Thought Talk

When one of my colleagues first suggested that I should interview the CEO and President of Hollman Lockers — I wondered how much is there really to say about lockers? Turns out quite a bit.

Join me today for a chat with serial entrepreneur and innovator Travis Hollman. We discuss his leadership style, business as a force for good, and the future of privacy in public spaces.

We will also discuss the mind-boggling use of data and technology in lockers today and ways that leading-edge materials and manufacturing may prove to be useful in preventing or containing the future spread of viruses.

Tips On Business as a Force for Good

• Find a niche that suits you and learn the success mechanisms of your business.
• Build a company culture that gives back — Travis shares his own company's initiatives: Hollman HELPs.
• Take care of your employees; they are family — Travis shares his approach to employment during COVID-19.
• Be a leader, do the right thing and support small businesses around you in any way you can.

"WE HAVE TO LOOK AT BUSINESS AS A FORCE FOR GOOD AND LEADERSHIP." Karen Tiber Leland, Sterling Marketing Group

About Karen Tiber Leland

Karen Tiber Leland is the founder of Sterling Marketing Group, a branding, marketing and color strategy and implementation firm helping CEOs, executives and entrepreneurs develop stronger personal, business, and team brands. Her clients include Cisco, American Express, Marriott Hotels, Apple Computer, LinkedIn and Twitter.

She is also the best-selling author of nine traditionally published business books which have sold over 400,000 copies and been translated into 10 languages. Her most recent book is The Brand Mapping Strategy: Design, Build and Accelerate Your Brand. She regularly writes for Inc.com and Entrepreneur.com and has had articles published in Self, The Los Angeles Times, American Way, The Boston Globe, and many others.

Karen has spoken for Harvard, The AMA, Direct Marketing Association and Stanford, among others. She has been interviewed on The Today Show, CNN, CNBC, and Oprah.

Get in touch with Karen on Twitter|LinkedIn

About Travis Hollman

Travis Hollman has been a serial "funpreneur," businessman, innovator, and philanthropist for more than 20 years. Currently, Travis serves as President and CEO of Hollman Inc., the world's largest manufacturer of sports, fitness, and office lockers. Hollman's leading-edge locker and workspace solutions can be found in the locker rooms of the Dallas Cowboys, New Orleans Saints, the Dallas Mavericks, The New York Times, and the J.P. Morgan Chase Park Avenue offices.

Long before taking over the family business in 2011, Travis's products and projects earned recognition on national television and in publications such as Good Morning America, The Today Show, ABC News, USA Today, and Fortune magazine.

Travis has always put purpose over profit, showing the world that you can have fun in business and be a source of greater good for the local community.

Find out more about Travis and Hollman.

Resources

Are you looking to firmly establish your CEO or executive brand, expand your influence or become more of a thought leader in your field? Consider my personal brand strategy mapping process and book a 20-minute complimentary phone consultation.

For more information about Karen Tiber Leland and Sterling Marketing Group please contact [email protected].

Today's Thought Talk show is about overturning adversity in the workplace. I'm happy to welcome Laura Huang — Associate Professor at Harvard, the author of the new book From Adversity to Advantage. The book is based on her research on interpersonal relationships and implicit bias in entrepreneurship and in the workplace.

Tune in for insight on topics ranging from the biases that women should be on the lookout for when pitching projects — and what to do with them, what "Hard work, Plus" and E.D.G.E. could mean for your career, tips and tricks to get a clearer picture of people's perceptions of you, and why doing business as usual right now might mean the end of some of your longest vendor relationships.

In addition, will explore the ramifications of the current coronavirus pandemic crisis as new constraints force adaptation.

Tips For Building Your Edge

• When it comes to working in times of adversity, go back to the basics — Determine what your core role is?

• Have a clear understanding of how you are perceived and work at flipping those perceptions to your advantage — try the 10 No's exercise.

• Don't allow first impressions to dominate — be proactive when meeting new people.

• Don't wait for the system to change to take advantage of the opportunities in front of you.

"CREATE YOUR BRAND BY DESIGN RATHER THAN BY DEFAULT" Karen Tiber Leland, Sterling Marketing Group.

About Karen Tiber Leland

Karen Tiber Leland is the founder of Sterling Marketing Group, a branding, marketing and color strategy and implementation firm helping CEO's, executives and entrepreneurs develop stronger personal, business and team brands. Her clients include: Cisco, American Express, Marriott Hotels, Apple Computer, LinkedIn and Twitter.

She is also the best-selling author of nine traditionally published business books which have sold over 400,000 copies and been translated into 10 languages. Her most recent book is The Brand Mapping Strategy: Design, Build and Accelerate Your Brand. She regularly writes for Inc.com and Entrepreneur.com and has had articles published in Self, The Los Angeles Times, American Way, The Boston Globe, and many others.

Karen has spoken for Harvard, The AMA, Direct Marketing Association and Stanford, among others. She has been interviewed on The Today Show, CNN, CNBC and Oprah.

Get in touch with Karen on Twitter|LinkedIn

About Laura Huang

Laura Huang is a professor at Harvard Business School and has spent her academic career studying interpersonal relationships and implicit bias in entrepreneurship and in the workplace as well as in the investment decisions of financiers such as angel investors and VCs. Her research has been featured in the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes, and Nature, and she was named one of the 40 Best Business School Professors Under the Age of 40 by Poets & Quants.

She previously held positions in investment banking, consulting, and management for organizations such as Standard Chartered Bank, IBM Global Services, and Johnson & Johnson. Laura received an MS and BSE in electrical engineering, both from Duke University, an MBA from INSEAD, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine.

Support your local bookstores and find your copy of Edge: Turning Adversity into Advantage, by Laura Huang.

Resources

Are you concerned about keeping your business on the upswing in these difficult times? Give us a call at Sterling Marketing Group.

For a limited time, we're offering a 50% discount on Rent My Brain sessions to talk about how bootstrap branding and micro-marketing can be used to keep your business moving through tough times.

For more information about Karen Tiber Leland and Sterling Marketing Group please contact [email protected]

Rodney Abbot is a senior partner at Lippincott, the global creative consultancy behind the logos of Walmart, Starbucks, Delta, and Southwest Airlines, among others. In this podcast, he discusses the process of creating a logo for a company. Topics include using a logomark, logotype (or both), color's impact on a logo, and the hottest logo design trends for 2020.

Gretchen Cryer has been at the center of writing, performing and directing one person shows for more than three decades. In this episode of Thought Talk she shares insights, experiences and knowledge about how businesspeople can use these techniques in public speaking.

Pauline Brown the Former Chairman of LVMH North America discusses her new book, "Aesthetic Intelligence". Brown left her position at LVMH to do a deep dive into the way aesthetics impact us personally and professionally and teaches about what she learned at Harvard.

Sritha Thayi, the co-founder of W3 Chocolate, discusses her journey (from idea to execution) in introducing a new chocolate to an already crowded marketplace. Sritha shares about how she and her co-founders conceived of the concept in a meditation and how she personally went door to door in Brooklyn hawking her chocolates to coffee shops.

Ben Pines, Head of Content for Elementor, a Drag and Drop Site builder for WordPress, shares his take on the way content management has evolved and what every business needs to know about creating content for websites and beyond.

This episode features Amy Morin a psychotherapist and author of 13 Things Mentally Strong Women Don't Do from HarperCollins. Her work as a psychotherapist, combined with her personal experiences of overcoming tragedy, taught her what it takes to be mentally strong. Her TEDx Talk, "The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong" has garnered more than eight million views.

The creative mode in your brain is like a butterfly. It's beautiful and erratic, hard to catch and highly valued as a result. If you want to capture it, you need a net. Enter the executive mode, the task-oriented network in your brain that help you tie your shoes, run a meeting, or pitch a client.

In this episode, Tony Award-winning producer, Mara Isaacs, shares the life and business lessons learned from being a Broadway producer As the founder of Octopus Theatricals, an independent production company, Mara shows the parallels between the way Broadway and startups function. She also talks us through the branding and marketing approach she took with her eight Tony Award-winning show, Hadestown.