision, because your vision is like your ten-year plan. Close your eyes, fast forward, what's materialized when this solution has come to market, when you've built the team? How are you quantifying that? What does it look like? And so that starts to shape your vision, which is simply what does the world look like if you succeed at this. And then your mission is really your core purpose for doing business. Once you flesh out those, the next thing I would say is get very clear on your unique selling proposition. And a lot of times people present your unique selling proposition as the feature or benefit that makes the seller greater than or competitive with their competition. And I just roll my eyes because for us, we boil it down as this, USP or unique selling proposition is really just short for understanding someone's problem and articulating it back to them. Because as we were sharing earlier, if you understand your customer's problem better than anybody else, you are 90 percent of the way there. They don't actually really care about your solution because they're so absorbed in their problem. They are not in a position most times to understand your solution until they experience it. They can only empathize with their problem. So if you become the most adept and facile and fluent in stating that problem to then and then putting your solution from the lens of that problem, you've got really great branding bases covered and then your marketing strategy will naturally flow off of that. So that's a mouthful. I'll pause there to get over to you.

John Shufeldt:
So that's awesome. So those are, I think, steps one, two, and three on how to get the ball rolling. And I love that you start with values, and I love the fact that you start with, you know, who my A players or what do I want my A players to look like? What values do they espouse? And we are not going to cut corners on or accept anything in the gray? And you know, for those out there, this is my thirty-first year of doing this, and I will just tell you every time I have and I have, it's always come back to bite me, even if in the short term, it sounds good and feels good, it's always bit me. And so if you can compromise on a lot of things, you can't compromise on your values because of a bunch.

Kait LeDonne:
Yeah, and don't, for us, like weE, we call it right person right seat. If we have the right person, no problem, I'll find a seat for you. The seat may not be there, but it will be there. I'd rather, you know, someone in my entrepreneur mastermind group up here in New York said, we have a motto at our law firm and that's ABH, Always Be Hiring. Like if I see someone and you are value alignment and you are, I'm snapping you up even if I don't have a position.

John Shufeldt:
I do the same thing. I will find a spot for them. You can, you train the right person to do almost anything.

Kait LeDonne:
That's right.

John Shufeldt:
But you get a brilliant person and they don't fit that culture grid, they'll never fit the culture grid.

Kait LeDonne:
Oh yeah. And then they'll skunk your culture, which is, and then like, they just, you can feel it immediately. Other people start to get, you know, not happy, and it really does not play out well for anybody involved, even the person it doesn't.

John Shufeldt:
I've never heard the phrase skunk to your culture, but I really like that phrase, I'm going to have to steal it from you.

Kait LeDonne:
You know where I got it from? I have some friends that work for Shake Shack and Shake Shack, even though they're publicly traded, is very much like, I'm going to say a startup, but like, they have a great culture. We all could probably see that externally, and they use that saying like, don't skunk, which means basically you're coming in, you're spreading your negativity, you're ruining it for others like you're skunking the culture. And I heard that and I just like you, I latched on to it. I was like, oh, no, skunking allowed.

John Shufeldt:
All right, well done. So, so speaking of skunking, how has the pandemic influenced your business much? Are you finding people diving deeper into the brand new message and their values? It seems like they should and would be.

Kait LeDonne:
Yes, I think a lot of us pre-pandemic were reliant upon tried and true yet maybe comfortable, and not as, I'm not going to say innovative because I truly miss networking and trade shows and being with humans. I'm an extrovert's extrovert. I lost my mind at certain points in this pandemic, especially in New York. You know, you're in very small square footages, and the reason you move here is to just be amongst people. Having said that, the pandemic and I say this with great trepidation because in no way do I want to seem not sensitive how difficult it's been because I have a number of entrepreneur friends, this is not been the case, and a number of friends who've just been so rocked by this, having said that, the pandemic has really, I think, skyrocketed our business because many people realize that they weren't online and doing that critical brand work before, connecting with their audiences online, then they quickly need to, to get up to speed in doing so. I think the other thing the pandemic did, as it relates to my very specific line of business, is when the world shut down, a lot of people looked introspectively, and so we saw a number of books being crafted and a real reflection point, an inflection point for business authors thinking, ok, well, what is Business 4.0 look like? And I think, you know, I'm curious to hear your perspective on this, John, from where I'm sitting right now and I'm working with a number of authors, we do seem to be at a turning point of like the before and the after. And what I mean is we all know it's an employee's market right now, labor is extremely competitive and in some cases very scarce as people are really thinking about what they want to do for a living. I forecast in the next couple of years, I mean, remote's here, hybrids here, but things like four-day workweeks will start to get more normal as corporate wellbeing and employee wellbeing happen. It's been interesting to see how it's very much shifted culture, which is another reason I urge everybody listening to start with values, because cultures and strong culture survived this pandemic. Flimsy cultures did not, and that's where you're seeing talent bleed out.

John Shufeldt:
I totally agree. And in health care, you know, businesses I have, we staff a number of Native American facilities on reservations across the country, and they were hit very hard by the pandemic. And so if you are, if our culture was not them first, caring first, compassion first, for both our, our teammates but also for our patients, it wouldn't have worked. And I think many of our competitors lost people in droves because the great resignation hit health care hard. You know, a lot of folks just said, you know, I'm out, and I think folks in New York definitely had a lot worse than the rest of the country. But it's I mean, I worked in the ED yesterday and, and you know, it's wrong to say it's a shit show, but there's a lot of folks in there, a lot of patients, a lot of sickness and some death. And you have to have a high degree of resolve day after day, after day. And if you don't feel like your company has your back, it's taking care of you, you're out. And so we really want the great pains to make sure our employees felt like they were part the culture, part of the team. And I think for the most part, God knows we're not perfect, but I think for the most part, it worked relatively well, even despite the harsh conditions within which they work.

Kait LeDonne:
Absolutely. You know, I think we're really, again, another thing now is like that shifting of like more of the what was previously seen as soft skills now being these skills that are in demand, empathy, vulnerability. I mean, when you're looking at cultures that endured and companies that had talent that endured, I would assert that that's because they had leadership and management that were much higher on empathy and vulnerability than their competition. It sounds like you guys were a case study of that.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, we've had some great people on our team who truly walk the talk. So, you know, you're what we'd call a multipreneur, you have a number of businesses, how do you keep all the balls up in the air?

Kait LeDonne:
I hire really great people and people who are smarter than me, and I think that that's probably cliched advice like hire people that are smarter than you, and it's one hundred percent true. There was a point in my life and still on a daily basis where I'm always as an entrepreneur, you're thinking, for me, am I inserting myself way too much or way too little? And that's constantly my daily fight. Like, does the team think I'm out of the loop? Do they need more of me, or do they? Or am I getting in their way? Do they need less of me? And when you hire people who are smarter than you, who are always looking to even replace themselves because they want to grow, you'll find that most of the time that answer is please get out of my way. I mean, give me structure and give me the resources to do it. But please, for the love of God, just get out of the way. And because of that, and because we have such a clear vision and values that allow people to make decisions like we would make decisions without us needing to micromanage all of that. I do have the capacity and the bandwidth to be able to have my eyes on multiple things and my energy and multiple things and know where that energy is best served. And so for me, I mean, we have an accountability chart. My role is big relationship, innovation, research and development, company culture, and I can always apply that to the different businesses I'm in while knowing that everything else, there's not going to be balls dropped because they are assigned to somebody else who is great at those things. And so if you're seriously thinking about being a multipreneur and most entrepreneurs are because again, we love to see opportunities in our, insert ourselves and solutions into them, you just have to. There was a point where I really thought I could build a seven-figure business as a singular person, and I'm not saying it's not doable, but boy, is it certainly faster and more rewarding when you do it with a team.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, totally. I'm smiling because I've literally had this discussion with myself today. Am I two in or two out and which way to go? And I tend to be, I was far from a micromanager as possible because I hate it. And you're right, you know, people are far better than I am at their jobs, so they don't need me mucking up everything, so I do fight that battle constantly. What would be the, you know, the elevator pitch, biggest piece of advice you'd have, because most of our listeners are physicians who will, by definition, be multipreneurs. Now maybe they'll be an employee with one shoe and an entrepreneur the next, but they'll be juggling. What's the biggest piece of advice you have for them? How do you keep sane? I'll start there.

Kait LeDonne:
Yeah. I mean, goodness. I think, first of all, the mantra I am not my business has served me well. You can very quickly get identified with that as a driving identity. And I don't have children, so I don't have like other roles that I can get absorbed into, like, oh, I am a mother, I am a dad, like it is so much of me from age twenty-six, so like very, relatively early on in my life has just been, I'm an entrepreneur and so my worth is deduced from how well the business is doing. Problem with that is just like anything else in your life, if your worth is externally driven, it will fluctuate and you will have very high highs and you will have debilitating low lows if you put it all into that. And so I think the first thing is every day I try and meditate for 30 minutes, I move my body for at least 30 minutes, and I have something outside of it, outside of the business to make sure that I know I am not just my business, which keeps me mentally, emotionally checked and, you know, in a great position to be able to perform. On top of that, I wish I would have told myself, at twenty-six, start thinking about structuring the business like you're going to sell it. And they always tell you, like, don't build the house to sell it because you might take shortcuts and you want to be simultaneously thinking about how am I going to sell this business and structure it and scale it so it can operate without me while also planning to run it for one hundred years? That's like the sweet spot is. You want to mentally and emotionally be invested to run it for one hundred years because you want to build a company that's going to endure, but you want to structurally build it so that anybody else can step in and take it over for you. And I think that from starting as a consultant, I did not have that mentality. I only really got it in the last two or three years, and business has completely changed with that level of thinking.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, it's really something that really struck me because you talked about an interesting dichotomy. Because you're right, half of the time I tell people, you've got to think of the exit when you start the business, because if it's an unexitable business, you're stuck, which may be fine.

Kait LeDonne:
And you can get got another job and your boss is the crappies person ever, because it's you.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're stuck with a loser for a boss, oh, hello. But the flip side of that is too, you need to build it with the thought is I need to put the structure in place, the foundation, in order to this business will be self-sustaining long after I'm gone. And so then you can go down two paths. You can turn the business over, become a chairperson and let someone else run it, which I've done a couple of times or, or sell it, and either one is great. But if you build right from the foundation with the right values and the right branding great, you're on the path and knock on what you set it upright, then someone will want to buy it, if that's what you want it to be your exit. So it's a cool duality.

Kait LeDonne:
The other thing, two things to that. You're absolutely right. I think we've explored this in a few different examples just in this conversation. Just getting comfortable with being an entrepreneur means existing as a duality. That's your first thing right there. Just get comfortable you all, am I into too much? Am I in it too little? I'm building it to sell it, I'm building it to run for one hundred years. Sales and operations, I'm selling, oh crap, now I got to make sure the operations have the capacity to sell. You're always going to be kind of like this pendulum of a person. And I think the best entrepreneurs are people who are very comfortable knowing that that shift is, you can exist in two places at once. The other thing I would say about that and now I just lost my thought on that other one, it may come back to me, but the big thing is, yes, being an entrepreneur means being very comfortable in duality and, and dichotomy. And I think some of us get anxious about that, but if you know that that's just to be expected, you're already one step ahead of, of beating that.

John Shufeldt:
Yeah, it's funny. It's, you know, I think as physicians were, most of us are very uncomfortable in the abstract and somewhat unknown, could it emergency medicine. But most physicians you operate and make sometimes life and death decisions with imperfect information, and that just kind of how it is. And so as an entrepreneur that suits you well, because you'll never have all the information you need, and oftentimes your decisions may not be the best decision, maybe the best decisions that time, but they ultimately may not have been the right decisions.

John Shufeldt:
Yes.

Kait LeDonne:
And you better get comfortable.

Kait LeDonne:
That's right. I think that you're absolutely right. That's why physicians do really well, I think that's why veteran business owners, I know so many successful business owners who were a part of our armed forces and the same thing, like I am in just a very uncomfortable situation and I got to make a choice and move forward with it.

John Shufeldt:
Hey, how's that, switching to something, how's your neighborhood out there? It sounds like there's police going by every few minutes.

Kait LeDonne:
Yeah, I know I was thinking about that. The ambient sounds that'll make their way into the podcast. So I live in New York and it's constant, it is unrelenting, and it's just so funny because you say that. And like, I didn't even process that that was happening outside until, so from the white noise you allow yourself to get adapted to living in New York City is unlike you could sleep through anything if you live here or not.

John Shufeldt:
That's pretty funny, that's pretty good. So Kait, I really appreciate your time. So how can, because I would encourage all of you to listen to this obviously, and then get online and contact Kait, you can do it through the Influence Academy. How can people learn more about you and how can people get sign up for The Influence Academy? I'm telling you, as a new business owner, I wish this was around back when I started because it literally like Ryan Holiday told me it would have changed quite a bit.

Kait LeDonne:
Oh, thanks, John. So for The Influence Academy, that is our online course that really sets up that foundational branding and personal branding, TheInfluence.Academy. Very straightforward. And then I am most active on LinkedIn, I'm on there all the time, if you look for me, Kait spelled interestingly, K A I T, I'm sure you'll see it in the show notes, you can find me there, too.

John Shufeldt:
Perfect. I really appreciate it, Kait. It's great reconnecting with you and great speaking with you.

Kait LeDonne:
Thanks, John.

John Shufeldt:
Thanks for listening to another great edition of Entrepreneur Rx. To find out how to start a business and help secure your future, go to JohnShufeldtMD.com. Thanks for listening.

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Key Take-Aways:

  • Entrepreneurs should get to know their audience, so getting laser-focused on who your business is for is a great exercise.
  • Find out who is the hero of your business and what are they struggling with. 
  • Your company values will shape your mission and vision. 
  • Run your business on the Entrepreneur Operating System (EOS), it will save you a ton of headaches. 
  • Your company vision is like your ten-year plan. 
  • If you understand your customer’s problem better than anybody else, you are 90 percent of the way there.
  • Don’t compromise your values. 
  • You can train the right person to do almost anything. 
  • Structure your business like you are going to sell it. 
  • Be mentally and emotionally invested to run your business for one hundred years because you want to build a company that’s going to endure, build it structurally so that anybody else can step in and take it over for you. 

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