In This Episode…
This is the seventh episode of the Visibility Agency Business and Marketing Podcast.
In this episode, I speak to Kelly Joanne Knight who owns KJ Brand and Marketing Consultancy which was founded to help SME’s to clarify their brand message, execute campaigns and up-skill leaders and their teams.
With over 12 years of marketing experience, we discuss Kelly’s career to date – beginning with her early days in HR where she began to develop her understanding of psychology and how that led into a successful career in Marketing and Communications for huge organisations such as Boots and the University of Derby.
We’ll discuss how her combined experiences now enabled her to be able to support companies to succeed by identifying their own value and converting that into a brand identity that is authentic.
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0:00:00
I have a question for you. When you think about the way in which your business presents itself and the successes it’s had so far, would you say it’s achieved its full potential? If the answer is no, then today’s guest can help you. In this episode, I speak to Kelly Joanne Knight, who owns KJ Brand and Marketing Consultancy, which was founded to help SMEs to clarify their brand message, execute campaigns, and upskill leaders and their teams. With over 12 years of marketing experience, we discussed Kelly’s career to date, beginning with her early days in HR, where she began to develop her understanding of psychology and how that led into a successful career in marketing and communications for huge organizations such as Boots and the University of Derby. We’ll discuss how her combined experiences now enable her to be able to support companies to succeed by identifying their own value and converting that into a brand identity that is authentic. All of that coming up. Hello and welcome to the next episode of the Visibility Agency Digital Marketing Podcast. Today I’m joined by Kelly Joanne Knight. Thank you very much, Kelly, for joining us. Hi, how are you? I’m very good. Thank you for taking the time out. It’s nice to see you again. We are all colleagues and it’s nice to have you on the podcast.
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0:01:41
We are, yeah. Yeah, it’s great to chat again.
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0:01:45
So, Kelly, please introduce yourself. Tell me a little bit about what you do day to day and also what you do outside of work.
1
0:01:53
Yeah, so I am a brand and marketing consultant. I’ve been in marketing for the last 12 years. So what I do day-to-day, I look at brand identity for businesses, I look at their marketing strategy, content strategy, and then execute everything that I propose to small and medium-sized businesses and various different brands. Outside of work, I’m a triathlete, so a triathlete and a runner. I also help to mentor and coach individuals to do triathlon, run, run in form, things like that. Me and my partner have a small business called Yorkshire Mentor where we’re coaching and helping other people throughout their sporting journey as well.
2
0:02:43
Amazing, amazing. Now I do half marathons. I try to do one a year but a triathlon is something else. So how do you manage that? How did you get
1
0:02:56
into that? Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve been running for 20 years or so. I can’t even remember how I got into triathlon. I had a few friends that were doing it and my cousin encouraged me to buy a bike off eBay. And at probably I was 35 years old from 40 this year. So 35 years old, he taught me how to ride a bike again. And then my now boyfriend taught me how to swim again at like 35, 36. So yeah, that was probably the hardest thing.
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0:03:28
Why not do it all at the same time? Well, not at the same time, but nice, amazing.
1
0:03:33
A half marathon is so much easier, Josh. Stick to that.
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0:03:37
Yeah, I’m fine with that. I can’t do any more. That’s amazing though. Okay, so in terms of this is obviously the Digital Marketing Podcast, Visibility’s Digital Marketing Podcast. I have changed the name a little bit because I am a marketer at heart and I thought that name was a bit better. So there’s more of a focus in this episode on marketing. And of course, you work in marketing. So tell me a little bit about your company and maybe more specifically about who you help and how you help them in a bit more detail. I know you introduced it before but a little bit more.
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0:04:09
Yeah, so my business is called KJ Brands and Marketing Consultancy, so that’s a bit reflective of my name, Kelly Joanne. And yeah, so I recently set up as a freelance consultant. Because over the years, I have developed myself in marketing and brand and all things, content as well. And I’ve just absolutely loved working with different brands, big organizations, working with different people. And yeah, over the last six months, I’ve just developed my own brand and decided that I want to meet lots of different people and support small and medium-sized businesses where I can and mentor people through how to do marketing and make them feel more comfortable with it and give them techniques and like processes and systems and things like that to help them because everyone’s super busy and it doesn’t have to be as hard as it seems and there’s a lot of information out there as well, isn’t there? So, yeah, I help businesses then to identify their own value because I think that’s where it all comes from, to kind of lock down a strategy that’s aligned to their mission and then engage their target audience. And I just want people to be able to do that really authentically. I know that’s a common word that’s used quite a lot, but I just think it’s really important for businesses to understand really what they’re trying to achieve and supporting other people through that and giving value and making sure that they stick to that rather than getting stuck in everything else that they see and hear. So yeah, once I’ve provided that proposal to them around their brand identity, around their strategy, then I just help them to execute that as well. So, operations, social media management, email marketing, paid advertising, content creation, just anything that they then need. I can either do it for them or just guide them and be that person in the background just telling them how to do it through a mentoring service that I offer as well. Nice. So, yeah, that’s what I do.
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0:06:29
Awesome. Yeah, I mean, on that, you know, you mentioned about kind of sticking to it. It’s easy to get distracted with new shiny platforms, isn’t it? And it’s not necessarily about the platform, but it’s more about who you are as a business and the message. I imagine that’s something that is an emphasis you put on there.
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0:06:45
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think what we see at the minute, particularly with like Instagram and Reels and TikTok coming in recently, that you feel like you have to go away and do the trends. And I’ve noticed that with myself, like I haven’t delved into TikTok because doing that just didn’t suit me. Like the whole music and dancing and things like that, it doesn’t suit me as a person. And then when I sit back, now I’ve developed my own brand, it doesn’t fit with my brand, it might fit with others and that’s great and we can completely get into that with different businesses but if it doesn’t, I just want businesses to know that they don’t have to go down that route but if you stay really consistent and authentic with yourself, then
2
0:07:32
that will attract the customers that you want to then help and say sure yeah absolutely yeah yeah I mean it’s amazing TikTok’s like developed quite a lot and you know at the beginning I mean my early perception of it was that you have to go on there and dance I think it is changing a bit and there’s obviously a variety of content now but I think in the early days you had to dance to go viral yeah I think probably scared a lot of people to why the release of Toggle. Yeah, just me. Yeah. Okay, cool. So tell us a little bit about your career and how you’ve managed to get up to this point where you’re now freelancing
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0:08:12
and supporting SMEs. Yeah, so my career actually started in HR. So I’m not a marketing person from way back when. I guess I am now. But yeah, so BA honours degree. I can’t remember what year that was now. But I remember doing that. So I used to do it like part-time. So I’d work full-time and I’d do it two nights in a week, two evenings. And I did that alongside my sister, which is great. But I remember having lots of different topics. And I loved the HR section and I loved the marketing section. I can’t even remember all of the topics, economics and some others in there. And so I remember just really enjoying them. And then I moved into work after my degree had finished. And the company I was working in, I got on really well with the HR director and the small HR team. I think I was doing administration work at that time, so they brought me into their department. And so that helped me just to learn about what they were doing from that industry perspective. And they kind of took me under their wing and paid for me then to move on to a postgraduate degree in postgraduate entertainment, it was, in HR management, like a strategic kind of view on a course. And I loved it. So I carried on doing that. I left that company and I moved to Boots UK. I’d always wanted to work for that brand. I just loved Boots. When we were little, I’d shop in the stores with my mom and always remember buying things at Christmas and going through their gift guide and stuff like that. And I think a friend worked there at that time as well. And yeah, so I moved to Boots UK in a HR role. We set up a big logistics site. And so I was, it was quite a generalist role. So I was doing training and development with managers and senior leaders, disciplinaries and things like that. And just this whole recruitment process for this new site. It was kind of a project role, so I think it lasted about 18 months or two years. And when that came to an end, I then moved to their head office, which is in Nottingham. And this is kind of where I think my marketing steer came from. So I moved into a learning and development within teams. So it was great. I met a lot of different people, but it was a very kind of like psychology type of role. So I was really like thinking about what people needed and yeah, it was great. I really enjoyed it. And I was on this, I’m going to sound like a bit of a nerd now, but I was on the management development program as a high performer. You got to go on, yeah, I got to go on like different courses and you learn about your own leadership style and you got to move around the business. So I was quite visible to lots of different departments. And I chose to move into marketing and applied for a role in their loyalty team, which looked at- You wanted more points, didn’t you? That’s basically it. I wanted more Asgard points, wait George, because I looked after the advantage card, email journey. I knew it. You didn’t even know that either. So yeah, I went into this like, right, psychology-led loyalty marketing. what are people doing, where are they shopping, what are they buying, where do you take them next on the next journey? And yeah, I really enjoyed it. The whole marketing lingo though was hot. Like I just couldn’t get my head around impressions and open rates and all of these things that people were talking about. So I did a little bit on the Advantage card. I worked on WebMD. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them. They’re like a health email. Yeah. I did an email campaign with the America team. And what else did I do? Health and Beauty magazine. So, they just kind of like the gift guide thing that I enjoyed. Yeah, I think I adapted that into my life. Awesome. I worked on the advertising for the Health and Beauty magazine. So, I did that for about four years. And then I moved into their PR team and for the next year, 18 months, I worked on their PR for number seven, so all of the big brand beauty range, 17 and Botanics. So great, like I love them brands as well, use them and I was dashing around London making up these crazy PR events and things like that with an external agency. But I realized PR wasn’t my thing. So working with the journalists, and yeah, it just didn’t fit me for some reason. I love the brands I worked on, but decided that actually it was the loyalty side that I really enjoyed a lot more. And from there, I think I was at Britain for about six years, but then moved to the University of Derby. I moved into an international role. So the role had been based in Britain for some time, and this really helped me to step up and think about strategy, plans, and owning and making decisions on what I thought was the next recommended state to move into so I had to kind of delve into all of the analytics from what happened before What was performing and what wasn’t and then make recommendations on a global market? so it was quite a big role and very busy and there was a lot of like culture changes and things like that that I could get involved in and help to influence just from my kind of old HR days too. So I did that for I think about 18 months or two years again. And then there was an opening in the brand team. I remember when I started at the university, we used to have these big marketing, like, gather up in big lecture theatres. And I remember hearing the brand team talk and I was like, I want to work on that team. And that came to fruition a couple of years later. I started in a content creation role. So they hadn’t really looked at that content or how they were creating it or being proactive with it at that point. So this was a new role and I could really shape the way that we created content. I could put a strategy around it and then help and support other people on how to create the right content, but really thinking about the purpose of why we were doing what we were doing.
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0:15:28
Because it’s the brand team and they’ve got that front of mind.
1
0:15:33
Yeah, yeah. So I helped to kind of instill that while they were going through a big brand development project at the same time. So that was really fun. It helped me to… I kind of just got a different perspective of a big organization. So I’d done quite a lot of tactic work, but then kind of flipped it. So I started to look at strategy and why we were doing what we were doing, just to help to influence some decisions as well. But created a ton of videos, like a ton of blogs. The best part of that role was that I got to work with the students and we set up an influencer program. So they could peer-to-peer, they were talking peer-to-peer and creating content for upcoming students. So I could help to guide them and there was a lot of marketing students involved in that, obviously. So it was just nice to kind of guide other people and show them how we were doing and why we were doing what we were doing.
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0:16:33
Awesome.
1
0:16:34
So we went through lockdown, flipped everything on its head, created everything into a digital format as everyone else did. And then about a year after lockdown ended, decided I was ready for a change and moved to a small creative agency. So they were healthcare-led and event-led but I was doing the marketing for their small business. So again, just got to be very generalist, very strategy-focused and yeah, then just decided that actually all the things that I’ve learned over the last few years, I could almost package it together and continue to help other small businesses. And yeah, I just decided that it was time for me to kind of branch out, do my own thing. I’ve seen that I could develop a brand through our triathlon mentoring business that I’ve just created last year, late last year as well. So just used all the skills that I had and started to build a website, put brand guidelines together, write a business plan. And my boyfriend was super supportive in it as well and just like really encouraged me that, yeah, I’m like, you’re 40 this year. Like, let’s try something new, be a bit brave. Yeah, and this is where I am today. Amazing.
2
0:18:08
Which is mind-blowing, but yeah, good. I mean, that’s a great story of your experience. You know, you really communicated that well in terms of like all the way through your career. And I think when, you know, in your early days of HR, you’ve obviously worked with people and started to understand psychology, and maybe that’s kind of where that started because now you understand how to communicate. I mean, you know, in a HR role it’s all about communication, right? So you’ve got to work with people which is not too far away from a marketing role really. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I see how that’s developed and I definitely think you went into Boots to get more points on your Lord’s card, but in general, it’s amazing how you’ve changed roles and it’s built into this point. That’s amazing.
1
0:18:56
Yeah.
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0:18:57
And obviously, we met in the international team. That’s how we’ve come to know each other. So yeah, those were really great days as well. And I really enjoyed working with you then. So in terms of the industry that you’re in, what would you say is that kind of why it’s interesting for you and unique industry to be in?
1
0:19:21
Yeah I would say it’s so varied isn’t it, marketing, you can get involved in so many different elements of it and I guess you can specialize in different areas if you wanted to or you can be quite generalist like I am and yeah and you can then decide maybe along the way where you want to go to where you want to specialize later on down the line. I think there’s just there’s so much information out there and there’s so many different almost like techniques and systems and platforms and there’s a lot of information taken isn’t there and I like that element of it. And there’s a lot of people shaping their businesses in different ways, using different techniques, too. And I think that’s what makes it quite unique. Things are obviously constantly changing with social media and technology, of course. But then, as we were just saying, the basics are always going to be the same. It’s down to consumer psychology and although over time because of technology consumer psychology has changed, people are still people aren’t they? So we purchase for a particular reason or for a want or a need and I think yeah because it remains yeah that remains and then you’ve got kind of that foundational layer and then all of the technology and change up above like I think that’s why it makes it so unique and interesting. And also, it’s happening every day and you don’t really realize it. Like, every time you’re on your phone or every time you’ve got the TV on or like something comes to your door, that’s marketing. And I think what also makes it interesting is, as well as unburied approaches, that you can see and hear people talking about marketing in a different way. So there’s that short-term tactic, getting a thousand followers on socials in one week. But then you’ve got other people where they’re saying that the true way to build a business is through community and relationships and it’s a longer term game and I think if you’re creating a business or you’re working for a business, it’s about understanding which one you want to go down and what fits with you most authentically. I also love that YouTube is there as well, like I’m a big YouTube fan but then you’ve You’ve got all of these big brands, these huge amazing brands doing huge amazing things with all of their budget but then you’ve got so many one-person businesses as well and everyone’s in business, aren’t they? Everyone’s got a brand in some form or fashion and if it’s a personal brand or if it’s a product or service but all of this technology helps everybody to communicate with everybody like it’s a state if you think about it.
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0:22:29
Absolutely. It’s changing so fast. The industry is, you know, I consider myself young and yet it’s changed so much in my career so far. And so that’s why people are confused and need support to navigate through. And you know, somebody like you, Kelly, to help them to be up to date with the latest trends and the latest way of doing things. SEO is changing all the time, paid advertising is changing. That’s why we’re needed in terms of people asking us for support because it’s overwhelming. It can be overwhelming for us.
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0:23:09
Do you feel overwhelmed sometimes?
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0:23:10
I personally do sometimes.
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0:23:11
Oh my gosh, yeah.
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0:23:12
Yeah, like I just saying what my career was back then, just then I was like, actually I’ve done a lot. Like you forget what you’ve done, but then like you say over time, so much has changed. But yeah, I can sit on Instagram and I’ll be watching different people and I’m like, oh, I don’t know if like, do I do that or am I doing that right? Or should I be doing it this way instead? Or yeah, we were talking about just posting on social for your own brand kind of it rocks you a little bit and it shouldn’t it’s like yeah there’s lots of different ways for you to get completely overwhelmed but going back to what we were saying before it’s and how I want to help businesses is just being really confident in what you have to offer and if it’s you as a one-person business or a service that you’re trying to develop, just know where and just be confident in what you’ve got and just push off everything else and go down that channel of marketing yourself in that confident way and just keep at that.
2
0:24:18
Yeah, because if you’re trying to be somebody else, it’s not going to happen over the long term. You won’t be able to keep that up for the long term. It’s about who you are as a business, what are your strengths and acknowledging those and putting more emphasis on the bits that make you unique and special.
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0:24:35
Definitely, yeah.
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0:24:36
Marketing helps, but you still got to have the core business and the core people behind
1
0:24:42
the business. I agree with you on being authentic. And I think as much as I love YouTube and people are creating their own personal brands which is amazing. Like I love that people can do that so easily. You can tell, you can almost see which ones are authentic and which ones are not and I watch a lot of people and I really do feel that authentic people want to help others and that’s so nice to see and to feel when you’re just watching other people doing what they’re doing in their daily lives. And there just needs to be lots of that, doesn’t there? It’s nice to see people enjoying what they do while giving back to other people. Absolutely, sharing.
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0:25:25
And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Okay, so in terms of your biggest challenge that you faced in your career, is there something you can share with us? And maybe you could tell us a little bit about how you overcame it. It does sound a little bit like a job interview, but it’s not.
1
0:25:41
I don’t know. I think, yeah, every role has its challenges, doesn’t it? But nothing really stands out to me as in anything’s been particularly that hard. Like I’ve always had lots of people around me because I have worked for big organizations and I’ve had teams and yeah, you just, you go into different roles and like I realized that PR wasn’t for me and probably at that time it felt like a challenge but I’m quite, like I will really can really sit with, okay, this role or this thing that I’m doing now doesn’t fit with me anymore. Okay, we need to change, we need to pivot, try something else. And I will always try different roles. And I think that’s how I’ve just built up my skills and over time. But yeah, I think probably in just the last few years after lockdown, that’s probably been my biggest challenges that I’ve known. I don’t, I want to be doing something different, but I didn’t know this option was there for me. I’ve literally only just realized it and researched it in the last six months. So I’ve always had this level of discomfort over the last couple of years, I think. Just wanting to do more and wanting to really stretch myself rather than be sat in a comfort zone. That’s probably my biggest challenge is things feel easy. I’m like, no, I need to do something different. Hence why I’ve got Indy Triathlon and now I’m running my own business. So yeah, that’s probably been the biggest challenge. But yeah, for me, it’s just about trying something different, fitting with it, doing the best that you can, and then seeing what happens. And if you need to pivot again, you pivot again.
2
0:27:40
If I was in your shoes and I was asked that question, I’d just have said the triathlon.
5
0:27:45
Triathlon, like, I just…
1
0:27:47
I’d get one tendon. That’s how I was like the biggest shot in the shot. When you’re racing, in the moment, yeah, it definitely is. I’m like, why am I doing this?
2
0:28:00
What’s your best time for training?
1
0:28:03
My best time? So, I mean, let’s not compare my time to my partner’s time or other people, but we, say we focus on half Ironman, that’s what we’re training for, but we do lots of distance. Half Ironman. Yeah, we do all the distances, not an Ironman, like I can’t even comprehend that. So I got under six hours in Mallorca last year, but that’s quite slow actually. My boyfriend has done it in just over four hours. Wow. I know. So he finishes his bike and then just watches me on the run, which is kind of sad at the time. But no, I’ve got support there.
2
0:28:52
I thought two hours is just, that’s it, that’s my limit, two hours. I can’t get it over in Dunwind for six hours, that’s incredible. That’s amazing. I mean, it is New York, yeah. Come on, it’s warm there.
1
0:29:07
It’s hilly as well, though. It’s very hilly.
2
0:29:10
It’s difficult to drive.
1
0:29:11
Oh, what? It’s difficult to drive in New York, let alone cycle those. Well done. Yeah, thank you.
2
0:29:19
Amazing. Surely that’s your biggest challenge.
1
0:29:21
That’s my biggest challenge of all life, yeah.
2
0:29:24
Okay, the best part of your career so far, what’s been the best bit, something you can share with us?
1
0:29:30
like, yeah, just finding the different opportunities that have come up and meeting the different people along the way. Yeah, I think back to roles that I’ve had and I always think about the people, like, yeah, just what you do. I’ve met so many lovely people, I’ve got lifelong friends, I still speak to people that I worked with like 10 years ago and meet up with them and they’re the people that have helped me learn and they’ve ultimately where I am where I am today like why I’m here and and those days when I was working nine-to-five in an office and the Christmas parties and the lunch breaks and things like that they’re the things that I think about and then running around London with different people and when you’re really busy and it goes a bit like crazy in the office it’s that kind of stuff that I remember. Yeah, I’ve had lots of opportunity, like I say, working in different places, going to conferences, I’ve been to Dubai with work and yeah, like down south and yeah, it’s been like fun projects and others have developed me over time as well. So yeah, they’re the best part of my career for sure. And the people that I’m meeting now, it’s very reflective of, although I haven’t got that like office space now and that team, like I’ve met so many different other freelancers and I just felt that like true sense of like solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, one-person business people, like everyone is just like all around me and helped me and these are strangers. So yeah, it’s even nicer.
2
0:31:18
Yeah, good. Yeah, because we’re all in the same boat. And I think, you know, sometimes it can be lonely. And, you know, it’s important to keep those conversations. So I would encourage you to keep doing that. But I can see from your social that you’re speaking to a lot of people and involved. So it’s nice. It’s nice that you’ve got that early doors. Okay, so what would you say is kind of a message that you’d send to the new generation getting into marketing? You know, we spoke earlier about TikTok and about, you know, it’s not all about dancing, it’s more about the messaging. Is there something that you would focus on that the young people need to know about marketing and what would
1
0:31:56
help them get into the industry or be successful? Yeah, I would say, I guess there’s lots of resources out there, isn’t there? There’s lots of different people that you can speak to. I would firstly say, and we say this as triathlon, like, if you enjoy marketing or it’s where you think you want to go, like, talk to the people that are already doing it and learn from them and take their advice if you want to and go away and do it yourself. And the best way to be able to do that yourself is developing your own personal brand. And I think that really fits in nicely with just understanding yourself and it supports job interviews, it supports when you’re marketing yourself and putting your CV out there. So yeah, think about your own personal brand. If you want to work in marketing and why you want to work in it, really like understanding that within yourself. I also think it’s not about creating like a thousand videos or anything like that, but creating a portfolio for yourself online, documenting the work that you’ve completed so far. This is one thing that I didn’t do as great as I thought I had. So all of the work that I’ve done over the years for Boots and the university, I didn’t take photos of that. I didn’t save things down. And then when I found to build my portfolio 20 years later, 15 years later, I can only write about it and show some stock imagery. I haven’t got all of that stuff from before. So yeah, if you want to think about, if you want to work in marketing, think about how you’re marketing yourself as well. Yeah, I think that’s the main thing.
2
0:33:47
I agree with that one. Documenting, definitely. It’s really important. If you’re going to go for a job, if you’re going to set up a business, like it’s important or whatever.
1
0:33:56
Yeah, because actually, we’re talking about things changing over time so much. Like all of the campaigns and things I worked on years ago do not exist anymore. Like the products have changed, the brands have finished, or they’ve developed into something else, and all of that work just isn’t out there anymore.
2
0:34:17
Yeah, you can’t go back and borrow it off the website.
1
0:34:21
Yeah, but also while you’re thinking about your own journey and where you want to go to, just like journaling down and writing down your experiences. I can talk about the broad things that I’ve done but you forget about all of those little challenges that you’ve had in different roles and things like that. So just remembering to do that and then that helps to build your own personal brand but also just sit with what your values are as a marketer, which routes do you prefer, and don’t worry too much about having to specialize. Like, have a broad experience and later on down the line specialize and go into one particular area if that’s what you want to do. I think it’s good to try, like, have a bit of a, let’s call it a squiggly career, like try little different things and try them in your own time as well. Don’t just rely on other people and businesses to help you to get that experience. Develop a little brand of your own, like do the brand guideline, write a business plan for something, even if it doesn’t come to anything major, like like do it in your own time and like practice it and set up an Instagram channel and create some videos and see what techniques work and attract different people in. Like it’s easy, so, so, so easy to practice these days. You don’t have to wait till you’re employed to do it. And through all of that practice, that’s creating your experience, isn’t it? And that’s creating your own brand. And then you can put that in your portfolio as well. Like, there’s just so many different ways to practice and learn these days.
2
0:36:08
Absolutely. I think to add on to your bit about a squiggly career, I think what younger people, they don’t necessarily realize that it’s not a bad thing to jump to different things because you look back and all of that is experience and you’ve learned something from that. But I think in the early days, you think, oh, that was a waste of time. But it really isn’t a waste of time.
1
0:36:26
Oh, no, not at all.
2
0:36:27
But you don’t realize that when you’re in the moment and it’s a horrible job.
4
0:36:31
Yeah.
2
0:36:32
You don’t like it for some reason. You’ve learned something from it. You’ve learned either you don’t like it or that’s difficult and that was better. And then the next step forward is more of a refined understanding of what you want.
1
0:36:45
Way back when I didn’t used to like analytics, I would be like doing the report but now I love analytics because I know what it’s telling me and yeah like I’m not a math type of person but like now 10 years later I realize the importance of it. Sure. Yeah, like learning how to write and your English and things like that, how important that is. Like, yeah, there’s just so many different elements. You’re always learning, aren’t you? All the time. And you meet different people along the way. And the other thing I would say is, like, your network, like this, for example, who would have thought, you know, like, years later, me and George are chatting, like, you just wouldn’t have thought it, would you? Like, things do come back around and you meet different people and circles are small and…
2
0:37:43
Maybe, Kelly, you didn’t want to sort me again, but, you know, I was interested in talking to you again. I thought you were really nice when we worked together.
1
0:37:49
You manifested it. You did.
2
0:37:51
No. Yeah, no, it’s good. Yeah, I think it’s about the vibe you give off. And obviously, like, we worked with each other for a limited amount of time, but it’s about the positivity that you gave at that moment. I always remembered you from that. So it’s a good thing to do in your career. For younger people, for example, when they’re getting into the world, you never know what comes back around. And exactly, like you say, I wouldn’t expect that we would be here talking on the podcast either. So it’s a good thing. It’s a good thing.
1
0:38:22
Yeah.
2
0:38:23
Okay, so do you have any kind of, any people that you’d like to give a bit of a shout out, whether it’s locally, nationally, globally, that’s kind of you take inspiration from, maybe an influence, maybe you could give us a couple of examples.
1
0:38:37
Yeah, I have more than a couple of examples. Okay. But not a huge list. But yeah, there’s different freelancers and consultancies and local businesses and people that are online and things like that, for example. I couldn’t just name three but there’s a few people that’s been to mine so I’ve written them down. Go for it, we’ll tag them in. And the reason why I love them is because they’re all developing their own brand. They’re helping other people. All of their posts are really just authentic and just clear. There’s no… Yeah, they’re just really reflective of who they are when I’ve met them in person, but they’re all helping other people and you can really feel that through all of their content. And that’s what attracted me to them and for one reason or another now I am working with them or talking to them in both different ways. So there’s Daniel Clark from DCC, she looks after, and she’s a brand identity and I think some graphic design and things like that. But yeah, she’s just really great and such an inspiration for public speaking as well. She’s just so natural at it. And yeah, just love listening to her. She’s got a great podcast as well, called Building Best Brands. Really good. And Anna Rumbold from Ape Pop Social. She’s just really good. She just focuses on Instagram. But you can just really clearly see that she’s helping other people to make their messaging really clear. But she just gives a lot of time out. And Sophie Croft from Freelancer Magazine as well. I bought Freelancer Magazine over a few months ago now, and it’s just amazing. I’ve worked for a magazine before, but the content in it is just so valuable and so helpful. And Sophie’s actually joined our triathlon mentoring.
3
0:40:44
No.
1
0:40:45
Yes, I’m excited about that. Helen Costin from Fellow Freelancers. So I joined her community group and she’s just got a number of different freelancers from a whole different array of industries that are just networking together. And Mike Cole from this is Mike Cole and the Cole Collector. He’s a business coach but he’s just giving me so much time and is the nicest human that you will ever meet. Nice. Yeah, really lovely in terms of like his coaching skills. And then look from NK Forces, he does a lot of freelance support. He’s a videographer, I believe. But yeah, his content is just great. And he didn’t have a marketing background. We’ve been chatting a little bit through LinkedIn and I was surprised to see that he didn’t have a marketing background. And but the way that he comes across, the way he communicates and it’s just really, yeah, it’s really, really good. Nice, lovely, lovely shout out.
2
0:41:43
For all my people. I’m sure they’ll be very happy when they hear that. The whole lot. Awesome. Okay, so we’ve come to the end of the podcast. Maybe you could let us know how we can get in touch with you, Kelly, the people listening and watching this podcast. If they want to work with you, what should they do?
1
0:42:03
My website is kjbrandandmarketing.co.uk. I am active on Instagram. So it’s kj underscore brand underscore marketing. And I’m very active on LinkedIn. So you can find me probably just through searching for my full name, Kelly Joanne Knight. But my URL is kellyjoanneknight kjbrandmarketing. KJ Brands Marketing. And then I’m on Twitter under BrandUAuthentic. So brand and then the letter U, authentic. And so on there I talk about marketing and kind of mind management stuff. I really enjoy that, the psychology side and then a bit of sports and triathlon
2
0:42:47
stuff as well. It all kind of bingles together. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you very much for sharing your story Kelly today. It was really interesting. You’ve got lots of experience and lots of interesting parts of your career. So yeah, thank you very much for taking the time. No problem. Thank you so much. No problem. Thank you so much.
1
0:43:02
It’s been great to chat. Thank you.
