Episode 17: How Your Personal Brand Can Transcend Into Measurable Business Success

00:32
Madison Riddell
Welcome to another episode of Marketing Moves. I'm your host, Madison Riddell, President of VividFront. Today's topic is the impact of personal branding, specifically how your personal brand can transcend into measurable business success. Here with me as a subject matter expert is today's guest, Raquel Eatmon. Raquel is a restaurant tour author, keynote speaker and CEO of Rising Media, LLC, a life empowerment communications company. Raquel got her start as a television news anchor and reporter for a variety of outlets, including CBS in Dallas, Texas. With a clear strength in captivating an audience, she dovetailed into a multifaceted career with highlights including publishing multiple books, serving as a keynote speaker for notable brands like Key Bank and Sherwin Williams, and successfully spearheading a national women's leadership conference, the Woman of Power Conference, for eleven years.

Most recently, Raquel serves as a partner in Osteria Italian Restaurant in Downtown Cleveland, flexing into a variety of roles from leadership and ownership to bartender and host. Raquel has been a great friend of mine and a mentor for many years, and I'm extremely excited to welcome her to our show. Thank you so much for being here, Raquel.

01:51
Raquel Eatmon
Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor.

01:55
Madison Riddell
Likewise, I think we were chatting before we started the show, and this is the first time, at least in our relationship, that I've been on the other side of the questions. You're typically the one hosting and asking questions. So how does it feel to be in the hot seat?

02:08
Raquel Eatmon
Well, I'm one, very proud of you. And two, I'm more relaxed being on this side.

02:16
Madison Riddell
Yeah. Why do you think that is?

02:18
Raquel Eatmon
Well, as the host, you do so much preparation for this and you're concerned about the overall message, making your guests comfortable. So now the onus is on you.

02:31
Madison Riddell
Well, I know you're comfortable.

02:33
Raquel Eatmon
I have to say, you're right.

02:34
Madison Riddell
The prep work is important for anyone producing a podcast or using it as a marketing tool. You have to know your guest. This one came a little bit more naturally to me because I've known you for a long time and I know how much you can offer to this audience. So I'm really excited to dive in. Obviously, with an introduction like that, there's a lot of ways we can take this episode, but I'd like to focus our discussion around branding and why you've had such a heavy emphasis on branding throughout your career. I think to give some context to listeners, we should start sort of at the beginning on television news, why you were in that field, how you transitioned from television to serial entrepreneur, and then we'll kind of get started.

03:12
Raquel Eatmon
I was interested in television news since I was a girl, and we'll talk a little bit more about that as we get into the thick of this. But I got into news on the cusp of when the business was changing, and I didn't know it was changing as much as it was and as quickly as it was. So it turned out that I was, to put it bluntly, getting dolled up at two or three in the know, big hair, and in Texas, they do really big hair, makeup. And I was getting ready to tell viewers the worst thing that happened overnight, day after day. So that was my way of informing the audience.

03:56
Raquel Eatmon
And I've always been a contributor, and I was contributing to a news team, but I felt that I was also contributing to a way of just really sort of inciting fear and panic in some of the stories. But that was my job, and I was supposed to be separate from the emotion of what was happening to subjects in the story. I grew up very humble beginnings, and I could not develop a thick skin, so I couldn't come to work and pretend like I didn't just witness a body of a woman who was unidentified. So those things sort of went to bed with me. I sort of woke up with those things. And then I told you, the viewer, what was happening.

04:34
Raquel Eatmon
So I had a long talk with myself and said, hey, if you're not informing and inspiring, those two have to work for me to be able to breathe and look at myself every day. Then you have to find something else. So when I walked away from the business, I had so many people tell me, you are absolutely insane to get a main anchor position. You're a woman of color. This is so hard to do. And I didn't think about any of those things. I just thought about, if I'm not being true to myself, then I can't keep doing this.

05:06
Madison Riddell
Wow, that's powerful.

05:07
Raquel Eatmon
So I walked away and I didn't have a plan b.

05:12
Madison Riddell
Like most entrepreneurs.

05:13
Raquel Eatmon
Right, right in your head, you're just like, I've been saving, I've been doing all the right things. I'll be okay. I'll be okay. A recession rolls along and I wasn't okay, but I thought, certainly somebody's going to hire me. Interesting thing, when you're a news anchor and you've established yourself and then you go in and try and get into corporate, you're marked as well. We really don't have a position for you. I mean, you've been in the news business, you're overqualified and there's your personal brand.

05:42
Madison Riddell
You've already established one, intentionally or not, right?

05:44
Raquel Eatmon
Yes. Except for a temp agency who called and hired me to wear a sandwich board and offer motorists a cell phone sale. I am not kidding you.

06:00
Madison Riddell
Like standing outside on a street?

06:02
Raquel Eatmon
Yeah. You can't make this stuff up.

06:04
Madison Riddell
Wow. You never told me this story.

06:05
Raquel Eatmon
Oh, I didn't tell you the story?

06:07
Madison Riddell
No, not this part.

06:08
Raquel Eatmon
Well, it happened. And that was when I felt the kick in the gut like, you've got to be kidding me. I felt defeated. I dealt with the defeat. I do have some self talking skills where the internal communications are. Look, how are you going to feel about this? You've got to change your attitude, which changes the behavior. And I decided I'm going to fuel a business, and one day I'll tell this story about being offered to do the sandwich board. So that's how I got involved with Rising Media. Well, I started the company and decided I'm still going to figure out how to put media in this business, but a life empowerment company using as much communications as I can.

06:51
Raquel Eatmon
And that's what started the whole thing out of feeling some defeat, but still taking a lot of what I knew, I built a sizzle reel out of news snippets. Save all of your video that you can, because I was not only telling the news, but I was emceeing different events. So I had these little snippets. So I put together a sizzle reel and I started to believe in myself as a speaker. I worked a lot for free in the beginning. And slowly but surely I learned how to market myself. And that's what I did.

07:22
Madison Riddell
And the sizzle reels have grown and grown since then.

07:25
Raquel Eatmon
And grown and grown. Yes.

07:28
Madison Riddell
So backing up a couple of steps, what was your brand when you were on television news versus when you dovetailed into starting rising?

07:37
Raquel Eatmon
So it's interesting in television because when you're working for a company like CBS, and they brand you. You have no say over that. And they also put the dollars behind it. You couldn't afford to even do a portion of what they do. So once I left, the branding was solely on me and I decided to look at the things that I was doing. Well, even though the television news position I left that it was still very much a part of who I was, I started to write a book about it. My decision, I think, at the time I self published and had no insight on writing a book. I figured it out. Thank you very much, Amazon.

08:20
Madison Riddell
What was the first book's title?

08:22
Raquel Eatmon
“Strut Your Stuff: Principles and Purpose, Power and Position”. And it was very therapeutic. I love that I could have gotten that done for myself. And what I didn't know was it was actually a great marketing tool when people would hire me to speak. And some of those speaking gigs were free of charge, but I could still charge for the book. So the book was sort of like a kickstand. And now I'm always thinking of, what can I take with me as sort of a kickstand, a leave behind, or something like that. But I just realized that television news was just a part of who I was. And all of those stories, all of the people that I met along the way, they all had something to contribute.

I started calling myself a humanity dealer because I knew that I was very much connected to the people in the stories and still keep in touch with some of them. Like, I'll get an Easter card from one gentleman, a hurricane Katrina survivor. And it's like, these are these connections that I make even though I'm not on air that way. Those things are still very much a part of who I am.

09:27
Madison Riddell
Well, I think there's something to this that kind of has changed over a couple of decades, but remains relatively the same, is the more you can use your background, your stories, your experiences, to shape and create content and thought leadership, the better it becomes that tool for your next chapter or pouring more gasoline on an existing fire. So I think back then for you, it was authoring a book, self publishing, it was creating note cards, which I know you still do as those leave behinds. And today, as a marketing agency, we're often consulting on similar things, like, how can we develop a blog series or a webinar series to talk about your experiences in an industry, something that someone in your niche might relate to. So you were doing thought leadership before it was a sexy headline as part of marketing?

10:12
Raquel Eatmon
Exactly, yes, exactly.

10:13
Madison Riddell
The real, true thought leadership, a book.

10:15
Raquel Eatmon
Absolutely. I think one of the things that a lot of people forget to do, they always take their professional accolades and start from that. I learned to deal with the personal stuff, and some of that can be shameful for people if they look too closely at their backstory, where they come from. I have found that it's what makes me original. Like, no one has the story of growing up in Mansfield, Ohio, in this small town, raised by three women, mom, grandma, great gran, and neither of them went to college, they figured out how to hustle. I call it heart and hustle. That's what they had, and that's what they taught me. The word leadership was never a conversation at my house. When I went to college, there wasn't a course then for leadership.

So trying to figure that stuff out and learn on the curb, it's like, wait a minute, I've had all of these outstanding experiences, and sometimes I weep over them. I'll still weep over them, right? But it's truly a part of my connection with other people. It's how I move through both worlds. And when I say both worlds, I'm talking about, if we put it bluntly, the black world, the white world. I know how to sort of bring people together and listen to these conversations on race relations because I have been able to kind of move through both of those places and remain somewhat humble at the same time. But my childhood experiences, adolescent experiences, all of those things, all of those failures, all of those great times, bad times, uncertain times, it is all a part of my brand in some way.

11:52
Madison Riddell
Yeah. I think there's a lot to be learned from that specific suggestion to go deep on your own experiences or your own story, because regardless of the vertical or space you're in, we're going to talk in a second about how you're using your personal experiences to pitch yourself as a keynote speaker to huge organizations. But you're using those same experiences in books that consumers read or shows that consumers listen to. We have a client right now that's a big restaurant franchise, and we're helping them rebrand a little bit to share a little bit more of their family story. Even though they're a large franchise, that doesn't mean that those personal human connections don't have a place in their brand. So I think sometimes, to your point, we get a little bit stuck on standard brand perception rather than pulling from our own story.

12:36
Madison Riddell
So that was a big reason why I wanted to have you on, was to share some of those insights with our listeners and prospective clients, too, who might be less eager to share some of those stories.

12:44
Raquel Eatmon
Absolutely.

12:45
Madison Riddell
Yeah. So what was your first gig? So you left television news, you started Rising Media. It started off a little bit slower. You wrote your first book, then what ‘Woman of Power’ was that next?

12:55
Raquel Eatmon
That was next. So this conference, it was really a self fulfilling prophecy, and that's a part of the brand. I mean, when you do something, you should do it because you too want something out of it. You'll work harder, it'll be more intentional, and you'll make sure that it's covered from a to z. This was one of the largest events I have ever spearheaded because it was so many moving parts. For eleven years, we had one day that was curated. So finding the content, that was the most difficult time, because I'm saying to myself, where are women in corporate right now? What's happening? Are we dealing with fear? Is there still the argument that women and men lead differently? What's the conversation that's happening? So there's lots of interviewing with those folks who are actually going to be in the seats.

13:47
Raquel Eatmon
So if a corporation is coming in to say, hey, we're going to send 15 of our high achievers to your conference, and what is the return on the investment? You have to hit that return on investment and it can't come at them. Boom, boom. It has to be sort of layered in stories, layered from people who look different from them, because if you see someone on stage who looks just like you listen differently. So there was just all of this behind the scene work that I would put into creating the experience of the guest for that conference. And your corporate sponsors, they have to be happy at the end of it. They need to see change in the organization.

14:31
Raquel Eatmon
So when a participant would go back and say, hey, I'm fighting for a think tank discussion that I learned at Raquel Eatmon's Conference, and this is how I think we should do it. So then the next year they're sending more and more.

14:46
Madison Riddell
So you were thinking about results. This is interesting because we talk about conferences a lot as an underutilized tool for brand building. And I think oftentimes when you hear conference hosts talk about results internally or to an agency like us, they're talking about conference ticket sales, sponsor dollars, things like that. You're talking about the real results. What happens when the attendee leaves, and how do we turn that into new revenue in the following year?

15:12
Raquel Eatmon
Absolutely. If you find, I hate to use this word, but it's absolutely true, if you find several mouthpieces that can take, or recorders, I call them sometimes, they'll take what they've learned, they go back into the meetings and they say, look this is what we need to be talking about. This is how we become more inclusive. And we just heard it at this conference, and this one speaker was there and she said, I've got the bullet points when folks go back and they talk about, we need to change some things. And I found this out at a conference. That's the buy in for that sponsor or client to come back again and again. I didn't worry about the financial part of it, although I desperately needed to make money, you know as an entrepreneur starting out, you're watching Judge Judy and eating noodles sometimes, but you got to figure out, how do I really get this thing moving and create value?

16:06
Madison Riddell
Was your focus, how do I get the right attendees in the room to start those conversations? Or were you just focused on, I'm going to give everybody the best content and experience possible to hopefully drive those results and that impact within the organization.

16:20
Raquel Eatmon
I looked for the right people in the room. I looked for the right vendors to support us there. I looked for the right sponsorship, the right speakers. So my guest experience started from when they wake up and walk in to this conference. How are they feeling? Most people are coming into a conference feeling scared. I'm alone, or I'm looking for my click, where's my group? And they almost panic if you can't find your group. So it's like, oh, okay. So let's figure out, what does the signage say the moment they walk in? Sort of like, we got you. Or, hey, here's a little board to post how you're feeling today, and then come back at lunchtime and tell us now, how are you feeling today? And I still have some of those things in my office. I love it.

17:05
Madison Riddell
I do, too. Yeah, I have some of your collateral.

17:08
Raquel Eatmon
So that's a part of it. And it was me just sitting there. Sometimes two or three in the morning. How are these women feeling? How do I want them to feel? And by nine five, they should really be feeling this way. And by 3:00 when this thing is over, they shouldn't be exhausted from getting a lot of information. It should be like, I am on fire.

17:28
Madison Riddell
And it was palpable. I think two or three of them. We did some sponsor work for some of I think two of them.

17:35
Raquel Eatmon
That's right.

17:36
Madison Riddell
And when we left, we were so energized, and we would always come back and have a debrief meeting and talk about what we learned, and it would kick start our team into action. It was the first time I ever felt like I was in a real community within a conference. And at that time, I don't think there was anything similar, at least not regionally. No dedicated Woman of Power Conference or anything in the same caliber. And it was the first time I ever spoke professionally in front of an audience and you let me speak.

18:03
Raquel Eatmon
I know, I remember it. We have footage of it. You did great.

18:07
Madison Riddell
I was probably how old - maybe 21, 22?

18:10
Raquel Eatmon
I was just 23.

18:12
Madison Riddell
Yeah, exactly. We were growing up together. But I remember feeling welcomed in that room. I was scared, but welcomed. Yeah. So when the conference started talking about the results for you and the impact, how many people were there? Eleven attendees or something like that?

18:28
Raquel Eatmon
The very 1st one, 11.

18:31
Madison Riddell
And then eleven years later, how many?

18:32
Raquel Eatmon
Oh, my gosh. We did hit a point of like, 453, something like that. Yeah.

18:39
Madison Riddell
And you think that was purely through just repeat success every conference?

18:43
Raquel Eatmon
It was. It's a lot of work to sit each year because you need to follow the headlines. I know how to research. I know how to ask certain questions. So you have to figure out where are people? And let me try to get a step ahead of that and curate the content to make a difference. And I still sometimes get emails from folks or little hits on LinkedIn, like, hey, I attended and I'm now the president of a company. So it's like, wow, this is still working. This is still working.

19:16
Madison Riddell
So you've moved past the Woman of Power Conference. I have a lot of other things going on. What are some of your lessons or takeaways from the conference? If you could have done anything differently, what advice would you give if a brand's trying to start a new conference?

19:30
Raquel Eatmon
So one of the things that I did in the very beginning, I called the conference Raquel Eatmon's Woman of Power Leadership Conference. I branded it with my name, and everyone said, who is Raquel Eatmon? I'm like, oh, well, this makes no sense. Five years in, I go back to Raquel Eatmon's Conference because by the fifth year, everyone started doing conferences and everyone was using the word women or woman, and it's like, oh, wait a minute. Oh, now they need to know who Raquel Eatmon is. So I think the one thing that I regret is not sticking to it in the very beginning, saying, if you don't know who I am, you will figure it out. But this is the branding that goes along with it. And I also thought about, well, people think I'm egotistical for putting my name on it.

20:22
Raquel Eatmon
And then I look up and of course, Oprah's name, it's on everything that she's doing, but that's a part of the branding. And I really had to get over that piece of caring what people thought about it. It's like, this is my baby. This is what I'm doing. And I had a lot of volunteers to help. I did not do it alone, but I absolutely was constantly working on providing leadership skills for women and for men. A lot of men were involved.

20:49
Madison Riddell
Yeah, they were.

20:50
Raquel Eatmon
So that would be the only regret. But learning from it, and I learned about branding from that perspective. No other regrets with it?

20:58
Madison Riddell
Well, I think even if that is a regret, that was just one, which is good. A good shortlist.

21:02
Raquel Eatmon
Yes.

21:02
Madison Riddell
I do think that in getting to know you are fearless about testing. Like ripping something down to the studs, redoing it, trying again, and it sounds like you did that with the name of the conference and maybe you regretted it later. Whatever. You are a serial tester. And that's something that I love about you that I think people need to understand in the marketing space is whether it's the name of the brand or it's one piece of ad creative in a Facebook campaign, or it's your entire business model and concept, we have to be willing to test and iterate and allow data and results to speak. How are you still doing that in the things you're doing today?

21:39
Raquel Eatmon
I've just had so many logos. I've had different colors. I've just changed bylines. Just all of this. It just has to feel right and you know it when it happens. Like, oh, that is it. I'm sure that's it. And looking at social media, that's been interesting to me because I so much prefer, in person, everything. So I've had to get used to. Like, I can't see these people. I really don't know if they're really breathing today, if they're tapping their foot on the floor because they're nervous. I don't know what's really happening.

22:16
Madison Riddell
And this is virtual keynotes you're talking about.

22:18
Raquel Eatmon
Well, doing the virtual ones. Once I started looking more closely at the absolute message that I wanted to send out there, it became easier to put the whole brand perspective together. And part of that, for me, is what really helped, because you're right. I was moving sort of like, oh, no, this isn't working. That's not working. Let's change it again. And then three months later, I'm like, Maddie, I really don't think this is working. What I really had to do was sit back and say, okay, let's say I'm at the playhouse square. I'm on stage. It's a one woman show. And in the front row, they are my ride or dies. Everybody's there. They love me. They already know what my message is. But the guy who's in row 28, seat k, does he know what this message is?

23:08
Raquel Eatmon
And if I had a certain amount of time, what would I talk about in that one woman show? And that for me, solidified. Okay, let's go this route. And even if you can't see your audience just yet, get a feel for how they're responding to a post, to a video. And you are the one who said, look, people are going to let you know. You'll see it. The numbers will come up when you least expect it. And that's what started happening. I started looking at it, saying, okay, this is where we are. So today with the restaurant, all of that, creating a customer experience, that's a big part of what we do. From Woman of Power Conference, I learned how to do that well.

23:54
Raquel Eatmon
So getting into the restaurant, creating the customer experience, from the moment they email us or call us, there's a feeling that they have about this restaurant. So training the staff to understand that. And then if I go back to my news days, I always loved interviewing folks. I find myself sometimes standing at a table that I'm waiting on, and before you know it, I am interviewing them. They'll let me. But I'm meeting some of the most fascinating people, and people do love to talk and eat. I mean, I don't know how many times. They're like, hey, sit down, Raquel. Have a glass of wine.

24:26
Madison Riddell
It's like, oh, okay, don't twist my arm.

24:29
Raquel Eatmon
Don't twist my arm. But it's all a part of the brand that I have had all the way through television news today. It is a part of a larger entity. And now it involves food and beverage, a business that I didn't know very much about when I got involved. But it all works. It's all been streamlined right there.

24:49
Madison Riddell
Well, what I love about you in the restaurant space is a couple of things. First, it's so true to who you are. It's all about human connection. So that's what you did in television news. That's what you did as an author, as a conference host. And now in the restaurant space. Yes, she's touched so many different industries. It's the human connection piece. So you just found another avenue for that. But what I also love about it is it's so data driven and tangible, whether people realize it or not.

25:14
Madison Riddell
So when we're talking about testing messaging that works with an audience, what better way to test messaging that works with an audience than testing what you say to someone when they walk in the door sit down at the table order their drink and seeing if they buy supplemental appetizers, is their bill a little bit higher than somebody else's who you spent less time with in a conversation? And then you're taking those results that you're earning, which you're part owner, but you're also serving and bartending and doing all the things in the trenches like any entrepreneur would. But then you have to teach that to everybody else and make sure they're driving results, too. So how did you end up in the restaurant biz in the first place? I'm sure people are wondering that. And what are you learning from a marketing and branding perspective?

25:54
Raquel Eatmon
I think it was temporary insanity. My husband came home one night and just said, hey, I was at this meeting. I think this is an opportunity that we should do. And I said, absolutely not, you're crazy. And he said, okay, I'm going to do it anyway. And he didn't say anything else about it to me.

26:13
Madison Riddell
Two fearless people in a household.

26:15
Raquel Eatmon
Yeah. And so about six months later, after going down and looking at it and saying, oh, my God, can we do this? Can I do this? Do I have time? I really felt sort of a flutter in my heart. And it wasn't fear, it was, hell, yeah, you should do it.

26:32
Madison Riddell
Wow.

26:32
Raquel Eatmon
And it wasn't instant. And just because something isn't instant doesn't mean. No. It just hit me in a different place that particular day. So I jumped in, and here we are, almost two years in. Wildest thing I've ever done. We don't come from a hospitality background, so I had to learn on the curve. And what was interesting is the people that were hiring, most of them knew more about the business than I did.

27:00
Madison Riddell
Right.

27:00
Raquel Eatmon
So interesting thing happened. I found myself in the impostor syndrome again.

27:06
Madison Riddell
After so much success.

27:07
Raquel Eatmon
After so much success. It's like, oh, it's an all male chef kitchen. This is back in this place. Yeah. Very strong minded folks. It's like, what? You don't know that. It's like, okay. So I found myself sort of pretending my way through it. And I did, in that moment, lose the sense of my personal brand. And I had a moment in the bathroom stall where I was just gutted that day, like, really falling apart. And I overheard two waitresses who didn't care much for me saying some things that just added to it. And I happened to have had a post-it note in my pocket and an ink pen. And I found myself sort of. My breathing was belabored, and I wasn't near tears, but I was so angry, and I didn't know who I was.

27:57
Raquel Eatmon
I was all dolled up again, like television news. You're all dolled up and ready to go. And something said pause. And I did. Didn't know what was happening in my brain. And the other thing said, shift on the post-it note. Well, I started writing it on the post-it note. Yeah. So I wrote pause. Okay, so what is this about? And by the way, I'm standing up in this doll, just so you know, get those visuals clear.

28:24
Madison Riddell
Yeah, there you go.

28:25
Raquel Eatmon
So there's pause. It's like, okay, pause. Breathing did slow, and the shift came, and it just came to me and said, what do you know about you? What do you do? Well, why aren't you doing those things? Instead of trying to be something, an owner, a boss, a supervisor, you're trying to fit into a role, and you're forgetting all of this other stuff behind. So that was the moment for me when I said, either it's this way or it fails. If I can't do it on the laurels of my past, the things that I've worked so hard for, then it won't be done. So I instantly found myself getting vulnerable, asking those same chefs, how do you do this? How do I make it? Asking a bartender, how do I make these drinks when people don't show up? How do I do this?

Can you help? And that is how I grew, by honoring my strengths and being vulnerable at the same time.

29:22
Madison Riddell
So you broke down barriers within the own culture, within the restaurant, and that led towards real revenue success.

29:30
Raquel Eatmon
Absolutely.

29:31
Madison Riddell
Can you tell? Can you share a little bit with our listeners? I'm not sure. And if you can't, that's okay. What the restaurant was like in terms of numbers when you acquired it, versus what it's like today, what that growth has been like.

29:42
Raquel Eatmon
It was 90 days near closing when we acquired it and when we came in.

29:46
Madison Riddell
Okay.

29:47
Raquel Eatmon
My work was that guest experience. But at the same time, I went to the wait staff, which was probably only two or three, and I started asking them about their personal brand. Most were 2023. They're like, what's a personal brand? What do you stand for? What are your values? And what I wanted to do was sort of mesh their brand in with the customer experience that I was putting together. So they felt included and they could also get what they wanted. And when people get what they want, they come to work happy. Right.

30:16
Madison Riddell
One of them is in the room with us. Right?

30:18
Raquel Eatmon
She is.

30:18
Madison Riddell
And she is listening to us today.

30:20
Raquel Eatmon
Yes, she is. She's very special - don't get me going on that, but very special to me. But yes. So people tend to do better when they feel like they're a part of something. And that changed, within 90 days the Google reviews were up. We had constant momentum for the Google reviews, and that's by asking people, will you please say something nice?

30:46
Madison Riddell
The art of the ask. Yes.

30:47
Raquel Eatmon
And I didn't care about the other platforms because when I looked on my website, I could see that most of our traffic was coming by way of Google. It's like 98% of it.

30:56
Madison Riddell
And you say you're not a marketer.

30:58
Raquel Eatmon
You taught me that, but yes. So you have to pay attention to those things. Only ask for one. I wanted to say, could you post on everything? But there's one ask. And when that happens, the traffic starts coming in. We're in downtown Cleveland. We have the convention center, the ball game, theater district. So we're in walkable distance. If we could just get these numbers up, people will just find us. And that's what started happening. So I didn't have to work very hard to get people in the door. Once Google started helping me do that.

31:28
Madison Riddell
There we go.

31:29
Raquel Eatmon
And that's great service and fantastic food. And we just started growing. And within six months, this thing turned up. Like, where are all these people coming from? And one of our servers, Jada, she started asking people, if you enjoyed my service, let people know. They started using her name, and they started coming in asking for her. It was like, wow. For a new restaurant, someone's asking for one of our team members to take care of them. And we had zero money in advertising, so it was a way of using this strength of communicating and connecting with people. And you know when it's right to ask someone, and some people come in, they're going to Cleveland clinic, and they're dealing with a lot of other things.

32:18
Raquel Eatmon
You have to know how to read the room and read people to say, this is not the appropriate time to ask for anything except what can we do to make things better for you here? But we've just grown. And it continues to amaze me. It continues to amaze me. This has been a fun project. It's been the heaviest lifting project, but so well worth it. When I look at the imprint I've made in that restaurant and then the relationships that I've built with some people that I know will be in my life forever.

32:50
Madison Riddell
Well, I think, first of all, when I'm listening to you, I get like chills, so excited with the success you guys have had. Because the restaurant business, food and bev in general, is not easy.

32:58
Raquel Eatmon
No.

32:58
Madison Riddell
It's so saturated and so competitive and there's so many ways to fail. And you came into a failing business with a trench to climb out of, basically. But I actually started, as I was listening to you, to hear a lot of similarities with our own marketing funnel and a completely different industry. We're still in the business of service to customers, but we're in professional services on the agency side and our funnel is very similar. People find us via Google, my business, all the time. Local brands that are searching for an agency, they come to our website. They have that first impression. As soon as they fill out a contact form, we're ripping and ready to answer. And when they come in, we curate an experience.

33:35
Madison Riddell
And then after, for us, the timeline is a little bit longer, six to twelve months of working with somebody, usually. Then if things are going great and results are strong for you, food tastes good, service was good. Then we ask for a Google review or they start to refer us clients. So the pipeline is actually pretty similar. Very similar industry.

33:52
Raquel Eatmon
Very similar.

33:53
Madison Riddell
An industry I wouldn't have thought to see parallels with. But there's always something new for me to look at. I like it.

34:00
Raquel Eatmon
You're listening.

34:01
Madison Riddell
Always, always listening and thinking. So all of these things translate to personal brand and we probably have some listeners or branding your business. We probably have some listeners that are doing at least one of those two things. What are your three tips that you would give to someone that's building a brand for a company or for themselves?

34:21
Raquel Eatmon
Great question. So the first tip we've already talked about that is really relying on your past story, figuring out what makes you original and how can you use that personal piece in the professional piece, there is a way. The other thing is something that's really quite simple and it may sound a little silly to some people. I call it sort of my PDF method. So there's practice, there's desire, and then there's the f word. Let me talk just a moment about practice. So I'm going to rely on an old high school story which wasn't very long ago. Everyone in the studio is laughing, you can't hear them. So I had a high school track coach. His name was Coach Lanier. He was just this wonderfully chocolate colored man who always had a stopwatch in his hand, and he yelled a lot.

Didn't smile much on the outside, but he was just very warm on the inside, you could tell. But one of the things that he drilled in us was practice. You can come and run a track meet if you don't practice, you just can't get better. There's no possible way he could give us the fundamentals of, hey, you've got to lift weights. I'll show you how to do that. You've got a carb load before the big track meet. I'll show you how to do that. But if you don't show up and practice, you will not get better. And he was right. I got better with practice, and I didn't win every single meet, although my mother would say her daughter did win all of those track meets.

35:52
Raquel Eatmon
But it taught me a really important lesson, that practice, actually, now I look at it's really like failure in a way. You can have a practice session and not do well at it, but you're doing it in order to get better. So there's this incremental growth that you need. And I think for us, especially in this country, there's just this negative, nasty feeling about the f word failure, or fear of failure, that it holds so many people back. And if you could just shift a little bit, pause and shift and think about it in a different way, that each time I've been rejected and I've gotten so many no's, that's practice. I'm getting better. The thing is, you have to keep doing it. You've got to practice each and every time. So that's your practice piece, the f word.

36:43
Raquel Eatmon
There's that intense desire that you have to have. That's the D. That's the d. No one can get in the way of it. Nothing can get in the way with it. Some things, like a pandemic, may throw you off to the side for a moment, but you have to keep that in perspective every single day. That desire has to be a part of it. Sometimes, when there's nothing else that can carry you through, your desire should absolutely be able to do that. So I call it PDF because people can remember the PDF document easy.

37:12
Madison Riddell
I love that. Yeah, I love that. Well, I feel like we have a lot of storytelling that we've shared.

37:19
Raquel Eatmon
Yes.

37:19
Madison Riddell
We have talked about your winding road of entrepreneurial success, how to brand yourself if you're anchor an author, a conference host, a restaurant tour, how to give advice she's also coaches, so she's come to our own office and coached some of our staff, working through some emotions that come up when you're trying to grow professionally, whether that's women or anybody in the field that's in a tough industry like ours in the marketing space. So she has a lot to offer.

37:45
Raquel Eatmon
Thank you.

37:46
Madison Riddell
One thing that I've been focused on heavily for our listeners is the marketing and branding piece because that's what Marketing Moves is all about. But I do want to give them a chance to hear from Raquel's magic a little bit what they might hear from you if they had a one one session or if they heard you at a keynote. So can you share one of your mindset shifters or an exercise you think would be valuable?

38:07
Raquel Eatmon
Oh, there's so many. Yeah. So the pause and shift piece, that's really important to me. That's where I am now. But I'm going to give you one that's super simple. That takes 60 seconds. When you wake up in the morning, before you get out of bed, smile for 60 seconds. We know what smiling does, right? So like the average child laughs, I think it's like 62 times or something. And adults, we're not even hitting twelve laughs a day. But when you wake up in the morning, the first thing you can do is start that brain connection. Get the mood going, get the blood going and you just smile. It really does put you in a different mood, a different mindset.

38:54
Raquel Eatmon
But there's all sorts of hacks that you can do to get yourself going, figuring out a way to start your day with something that you love and you have to get up early enough so that you can do that. And for me it's sitting down, having tea, writing in a journal. I'm projecting what my day is going to look like and feel like. I think I talk more about or I write more about my emotions versus today. I have to do this and this. This is my one time to get in touch with myself. So if you could start the day off with some sort of ritual, I think you're off to an amazing start.

39:27
Madison Riddell
And do you think if there's any leaders listening that have a team that they're managing, that's something they should push or recommend? I know for us, you came in and met with my team and you made them do some uncomfortable exercises.

They had to uncomfortably look at each other in the eyes for like a couple of minutes without breaking contact, share personal stories of things that they were really insecure about. Did you encourage that type of cultural building? Like, what's your favorite go to for a leadership session?

39:54
Raquel Eatmon
I do. So I am a communications catalyst. I like to help people get better a little bit at a time. And one of the things that works well, and this is why I did that in your session, is you start with the internal piece first. So many folks think that communication is all about external. It is, but the internal piece is much more important because this is where I form my beliefs, my thoughts. That affects the behavior, the attitude, and the next thing you know, the language. So how can I communicate with someone if I'm just going off the fly and I'm not processing any of that stuff or doing the work inward? So if you can figure out exercises which the stare exercise, it is very uncomfortable. Thanks for inviting me back, because a lot of people hate to do that.

If you can do something that allows people to see themselves in the eyes of others, they will communicate differently almost immediately. And you could hear people saying, I feel different. That was odd. Well, yeah, I want you to feel odd. I want you to feel excited or scared to do it, because now I have your attention. Now we know that change is going to happen. You're not only informing people, but you're allowing them to be inspired by it. And when we inspire people, they go out and inspire others. And I think that's really how change can happen. But the bottom line with leadership, if it doesn't allow you to lead well to love, know you're in the wrong business.

41:25
Madison Riddell
And that brand starts on the inside out.

41:27
Raquel Eatmon
It starts on the inside out. Self love is important, and loving each other is equally important.

41:33
Madison Riddell
So special. Thank you, Raquel.

41:34
Raquel Eatmon
You're welcome.

41:35
Madison Riddell
The last thing I want to close with. If anybody's local or coming to visit Cleveland, what should they order at Osteria?

41:44
Raquel Eatmon
Oh, my goodness. Well, there is a wonderful way to start with a cocktail. It is called the Raquel. We muddle fresh ginger with lime juice. Casamigo reposado. We sweeten it with agave nectar, which is why it is a clean margarita. From there, you would be wise to start with the arancini. It is so good. A risotto ball with a little bit of porcini mushroom, a little bit of cheese, pesto sauce on one side, marinara on the other. And from there, I'd go with a red pasta. The orecchiette is fantastic. It has a little bit of a punch. And why not have the 22 ounce bone and ribeye? It's got a Colombian peppercorn demiglaze sauce, mashed potatoes, green beans. You're living good.

42:32
Madison Riddell
My mouth's watering. What's for dessert?

42:34
Raquel Eatmon
I personally like to drink my dessert, so a chocolate espresso martini is fantastic. But we do make the most incredible tiramisu in house by those same chefs that had to teach your girl a lesson or two about the hospitality industry. They do a great job.

42:51
Madison Riddell
Delicious. I can't wait to be back. Thank you so much for coming. Raquel. Where can our listeners find you if they want to get in touch?

42:56
Raquel Eatmon
raqueleatmon.com is where they can find me. And for the restaurant we're at osteriacle.com.

43:04
Madison Riddell
Awesome. Thank you so much for coming.

43:06
Raquel Eatmon
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

43:07
Madison Riddell
Signing off.