How To Create An Authentic Personal Brand Without The Struggle | Digital Brand Strategist

How To Create An Authentic Personal Brand | Without The Struggle | Jess Jensen Transcripts

[Roger Kastner]

Today’s guest, Jess Jensen is a Digital Brand expert and she’s sharing what it takes to re-write our personal brands and how to tell our new stories out into the world and on social media in ways that are authentic, consistent, and aligned with our core values and purpose.

Whether it’s interviewing for a new job, asking for a promotion, creating credibility within an organization, or getting to understand who we are and what we stand for, our ability to craft our personal brand and tell our story feels as important as ever.

With social media and increased competition in the workplace, our ability to know who we are and articulate that clearly and consistently, and with authenticity and authority, could be the difference between a promotion and being passed over.

And then there’s also the stories that we  have playing in our heads about who we are and who we are not. What we can do and what we cannot. And between what’s possible and what’s impossible.

In both cases, that public personal brand story and the private story that drives our perspectives and decisions, we have the power to re-write those stories that no longer serve us.

Hi, I’m Roger Kastner and welcome to the What Do You Know To Be True? podcast. I’m glad you are here.

Let’s dive in.

Hey Jess, thank you for joining me today. I'm grateful for the conversation we're about to have.

[Jess Jensen]

Yeah, happy to be here.

[Roger]

I'm excited to learn more about your superpower of pulling out people's stories. But before we get too far, what's important for us to know about Jess Jensen?

[Jess]

I am the founder of Copilot Communications. That's a relatively new endeavor. I launched it in 2024.

Prior to that, I have been in corporate environments for about 20 years, leading digital marketing, social media, and kind of the last five years really doubling down on executive communications for brands like Nestle, Adidas, Qualcomm, and Microsoft. Through that work, I realized that I do have a bit of a superpower around pulling out the stories in people. And sometimes they don't see it themselves.

Often they don't see it themselves, which makes sense, right? You sometimes need outside eyes to sort of bring the pieces together and see those red threads through people's professional and personal lives. And so I love the work I do now with Copilot Communications where I get to shape those stories, often in places like LinkedIn, right?

So often in video, written word, visuals on digital platforms, but it elevates their professional brand, their personal platform in a way that's still very germane and authentic and true to them. And it's really important to me that the work we do sounds like them, which hasn't always been the case with a lot of C-suite and founders historically. It's also of service, not just to them as an individual, but often very much to their company, right?

Because people inherently trust and want to follow people much more so than brands. And I can say that because I've worked in both arenas, right? On the brand building side for companies and now on the people platform side with executives.

The idea of getting to work with executives to help them build trust, credibility, authority, but in a very natural, organic way online is a gift.

[Roger]

Lovely. And I instantly, in that description, it made me think a little bit about that tension between a company brand and a personal brand. And I see that tension.

I see that tension for the individual, but I also see it a little maybe for the company, that the company might want to have its brand out there and maybe see individuals having their own brand as potentially a little bit of a threat or a risk. Do you come across that in your work?

[Jess]

For sure. And I want to answer that in a couple of different ways. When we think about influencer marketing, which has become such a buzzy word, right?

But let's just go back 15, 20, 25 years even, pre even social media. Celebrities and athletes often were some of the earlier people to sort of build these influencer brands. We just didn't have that language for it back then.

In fact, I'll share a quick story. In September, I had the opportunity to go to Louisville, Kentucky for the first time. I'd never been there.

I went on a lovely bike ride and got to taste some delicious bourbon and also went to the Muhammad Ali Museum because he's from Louisville originally. So I of course know who Muhammad Ali is, but I didn't know all of the depth of all the different aspects of his childhood and his early years. And when you really look at Muhammad Ali, he was a quintessential influencer.

It was just back in the 60s, right? When we didn't have the digital platforms we have, we couldn't amplify as fast as we can today. We certainly didn't have, again, vocabulary for it, but he befriended the press.

He had taglines that he'd use for himself. He was highly confident and courageous, and he was really willing to stand up, especially later on in his career, stand up for his values and his belief systems, and people followed him. Fast forward to today, there's obviously a whole influencer economy where people are doing that on purpose.

It's very much a created platform. But to your point, there's a risk, certainly on both sides of the house, there's a risk for a brand to associate itself with a influencer, whether that's like a Muhammad Ali, an athlete, a celebrity, a musician, because of course, those folks are people, and they might make a bad decision, right? They might make a mistake.

They might say the wrong thing in the wrong environment, and then that now is coupled with the brand. So the brand has to figure out what to do about that. So when I was at Adidas, we did a lot of partnerships, as you can imagine, with both athletes, but also skateboarders, musicians, artists.

I was on the lifestyle side of the house, so we were very deep in that space. And it was after my time, but you may remember there was sort of a flurry of activity around the relationship between Kanye West and some of the decisions he was making and public statements, and his deep affiliation with Adidas. And that caused quite a bit of heartache.

They had to stop producing part of the footwear line that was associated with him, and it was a big expense for the company. So I mean, we've all been exposed to those moments where a brand takes a risk by associating themselves with a celebrity or influencer, and that individual maybe makes choices that are not necessarily ones the brand wants to be affiliated with. On the flip side, there's the notion I think you were referencing, which is if an individual only associates themselves with a company, right, their whole public brand, especially their professional brand, is deeply associated with a certain company, well, what happens when they leave that company?

And we know that in our generation, and certainly millennial and will be the case of Gen Z, we're not staying at companies for the most part for 20, 25, 30 years. There's a few people that do, but it's rare. And so when we're jumping from company to company every five to 10 years, our careers are long, right, and our lives are even longer.

And so don't we want to present a public platform or a brand that includes our company, includes our industry and our expertise, but is much broader and more robust than just that one narrow affiliation?

[Roger]

I'm curious, based on the work that you've done with individuals, why have you found it to be difficult for most people to be able to craft their own personal brand?

[Jess]

Yeah, well, certainly it takes intellectual work, right? You've got to pause, you've got to, you know, put the phone down, stop the scrolling. It's so easy to consume, and it's so much harder to create.

So we have to first just pause, and then we have to, you know, maybe get a laptop or get a pen and paper or whatever your, you know, whatever your format might be, and ask ourselves some tough questions, right? What are the core values that I stand for and that I want to publicly stand for? How do I exhibit those values in the actions, the statements, the companies, the roles, right?

How do I actually evidence those? I can say that integrity is an important value of mine, but how do I actually evidence that in my life? And then we want to think about who are the audiences that we're trying to attract.

We're all trying to attract somebody, right? And for me now as a business owner, right, I might want to attract potential relationships that might become prospects that might eventually become clients, and I want them to be a certain kind of person. And so when I think about my content creation now, I think about it much more strategically.

Who am I going to attract with this type of content? Who's going to be drawn to me? And in and of itself, that's a filtering mechanism, right?

But if you're working inside of a corporation, you might say, well, I'm not trying to get clients. I don't run my own thing, so who am I trying to attract? Well, it could be that it's potential headhunters or recruiters for whatever might come down the road, because like we talked about, people don't stay for 20, 30 years.

It could be partners that maybe you want to do a collaboration with. There's loads, obviously loads of partnerships that happen all the time across companies. It could be that maybe you enjoy speaking.

You want to get up on stages and talk about your areas of expertise. So you want event planners and conference makers and sort of thought leaders to see you. And as a student, I just got back from a speakership at Harvard, which I was so blessed to get to have that opportunity to be part of.

And here I was with a bunch of college students, these super bright, aspiring women that want to go into business roles. And they're thinking about this too. Who do they want to attract?

Is there finishing out their undergraduate work? Is it investors for an idea they want funded? Is it maybe a research partner?

They want to go deep on some research they're working on. So I think asking yourself, what do I stand for? How do I evidence those values in my day-to-day life?

And then what are the audiences that I want to attract to me when I start to actually create content?

[Roger]

That's beginning to sound like a framework, or maybe at least the upfront questions that help, almost like guiding principles for creating your own personal brand. Do you have a framework that you use with individuals to help them build their brand and tell their story?

[Jess]

I do. I do. And I can share a loose architecture for that.

And frankly, again, having worked for so many years on the brand side, building brands, building a digital presence for companies, there's a lot of crossover, right? The Venn diagram is tight between building a personal brand or professional brand for a person of one versus building a brand for a company. In some ways, it's actually easier to do it as an individual because it's just you.

And you're the captain of your own ship. You can decide these answers. Versus in a corporate setting, you obviously have to get a lot of buy-in left to right.

You've got to have a lot of checks and balances before you put anything out publicly. The framework that I like to use with my clients now, and again, is rooted in a lot of that background I have from being inside of those companies we talked about, is number one, define your audience of one. So I talked earlier about who are you trying to attract?

And when I say define your audience of one, I steal that from the famed marketer, Seth Godin. So he gets the credit. But it's that discipline, that sort of filtering that you need to do to say, it's not everybody, certainly.

And you can't even say something as broad as it's hiring managers in the tech industry. Well, gosh, that's still thousands and thousands of people. So really dig in.

Really ask yourself, if I was to paint a picture, where does this person live? How old are they? What are their interests?

How busy are they? How many things are on their plate? What kinds of attributes are they looking for in X?

Try to define that audience of one because when you go to start creating content, the more you have that picture in your mind, the easier it is to speak to them like they're a human. And that content lands when you're speaking to a human, not a big audience. Number two, we talked about knowing your values.

So clarifying what you stand for. And often, when we do this, when we do this work together with a client, it's framed in a narrative platform. And so that's kind of just a fancy way of saying, let's pick three themes or topic areas, because three is a nice number.

It's manageable, but it's still interesting. It's not too big, not too small. Three topic areas that are rooted in things that you naturally stand for.

So one of the ones that we talk about a lot with executives is the style of leadership. Servant leadership is an example where not everybody ascribes to that. That's not everyone's jam.

But for many, it is. And when you really dig into like the nine tenets of servant leadership, and you start kind of reading that out loud to them, they might not have had the language, but then they hear it and they're like, yeah, that's me. That's me.

That's me. Number three, we want to go into beginning to create content and experimenting. And this is one of the things I look for in clients is I want them to be open to experimentation.

Perfection is the enemy of progress, as they say. And so I want us to always be trying new things and knowing that it's not going to always work. And that's OK, because we learn from it.

We get better from it. And then we keep moving. We keep chugging.

That's the beauty of digital, too. If something goes really left, we can delete it. Just pull it off.

It's rare that happens anyway. So begin creating content that actually sounds like you. It's not polished fluff.

It's not PR jargon. It's actually your voice because that's going to land. People are going to feel the authenticity come through and they're going to you're going to be relatable.

You're going to be likable. They're going to build trust with you. And then the last two of the five step framework number four is really this idea of baby steps and mastering one platform.

So, again, LinkedIn is often the entry point for a lot of my clients, which is logical given the audience there. Let's get really good at that. And then once we've really dialed that in, we've got a rhythm, we know our audience, we're good at responding to comments.

We understand the back end tools, all that goodness. Then we can add whatever, an email newsletter or a blog on Substack or Instagram, whatever else makes sense for your business or your platform. But let's get good at one versus peanut buttering across a bunch from the very beginning.

And then the last one is really, again, I'll give credit to Gary Vee for saying the relationships are built in the comments. And so we know in all social platforms and all long form blogging, right, comments, YouTube video, all that, comments are king, right? And so the more that we spend time, now that we're publishing, now that we know what we stand for, now that we're on a platform, we're going to start to get feedback.

And the more that we spend time in those comments, responding, listening, looking for patterns, shining a light on other people. As an example, if someone is repeatedly commenting on my posts, and it's not someone that I necessarily have a close relationship with, I'm going to go over and DM them and just say, hey, thanks. Thanks for being present and actually paying attention to what I'm putting out there.

I see you. And, and that's it. There's no other ask.

It's just I noticed and thank you for taking the time to do that. So really leveraging the comments as a place to forge relationship at a more like intimate kind of one on one level.

[Roger]

One of the things that stood out in that framework is this idea of experimentation. And rather than just cranking out the same content time and time again, I love the idea of experimenting to be able to find, you know, could could something land even better? Could you what I what came to mind for me is could I discover something different about how I'm looking at my own brand and how I want to represent that?

And are there are there ways to show up that's authentic to you that lands with people? And are there ways to show up that's authentic to you that doesn't land with people? And for a little while, there's this idea of bringing our full selves to work and being 100% authentic.

And I think that the pendulum is kind of coming back to the middle on that one. A friend of mine, Tash Durkin said, you know, like, you're not going to be everyone's cup of tea for so maybe being 100% authentic in every thing you do, and especially in how you tell your story, you know, might not might not work out. So that's, this is where experimentation makes a lot of sense to me.

[Jess]

Yeah, and, and I agree. And I think I am always slightly chameleon-ing myself into the environment I'm in. And I think most of us do that.

You might not even know, it might be subconscious, right? Could be everything from the way that you dress, the way that you speak, the topics that you bring up, like you're going to bring up different topics over Thanksgiving dinner with your broad family and, you know, larger group than you would in like a one on one coffee chat with someone that you just met, you know, at an event, like, I think we all know to sort of package and filter to some degree.

So certainly, I would never advise my client to share everything all the time to everyone, right? That's just, that's not even a strategy. It's just like a spray and pray scenario.

That's not a good strategy. What I would say is that I think what the pandemic gave us, I really believe this is, I think that especially that the years of 2020 and 2021, when all of us, many of us were working from home, you know, if we weren't like a first responder frontline worker, right, we were working from home. Everyone was seeing the cats and the dogs and the kids and, you know, the juggling of life, all of a sudden, that all came to the forefront.

And I can see in your face, you can relate, you probably remember. And so I think we, yes, now there's this big pull to return to work, come back to the office. But I don't think that we can forget what we saw.

We can't unsee what we saw. Right? And I love it.

I'm here for it. Because I think it's actually a ridiculous situation to fully compartmentalize. This is the Jess at work.

And this is a totally different Jess at home. Like, I think it's kind of bullshit. Like, I'm not 100% the same, but there's a lot of crossover in the middle.

And so the gift I think of the pandemic is that it gave a lot of us the permission to be more of who we are at home at work, and maybe even more. I mean, I bring things from my work into my personal life, too, for sure. I certainly apply it to how I parent.

Ask my 16-year-old daughter, who I've taught all about time blocking. I think it's a really lovely thing that leaders are now more able than ever to come to the forefront of, again, a public-facing platform like LinkedIn, and speak about their kids, speak about their interest in hiking or kayaking, talk about challenges they faced earlier in their career, and how they overcame them, and how it's made them a better leader today. Like, I think people really are hungry for that kind of transparency and authenticity.

And it ultimately pays off because it builds trust with that leader, and that cascades to their companies and their divisions.

[Roger]

Mm-hmm. Great response. I love it when people, when we're having these virtual conversations, I love it when people don't put the fake background on.

It's great to see where they live and get to see, you know, when the cat jumps up on the desk. But just as we're talking about, maybe not 100%, you know, when you see your boss's wife walk in the background in a bikini, it's like, hmm.

[Jess]

Right. What's going on there?

[Roger]

Yeah, yeah. So who or what inspired you to have the superhero power of pulling out people's stories?

[Jess]

I'll share that when I was a kid, we moved around quite a bit. I think I went to eight or nine schools before I got to high school. So it wasn't because we were in the military.

That was the first question that I get, which makes a lot of sense. But no, I wish it was that easy. It was, I think, just a combination of, you know, some struggles with landing and holding jobs over the years.

My mom went back to college when I was in elementary school. So that kind of temporarily disrupted, you know, things for a couple of years to finish her degree. And, and my parents were hippies, you know, so early, especially early on, I would say through the 80s.

You know, I had maybe more of a non traditional kind of family structure. I mean, I had a mom, dad, brother, but like, you know, there was a lot of cousins and family sort of weaving in and out of our lives, probably a little more transiency, you know, moving around again, and the average kid, my parents had me relatively young at 23 and 25. And so again, I think they were still figuring out who they were and what they wanted.

You know, they were still so young when when we were born. So all that to be said, because of moving around a bit, I think I got pretty good at asking questions. And being curious, right, I was the new kid again, and again, and again, which is so hard.

I can't tell you like it at the time, especially as you get older, it's harder and harder. But you learn some some strategies, right? You learn to be curious, you learn to be open, you, you learn to sort of be of service, because you recognize, I'm entering, I'm the new one, I'm entering an existing ecosystem, they already have all their friend groups, and you know, their habits, and I need to kind of fit into that, at least in the beginning.

And then eventually, maybe I can steer things, but I have to start off really being a listener. And then I think I've always been very curious. I don't know, I don't know where that comes from.

I just have always been very curious. I feel like whenever I meet people at parties or dinners, I love hearing more from them than speaking, because I always learn something. And it's amazing how those little nuggets, you don't know in the moment, but it's like you bank them.

And then almost every time within a couple of months, I'll be in some other totally different scenario. And I'll remember that conversation, it will come back up. And it will be accretive to what we're talking about now.

And so it's like there, it's a data points that sort of you don't know what the data is saying quite yet, but you keep collecting and collecting. So all that to be said, I think that's led me to a place where now I'm comfortable working with very seasoned leaders, and I'm comfortable asking questions, and I'm comfortable sometimes getting a little personal with them, because this does become personal work. To draw out those threads, those, you know, those maybe those things that they don't talk about, like in their board meetings or their QBRs, right, but they're still inside of them.

And then figure out how do we take that and package it so that it's part of a bigger story about you, and again, ultimately shapes how you're leading this company.

[Roger]

So there's been a few guests who've been on in these conversations who have had a similar experience where they moved around a lot when they were young, eight, nine, 10 times, you know, up through high school, and I'm one of those. I also had a very similar experience. My parents weren't hippies.

They were the opposite of hippies. Sometimes I wish maybe they were a little bit more hippie-like, but, you know, we don't get to choose our parents. But we also moved quite a bit.

And, you know, what's interesting to hear, people's different reactions to it. So you got curious. I went to a place of, like, how do I prove my value?

How do I prove my worth? In addition to moving around a lot, I had a speech impediment where I couldn't pronounce my R's. So I'm not only the new kid, but I'm also the new kid who couldn't say his own name.

And maybe that's a little bit why I went into, okay, how do I prove myself? I also had an older brother who took out his frustration of moving around a little bit by enjoying the, you know, beat up on me. And my brother and I, you know, love each other, and we get along really well.

Anyway, it's just interesting to see the different reactions. So there's definitely, part of that's probably nurture, and probably some of it's nature. But these early stories matter to us.

Yeah, they really do have an imprint on who, you know, how we have we navigated life to this point. I think it's also indicative of where our superpower comes from. And, you know, it's also how we tell the stories of who we are today ties back to that early development and the, whether their scripts or whether their powers, they're, they're there, they're present.

[Jess]

Yeah. Yeah, well, and I think I think for a lot of us, I don't know if you feel this way, but maybe some of your past guests have discussed this as well, like that, the things that maybe when we were younger, we, we wanted to sort of hide or fix or change. Maybe we felt some level of shame or embarrassment or whatever about it.

It's funny how, as you become an adult, that almost always those become the, the fuel for your superpower. That's, that's where you really excel.

[Roger]

Oh, I love that. I have another friend who would like to say, if you're in an organization that says you're too much of something, if that's the message you get. No, that's, that's your value.

You're just in the wrong place.

[Jess]

Yeah. Yeah. I completely agree with that.

But it takes some, you know, when you're in your 20s, like it's hard, you just want to assimilate. Most of us do, right? Most of us.

So, and maybe that's, you know, how we're socialized and that's a whole separate conversation to have. But I think most of us want to fit in and be similar. And so I really think it takes some, some seasoning to get to a point where you can say that thing that someone said I was too much, that, you know, that this just isn't the right place.

It doesn't mean that I'm broken. It means this, this strength, this intensity needs to be put to work in a different environment.

[Roger]

So Jess, what do you know to be true about your superpower of pulling out people's stories?

[Jess]

That everybody has one. And I mean, some are certainly more dynamic and, you know, robust than others, just based on what they've done and where they've, where they've traveled and lived and experienced, but everybody has a story. Unfortunately, the word storytelling is kind of almost like the word authenticity.

It's gotten like hijacked. And I think it's now so overused. I'm reluctant to even use it.

But if we kind of can rewind the clocks a little bit, maybe 10 years ago, like the, the notion of storytelling is so paramount to the marketing and communication space that I've, I've certainly spent my career in. And it's certainly a skill that is beneficial for anyone in any setting, being a good storyteller. I feel like that should be a required class in high school, right?

Like the hero's journey. Let's just spend two weeks on the hero's journey, right? Why is that an architecture for storytelling that we as a society go back to again and again and again?

And obviously there's other frameworks too, but like the notion of being able to set up characters, develop them, have empathy for them, right? Have them have a challenge they have to solve. That whole notion of beginning, middle, and end.

And how do you, how do you create that in just your ability to share things in everyday environments, whether you're again at a dinner party or you're at a networking event, or obviously if you're up on stage, certainly you want to be able to do that. It's a, it's a skill that a lot of us were never taught. So unless we had parents that just were really good at it and we had models at home to watch.

Jess Jensen Audio 2

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[Jess]

So I think that helping people as a partner, as a co-pilot, to find those moments and then weave them together again in a coherent frame is fun. And I think it's also gratifying for them, right? They sometimes have a little moment of aha, like I've never thought about it like that, but now I'm going to use that.

So I love that part of the work.

[Roger]

I love how you threw in co-pilot in there. It's such a good name.

[Jess]

Thank you.

[Roger]

How's the cease and desist letter going with Microsoft? Have you got them to change their product name? Because that's not cool on their part.

[Jess]

I will tell a funny story about the name because I do get asked about it. To be really frank, when I was coming up with the name, I didn't know about Microsoft co-pilot. And here's how I found out, this is comical.

So I went to a Costco. I'm going through the beginning, it's all the electronic section on the upfront, right? You got to get through that to get back to the muffins and the salmon and all the good things.

And I see this big point of sale display, and it's the collaboration between Microsoft and Qualcomm. So two of my former employers. And it's for the co-pilot plus Snapdragon PC.

So Snapdragon is the chip, right? Co-pilot, the AI platform. And it was the first time, I stopped because I saw Snapdragon and I was like, yes, Qualcomm, so happy for you.

Look at you showing up in a Costco on a point of sale. It's hard once you even leave a company, I feel like you're still an alumni and you're always rooting for them. And so it caught my eye because it was both Microsoft and Qualcomm together.

And then I saw the co-pilot logo and I'm like, oh, that's a thing. So I did searches on the US trademark and patent website to say how many other co-pilot companies? There's actually like hundreds, believe it or not.

There's hundreds of companies with that word co-pilot. And I debated, and then I thought, you know what? I just love it.

I love what it stands for. I love the C and the C, the co-pilot communications alliteration. And I'm like, I'm just going to go for it.

I'm just going to take the risk. Microsoft's never going to even know about me. They won't care until they hear this podcast.

[Roger]

Well, I mean, I think you came out with it first. So there's something about, well, between the two of you, right? As you mentioned, there's probably hundreds of other companies, but I love that you're standing firm, that you want to keep that name because of what it means to you.

[Jess]

That's powerful. Well, thank you. And I mean, I really do believe it describes the role that I play.

I don't need to be the captain. I love the idea of being a co-pilot, right? Where I'm a partner, I'm an influencer, I'm somebody who is helping, again, pull things out and sort of reassemble them in a different way.

And so I hope that my clients see me as a co-pilot too. I mean, that's the whole idea.

[Roger]

So Jess, what did you believe early on about your superpower that you've come to learn not to be true?

[Jess]

Well, I think that the way that you help pull up stories from others is by being curious and asking a lot of questions. I think there was a time when I was when I may have thought you ask too much, right? You need to, again, you need to sort of stand down a bit.

And I think what it comes down to, again, is nuance, right? Like knowing the time and the place. What's the right question?

I remember definitely when I was younger, I would ask questions, not always thinking about the second or third knock-on consequences of those questions. And I had totally just chalked this up to just immaturity. When you're, again, 18, 19, 20, you don't always...

Like I remember, I'll give you an example. When I was just out of college, I spent some time on the agency side before I went to the brand side. I remember we had a winery that was one of our clients and we got very close with them.

We were out there at their winery. We would help them at events. We were almost in their business with them.

And I loved the whole environment. I got to know them pretty well. And one time we had all been working all day to set something up for a big concert and they invited us to stay for dinner at their house.

So we were all having wine as you do at a winery and hanging out. It was like 15 of us. And I remember asking, it was a husband and wife that started the winery.

And we were asking her, how come we didn't have any kids? And I just, I was 22. It didn't even occur to me her answer of course was, well, we wanted to, but it just didn't work out.

And I still, as you can tell, I still carry that. I'm embarrassed about it, but I just didn't even know. It wasn't even in my zeitgeist at 22 that people couldn't have kids.

I just assumed, of course, you know, when you want to, you do. It's stuff like that where I think over time, I got more mature and I realized, you know, think, pause for a beat and think about, if you ask this question, could it put someone in kind of a sort of a compromised scenario if they answer in a certain way? And so is it worth it?

Is it worth asking that question? Maybe not.

[Roger]

What's coming through for me is that you use the word immaturity, but almost like a purity. Like you were coming from pure curiosity and now you're applying wisdom to understand, oh, like how might this question land? What might be the answer?

Is this the right forum to ask that question? So I love that. And I love, you're painting pictures today, and I don't know if you mean to, when you were talking about the Snapdragon and co-pilot display in Costco, I immediately got the, you know, like the famous film footage of like tight close up on your mouth, just going, no, and having it echo, echo throughout the warehouse.

And then here, when you're talking about, you're in the back of your, you know, your high school classes, you're in the back of the classes, yet you're asking all the questions. And my experience being in the back of many classrooms, the people who asked all the questions were the ones in the front and I was always annoyed by them, but they were the always one. They were the people who always got the A's on the test.

And I love this like juxtaposition of like, no, you're hanging with the cool kids, but you're asking the questions. Great, great little vignettes. And although they might be, you know, completely manufactured in my mind, I love that.

And I also, in your responses, I'm hearing this, there's like the difference between telling stories and a narrative. Like that narrative is the through line that continues with you, whereas stories have a beginning, middle and end. And, you know, we can tell stories that have a point, but our narrative about who we are, why we do what we do and what we're, what goodness we're trying to do in the world, that's a narrative that should stand out in all those stories.

[Jess]

Yeah. Well, and I'm glad you used that word narrative because again, that's another one of those words that's gotten really picked up on the last couple of years. I think one of the things that I've learned to do over again, like the last five or 10 years is to sort of try to separate myself from the narrative that I've written about myself.

Because it is a narrative, right? It's what I've just decided. There's always, there's the facts, like, you know, you went to this school, you lived in this city, or you married this person, there's facts, but then there's a lot of layers on top of that, of the narrative, right?

The story that you've written. And I've got a good friend, Julia, who is a coach, and she's just one of my favorite, favorite people, a mentor and former coworker at Microsoft. And one of the things that she will say to her clients, and to me, when I'm, you know, this and this, and this is, and I have this whole story I've written, is she'll say something so simple, which is, but what if it wasn't?

[Roger]

Right. I love that.

[Jess]

Right? Like, it gives me the chills just to say it. And so I don't use that.

I'm not that kind of partner or coach. I'm not using that language with my clients. But I, but I think about that.

I think about how heavy the stories that we've written about ourselves can be, and how much we can carry, that if we just chose to rewrite it, even just 10%. Right? What if it wasn't that story?

That's a powerful reframe that it's all intellectual, right? It doesn't take any money. It's just intellectually deciding.

Maybe, maybe I didn't ask too many questions.

[Roger]

Jess, what's next for you and your superpower of pulling out people's stories?

[Jess]

You know, my business is only about a year and a half old, and I am already getting to work with some really interesting and dynamic clients. Being that so much of my background is in the tech industry, and even more recently in kind of deep B2B tech, I think I'm going to be able to put that to use in the next 6 to 12 months, where I'm going to get to work with some folks that I think come from those deep engineering technical backgrounds. In my experience, those are sometimes the ripest to mine for stories, because that isn't always their inherent inclination.

They often are very data driven, very logical, very fact-based, and I love all that. All good. But I think it's going to be fun over the next year to get to work with some of these folks to help them find those red threads, and how we weave in who they are as a person.

How did you ever get into this industry in the first place? Whatever inspired you to study that thing, and bring that forward into their storytelling for their service of their company and for their own platform. So I hope that that work is fruitful and interesting over the next 6 to 12 months.

[Roger]

Jess, are you ready for the lightning round?

[Jess]

Okay, let's do it.

[Roger]

Fill in the blank. Pulling out people's stories is...

[Jess]

Challenging.

[Roger]

Who in your life helps you pull out your story?

[Jess]

My husband.

[Roger]

Is there a practice or routine that helps you grow, nurture, or renew your ability to help pull out people's stories?

[Jess]

I am a cyclist, and both outdoor in the summer, indoor in the winter. So I would say breaking a sweat helps me be my best self during the day, for sure.

[Roger]

Is there a book or movie you recently read or watched that you would recommend that has pulling out people's stories as a theme?

[Jess]

I am right now reading a book by Stanley Tucci. Maybe you know him. He's an actor, and also a chef or aspiring chef.

And this book in particular is about his Italian heritage, growing up in New York, but family all in Italy. And it's a really lovely kind of melding of quite literal recipes from his childhood, but also the stories behind food, which my husband and I are also, we love to go and eat good food, and he's a good cook himself. So I think there's a ton of story in food.

So I like the combination that Stanley Tucci is sort of weaving of the practical recipes, but then the stories of his childhood, and even his grandparents, and why those recipes are so meaningful.

[Roger]

What's one thing that gets in your way of pulling out people's stories?

[Jess]

I think getting them to give me their full attention. And we all struggle with that, right? There's so, so many distractions, so many distractions.

And so if the time we have is shoehorned in, and they've got four meetings before, and four meetings after, and slack is lighting up, right? We can make progress, but it's slower. Versus if I can get their undivided attention, even just for 30 minutes, I can often get them to sort of drop their shoulders, take a breath, and really give me the material that I need to help them articulate, and speak, and write in ways down the road that will benefit them.

[Roger]

If an audience member wanted to ask you a question, or follow you, where would you want to point them to?

[Jess]

Where I am the most active is on LinkedIn. So if you want to read my writing, hear my voice, see my photos, get to know me a little bit, I certainly have a copilot communications handle, but honestly, a lot of my work comes out of my Jessica K. Jensen.

So just my full name, Jessica K. Jensen. And then if you want to just learn more about the business, and sort of my services, what I offer, my origin story, copilotcommunications.com.

I wanted to offer something special for the listeners today. So if you would like me to do a 25-minute, no charge LinkedIn audit, I will give you my perspective, point of view, and some kind of quick hits on what you can do to begin to set up your own professional brand. All you have to do is go to copilotcommunications.com.

You'll hit that contact button, and just find time that works for you. And then just say that you heard about this on the podcast, and I will offer that through the end of February.

[Roger]

Oh, thank you. That's so generous. In fact, this is, for everyone else, this is how Jess and I met.

I had seen a post that was Julia, either reposted or commented on it. And I saw it, and I'm like, yeah, I'll sign up. And it's absolutely been so helpful in me and my sharing of my stories, and sharing of my personal brand on LinkedIn.

So it was absolutely helpful for me. So I really appreciate not only the time you invested in me, but also offering this up to the audience. So thank you.

[Jess]

You bet.

[Roger]

Jess, thank you so much for spending your morning with me. I have really, really enjoyed all of our interactions, whether it's been other calls or whether it's been on LinkedIn and in this call. Oh, my goodness.

Your strength, your wisdom, and your superpower is just on full display. And I know that's intentional as well as natural. It's who you are.

And so it's just really wonderful to be with you and to be able to enjoy your presence.

[Jess]

Thank you so much for having me, Roger. This is really a great way to start the weekend.

[Roger]

Here we go. Okay. Take care.

Bye-bye.

[Jess]

Bye.

[Roger]

Thank you all for being in this conversation with us, and thank you, Jess, for sharing your experience with your superpower and your wisdom in rewriting our personal brand.

The question I’m asking myself now after the conversation is: For that story I’m telling myself as if it’s true, what if it wasn’t? 

What Do You Know To Be True? is a Three Blue Pens production. I’m your host, Roger Kastner.

We are recording on the ancestral lands of the Duwamish and Suquamish people.

To discover the ancestral lands of the indigenous people whose land you may be on, go to native-lands.ca

Be well, my friends, and, love you, mean it!