Grace Nikae - Founder of Kizuna: Career Changes, Zooming Out, and Branding

Grace Nikae  00:00

I just want to say that in case anyone's listening who's considering a pivot, you know, something big like that. Oftentimes, it's the others around you who struggle because they like to put people into certain categories, and certain boxes, and this is how we like to understand people. But it has nothing to do with who you are. So that was kind of my big decision to walk away.

Callan Harrington  00:19

You're listening to That Worked, a show that breaks down the careers of top founders and executives, and pulls out those key items that led to their success. I'm your host, Callan Harrington, founder of Flashgrowth, and I couldn't be more excited that you're here Welcome back, everyone to another episode of That Worked. This week, I'm joined by Grace Nikae. Grace is the founder of Kizuna. Kizuna helps high performing startups, subject matter experts, and thought leaders elevate their branded content strategies across digital platforms. Prior to founding Kizuna, Grace was an international concert pianist, educator, and fiction author. To say the least, this was an incredibly interesting conversation. We talked about fostering creativity, how Grace builds brand advocates, we also dove into when to zoom in, and when to zoom out, so you don't lose sight of the grand vision. And I thought Grace gave an incredible background here. And as I mentioned earlier, Grace was an international concert pianist, educator, and a fiction author. You'll see right out of the gate, she has lived a fascinating life. And the thing that I really loved diving into the most, was learning about Grace's mindset around career changes. For anyone that has pivoted in their career before, they know just how big of a challenge it is. But on the flip side of that, I found it to be incredibly rewarding. Grace walked us through her full story. And I think it's an excellent roadmap for anyone considering a major change. So with that, let's jump into the show. Grace, I'm excited to kick this conversation off. And one of the areas that I was, when taking the look into this, that I would love to talk about is: tell me the story about the mouse and the hawk.

Grace Nikae  02:30

So this is a story that I share quite frequently when I speak in public, because it had such a profound impact on me when I first heard it. In my previous career as a concert pianist, I was very fortunate to study with Alexander Slobodyanik, who was one of the great pianists of the 20th century, and he only took on three students, and I was very fortunate to be one of them. Every lesson with him was a profound educational experience. And at one of these lessons, I was working on a work by Chopin, and after I finished, in his very typical Alexander way, he was very quiet for about a minute. And then he walked over to the window of the studio, kind of looked out very poetically out into his backyard, and then he turned to me, he said, "Gracie"- he always called me Gracie, because he was Ukrainian- "Gracie, you're not a mouse." And I remember being very startled by that. What do you mean? He goes, "you're not a mouse; you must always be the hawk." And this was the type of lessons that he would give, where it would be something so profound but stated in such a simple way. It took me many, many years to understand what he was saying that essentially, a field mouse can only see what is right in front of them. Every pebble, every stone, becomes enormous. The blades of grass, create these huge walls alongside them, and they can only see this very narrow path in front of them. A hawk however, can see the entirety of the horizon, the tops of the trees, sky, also that tiny little mouse running in the field, all at the same time. It was a lesson in being able to zoom out. And I think this is very critical in any aspect of life, personal, in business, artistic arena, creative arena. We are a culture that hyper emphasizes narrowing down, niching down, like getting so zoomed in, that all we see is just the tiniest step in front of us. We can only see one possible path forward, and we don't, I think, emphasize enough the importance of the skill of zooming out. Because when we zoom out, that's when a limitless array of possibilities open up in front of us. Oftentimes, we get so fixated on the how, how we're going to get there, that we don't pull back enough to consider the why, the greater or macro concept of what it is that we're- the vision of what it is that we're looking for. And then the how will com. The how may come in the most unexpected ways. But if you're so zoomed in that you can only see one way forward, it's is going to be very difficult sometimes to be able to realize that. It was a very important lesson. And anytime I get stuck on anything, or anytime someone's so fixated on just one way of doing things, my number one piece of advice is: have you zoomed out yet? Have you zoomed out yet to be able to consider that there may be other infinite possibilities of being able to realize what it is that you ultimately want?

Callan Harrington  05:19

So I think it's a super interesting story. And I agree with a lot of that. One of the things that I'm curious about is how do you balance zooming in versus zooming out? Right? And like, for example, I struggle with this at times. Of course, I think any early founder, because you have this ebb and flow of, I'm working mostly in the business, but then I use goal planning and things like that to zoom out, but sometimes I'll get stuck too much in one or the other. How do you strike that balance?

Grace Nikae  05:47

For me, I always think of goals as something that we dive into, as we near the finish line; meaning, I put much more emphasis on vision, the larger macro vision, that zooming out part, and then there are different possibilities to be able to realize that vision. Once you start to see, okay, now it's starting to a lot of different things are coming into place, it looks like this is the way forward, this path is the way forward. As we start to approach that sort of finish line, that's when goals come into play. That's when we zoom in and focus in on that. But I think oftentimes, because we think there's only one way to get somewhere, and we lose sight of the larger vision- by the way, this applies to so many things, right? Leadership, and culture, and internal organization, and that, so many different levels. When we don't stay aligned with the larger vision, and we get lost literally in the weeds, right, in the tactical, in this kind of goal setting, there are a lot of things that can go awry. And so I'm a big believer, and also part of my work, obviously, as a brand advisor is to really hold on to always be aware of the vision, always keep that in mind. And then you can zoom in as needed as you approach the finish line. But if you lose sight of that larger vision, at any point, then you know, the whole cohesion and sort of alignment falls apart.

Callan Harrington  07:03

When you're mentioning that these goals are very close to the finish line. Do you have a process on how you're doing this? Like, to get more granular on that, is this similar to the OKR format, for example? OKRs, you've got objectives, and the objectives are a- those are typically a general direction, those are the KPIs, those are very specific, that this general direction we want to go to. And then the K, those key performance indicators, this is how do we objectively know we're on track? Do you think about it like that? Or do you think about it at a higher level of this is our general vision, we're just going to figure it out?

Grace Nikae  07:40

That's a really interesting question. I think, where I start from, let's go with that. I start from sort of a conceptual point of view. So I always, when I talk about vision, I'm talking about macro concepts, things like, for example, empowerment could be one pillar of a vision. It could be on a personal level, if you're talking about your personal vision, things like trust, or things like adventure, or for a company could be innovation, these are concepts, right? Conceptually, you have an idea of what it is that you want to be aligned with, or realize. Okay, so then from there, there are infinite ways of how that concept can be realized, right? And then so let's say in a business setting, usually, for me, the way that my life has sort of unfolded, my journey has unfolded, usually, when I have that vision in mind, something about my awareness in terms of how I look at opportunity shifts, meaning things that I wouldn't notice as an opportunity before, suddenly come onto my radar. And I think part of it is this, I think they call it a cognitive sort of, there's a psychological term for that. For example, if you're thinking of buying a blue car, then all of a sudden, you start noticing blue cars everywhere, right, your mind starts to pick up on this. So it's kind of like that. So I have this concept in mind that I want to realize that suddenly, I started noticing, oh, this is one possible way that could be realized, oh, this person just came into my network into my sphere, and you know, maybe there's something that can be realized there. So you start to notice things in a way that you didn't use to. And then as you start to discern, and kind of look at all those opportunities, and start to decide which direction you want to go, then it becomes about okay, how is it that I want to work with this person? How is I want to work with this opportunity to be able to realize this concept. And then it starts to get into the granular, right? It starts to get into like, okay, when do I want to do it? How am I going to break that down? What are the actions and the tasks and everything, and the ultimate goal I want to set for this first action, the step that we take. So that's kind of how I operate. So it comes from a concept first, a macro concept, before I start to get into the granular.

Callan Harrington  09:36

Okay. I want to circle back to this, but it's probably a good segue, and why I'm so interested in your take on this specifically is you've had what I've seen to be three major, major career changes. You know, some of the background to add maybe a little bit more color on that original story was, you were a child prodigy pianist, and as I understand it, you were on TV for the first time at the age of three. And then you went on to do this at the absolute highest levels, and then totally pivoted. Walk us through that. What I'm most curious about is what was kind of that moment where it was, I don't want to do this anymore? Well,

Grace Nikae  10:13

Well, um, music is my first love. Still one of my great loves of my life. It was where I discovered my own voice. It was where I was able to express who I was. I understood so many things through that art form and certainly through that career. it influenced and affected, of course, every aspect of my life. Music was a part of everything I did, from as far back as I can remember. I had my first piano lesson at age nine months, so it was literally my entire life, that piano and music was a part of it. And I was never, you know, contrary to what many people mistakenly assume, I was never pushed into it. I didn't have like a stage mom or anything like that. It was something that I genuinely loved and was very passionate about. And I wanted to do it. I think, if I look back on it now, to be honest, there were certain moments that I think were kind of key into the final decision to leave it. So I made my professional debut at age eight. So I had been performing professionally as a pianist since that age. By the time I hit seventeen, eighteen, I actually had no intention of continuing piano as a career. And so I actually wanted to become a doctor. I wanted to help people. And at seventeen, of course, senior year in high school, we all apply for colleges, and I had applied to all pre med programs. I didn't apply to any music conservatories, because that was my thinking moving forward. And then the spring of senior year, I went to New York for the first time, and I had my Carnegie Hall debut. I fell madly in love with the city. It was such a profound experience for me. I loved the culture, the vibrant art scene, and I wanted to be there. And after that performance, I was like, no, I don't want to give up piano, I want to continue music. I want to be in the city and be an artist in the city. So I returned from that trip. And of course it was right around the time all the college notifications were coming in. And I ended up choosing Columbia because it was based in New York and because I had a program with Juilliard. And so I ended up moving to New York. I attended both Columbia and Julliard, continued my music studies at Juilliard, and was based there for many years, as I continued my career as a soloist. So, I think the reason I bring that up, before I bring up when I finally did leave music, the reason why I bring that up is because I have always been someone, despite music being such an important part of my life, I was always curious about other things. You could already see that I wanted to explore a career in medicine. I wanted to do other things. When I was at Columbia, I majored in history. So I always had many, many different interests outside of music. But music was what I knew, music was how people defined me, how people saw me, they saw me as pianist Grace, it was a very big part of my identity for my entire life. As I continued touring, and my career started to grow even more, and it became really an international career all over the world. I began to feel, right around, I would say, the two decade mark. So I'd been doing it for about twenty years professionally, I started to have a lot of conflict around music within me. And I think the first part of it was that I didn't feel like I owned my life. I felt like my life was owned by managers, by agents, by the public, by the demands of this art. Right? I also began to resent the art that I loved, because art and commerce have very different objectives. And so the music business, and what I wanted to do artistically, were very often at odds. And I didn't want to hate what I loved. And I didn't want to get to the point where I hated what I loved. In addition to that, the life of a concert pianist, a solo concert pianist, is very grueling. I was on the road, six to eight weeks at a time, for every tour, you're performing at the highest level, you cannot turn off, that's the thing you always have to be on. Even if you only slept three hours on the plane, you got off, you got to be able to go straight to the rehearsal and be able to perform at the highest level, you know, it was that mentally, emotionally and physically very grueling. And as all those concerts sort of bled together. And I was feeling this internal conflict about you know, who I am and feeling like I didn't know my life, it started to lose meaning for me, meaning I didn't know why I was doing this. What was the point of the playing these concerts? What was the- What am I doing? What is the point of my life, right? And right around that time, because I started to have those doubts, I started to heavily dedicate myself to more education initiatives, educational initiatives. And so I became an artistic ambassador for the US Department of State. I became a cultural ambassador for UNICEF. I started to do a lot of humanitarian work through music and art with children in developing countries. And I was desperately trying to find meaning in what it was that I did. But ultimately, I couldn't reconcile it, and all I knew- I didn't know what I was going to do outside of music. I didn't know. I had these interests, I was always very interested in many things, but I didn't know who I was. And I wanted the opportunity to find out who I was. And so I made a decision to walk away from this career that I had literally spent a lifetime building in a highly competitive arena. Because I felt that understanding who I was and honoring and exploring who I really was, was more important than any of that. And so it was a very controversial decision. It was very interesting, and it was a very scary one. And it is still to this day, one of the greatest decisions I've ever made in my life, meaning the most monumental choice I ever made in my life, to walk away from that. And interestingly enough, even though it was as scary as it was to make that decision, because I didn't know what I was going to do, who I was, I didn't know what was going to happen after I walked away. Scary as it was for me, interestingly enough, it was far more difficult for the people around me to accept my decision than it was for me, because they saw me, as I said, as one particular identity. They saw me as pianist Grace. And when I challenged that, I said, hey, I think I'm more than that. I'm going to go and find out who I am. It was, I think, very unnerving to a lot of people. And I just want to say that in case anyone's listening who's considering a pivot, you know, something big like that. Oftentimes, it's the others around you who struggle, because they like to put people into certain categories and certain boxes, and this is how we like to understand people. But it has nothing to do with who you are. So that was kind of my big decision to walk away.

Callan Harrington  16:37

I mean, I've got so many questions on this. You know, one of the things that I'm super curious about was for you, was cutting back not an option? Was that almost if I cut back and I do this at a lower level, I'm not living up to like my own standards of what I can do this at, or what did that look like?

Grace Nikae  17:00

That was more of an industry issue, because they are making a certain amount of money off of me. And that requires me to be able to perform on-demand, perform as needed. I could have done that. But if I had done that, it would affect my reputation within the industry, as someone that you couldn't really count on, there would be less opportunities coming in, it would have a lot of other sort of domino effect. Much like corporate America, if someone said, hey, you know what, I'm going to kind of cut back my hours, because I want to spend more time with my family and my kids, even if you had a culture in which, or an organization in which, they would allow for that, or make space for that, there's still sort of this underlying, and at the time, you know, there's still this underlying sort of thinking that maybe he's not our go-to guy, or maybe he's not the person that really can take it. It's all of that subtlety. And it's absolutely the same in the music business. So it would have been the same thing. If I had said, oh, you know, I don't really want to do as many concerts, I don't want to- Well, we can't really count on her then. Then maybe we shouldn't be sending any opportunities her way, and then it would be a domino effect. Yeah.

Callan Harrington  18:04

Interesting. So it got to the point where was, if I'm going to do this, to do at a level to even support myself, it's either you have to go all the way, or not at all, or do it for fun.

Grace Nikae  18:15

Correct. Correct. And I think when I also made that decision, there was this part of me that just, I didn't want my talent to be owned by anyone else anymore. I wanted my art to belong to me. I wanted to play what I wanted, when I wanted, in the ways that I wanted. And I didn't have that. It was completely outside of my control at that time. And I just wanted it to belong to me again.

Callan Harrington  18:38

Yeah, it's interesting hearing you say that, like I would have never even realized those different types of situations that happen. But it makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense. I can see what you're saying in that somebody says, well, Grace doesn't really care. And then then you're just kind of frozen out of everything.

Grace Nikae  18:55

Yes, yes.

Callan Harrington  18:56

So as another follow up on this, you mentioned that so many people had attached this identity to you. And they had a hard time with you changing. What I'm curious about is, and I've had something similar, I was in a sales career, I was successful as a sales executive. Nothing like what you're talking about, right? You're at the absolute top of the top. But many people would say, when I would say I was going to start a business like well, why don't you just be a sales executive at a greater level? Why don't you go be a CRO at this company, or whatever that might be? And I will tell you for me personally, because a lot of the people that were saying this were people I had, I still have a ton of respect for, it made me second guess my decisions. Did you experience that?

Grace Nikae  19:42

Absolutely.

Callan Harrington  19:42

How did you get through that?

Grace Nikae  19:44

Absolutely, absolutely. Of course, it causes you to doubt yourself, right? And you'll wonder, am I, am I doing- I don't know if I can give like, oh, this is the answer type of response. But I will say this for me. One of the things that has recurred time and time again in my life, a pattern that has recurred through the numerous pivots and changes I've done in my life, people are only able to perceive you through the lens of their own paradigms, which means that if we get pulled into that, we are limiting ourselves based upon the limitations of others, because they cannot see what it is that you see, perhaps, right? And this is, I think, one of the hardest things to move through. And even though I've moved through it several times, I still need to actively be aware and intentional, when I have a vision of something, if I want to do something, you know, and then people start saying, you know, XYZ, and they're saying, like, "oh, why don't you do this?" To really be aware of do they understand me well enough, where they really get me, and they're bringing up a legitimate sort of like, something that I should consider that I don't see? Or is it that they are projecting their idea and their vision, therefore their construct, onto me? And this is such a difficult thing to navigate, and there is no clear cut answer. And it's not like all of a sudden, magically, one day you know how to do it. I think over time, as you start to understand yourself better, I think you start to be able to delineate better, this is who I am, this is my vision, do they understand me well enough to really be able to like have a conversation about that? Or is that more a reflection of them? It takes active intentionality to be able to discern the difference between the two. And I think one of the things that I learned in that moment when I left music, because it was the first time in my life, the first time in my life, where I really said, no, I know me, I know myself enough to know that I need to make this choice now. I cannot do this another five years, I can't be doing this another ten years, to be able to move through that. So it's really about the more you understand yourself, the more aware and connected you are with whatever you want to call it, your gut, your instinct, your vision, your inner self. The more connected you are, I think, the more you'll be able to see those patterns and be able to separate yourself from it.

Callan Harrington  22:10

I think that's so interesting. And that was definitely the experience with me. I mean, candidly, I think I had to grow my own self confidence, my own self confidence that the feelings that I'm feeling and the excitement that I have towards this is what I want to do. And then I've got the confidence to actually execute on this and go make this change, despite all the things that you're hearing. And I don't want to make it seem like for me that it was everybody was saying, "that's a dumb move." There were plenty of people that were like, "go, yeah, do it!" Like now's the time to do it or whatever that might be. And I think you know, something else that's really interesting, and I'm curious if you felt similar on this, this is probably a good segue to this next career shift that you had was, I look at it very similar when I'm writing jokes for stand up or whatever that might be, some of the best advice I ever had is, when you write that joke, you don't share that with anybody for at least twenty-four hours. Because it's still in this- and this the same, I think, goes for writing anything, any type of creative work, like feel good in that moment for what you just did. And then after that, that's okay. Like you need to be very critical on whatever that may be. Is that similar in your mind?

Grace Nikae  23:19

I love that so much. Yes, I think because there's still a period of rawness, right? It's still a little raw, when you first kind of give birth to it. It needs that space, that time. Also, during my career as a writer, as an author, it needs that time where you kind of walk away for a little bit and let it kind of sit and breathe. And then of course, when you come back, you can see it a bit more objectively, right? Because you've kind of detached yourself from the actual creation part of it. Absolutely. I think you know, what's so interesting. During my career as a musician, it was so hard for me to listen or watch a performance immediately after. I had to wait at least at least, maybe a year or so like, enough time had to pass before I could go back and watch it. And it was the same with my novels, where I couldn't read it right after, like I had to, I wanted to kind of leave it and let it be, and then afterwards, come back and be able to read through it. So that's very interesting, what you said.

Callan Harrington  24:16

Yeah, I know that feeling. One of the best examples that I've heard was when it comes to like watching a performance or something like that is, it should feel as if you're watching a movie, meaning you're watching a movie, you have no vested interest in, outside of the enjoyment of the movie, you could look at this and be like, what was I doing? That wasn't even me, that wasn't even like, because I don't even know, that was like, I don't even recognize this person so that I could look at it. So I think that's really interesting. But as you mentioned, you've hit on this a couple times, the career move that you did is that you became a writer.

Grace Nikae  24:45

Yes.

Callan Harrington  24:46

Walk us through that. Where like, where did that come from? Why writing? Like, what did that look like?

Grace Nikae  24:52

So as I said, when I left music, I had no idea what I was going to do. I didn't really know who I was outside of music, and and during my touring performance years, you know, as a soloist, I was always traveling alone, I was always alone in a hotel room. And when you're on tour, all you see is the hotel room, the airport, maybe the radio station, media, and the concert hall. And literally that said, so all of my downtime was spent in my hotel room alone. And there were a couple of things that I loved doing during those tours, which was, I love to write, I love to read. And I also taught myself how to code. Now, this was kind of like sort of an interesting side thing. I think part of it is based in this prodigy sort of thinking, in which we really love pattern recognition. And I just found coding websites and doing mobile apps and developing that to be such a fascinating language. And I did it just for myself just as kind of as a creative hobby. So I began, like, you know, designing logos, and like building some pretty websites and things like that, just for fun. So when I left music, and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, I decided to write a novel. And again, not with the intention of becoming an author. But just, I wanted to continue, of course, this creative expression, I had an idea that had been percolating for a while. And I decided, you know what, I have some time now, let me go about and start writing. At the same time that I started doing that, my accidental, I like to call it accidental, career and marketing started. And it was because people began coming to me and asking me, they would say, "hey, Grace, you know how to design websites, right?" Like, could you design my logo for me? Could you design my site for me, and all of those, like little projects I had done for myself, ended up becoming this consulting career. And so I actually started out on the back end of marketing with web development, mobile development, before moving into the front end. But those two things sort of happened simultaneously after I left music. And of course, both played major parts of my life. And I ended up becoming a fiction author, eight novels. One of them was a young adult fantasy series. Another one was written for adults, adult psychological suspense. And it was such a healing period in my life, because I wrote those books under a pen name. And after spending my entire life, thrust onstage in public, under my name, to be able to adopt this pen name, no one knew who this person was right? Like, no one knew it was me. And it gave me so much safety, and space to be able to explore a lot of questions, a lot of themes that were, you know, percolating inside of me. And it was an extraordinary healing period for me, after walking from music. I consider it such an important chapter in my life, post music.

Callan Harrington  27:32

That was one of the biggest questions I had is, how did that feel, writing under a pen name, I have to assume it was- Given that you were, like you said before, everything was, and I have to assume that includes like everything was laid out for you, your life was at the hands of everybody else. I have to totally assume that your image and your brand and everything else was like you had to be this person, and if you weren't this person, like you said earlier, that was going to be a problem. This had to have been the ultimate freedom for you moving to a pen name.

Grace Nikae  28:03

That was exactly what it was. Under Grace Nikae, the pianist, everything from what I wore, to you know, as a woman in the business, oh, you have to lose weight for the photoshoot, you have to look a certain way for this. I mean, that on top of the demands of the actual art itself, when I wrote under a pen name, there was such, like you said, this liberation, absolute liberation, I could write about whatever I wanted. I could build worlds and characters, and explore all the things that I never had a chance to say out loud. I think that was a big thing, you know. And it's very interesting, having an artistic career, because it's taken me a very long, you know, even being here speaking with you, it's taken me a very long time to get to this point where I can use my actual voice, to share all of these thoughts, because growing up all of it was channeled through music, it was expressed through sound, and then it was channeled through my fiction works. It was channeled through the written word. And then now I've reached a point where I'm able to really articulate and say it with my own voice.

Callan Harrington  29:07

Yeah, I love that. So one of the things that I'd love to dive into is, you went and you wrote these eight novels, and you had this completely freeing experience, you were able to really express and be your true self. How have you pivoted that into this marketing career.

Grace Nikae  29:28

So, at the time, when I started my author career and my marketing career, I was still living in Europe at the time. And so, with that, marketing consultancy, I had the opportunity to work with some pretty big brands like Adidas, and Zara, and really gain a lot of skills in a lot of different ways. After I finished up my second series of books as an author, I moved back to my hometown of Hawaii. And I was really kind of considering what I wanted to do next. Do I continue writing? Do I explore marketing more? And I was offered a position as head of marketing for a hotel in Waikiki, and I decided to accept it. That was my first entrance into the corporate world as director of marketing, and built the marketing team there from the ground up. And I think what has been so- certainly the creative aspect of my artistic life permeates what I do as marketer, obviously, as a brand and content strategist, creativity is extraordinarily important. I think, also, something that I have always been very passionate about, are the ideas of authenticity and the idea of community. And these two are important to me, I think, for very particular reasons, authenticity, obviously, because I understood, it had taken me so long to understand what it means to be aligned with who I am, to be able to articulate my voice, to be able to be true to myself, and the importance of that, the uniqueness of that, the value of that, took me a very long time to understand. And that's something that's always been a part of any marketing strategy, any content, any brand building that I am offering. At the same time, the idea of community, which ties into the name of my business, now, the name of my company, is Kizuna. Kizuna, in Japanese means the deeper bond of connection. So human connection to me, is the invisible thread that ties all the different chapters of my career and my life together. Whether it was as an artist, as a writer, as a musician, as an educator, as marketer, human connection is the macro, the hawk, right, the macro concept, tying it together. Many different possibilities of realizing it, but that's the macro concept. So community to me, and building community, and creating connection is fundamentally such an important part of who I am, because I grew up without it, because I was enormously alienated and felt enormously lonely. Of course, as a child prodigy, I didn't belong anywhere, I was a first generation immigrant, I was a young girl in a white male dominated music industry. I was alienated on so many different levels. It took me- it was the journey of my life, to understand what connection means. And so for me, what I do now, what I have the privilege to be able to do now, the privilege that I had to be able to be an author, a musician, all these different iterations of my life, chapters of my life, was about really exploring and understanding that. And so for me, so much of my work now in marketing is informed by authenticity, community connection, these are the core pillars of mine.

Callan Harrington  32:24

So I guess, actually diving into community deeper, what is your approach to building community?

Grace Nikae  32:29

I think community, I mean, I could go on forever. But this community is the human element. That I think is the moat, we talked about moats a lot in business, is the moat for every brand or business community is critical. I don't care what kind of business you do, what kind of brand you have, community is critical. Community is not just the people that you're selling to. It's the peers in your industry. It's your partners. It's everybody that is involved, that helps to develop and grow your business. Community and brand are inextricably intertwined. And I think one of the big shifts that we've seen over the years that I think people misconstrue a lot, is, the development of community requires two way conversation. And I see this mistake all the time on socials, and people, legacy brands, a lot of other businesses, mistakenly go into this arena broadcasting in a one-way fashion, because it used to be that way. It used to be that we would see an ad in the paper, or it would get broadcast to us via the television screen, right. And we would be one way, and we'd see it over and over again. That's not the way social media, and the current landscape, and the creator economy works. It does not work that way. It is a conversation. It is building, again, these brand advocates, and these pillars, and the strong foundation of community around you, through trust through loyalty, all of that. And that requires two-way conversation, it requires listening, it requires being able to speak with them directly, it requires creating story, these moments of connection. And in the age of AI, this community is the human element. This is the part that will define whether a brand succeeds or not. And I've talked often about the humanization of brand, the humanization of brand relies upon its community.

Callan Harrington  34:14

So I totally agree with that. And I think AI is going to make community ten times more important as well. It's going to force people to want to do more face-to-face and have more of a human to human conversation. If you're working with a brand, where do you recommend that they start? If a brand has been doing this the one-way conversation way, what is the first thing that they should do in order to have a two-way conversation?

Grace Nikae  34:37

I always love talking about brand in terms of personal identity because it helps people to kind of grasp the concept a bit better. if you had a friend in real life who was struggling with relationships or with communication or really connecting with someone else. You would tell them, well, start with yourself, right? Take a look at yourself to see what it is that's blocking your ability- what fear, what doubt, what internal work needs to be moved through first, in order to be able to realize external communication or relationships with other people better, right? It's the same thing with brand. If a brand is having difficulty and doing one-way sort of broadcasting, not understanding how connection can be made, the first thing I would ask is, okay, let's take a look at the brand itself. What is going on in terms of their internal values? What is happening in terms of do you understand your story? Do you know who you are? Are you still connected with your vision? Do you have a vision? Are you actually living and making decisions moving towards that vision? Or that mission? Or that purpose? What is your story? What is your internal identity? Who are you? Right? If you don't have clarity and understanding around that, first? How in the world? Are you going to be able to communicate and connect authentically with anyone else? It's just like, people, right? If you don't understand that about yourself, how can you connect? It's very difficult to do so. So that would be my first approach if a brand was having trouble.

Callan Harrington  35:58

And then when it comes to like, the actual tactics themselves, when you say like a two-way conversation, is this, are you thinking about this from the standpoint of, I want to know what my customer's pains and challenges are? And I want to create content to help them solve that? Or are you meaning specifically, from example of even more direct than that, where our executive team is going to be posting on LinkedIn, and then they're going to be responding to all of the comments. So they're actually engaging one-on-one with the customers and the community at large?

Grace Nikae  36:32

I think it very much depends on the organization. And there are several thought leaders and executives that I do work with to help build the personal brands. But I will say this, if the individual executives are not genuinely deeply on board with and understand the authenticity necessary to connect and communicate online, in terms of social media, I would say, don't do it. If you don't really understand that, and deeply understand that, and are willing to dive in and commit to that, it's better if you're not putting yourself out there. Now in terms of the brand itself, and how it connects with people and the two-way conversation, but certainly, of course, it's about listening to them, and seeing you know what their pain points are, and how to address that. But it's also uplifting and amplifying, your loyal customers and community, meaning how are you leading your community, leading your customers, leading your partners, positioning yourself as a leader within the industry? How are you advocating for the values that you stand for? How are you uplifting partners? How are you talking about important discussions that are driving the future of the industry? You know, are you engaging in that kind of conversation, the collective conversation, this is the kind of discourse that's necessary. And of course, if you are connected with your customers, and we're talking about it from a customer client perspective, if you're connected with them, if you uplift them, if you give every opportunity to dive into conversation with them, show them that you see them, you know, if they shared a fantastic review, like are you sharing that? Are you sharing their voice, amplifying their voice, showing that, hey, I pay attention to you, I know what's happening, and we appreciate you. This is all these small, seemingly small gestures are critical for building brand reputation, brand loyalty, brand authority, and creating an entire group of people who will become your brand advocates, which have far reaching consequences. So it's really about how are you nurturing all those different levels of relationships within that community that's around you?

Callan Harrington  38:34

Yeah, that makes sense. So are they recognizing the community members? And are they making them kind of the heroes of this story? And leading from the front? Yeah, that's a really interesting example. Here's what I'm really curious about. You've had these major pivots, you've been successful at each one. I can clearly see how passionate you are about this current season of your life right now. What comes next?

Grace Nikae  39:00

So I love that you said seasons of life, because I am a very passionate believer in seasons of life. For me, for some reason, those chapters seem to kind of naturally fall to about six, seven years or so like, it's always kind of like it naturally falls that way. But for me, because of how I've lived my life, and because of what I believe in, I'm going to see how it goes. So I have nothing planned beyond the next, I mean, we'll see in five years where I'm at. I'm sure things will continue to evolve, and if I'm still having fun, and still curious, and still want to continue this path, right. If at that time, I feel like well, my curiosity is leading me this other direction, I'll pivot again.

Callan Harrington  39:41

I love it. I love it. Grace, last question I have for you. If you could have a conversation with your younger self, what would that conversation be? What advice would you give them?

Grace Nikae  39:51

Wow, that's so- that's actually quite a deep question. Okay. I'd tell her, you'll be okay. That's it. You'll be okay.

Callan Harrington  40:01

I tell you what I was looking forward to asking you this question. And that's about a perfect mic drop moment. So, I love it. Grace, this has been so much fun. I love talking about all this. So thank you for coming on the show.

Grace Nikae  40:15

Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.

Callan Harrington  40:22

I hope you enjoy Grace and I's conversation. I loved hearing Grace's approach to career changes and how she went about each and every one of them. If you want to learn more about Grace, you could find her on LinkedIn and the show notes. Also, if you liked this episode, you could find me on LinkedIn to let me know, and if you really want to support the show, a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify is very much appreciated. Thanks for listening, everybody, and I'll see you next week.