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Amber Naslund

Before You Market Podcast: Episode 3, Amber Naslund

Brand3 Marketing Services  •  October 16, 2024

The Amber Naslund Interview

Welcome to the Before You Market Podcast, where we challenge you to “Rethink Marketing.” In this episode, we sit down with one of the best in the business: Amber Naslund. Amber is known for her honesty, wit, and expertise in marketing, and she brings her A-game to this episode. As the Enterprise Sales & Customer Success Leader at LinkedIn, she’s got some incredible insights to share! In this episode, we cover:

  • Amber’s top advice for creating engaging B2B content.
  • The explosion of LinkedIn newsletters: Why this format continues to thrive.
  • Amber’s take on hustle culture and her motivation behind her newsletter, The Courageous Career.
  • How having a clear brand message and identity helps in networking on LinkedIn.

Amber is a marketing powerhouse, and you won’t want to miss her unique perspective on LinkedIn, content creation, and so much more. Tune in now!

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"There’s still a lot of appetite for expertise, knowledge sharing, like in-depth thinking... I think people are just hungry for substance." - Amber Naslund, LinkedIn

Amber Naslund Bio

With over 20 years of experience in marketing, social media, and sales, I am passionate about helping businesses create human connections through the digital world. As an Enterprise Sales Leader for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions across North America, I lead a team of account executives and client success managers who drive a $XXXM-dollar media business within the enterprise technology sector.

I make the most of my marketing background to create scalable best practices, tools, and processes for our customers and teams, and to drive go-to-market planning, revenue forecasting, and program development. I am also honored to be an alumna of LinkedIn's WIN Invest program, which supports high-performing women in leadership roles.

Before joining the sales organization, I was a Principal Consultant for LinkedIn's Content Solutions team, where I advised strategic accounts on their brand and content strategy across the platform. I also led North America programs and strategies for our content consulting team in our Global Enterprise business, working with customers across multiple B2B and B2C verticals.

I designed and delivered solutions and services, oversaw editorial development, coached and developed team talent, and represented LinkedIn as an industry thought leader and speaker. I am proud of the value and impact I have contributed to LinkedIn's $3B media business and our customers' success. Proof positive that B2B never has to be boring!

AI Transcript:

(edited for readability and humans)

Introductions

Jon Bailey  00:00

And I want to make sure I record this time. All right, so hi everybody, and welcome to the Before You Market podcast where we challenge you to rethink marketing. I'm going to do that every time, and I don't care to help us in this endeavor. We've invited some of the best marketers in the business to enlighten you on your path to marketing glory. Amber Naslund is one of my very favorite people who also just happens to be a marketing badass.

Amber is the person who says the thing you didn't know you needed to hear but definitely needed to hear. Amber is honest, real, and as they say in the northeast, wicked smart, uh, but she's in Chicago. I don't know why I felt like I needed to do a northeast accident, but whatever, whatever, Amber, please take a moment and introduce yourself to these fine folks.

Amber Naslund  01:00

How do I do better than that, though? 

Jon Bailey  01:02

 I have faith in you.

Amber Naslund  01:06

Thank you very much. Hi everybody. I'm Amber Naslund. My day job is currently with LinkedIn, which I think we'll get into in a minute. I run a sales and customer success team over there. I started defecting to the sales side after about 25 years of marketing. So I don't know if that still qualifies me as a marketing badass. I don't know if I'm still that.

Jon Bailey  01:23

No, I think it does actually more so than ever. 

Amber Naslund  01:27

Anyway, yeah I've been a marketer and a digital marketer for a really long time. I started in nonprofits, weirdly enough, but ended up in the tech sector about 15 or 18 years ago, or something like that, and I've been doing that ever since. And I think that's how you and I met, in the halcyon days of early social media.

Jon Bailey  01:45

Back, years and years ago when things were simple,

Amber Naslund  01:50

When we were young and I didn't have as much gray hair.

Jon Bailey  01:54

And Facebook was new and exciting.

Amber Naslund  02:00

Back when everybody actually wanted to be on Facebook, right? Like horrifying wastelands.

Jon Bailey  02:05

So the mass exodus. 

Amber Naslund  02:09

Twitter was cool.

Jon Bailey  02:11

Right, yeah, exactly. Lots of things are cool that are no longer cool, and lots of things are cool now that really shouldn't be cool, right? But anyway, we're old, yeah, we're all we're old and cranky. So I spoke to your book, spouse, his words yesterday, certain, Mr. Jay Bear, and we both agreed that you know you're going to be a better guest. Or maybe I, maybe I just thought that. 

Amber Naslund  02:38

That sounds like a very Jay thing to say, yeah, sorry.

Jon Bailey  02:41

Yeah, sorry, Jay, anyway, are you ready to do this?

Amber Naslund  02:44

I'm ready bring it up. Roll.

Why is B2B Content So Boring?

Jon Bailey  02:45

Let's do it. So I wanted to revisit a question that I asked you the last time I interviewed you, but from a slightly different angle. So I asked you before, why so much B2B content is so boring. So this time from a slightly different angle, my question is, why is B2B content still so freaking boring? I mean, will they never learn? What's your advice to these hard-headed fools?

Amber Naslund  03:15

You know, what's interesting is like, in some ways, I'm grateful that it hasn't evolved, because that means I still have a job. But in other ways, I think I have a couple of answers to this. One is, I think so much of B2B, we were conditioned that it's like this very clinical process, because we're talking about business decisions, and so it's all about like rational thought and ROI and all these very like spreadsheet type terms.

And I think marketers got indoctrinated in that world, thinking that the only hook we have is a bottom line on a spreadsheet or product features and benefits and that kind of stuff. And we didn't benefit from the world of splashy like, nobody hired Whedon and Kennedy to do their ads in B2B. So we didn't get the infusion of creativity and fun and emotional messaging and stuff that was so endemic in the B2C world.

I do think that, like, the tides are starting to turn. I'm starting like, I'm hearing more and more people who are determined to break out of that but, but I also blame us as marketers, to a certain degree, for the way that we evaluate and measure marketing success. We do it in such a bubble and in the B2B world, we're constantly concerned with things like cost per clicks, cost per 1000 impressions, cost per lead. And we got in this train of everything had to be a lead.

Everything had to be like a gated white paper. And we did it to ourselves by making that the way that we evaluated success and refusing to take on a much more integrated mindset for marketing's influence on an entire customer journey, on brand perception, on customer experience, on the post sales experience. Like we decoupled marketing and we started doing marketing based on our org chart.

So it was like the product marketing team does this, and the demand gen team does this. We created our own monster in a lot of ways, and it ripped the soul out of a lot of what marketing is and was. And what's interesting is I'm seeing companies starting to expand their horizons a bit. I'm seeing B2B companies throw some budget at Super Bowl ads.

Not that I'm saying that that's the way everybody should go. But, like, Work Day did a really cool campaign around the Super Bowl with Billy Idol and Gwen Stefani and ads. And finally, somebody has got a sense of humor about some of this stuff. So I don't know. We've taken ourselves way too seriously for way too long. We're measuring a lot of the wrong things, and we're doing it in a vacuum, and that none of those things foster creativity or interesting marketing, in my opinion.

Jon Bailey  06:12

I mean, there's so much in what you just said that my head is spinning because I couldn't agree more. I mean, it's insane, the the silos, the you know, the writing to the or the creating content to the or chart, and just the idea that, you know you can't have a story and and you know a personality and a soul is just

Amber Naslund  06:40

We’ve forgotten that the person who signs a check to buy software or consulting or something is still a human being at the end of it, and you don't, you don't just, like, put on a suit and then forget all of the thoughts, feelings and emotions that you have at buying is still an emotional process.

Whether it's a B2B decision in a sales cycle that's 18 months long, you like, there's lots of research that says that people still will buy a B2B solution from their day one list, meaning that they've already got a list of people, providers, companies, brands in their head that they know, like and trust already, and that's more than likely going to be who they end up going with, and they'll do their due diligence to maybe add a few more to the list, or do some research, or do an RFP, or whatever you know, Mickey Mouse stuff we're doing.

But like at the end of the day, you're still talking to a human being who has thoughts and feelings about the people they work with. They want to work with a company they trust. They want to work they want to work with people they like. And all that stuff is really cliche, but it still holds true, and yet we've somehow excised that part out of B2B marketing and pretended that the entire process is this rigidly rational, and it isn't. It still isn't.

So if you can infuse a little bit back of remembering that your first job as a marketer is to catch somebody's attention and pique their interest, versus thinking of everything as the bottom of the funnel, demand, Gen, motion, we forgot that there's so much that has to happen before anybody will ever consider downloading your white paper or signing up for your email list like there's a lot of very psychological things that need to happen and B to C marketing never forgot the art of persuasion.

They never forgot the art of positioning, and the things we learned in marketing classes that there were four P's and promotion was only one of them. Still, we've forgotten things like pricing levers and product positioning and so much that really rounds out marketing as a discipline. We've boiled it down to whether or not we can capture a lead that isn't arguably even a lead in the first place. So, 

What is Behind the Explosion of LinkedIn Newsletters?

Jon Bailey  09:03

Yeah, 100% it's craziness. People still need to establish trust in you and make that connection. So yeah, you work at LinkedIn, so obviously, I'm gonna ask you some questions about LinkedIn. So what, first, is behind the explosion of LinkedIn newsletters lately? I mean, I've seen so many of them, and a lot of them seem to be doing very well.

A previous guest on this podcast, Gini Dietrich, is wonderful, great, and powerful. She told me her newsletters actually generate a lot of business for her. So why do you think this is taking off? What's behind this?

Amber Naslund  09:58

I think that there’s two things happening. One is, it's a reflection of just the continued growth, engagement and expansion we've had on LinkedIn as a as a whole. I think as there's a fair bit of abandonment of social media. 1.0 people are looking for a place where, like, content, engagement and audiences are more substantive, where the discourse is a little bit more grown up, and LinkedIn is a home for that.

So we've continued to see our platform grow, our audiences, and our engagement levels grow. So part of that's just an outcome of that. I also think that the return to more newsletter or long-form style content has been happening over the last couple of years.

You've seen the growth in platforms like sub stack, and you've seen people returning to blogging and email newsletters as realizing that like having a an audience like that is far more, far less volatile than having, like a fleeting audience on social media or a platform that can, you know, disappear and yeah. 

Jon Bailey  11:02

It's substance and, trust building, yeah, totally.

Amber Naslund  11:05

I think that there's still, I know a lot of people are really allergic to the term thought leadership, but there's still a lot of appetite for expertise, knowledge sharing, like in-depth thinking and newsletters are a great format for that. I, too, have a newsletter on LinkedIn that I neglected sorely in the last couple of months, but is still the most gratifying thing that I do, and I get really great engagement and comments and messages from people about it.

So I think people are just hungry for substance like we've spent a lot of years with; remember, I mean, everybody used to call itbite-size or snack-size content, which is fine. I think there's still room for that in the world. But all of these things are cyclical, and I think people start to get hungry for like, okay, cool. I don't want the 32nd reel.

I want to read something that actually helps me do my job better, helps me think differently about my profession, or helps me develop professionally. So I think that's just kind of where human’s heads and hearts are right now, and we, you and I grew up in the era of like people did blogging.

And I think people are not as, not as keen to like own their own domains and host their own blogs and do all that kind of stuff anymore, but a newsletter is a quick, easy way to do it, and LinkedIn is a trusted platform to do it on. And so I think the combination of those two things has made it a very successful format for us. I

Jon Bailey  12:39

 I think it's great. And it's, just, I love the way. I especially like when you, when you when, when you start a newsletter, how it automatically just sends it out to to all the followers. It's like, Hey, there's this, there's this newsletter saying, it's like, sweet.

Amber Naslund  12:55

Yeah, I think, like, in the early days, I had the privilege, of course, of like, seeing some of the early iterations of the product, and they did a lot of thinking around balancing, you know, not wanting to spam your network, but making it such that the distribution and reach was a built in component of the product, and making sure that your network could benefit from knowing that those newsletters exist.

But you could also benefit from having easy ways to distribute, publish and promote your newsletter from within your LinkedIn network. Um, and I think they've done a good job, and they continue to iterate on how to like, tweak, and fidgety the little fidgety things about that. Um. 

Jon Bailey  13:34

Yeah so I don't, I don't think it's it, you know, I don't want to like sound like I'm kissing up, But I think LinkedIn has nailed, you know, organic engagement better than any other platform.

Amber Naslund  13:45

I mean, I agree with you. I'm obviously, I'm biased, but I was a power LinkedIn user both. Actually, I got my job at LinkedIn because of being really heavily active on LinkedIn, which is a story for another time, but, like, I still am a very avid LinkedIn user, and I spend a lot of time on the platform, creating content, engaging with content, and just the experience of interacting.

I know LinkedIn gets a lot of shade, like people love to poke fun at the LinkedIn bros or whatever, who like, know, but you have those on any platform, so I just giggle, because I'm like, there's always something. But I think, by and large, the LinkedIn platform has so much more substance and interesting content on it and thoughtful, intentional content that I find a much better use of my time to spend time on that feed.

The feedback we get from our members is that they come to LinkedIn with intention. They spend time there intentionally versus mindlessly, like you mindlessly scroll on Instagram, you purposefully scroll on LinkedIn, because there's actually stuff in there that you want to see and read, and that means that the quality of the experience is so much higher. 

Jon Bailey  14:54

I think you and I had talked about it before that, that you know you could leave a scrolling session on Facebook or Instagram and feel like crap. You can leave a scrolling session on LinkedIn and actually feel uplifted and motivated and like ready to roll. 

Amber Naslund  15:08

I agree. I mean, so many of the most like interesting and even the serendipitous connections that come up on LinkedIn all the time for me, just I get amazing notes from people who I hadn't connected with in years, I find new connections because they're like a friend of a friend or a connection, and that really was the juice that made LinkedIn special at its very outset.

And I think it's still the thing that makes it unique and interesting. And I still derive whether I worked for LinkedIn or not, I would still be a very avid user of the platform, because I pull so much value and fun out of it, really.

Hustle Culture and The Courageous Career

Jon Bailey  15:48

So you mentioned your newsletter, and it's called The Courageous Career, and I'm gonna kind of overly truncate it, but it really kind of discusses and addresses some of the ridiculousness of the whole hustle, tech bro culture out there, which and it does it very well. I highly recommend it, so check out that career, the courageous career, on LinkedIn. So this has been a hot button issue for you for some time, and, you know, I'd love to hear how all this got started, or maybe you know more about your motivation to really address this topic. And you do it wonderfully, I should say. 

Amber Naslund  16:34

Well thank you, but it's like, I think the reason it's successful is because it's deeply rooted in personal like experience for me. And the origin of it was really that back in 2011 or so, I was part of a company called radian six, which some of you may have heard of or remember. We were a social analytics platform. In 2011 we exited to Salesforce. It was a big exciting like

Jon Bailey  16:59

I remember it well, yeah, fire

Amber Naslund  17:01

startup exit. I did well in that exit, and decided to take my our book, my book with Jay had just been, had been out in the market, and was doing really well. It was kind of like peak halcyon days of social media, like Zeitgeist. And so I sold my stake, and I stayed at Salesforce for like, a year or so after the acquisition, I sold my stock in Salesforce and used that to start a business, and the really short rest of the story is three and a half years later, the business imploded for a bunch of reasons that aren't worth going into.

But like it was It ruined me financially. It like devastated me emotionally, psychologically, on every other level. I went back into the work world and suffered two subsequent layoffs, along with a lot of really difficult, gnarly we were talking about this before we went on air, but like some really gnarly professional stuff in the midst of that was kind of like toxic work environments and some really difficult other things.

So the upshot was that at the end of that process, my confidence was just annihilated, and I spent a lot of time reflecting on feeling like the the glut of imposter syndrome that washed over me, and feeling like I, my identity and my career had been so tightly tied together, and I was faced with recognizing that I needed to find self worth outside of what I did for a living, and that I was really tired of the narrative that if I wasn't out there with fancy titles and working 80 hour weeks, that I somehow wasn't valid, worthy or interesting, and so I did, I mean, candidly, I went to therapy.

I did a lot of work on my own, I did a lot of researching. Like, what is this, this has got to be a thing that happens to a lot of people. So I think the newsletter and a lot of my writing and talking about this particular topic just came from me needing to explore it out loud, personally, because that's sometimes how I process. But in the in the adventure of doing that, I connected with so many people that would immediately send me a message, going, Oh my God. Like this happened to you too, like me too. I felt this way. This happened to me.

So I started surfacing all of these stories of people who had navigated really toxic work environments, or had had multiple professional meltdowns and failures that was was hurting their confidence, or people who had worked themselves to the bone for years and years, thinking that they needed to achieve and achieve and achieve and then relax, feeling empty as a result. And the pinnacle of it was this last year, I lost both my parents, and as anybody who's like dealt with this extreme loss will tell you, it really puts in perspective.

How you spend your time, where you put your effort, or the things that you care about. And I keep saying that, like, neither one of my parents laid on their death beds wishing they'd worked more, or wishing they'd gotten emotional, or wishing that they had, you know, added that one line on their LinkedIn profile, right? It really makes you, my daughter is going off to college next year. so, like, it really makes you reflect on your life outside of work and how important it is to find meaning and value and worth in areas of your life that have nothing to do with how you earn a paycheck.

And some people like to live to work, and God bless them if that's the way that they want to do it, but I want to work to live, and I want, I wanted a different balance in my life. And so, I mean, obviously, in a very different place now, like 13 years later, but it was a journey to get there. And so I find it very healing to be able to write about it, to talk about it, and to bring other people along with me, and let them feel like they're not alone in like, struggling with this balance because I think it's a very real human experience, but it's not one that gets talked about very often

The Intentionality of LinkedIn

Jon Bailey  21:07

Well, and the other interesting thing for me is that, for me, it makes perfect sense, and it makes perfect sense that it's on LinkedIn, but I think a lot of people don't think of LinkedIn as the place for that type of thing, and, and, and I think it's perfect for that. And I think, I think it's done really well, and it resonates with so many people, because, like you said earlier, people are going to LinkedIn with intention and and they're reading these messages, and they're reading this content that's actually, you know, has depth and meaning and value to it. 

Amber Naslund  21:41

Well, the vulnerability thing too is, yeah, because a lot of what people read and perceive LinkedIn to be, and they're right, in some ways, is like, a very carefully manicured version professionally. And people know LinkedIn is, like, the suit and tie network, or the one where, like, It's the world's biggest professional network, and you're expected to show up as like the best version of your professional self.

And I think that tempts people to only share the good things or only share the triumphant moments. And I've just always taken the opposite approach, where I feel like shining a spotlight on the hard stuff, or the less-than-pretty moments or the moments that are hard are the ones that connect us as humans. So I'm the one who's happy to put my shame.

We go out there and talk about all the gnarly, gritty stuff so that people feel I get messages all the time from people who are like, I'm not comfortable sharing that stuff, but I'm so grateful that you do, because it makes me feel seen and it makes me feel validated, even though I don't feel comfortable sharing that side of me outwardly. So, like, I'll take arrows for you guys; it's cool. I got you. 

Jon Bailey  22:52

Yeah, and you don't. I don't think you know our fearless leader, Orsi Herbein is the owner of Brand3, and she I don't think I think I'm okay in saying this because she's been pretty public about it. She's gone through some some personal issues in the past, and she actually does the same thing. She posts about it very open and vulnerably on LinkedIn, but she doesn't do it in such a way that she's just complaining.

She does it in a way to offer, you know, her perspective in the hopes that it's going to help somebody else. And you can see in the comments it absolutely does every time. And I think, you know, I think we were talking about humanity earlier, and I think it's important that that even, you know, companies let people be people. And, I think all of that stuff, I mean, yeah, you got to be appropriate, but, but that stuff, you know, that stuff matters. So. 

Amber Naslund  23:55

You talk a lot at LinkedIn, and like, part of our core, you know, culture and values, and LinkedIn is known for having, like, a really healthy, vibrant corporate culture, and that's partly because I think we really do try to walk the walk about bringing your whole self to work.

And I've been at LinkedIn six years and change now as long as I've been at any company in my entire professional career, and I, a lot of that has to do with feeling like I can be who I am at work, that the people around me value that part of me. I'm fortunate to have an incredible boss, and that like makes lots of things easier.

But, you know, working in an environment where you feel like you're seen and valued for the whole of you, and like you're not expected to just kind of show up and wear a mask every day, is everything, and it's it's sorely missing in today's kind of professional and corporate culture.

Working for LinkedIn + Amber's Biggest Surprise

Jon Bailey  24:54

Amen. Um, so in your six years and some change at LinkedIn, I. Um, I'm curious, you know, what has been your biggest surprise about the platform, like, you know, maybe about the LinkedIn community versus other platforms, or just the platform in general versus other platforms?

Amber Naslund  25:14

I think the biggest surprise for me, maybe surprise is the wrong word. But I think the most interesting, maybe thing has been how intentional and deliberate our platform and product teams are content to be the tortoise versus the hare in the tech a lot of people like I said, you know, give LinkedIn a little bit of guff for being like, stodgier than other tech platforms and stuff.

But I feel like our moment is coming because people are starting to realize that being more thoughtful and intentional and developing a product and a platform that isn't just riding the coattails of every trend that comes along. And listen, we've gotten things wrong. Like, we tried stories for a while, and that was a short-lived thing.

But like, I've been pleasantly surprised by how thoughtful and intentional our product teams are about making a platform that continues to create an experience for our members that is distinct from every other social network, like LinkedIn, internal people tell you that we don't identify as a social network like not personally, like we really want to be so much more than that, and it's understanding that understandable that we got to get categorized that way.

But I also have been really pleasantly and surprised by how devoted a lot of my customers are with their the investment they make in LinkedIn marketing, how passionate they are about the impact it has on their business, how much we fuel everything from the tiniest small businesses to the largest enterprises and everything in between.

It's been really eye-opening for me to see how much people depend on LinkedIn. And we talk a lot about our vision of creating economic opportunity for the world's workforce. And you know, a lot of times when you do a corporate vision thing, you're like, yeah, yeah, okay.

It's like, not a lot of nice words on a slide, or it looks good on a corporate boardroom wall. But I'm surprised at how much that really does come to life in our platform, from the way that it is legit, like, we find everything from, like you find somebody a job to creating economic opportunity by fueling the growth of the economy and the businesses that are part of the economy and allowing them to create jobs, which in turn creates places for people to get jobs.

I mean, like that whole narrative, to me, is, like, surprisingly inspiring, and that's coming from an old and grizzled, gray-haired woman who's like, a little hard to impress so, so I'm like, 

Jon Bailey  27:44

People are going to be watching this, going, you're not old, you're not grizzled, you're not gray haired. What the hell are you talking about?

Amber Naslund  27:51

I think that that has been surprising to me, that I continue to stay very connected and personally fulfilled by that mission. And on my hardest days, when I feel like I want to slam my head against a wall, because we all have those at work, and instead of yeating my computer out the window, I remember that like we are actually doing something valuable in the world, like there is something really inherently useful about LinkedIn existing, and it's grounding on the days when I'm not sure I can, you know, fill out another spreadsheet. That's unfortunately, like the reality of corporate jobs, like a lot of Excel, there's a lot of Excel. 

Having a Clear Brand Message and Brand Identity Helps You on LinkedIn

Jon Bailey  28:40

Yeah, yeah right. So I actually have a bonus question, and it's from our director of brand strategy, Matt Wolfe, and it's about brand. So shocking. Yeah right. Matt asks, How does having a clear brand message and brand identity help you in networking on LinkedIn.

Amber Naslund  29:02

Oh, my goodness. Okay. Well, we talked earlier about how much, especially in B2B marketing, we've forgotten the very early part of when somebody moves from the moment they don't know you exist to the moment that you enter their peripheral vision. The most important thing that we can do from a marketing perspective is create an immediate association.

So for example, when people introduce themselves to me, often, if I don't know them, they either found me through my newsletter, so they know me as, like, the imposter syndrome, or just career person, or they know me from like, you know, social media and digital marketing circles, but they've made clear associations in their head, and that's what branding is.

That's all branding is, is really like a logical and emotional association. Zay Frank. Famously called it, which was one of my favorite definitions of brand of all time, the emotional aftertaste that we leave with people. And I think of having a clear and present brand, whether it's intentional or unintentional, you have a brand like whether you want one or not, you got one, but being intentional about developing it is how you are shaping the emotional aftertaste you're leaving with people when they interact with you.

And for me, that is like the lasting, long tail effect of whether people want to associate with you in the future, how your reputation precedes you in rooms that you're not in, how you earn the introduction to somebody who doesn't know you first, because they can immediately encapsulate for somebody else.

Like, if you were to describe me or introduce me to somebody else before I've known that person, it, can you do it in a bullet or two, or can you sum that up in a phrase? And if so, I've done a good job of branding myself. And I think that applies to companies too, but I think that applies to people.

And like, there was a lot of scuttlebutt for a long time about personal branding, and I kind of detest that term for a bunch of reasons, but because I think it evokes ideas of like, contrived but to me, like a really clear brand is as much about like, personal and professional purpose as anything else, and when that's clear, people know whether or not they want to be associated with you.

Jon Bailey  31:24

There you go. That's it. That's it in a nutshell, right there. Well, 

Amber Naslund  31:29

Is that the mic drop moment? 

Jon Bailey  31:30

That's the mic drop moment. And I think that is the, the perfect place to to wrap this up. And so Amber, as always, I absolutely appreciate your time, and just so much great stuff in here, and I can't wait to share it out with the world again. Check out her newsletter, the courageous career on LinkedIn. Follow her on LinkedIn. Her posts are great too, and she's just an amazing person. And if you're sleeping on LinkedIn, shame on you. It's a great place.

Amber Naslund  32:01

Yeah, LinkedIn, I'm sorry, or you're welcome in advance, depending on but you're the kind words. It's always so great to talk to you. Awesome.

Jon Bailey  32:11

All right. Bye, everybody. Bye. All right. And the recording you.

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