Transcript: Now here’s your host, David Brower.
David Brower: Here’s part two of our interview with Amber Hurdle.
Amber Hurdle: They have a strong brand and a healthy business and that’s what any woman needs to figure out for her own brand.
David Brower: And you helped them do that.
Amber Hurdle: Yes. Oh, yes. I love it. [crosstalk 00:00:30]
David Brower: That’s what you sink your teeth into is helping somebody develop their brand, identifying with it, accepting it, having the confidence to engage with it, and then go take on the world, right?
Amber Hurdle: Absolutely. And you know I do this not … I really don’t launch a lot of brands. A lot of times I go into an established business and talk to them because they started a business and somehow they created a brand along the way because people are going to have an opinion about you whether or not you tell them what it should be. And I come in to help them clarify, “Okay, given the data that we have, given that here’s where you’re really making your money, this is what people respond to when you’ve marketed before. Who are you? What is your brand’s story? What is your brand’s promise? What should customers expect from an experience with you?” And then we start going down the path of that brand clarity and I do that for one person businesses and I do that for international brands from the inside out going in and saying, “Okay-
Allan Blackwell: Your 20 Minute Podcast with David Brower has been brought to you by Audile. You can listen to any of David’s podcasts anywhere podcasts can be found including iHeart Radio, the Spotify mobile app, and at DavidBrowerVO.com/Your20MinutePodcast. Until next time, thanks for listening.
Amber Hurdle: -here’s your brand, but for some reason the customer experience isn’t working or your employees aren’t really happy about what goes on in the brand. So it still needs that clarity. What is it that you do? How do you do it uniquely?”
David Brower: And the employees have to identify, embrace, understand and be loyal to that brand.
Amber Hurdle: Yeah. They have to help you lift the brand. They can’t live out your brand experience. Your customers are not going to receive a consistent brand experience and now your brand is going down the toilet.
David Brower: That’s part one of our interview with Amber Hurdle. Yep. Wow.
Amber Hurdle: It’s critical at every level.
David Brower: And it’s not complicated. It’s not brain surgery. It’s just being consistent.
Amber Hurdle: And it’s really slowing down from the operational elements. At the end of the day, big businesses are focused on their P&Ls and what their strategic goals are and the small businesses are just trying to get through the day and make it to soccer practice afterwards and somehow get their taxes to their accountants by midnight or whatever that looks like.
David Brower: Whatever that looks like. Yeah.
Amber Hurdle: You might want to put this on the back burner because it’s not both urgent and important. It’s just important. But my challenge is that it becomes urgent when you start to see these hiccups and your consistency decreases and then suddenly you’re going to be in a world of hurt because you’re not able to perform at the level that you expected to when you started your business.
David Brower: So if your customer base is not enjoying that full experience that you expect them to, that’s where the urgency comes in, right? You got to figure out where those hiccups are and address those.
Amber Hurdle: Yeah. I mean you pay now or you pay later. That money, that time.
David Brower: Right. That’s right.
Amber Hurdle: It’s like where are those priorities? And at the end of the day, I tell my clients all the time, “I can’t care more than you care. I can’t care more than you care. And your customers can’t care more than you care. So if you want your brand to be as powerful as you dreamed about when you thought, ‘I’m going to start my own business,’ then you have to care the most about protecting that brand and every day is an exercise of protecting your reputation as a business.”
David Brower: Wow. Absolutely right. And not to the point of being paranoid about it, but just to the point of embracing it, being confident, and going forward in a positive confident way.
Amber Hurdle: Yeah. Think about it. Every day, I protect the integrity of my family.
David Brower: Yes.
Amber Hurdle: I don’t like warrior up and put a battle helmet on and go out there and worry about how the world is going to attack my family that day. But as a parent, every day I wake up and I protect the integrity of my family. That could be financially, that could be with relationships, that could be with wisdom. And it’s the same for your business and your business family and your employees that are depending on you to sustain their own lives and their own families.
David Brower: Absolutely. I mean at the end of the day, to me any way, it feels like it rolls down to being authentic, having integrity, and being consistent with your brand and then that helps the pieces kind of fall together the way they need to. Is that fair?
Amber Hurdle: Yeah. Totally fair. And I like that you brought up the issue of integrity. That’s a huge, huge value of mine. Probably the top one. And I want to say this too because I actually was dealing with this this week with a client. When somebody else’s integrity does not measure up to your expectation of integrity, it is still incumbent upon you to uphold your brand and your brand promise and your brand’s values and how you do business and to not react or stoop to whatever it is somebody else did because without battling that person, their brand will suffer because that kind of stuff comes out.
And so back to the confidence piece of just standing clear and who you are and what you’re about, when you are that confident in what you offer to your customers, to your employees, and to your community, when you’re that confident, you don’t have to get in low brow boxing matches. You just don’t.
David Brower: Right. To me, integrity’s everything. It really is because I want to wake up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror, poor guy, and feel like, “Hey, I’m in a good place. Let’s go do some business or let’s go walk the dog or let’s go play with the grandkids,” or whatever that is. Just be thoughtful, and consistent, and passionate about it and hold onto that brand. Integrity in family, I love that. I’m all crazy about that.
On your website, you have access to worksheets and tools that are mentioned in the book. You’ve got an exclusive book club. You’ve got daily devotional and daily affirmations available and people could just get right into the bombshellbusinesswomen.com site and just really find a whole bunch of stuff that will entice you virtually immediately to order that book and start building your brand and understanding what you’re talking about.
Amber Hurdle: Yeah. Absolutely. And the book covers so much. It’s really one of those books that you probably need to read through once and then get down on each chapter and focus on that and know that it’s not going to … you’re not going to get through this overnight. Some of my bombshells referred to it as a manual. But I just want to point out … and it’s fun thought. It’s not a hard read. It’s not going to be this and this and that and that. I mean I definitely tell stories and my personality is weaved all throughout the book because nobody wants to read a yawner. But it begins with my story because I believe that if i tell my story of going from a teen mom to a powerhouse business woman then no matter what’s going on in another woman’s life, she can believe that she can do it too.
David Brower: Absolutely.
Amber Hurdle: So we eliminate excuses right away. But then we get into things like following your breadcrumbs. Like what have you consistently been good at all throughout your life? Not even necessarily what positions have you held, but what have you been attracted to inherently, we’ll talk about that. We talk about … I would just redefine some terms. None of us are Harvard graduate MBAs. That’s not our world and so how can we talk about business in a way that’s a little bit more relatable to our common language? We talk about your personal brand or business brand. We talk about goal setting and creating that ideal customer profile. We talk about networking and customer service and when you’re ready to hire a team, what does that look like? How do you hire somebody without taking a big risk of them not being the right fit? We talk about technology. We talk about time strategy because I think time management is a farce. But all of those things, it sounds like all these separate ideas but my truth is all of those things impact your brand and the trust that people have in your brand because if-
David Brower: The customer experience.
Amber Hurdle: -your systems aren’t in place … Yes. All this stuff matters.
David Brower: As you just said a few moments ago, this is not a book. This is a handbook and it’s something that you need to not only spend time with over and over again, but really spend time with and reach out to you to help get some answers to questions that come up.
Amber Hurdle: Yeah. And I support it through my podcast as well so this particular audience of mine, my bombshells, they get a little more free attention or affordable attention but at the end of the day, and I kind of giggled and laughed the whole time I was doing this like, “I’m giving away the farm. I’m giving away so much information in this.” But the reality is the woman who’s ready to super focus on a specific area that she knows she’s missing or she just can’t get to on her own, that’s the woman who’s going to call me and say, “Okay. I’ve read the book. I’ve done most of the work. I need to go deeper and I need support.” And that person is going to need my one on one attention because she simply doesn’t have time to do the do it yourself approach.
David Brower: She’s ready. She’s in a place to go, “Okay. I’m ready. Let’s go.”
Amber Hurdle: I see the value. I see how this is going to transform things.
David Brower: What a gift you … I can’t believe we’re out of time already. But what a gift. I love talking with you. I love your passion. I love your energy. I love what you’re doing with your book. Your heart is amazing. And to take people to places they’ve only imagined is amazing pay off for you. And money aside, all the benefits you get from feedback, from letters, emails, phone calls, all that kind of stuff just has to enrich your life.
Amber Hurdle: Oh, this is so fun and so rewarding to be connected to other women who believe the things about life that I believe. And I couldn’t be any more grateful for the community that has embraced me.
David Brower: Awesome. Amber Hurdle. Author and living the handbook of the Bombshell Business Woman. She walks the walk. She talks the talk. And she will help get you where you’ve never imagined, there’s not doubt about that. Go to thebombshellbusinesswoman.com. You can read about her. You can order the book. You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, LinkedIn. All those good places. Amber, what a treat. What a real thrill to talk with you today. Continued success.
Amber Hurdle: Thank you so much, David. The privilege to speak with you.
Allan Blackwell: Your 20 Minute Podcast with David Brower has been brought to you be Audible. You can listen to any of David’s podcast anywhere podcasts can be found including iHeart Radio, the Spotify mobile app, and at DavidBrowerVO.com/Your20MinutePodcast. Until next time, thanks for listening.