Lura Hobbs is an executive marketer, strategist, growth leader and catalyst for change. Today she is using her expertise to help us unpack how to bring our full selves to everything we do. How you show up is key. This is especially true in a social media driven world. The person online should match the person you are in real life.
Show Notes
What are people saying about you when you are not in the room? According to Jeff Bezos, that is your brand.
Lura Hobbs knows that in order for your personal brand to be legit you have to be yourself. You have to show up in life and how you show up matters. This gets interesting in a world driven by social media. Does the avatar really match the person?
In this episode, Lura shares some really inspiring insights. A few of my favorite include:
- Getting perspective from others helps you see your blind spots
- It is important to know who you are and the value you bring to the table
- No matter your level, your personal brand is essential
- It is imperative to be thoughtful with your social media presence
- It is okay to fail and pick back up again
Links
Gmorning, Gnight!: Little Pep Talks for Me & You
Transcript
Intro: Welcome to “How She Got Here – Conversations with Everyday Extraordinary Women.” It is my belief that every woman has something inside her only she can do. The more we share the stories of other women, who have already discovered their thing, the more it inspires, encourages, and empowers other women to do the same.
Susan: Happy New Year, pod sisters. I am thrilled to be back with you all today. It was amazing being able to take a break over the holidays and spend some time with the fam and recharge, but I am so ready to be back. I have missed you. So my guest today is Lura Hobbs. Lura is an executive marketer, strategist, and growth leader, and she has worked with a few brands you might recognize like AT&T, Pizza Hut, State Farm, McDonald’s, and Frito Lay. We aren’t talking corporate branding strategy, though. We’re discussing personal branding and what that means today, especially in a digital and social media driven world. We discuss not only showing up in life, but how you show up. We discuss perception versus reality and bridging that gap. We discuss failure and getting back up. It is a jam-packed episode and no matter if you are launching your own company this year or consistently posting on social media, there is something in this episode for everyone. So without further ado, here’s Lura.
Well, Hey Lura. How are you? I’m so glad to have you here with me today.
Lura Hobbs: Oh, Susan it is so awesome. I’m so excited. I can’t wait to dig in with you. Your questions had me humming along just thinking through lots of different things.
Susan: Well, that is so funny because you are already such an accomplished marketing communication strategist. I guess I put people who’ve been in the business for awhile on a pedestal and think, “Oh, you’ll have these off the top of your head.”
Lura Hobbs: No, no. I mean we do. We can answer them off the top of our heads, but the reality is, you know, with a little bit of thought, it definitely goes a little bit deeper than the surface. So I’m a full believer in telling the real-real and not making it look overly pretty. So I’m looking forward to this today.
Susan: I am too. As we get started, could you share with our audience a little bit of your background story and how you came to start your own marketing consulting firm?
Lura Hobbs: Sure, sure. So I am a marketing and advertising veteran. I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of working on some amazing brands from AT&T to State Farm and McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Frito Lay products. And it’s just been an amazing and gratifying ride. So I’ve worked client side or brand side, as some people will say, and agency side and really just enjoy progressing and stretching myself into new roles and new arenas and putting myself in places where I had to figure it out. So I made the jump to. I started my own firm back in 2009. I had actually been laid off from a job in a company I’d loved through a national restructure, and I was presented with an opportunity to do some consulting instead of a full time job. And I was like, “You know what? I’m going to try to, let’s see what happened.”
And I started Solstice Strategies, my consulting firm, and really just was amazed at what I was able to do as a consultant working on a startup. I actually had an opportunity later on after that to go back into a full time role, so I dropped consulting and went into that and I’ve actually done a couple of cycles of that and now I’m on my third time of saying, “Okay, no, I’m really going to stick with this. I’m going to do the consulting thing and not be wooed back into a corporate gig.” So it’s been an off again on again love affair because sometimes I get recruited and I just can’t say no to an opportunity, but I really do love this time and space of being able to work on brands and projects that I love rather than kind of being in a box that I have to fit everything in.
Susan: That is really admirable to continue to go after your own thing. Because I know that’s hard. Just in thinking about going from employed to employer, there’s just such a huge mind shift that has to happen. And I think it’s always, at least for me, it’s easier to drop back into the employed piece versus employer, but we can get into that a little bit later. Tell me a little bit about what it was like putting your own brand strategy together. Because you’re an expert in your field, did you do it all on your own? Did you get outside consulting? Tell us a little bit about that. Tell us a little bit about how that. How you accomplished that.
Lura Hobbs: Yeah, so the strategy piece in terms of what I bring to the table and the value that I add, it’s something that I feel like I can do on my own. It’s a struggle. I won’t lie and say that it’s flawless and it’s easy because I think it’s a lot easier for those of us, at least I can speak for myself, in the business. I’m a lot better at it doing brand strategy and branding for someone else or another brand product versus myself because it really is looking at yourself from the lens of the rest of the world looking at you, and it’s a bit kind of a nerving. But I needed to work on the strategy at least on my own. And it’s an intensive process. It’s not like, you know, I did it back in 2009 and I haven’t touched it. Every time I gain the skills or pivot a little bit into a different arena, I have to revisit it and make sure I know what value I can bring and how I’m going to bring that to the table. In terms of the identity, the logo, the colors and that kind of thing, I actually worked with someone that I’ve known for a really long time. He and I have worked together on several different projects and so I completely trust him with my identity and what it looks like and we’re actually. We’ve committed that we’re going to do that again and I just haven’t committed to it yet. But it’s something that is an intensive process. I think there’s a perception that you’re going to do your brand strategy, whether it’s for your personal brand strategy for your company and you get to just leave it. And it’s something that should live and breathe with you as you grow and add services; it’s not something that’s static.
Susan: I like how you said that it’s hard to look at yourself under the microscope basically and create something yourself. I have had that issue with content writing, actually. And I have partnered with somebody to kind of help me through some of that and a lot of it, at least for me, and tell me how it is for you. It’s for me, it’s easy to get stuck down in the weeds sometimes instead of like popping up over the surface, if you will, and looking at it from the bird’s eye view of this is what it really is. Is that kind of what…?
Lura Hobbs: Absolutely. Because when you’re sitting on the side of being an employee, you have objectives that you need to deliver on. And so at the end of the year you can sit down and like, “Okay, here’s the things I accomplished.” And so it’s a list of, you know, however many things you got done that year and you’re feeling good about yourself. But when it comes to brand strategy, it really is a next level up from that and saying, “Okay, yes, I accomplished these things, but how did I do it? How did that come to the table? What were the strengths that I employed in getting them done, whether they’re soft skills or hard skills, and how did I do it uniquely to me?” And that takes a different lens than just looking at I’m accomplished. And I think the thing that we have to remember is yes, you need to do the searching and some of it on your own, but you also need to spend some time talking to people who work with you. You know, whether that’s clients or colleagues, you need to really dig in and say, “You know, I feel like this project went really well. Help me understand what you saw.” Or if something didn’t go well, what did I miss in this opportunity? And I think in getting that feedback, we’re able to understand better. There are things that each of us we do really well and they come easy to us and we don’t realize how impactful they are and we’re able to ask somebody else how they saw it.
Susan: Oh, absolutely. I 100% agree with you on that. We’re talking about brand strategy and your own personal brand strategy versus starting your own business and that brand strategy. Share with us a little bit about the importance of creating your own brand strategy. Why do you need to do that? What does that look like, even if you’re not talking about starting your own company or business?
Lura Hobbs: Absolutely. There is a quote from Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon that I love and he says, “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in room.” I love that quote because it’s so true.
Susan: It is so true.
Lura Hobbs: And when people talk about brand strategy, personal brand strategy, too often they immediately go to LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and all your social accounts and how you show up online. But the reality is, your number one vehicle for your personal brand strategy is who you show up to be in person at work, whether you’re an employee or an employer, it’s what it’s like when people work with you. So a lot of setting your own personal brand strategy is understanding who you are, what you bring to the table, and what value you bring. And so you really need to dig in to really understand that and again, going back to getting some people that know you very well and getting that feedback, but then also just spending some time going back through all your accomplishments. There are some threads there of just what you do really well and you want to be able to make sure you’re managing that and presenting that to people when you work with them. So what he says is “what people say about you when you’re not in the room,” you want that to be positive of course, but you have to influence that perception and so that’s when it comes to being intentional about knowing your value, talking about your value, representing your value well so that you’re influencing what that conversation is when you’re not there.
Susan: Yes, you don’t want people talking about you behind your back and calling you what we used to call or what one of my favorite partners at PriceWaterhouseCoopers used to call a PURE, which was a Previously Undetected Recruiting Error. I was like, “Did you come up with that yourself?” He’s retired now and I’m not going to drop his name on here because I didn’t cover that with him beforehand, but he was one of my favorite partners in the whole wide world and that comment always used to just make me laugh.
Lura Hobbs: Oh, I love it.
Susan: It didn’t matter how long the person had been in the firm, whether it was, you know, a brand new associate, a summer, a partner, a high level partner. He didn’t care because he was on his way out anyway for retirement and yeah, he would say, “Well, that’s clearly a PURE,” and I would just laugh. It was too funny, too funny. So yes, no matter what level you’re at, your brand strategy or personal strategy is important.
Lura Hobbs: Yeah, and I think the thing that people don’t understand, especially for us as women, professional women, we so often focus on the results, you know, if you’re an employee, you were asked to deliver on X, Y and Z and you delivered X, Y, Z, and you went back and did A as well. So you’re like, “I overdelivered.” But the thing is you also have to manage the perception of that. You know, it’s going back to that quote, there’s always a gap between what you want the perception to be in what’s being said and that’s what you have to manage, actively manage. And that’s true for us as entrepreneurs as well because we all have clients so we always have to manage the perception of what you’re putting out there versus what they’re viewing, but is there a gap and how do I need to close it?
Susan: Absolutely. And I think you can’t just go in there and put your head down and do the work. There’s also managing relationships and figuring out who the players are and yada, yada, yada. And I don’t really know how that incorporates necessarily into your personal brand, but it’s just things to be aware of, the little cues that people don’t necessarily always pick up on, the politics I guess.
Lura Hobbs: Absolutely. And I think it all kind of plays together because your personal brand, you know, of course what we’re saying is what people are saying about you when you’re not in the room. Well, how do you handle politics? How do you handle conflict? How do you handle it when things don’t go according to plan? All those soft skills do influence what people are talking about without you so gets you need to get your work done and do it well and flawlessly over deliver. But how you get that work done, how you show up in your work is also really key because part of their personal brand is what does it feel like to work with you? You know, do I feel like I got ran over by a truck when I worked with you? Or do I feel like, wow, she really partnered with me. I felt pushed, but it was in a good way. You know, those are things that we need to actively work on in our personal brand strategy is making sure that you know, yes, you bring skills to the table, but how you bring them to the table will influence what people say about you later on.
Susan: I didn’t put this question in here, so if we cut this, I’m totally fine with that, but for women who have been out of the workforce or out of the corporate gig, maybe she’s been doing something on the side and she’s really wanting to go back into a corporate structure or work for a company or something like that. How is it best to position yourself or do you even—have you ever thought about this? Like how is. How is it best to position yourself from a branding standpoint coming back in?
Lura Hobbs: It’s a great question. I have a really good friend who is coming back after some time really focusing on home, children, parents, all the stuff that we carry as women and balance it all and she’s looking at her professional career and I think she’s done a great job because she is highlighting all of her volunteer leadership experiences. She’s been in leadership positions but they haven’t been paid and so she’s going back and looking at, “Okay, here are all the things I have accomplished, although I have not gotten paid for them.” So I think the way she’s positioning herself is exactly what a lot of women returning to the corporate world have to do is, you know, you’ve been doing a lot of stuff. It’s not like you’ve just been sitting at home watching TV. How do you position all of the work that you’ve done in a way that you can talk about the value you’ve added, the skills that you’ve gained or how you use your corporate skills in a new way and nonprofit, school volunteering, church volunteering, all things. So there’s definitely a way to bridge it.
Susan: That’s a really good point. That’s a really good point. Thanks for going through that with me. We touched on this just a little bit ago, but tell me what you see how the personal brand or how individuals brands have changed because of social media for good, bad, ugly, and then what do you do if you realize it might not be what you want it to be?
Lura Hobbs: Oh, there’s always time to start over. I am a believer in pivoting and starting over and scratch and stuff. But let’s go back to your, the beginning of the question. So social media has really changed everything. I think the thing that I love about social media is it allows people and brands to connect in ways that they have not been available in decades before. So you can start a small business and be global because you’re online, but at the same time social media can be really nasty, ugly, heated place.
Susan: Mm-hmm. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Lura Hobbs: You don’t know what I’m talking about. Things get inflamed really quickly, wide spread really quickly. You know, there’s a question of what the truth is and what it isn’t. So I think if you’re, whether you’re an employee or an employer or an entrepreneur, you really have to be thoughtful about what you want your social media presence to be. And there’s a lot of things out there that will tell you you need to be on every social media platform known to man. I disagree with that personally. I think you need to pick and choose where you are and pick and choose what’s personal versus what’s professional. My Facebook is personal so I don’t allow anybody and everybody to be connected to me on Facebook. To me, that’s where I share family and friends and just fun stuff that’s personal to me. My LinkedIn, I connect with people who professionally are people I want to work with: old colleagues new people mean there’s to me, there are rules that I’ve created for myself in terms of how I use each medium. And I think that applies whether you’re a entrepreneur or just an employee in terms of managing what’s there. The thing I’ll say is, I mean even in separating what’s personal and professional, you have to realize that it’s all online, so if you are ranting and raving and misbehaving on Facebook and then a completely different that person on LinkedIn that’s professional really well put together, you have to realize that somebody is going to crossover and understand that you’re a whole different person on Facebook. And so you need to think about how you manage yourself. One of the favorite things of Michelle Obama quotes over the time that she was first lady, she made a comment about when they go low, we go high.
So there are attacks and rants and all kinds of ugliness on social media and I would just say go high every time because the moment that you succumb to the anger and the venom that can happen on social, it can ruin your reputation professionally. So you just have to be really skilled in making sure—walk away from the keyboard. If something happens online that just drives you up a wall disconnected from that person if you need to walk away, but do not become an angry villain because that will translate over into your professional.
Susan: Oh, absolutely. In fact, back in October we did a whole month of self-care, and that was one of the day is, a good way to take care of yourself is to put social media down, is to unfollow, declutter the social media so you’re not even seeing the negative. And then if you do see it, scroll past so that your own anxiety levels don’t go through the roof.
Lura Hobbs: Absolutely.
Susan: Because there’s a personal cost to it as well forget the—not forget the personal branding point, but I mean there are so many reasons not to get involved in the negative on social media. It’s like damaging to your health.
Lura Hobbs: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think we forget there’s such a push to gain followers, to have an audience, to have a platform that you can forget that yes they are… Size is a good thing depending on what your business is, but the quality of the connection is also a good thing to look at. So you can have a million followers, but if of those million followers, only 10 people aren’t engaged in the conversation, does the million followers really matter? So we don’t have to succumb to the game of I have to have a huge audience. You can have a smaller audience that’s really targeted and really engaged in whatever you’re selling or marketing. So just create your own metrics and your own decision tree of what’s important on social and don’t succumb to all the games that say bigger is better.
Susan: Well, and keeping in that same vein, a lot of this sounds like being your own authentic self.
Lura Hobbs: Absolutely.
Susan: So what is a good way to maintain authenticity in your personal brand? How do we refrain from being that cookie cutter, oh, you know, the best employee or whatever. How do you, how do you interject your own authenticity into your personal brand?
Lura Hobbs: I think a lot of that is knowing what you’re great at. So in the book, Good to Great, there’s a chapter where I think it’s called the “Hedgehog Concept” and he talks about companies knowing what their best in the world at. He does a video chat a few years after he writes the book and applies it to your personal brand. And if you reread that chapter through the lens of not the company but your personal brand, you really can start to go through the process of discovering what your best in the world at. And that’s your authentic self. That’s really your goal is just to be true to what you’re best in the world and do it in a way that’s authentic to you. And by that what I mean, if you like to have fun and laugh a lot at work, you can bring that into your day to day so when people meet you, but also you can bring them into online. If you have this very dry, witty, sense of humor and that’s where you are in person and that’s part of how you get your work done and make it enjoyable. That’s who you should be online. Some of us as ladies, we love to dress up and be 100% made up all the time. Be that online. And if you’re not, don’t, I mean it’s just…There aren’t rules that people need to follow to look like somebody else; you need to look like you because the person online should match the person that somebody going to meet. And if they don’t, then you haven’t been true to the brand that you want to represent.
Susan: Oh, that’s such a good point. That is such a good point.
Lura Hobbs: I think that’s the trap we fall into, we try to curate and create this brand online that’s beautiful and always made up and always coordinated and always this, that and the other. And then you can meet the person and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, that is not who I thought you were.” And we need to realize that everybody’s not perfect. Nobody’s perfect, right? So your online social media should look and sound like you look and sound in person. I love to make fun of my own mistakes. I will be the first one to tell you all the crap that I’ve done wrong and I’m not afraid to talk about that. So there are times on Facebook I tell funny stories about you will not believe how stupid I was and what I did, and then there’s always, like, at the end it’s like, and here’s whatever. So that’s just, I’m not afraid to make fun of myself, so I should not only do that in person, I should be willing to do that online. And then when you meet me like, “Yeah, she’s crazy.”
Susan: Oh you are funny, you’re funny. You’re not crazy or maybe kinda crazy.
Lura Hobbs: Kinda crazy. We’re all kinda crazy.
Susan: If you’re not kinda crazy, you’re not going to make it. That’s my theory. Let’s switch gears a little bit and talk a little bit about you getting started in your own, doing your own thing out on your own, what were some things or what have been some things over the years that you have found helpful to strategically outsource, either it being a personal thing, a business thing in order to help you not be doing it all all the time?
Lura Hobbs: Yeah. So, we have a housekeeper for sure. I discovered a long time ago that I like to keep my house clean and there’s a certain way I like it done, but I have to let that go and just get something else. Or do I do stuff on my own in between visits? Yes. But overall, I cannot say that I keep my house clean. Okay. So for everybody who thinks that… Yeah, I don’t, that’s just not possible. When I’m traveling—I used to travel quite a bit in my last corporate job. My travel was insane and I always outsourced driving and it sounds like a small thing, but doing Uber, Lyft or having a driver when you land in a new city, take a whole level of stress down. I don’t have to figure out where I’m going. I don’t have to have directions. I actually can sit in the car and work, take phone calls or have a moment to myself that something that was really key to me surviving my corporate gig with a level of travel I had, the amount of time I’m spending in cars, I realized this is an opportunity for me to get stuff done and why am I renting a car? That might sound small to some people, but if you travel a lot, I think people will get it. I used to outsource kid pickups and dropoffs, so Uber for the family.
Susan: Oh nice.
Lura Hobbs: I used to outsource that. I’m doing that right now and I’m actually enjoying it, but I can see a point maybe next year when I’m going to have to outsource that again, but you’d be amazed at how much time you spend being Uber for your family and I’m very grateful we have some other families in our lives who have girls who are older than our girls and it’s a bonding experience. They get to meet someone who’s in college and you know, get a glimpse of their life and they’ve been great influences for my girl so it’s worked out. But the amount of time you spend driving around town or volleyball practice and tennis practice and music lessons and all that adds up as well. That’s time you could have to yourself.
Susan: That is so true.
Lura Hobbs: So hate shopping. So Amazon Prime is my best friend, so I love it.
Susan: Oh, it’s amazing.
Lura Hobbs: Yeah. I hate shopping.
Susan: It has been a lifesaver, and a money saver, quite frankly. This is the membership pays for itself, at least for me because I don’t go to Target and spend $100 here, $100 there. You know, I feel like if I go into Target and I’m spending at minimum $100.
Lura Hobbs: Oh absolutely, every time.
Susan: And I might do that on Amazon anyway because it’s stuff that I need, but at Target I’m buying stuff I don’t need to.
Lura Hobbs: I do go to Target, though. I love Target. It’s like a guilty pleasure. I love Target.
Susan: I do too. I mean it has everything. It has everything
Lura Hobbs: And they have really cool stuff.
Susan: I had a friend of mine say that the other night, she has a newborn and she was meeting another friend who had a newborn at Target at 9 pm and just because they could get out of the house that was, you know, husbands were home, they could just get out and they were going to do it. And one of them actually suggested they were like, so should I like bring wine and a Roadie Cup or something? She was like, “No, but Target should totally like open that up.” You know, they have Starbucks in there, why not like a little wine bar like Whole Foods does and some of their stores. Hello?
Lura Hobbs: There would be people who would never leave Target if they had a wine bar, are you kidding me?
Susan: That is a very good point. They would never close.
Lura Hobbs: But I like it.
Susan: I thought it was a pretty crafty, clever idea. So owning your own thing, we talked a little bit about this, about getting in the weeds, about getting stuck in the muck with it. It can be so hard and so challenging, at least for me to let it go at the end of the day or to let it go ever. Talk to me a little bit about self-care for yourself. Do you have a routine? Are there certain things that you just have to do in order to get yourself back to level?
Susan: Yeah. So don’t laugh. I pray a lot.
Lura Hobbs: No, I’m not laughing.
Susan: You know, I say that and they’re like, “You’re serious?” and I say, “Yeah, I’m serious.” For me, if I can do two things nearly everyday I can keep myself sane. The first one is in the morning having some quiet time, a little time to write some notes of gratitude, to pray, to realize really I do have everything in life I need. I’m not living in a state where I don’t have what I need, I do, I really do. No matter how stressed out I get about it. And it grounds me just to realize, you know, life is more than work and money. There’s a lot more that I’m here to do on earth. So I try to ground myself in the morning with who I am and what I’m here for and in that life is bigger than stuff. And then if I can get a workout in three, four days a week in the evening, I really feel like I can keep myself from going crazy.
Those two things, I try to have them bookmark my days, and it really does make the difference for me because if I go too long without having some kind of grounding, I started to think that things are more life threatening than they really are and I blow them out of proportion. I like to box, so hitting 135 pound bag, if I’ve had a hard day, clears everything I can take all of whatever has gone wrong, whoever has put me in a bad mood, I punched myself happy and then I can leave the gym and feel like I could start over.
Susan: I feel that way about lifting heavy weights. So I totally understand that. And it’s been a while since I’ve lifted heavy heavyweights, but I can totally identify with that. And I really liked how you said how you like to bookend your day, and this is totally off topic, but I was watching an interview with a Lin Manuel Miranda –I hope I’m not saying his name wrong, I think I pronounced it correctly – he’s the guy who did Hamilton, and he talked about in his interview because he came out with a book and it was like basically all his tweets or something because he’s never really journaled or anything like that, he said he never really kept a diary so this is kind of what it’s been over the last couple of years and obviously, he’s a writer so a lot of the writing was just really beautiful even though it’s via Twitter. And something he does, or did, I think still does is say good morning and good night. And he talked about how that started and why that started. And even though he is saying good morning and good night, that’s how he turns on and off mentally his social media during the day. It’s how he bookend stuff. He says good morning and then he goes on throughout his day or whatever and he says goodnight and that may be 7:00, 8:00 at night and obviously he’s not going to bed yet, but that’s when he turns it off. And I thought that was really interesting how you talked about bookending your days as well.
Lura Hobbs: Oh, I love that principle because you didn’t have to have some discipline about when you turned it off. And let me be the first to say in all transparency, I’m horrible at that, so if I can get myself to go to gym, more likely than not, I am not going to come out of the gym in the same mental state I came into it, so it gives me a chance to shift my mindset, my emotional state, whatever needs to be reset, it resets in a gym, so I love. I love a good morning tonight. That’s it. That’s a great way.
Susan: I know, and I don’t know that he started it that way on purpose or if it just kind of evolved into that, but I thought it was just a fascinating evolution of his social media. I really liked the turning it on and turning it off because I’m bad, bad, bad, bad at that. So having your own gig is hard when things get crazy, when things get stressful, overwhelming or things just aren’t going how you think or want them to go, how do you keep going or what keeps you going and maybe not even running back towards the door of a corporation?
Lura Hobbs: Yeah. That’s a hard one.
Susan: Yeah.
Lura Hobbs: There are days that I’m like, “I’m just going back to work. This is not working.”
Susan: I know
Lura Hobbs: Part of it is my quest to get it right, and I can laugh about that. Not just saying that it was wrong. The other two times I’ve done it, it’s just I somehow found myself back taking a job. So for me, right now I have a quest to get it right this time. That’s part of what keeps me going. Another thing that keeps me going is my quest to have more flexibility. So in my last two rounds, corporate side, I had jobs that I loved, but I literally traveled like a crazy woman to do those jobs, and it takes a toll. It takes a toll personally and it takes a toll for my family. Can it be done? Absolutely. You know, I probably have travel tricks and tips that I’ve created over the years to make it all work, but it does put a level of stress on me that is in addition to the stress of the job.
So I want the flexibility to cycle up and cycle down a bit during the course of a year to do the 80-hour weeks and for some months maybe to do a 40-hour based on what’s going on. So I have a quest for flexibility in my work that I have not yet achieved. And then part of it is I have two daughters and I’m on a quest to show them that it’s okay to start, to fail and pick back up again. And that’s hard because I don’t do well at failing, but I’m embracing the fact that failure is okay and it’s okay to say the word and it’s okay to admit that it didn’t work. The trick is getting back up again. And so entrepreneurship definitely is a rollercoaster ride financially, emotionally, all of it. And so I want to walk out in front of my girls a level of determination and just willingness to try and try again so that they’ll know that it’s okay to try something new, try something bold, and even if you fail at it you learn something and you’re going to move on and do something great.
Susan: Thank you for the rawness of that. Because as women, maybe especially, maybe that’s not true, I don’t know. I always feel like being a woman and failing is like a double whammy somehow. And maybe it’s because of where I’m from, I don’t know, because I’m from South Carolina and I have heard people say, “Well women don’t do that. Well, women shouldn’t do that. Well, women da, da, da…” And so it’s like when you do something and you try something and it doesn’t work out, it’s like, “Well, they were right.” I’ve said that to myself so many times and been so unkind to myself. So thank you for the rawness of that, that it’s that it’s okay to fail and learn the lesson because I think that’s really—that’s probably hard for everybody, but maybe for me in particular. So thank you for that.
Lura Hobbs: I loved what you said about feeling like sometimes you’re so unkind to yourself and I think one of the things we have to do, not just as women entrepreneurs, but just professional women, whatever level you’re striving for, you need to have at least one other woman in your life that can speak to you directly to affirm you, to push you, to challenge you when you’re having those moments, when you’re being unkind to yourself. And I think too often we have those harsh, unkind moments alone and we’re not willing to share though and in that that’s when we become defeated and we’d give up and we just go do something safe. And not to say that the safe path isn’t an okay path because some of us have to take a safe path because of what we need to do for our families. But too often we talk ourselves out of our own greatness and we just need another woman there to hold our hand and say it’s okay, keep going. And we need to be vulnerable enough to find at least one woman in our life to be that person.
Susan: Oh, I love the way you said that; “We talk ourselves out of our own greatness.” That’s where the. That’s pretty big. That’s a big thing to say but you’re absolutely correct. You are absolutely right.
Lura Hobbs: Right. At least once a week I’m sitting here and I’m going, “Okay, I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I just can’t.” And I’m so grateful that over the course of the last year, I have met some just lovely, amazing women, and sometimes I’ll just send a text message; “I can’t do it. I can’t do it.” And I’ll get a message back that says, “Yes you can. What did you need? Do you need to talk? Do you need to meet me right now? What do you need?” And you just need somebody that answers that text message with; “Yes, you can.”
Susan: Well, on that note, thank you so much for joining me today. I have loved our conversation. I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk to us about personal branding and perseverance. Before I let you go, it’s something that was a little unexpected, but I really liked it and I appreciated that very much. Before I let you go, tell us where we can find you; via your website, your social media, if people are looking for your services or, or everything that you offer in your own consulting. Tell us where we can find
Lura Hobbs: Sure. You can find me on LinkedIn under my name. I have a different name. It’s Laura Hobbs. You can type my name on LinkedIn and you’ll find me there. You can follow me, you can connect with me. You can see a little bit about my background and what I do professionally. And then, you can find me on Instagram. I don’t post a lot on Instagram, but there’s a few things there. Same thing my name, Lura Hobbs, you can find me there. My Facebook is private, so if you’re listening to this and you know me first, maybe you can connect with me there, but I try to keep that to a kind of a smaller group of ladies.
Susan: Cool. And then do you have your own website?
Lura Hobbs: That is the bane of my existence. I have done it, not done it, done it, not done it. I own all the URLs at point too, or at least those that I could buy. I haven’t done it. It’s the thing I need to do. That’s the thing I talked myself out of it so I use LinkedIn.
Susan: I love that. Can I leave this in? Okay. Because I feel like as women I feel like as women there are things that are just action steps we have to take and often it’s buying the URL that’s the hard part. I understand.
Lura Hobbs: I bought them. I’ve got like 10 URLs. I build it, I look at it, and I’m like, “I don’t like it.” So, it’s a commitment issue and I need to get past it, but that’s the God honest truth. I have them. I just haven’t committed.
Susan: Well, I love it because we all have those things that we refuse to commit to, so I appreciate your being honest about that and letting me leave that in. Thank you so much for joining today. It has been a real treat for me to catch up with you and I look forward to seeing you soon.
Lura Hobbs: This was truly just fun to hang out with you this way, and I am glad to have you as one of those women in my life. So thank you.
Susan: Well, thank you so much for that. That means the world to me.
Outro: Thanks so much for listening today. I’ve learned so much from our conversation with Lura and I know you did too. I’ve made sure to link everything we discussed as well as where to find Lura over on our website, howshegothere.com. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please, please, please share with your friends, and don’t forget to head over to iTunes and hit subscribe and while you’re there I really appreciate if you would rate it and review it in order to make it easier for others to find. I also made sure to read every review and email and Facebook posts you leave, and I have always, always, always enjoyed hearing your feedback. It has really meant a lot to me. We also have a private Facebook group, the How She Got Here community page, and would love to have you join us there to continue the conversation on today’s episode as well as any other fun, How She Got Your Content. So with all of that said, thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening. I’ll see you soon.
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