Episode 70: Taylor Shanklin

Join Lori and her guest, Taylor Shanklin, as they discuss how branding is crucial to the success of any philanthropic endeavor. Taylor is the CEO and founder of Barlele, which specializes in branding and marketing strategy. She discusses understanding your audience and leading with kindness. Stay tuned!

Here are the things to expect in this episode:

• Taylor's path to realizing her passion for branding

• The impact of branding on nonprofit organizations

• Understanding your audience’s perspective and aspirations

• Leading with kindness

• And much more!

About Taylor Shanklin:

An accomplished and energetic marketing leader with a solid history of achievement in leading teams, corporate marketing, product marketing, and growth strategy. I lead with agile marketing processes and a scrappy roll-up-your-sleeves attitude. My Clifton Strengths Finder test results say I'm a futurist. Areas of expertise include strategic growth planning, branding, podcasting, video marketing, collaboration with product teams, and building creative, curious, and happy marketing teams.

Connect with Taylor!

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tshank/

Barlele: https://www.barlele.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/taylorshanklin/

Connect with Lori Kranczer!

Website: https://www.linkphilanthropic.com 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorikranczer/

Episode Transcript

You're listening to the positive impact philanthropy podcast where we'll share the journeys of everyday philanthropists as they incorporate philanthropy into their lives. Land fee is a personal journey and through the stories we will share here. We hope that it's arc something in you and how you can make your own philanthropic impact in the world. I'm your host, Lori Kranczer attorney, philanthropic advisor and legacy gaming strategist. Together, we're going to explore what it looks like to be an everyday philanthropist and make a positive impact in the world. Before we get started, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss a new episode posted every other Wednesday. Today we have Taylor Shanklin. I'm so excited to have her come on our podcast I have known Taylor's name around the philanthropic landscape for a long time and she agreed to come on today. So Taylor Shankland is the CEO of bar Leigh Leigh and welcome Taylor.

Hey, good to be here. Thanks for having me today. It's good to see you.

Same here. So please tell her tell us more about who you are and what you do.

Yeah, who I am. Let's see. I am the CEO and founder of bar Lele. We are a branding and marketing strategy firm. And we also have a spin off company called Creative shizzle where we help smaller businesses and nonprofits get great graphic design at a reasonable subscription price and a little bit about me I live in the mountains in North Carolina and Boone. I'm originally from Texas from Austin before Austin was Austin. And I like when Austin was back in the Keep Austin weird days and people didn't really know about it. And there was actually this like very GarageBand music scene. I grew up in that Austin, and three years ago moved to the mountains and discover that I'm a mountain girl and never knew it and I just love living here. I have two human kids. We were talking about offline and one for kid and I love working in the nonprofit space because it's one of those things where you get to we get to do work that we love that fuels us we get to help people envision their brand story, build it and then actually put it out into the world. And when you're doing that for organizations that are actually moving social causes important causes forward. It feels phenomenal to be able to be a part of that. So I feel I feel blessed to have you been able to somehow like I kind of fell into the sector, and then realize, Oh, it's just this is just my niche.

I love that. So I have very similar sort of background with practicing law and getting into the nonprofit sector and it's been 22 years and I don't feel like I work because I love what I do and who I work with the nonprofits. But let's go let's go back to you and talk about your background you said sort of fell into it. So I'd love to hear more about what you're doing before and then how you got into this area.

Yeah, well, it's funny, my my nonprofit space experience started when I was about eight years old, and I was fundraising for my school for the bike Athan, my mom was one of the chair people of the bike Athan every year she was like what the very involved and always hoping to score is money and she used to take me around, you know, grocery shopping, running errands with her and I started realizing that I could just go up to anyone and ask them for money and pitch why they needed to give money to my school. And then I let it you know, I did the bike and then I went through the rest of my school and didn't really think about fundraising at all. Like I never really thought at that time I was going to be a nonprofit person or a fundraiser. I just realized looking back like oh, it really kind of started them when I was about seven or eight years old and I would just go ask anyone for money. And to the point where mom was like I can take you anywhere starting to embarrass me because you're going up to random people asking for money all the time. Then I actually was a musician singer songwriter was kind of chasing a career in the music industry for a little while. I went to school for my freshman year in Nashville and wanted to pursue music performance and music business. After doing that for a little while I graduated from college. I started managing a recording studio in Austin working for a singer songwriter there who wrote a lot of big hits for big country singers, and for some reason decided like, oh, in this industry, you either really make it or you sleep on a friend's couch forever and I decided that I didn't want to sleep on a friend's couch forever. And I went back to graduate school to get a mass communications degree. And at that time, it was about 2005. And the internet was a real thing at that point. And I started taking new media classes. I've never been a technical at all. I knew nothing about digital marketing. But I had this one professor who said you really should start learning this stuff like HTML and CSS and web design and flash and so I did that took me into my first job that I fell into that just happened to be in the nonprofit technology sector. And that's how I got into digital marketing for nonprofits. So my professor introduced me to another former student of hers after I finished my graduate degree, and said hey, he works at this really cool startup and Ralston. I went I interviewed everyone seemed really nice and didn't really understand what I was going to be doing. But it was something with technology, and I was going to be doing some things with HTML. And I was like, Yeah, give me the job. And it turns out that it was at a company called canvio and onsen. They later got acquired by Blackbaud. And they helped nonprofits with their digital marketing, email campaigns, websites, online digital fundraising. And so in 2007, I started that job and then really discovered how much I liked it because I got to do I got to tap into my creative brain and also tap into helping feel good in the world. And so that's kind of how I, I fell into it and then decided, I'll stay in this. This is something that I can go and you know, make a good living doing and also feel like I'm part of something important, and not just not just taking a paycheck. I didn't want to just do that.

Right. So then how did it evolve now to what you're doing with your business that you launched?

Yeah, so I did a lot of different things. So I got a lot of experience my years at can do and then black odd or years or I just said I'm going to learn everything that I can about how to do digital marketing in this world. So from technical skills to project management, to account management, to sales to marketing, to helping organizations with their digital marketing and fundraising strategy. I just kind of leverage that opportunity that I had, at that time a large technology company because it grew quite a bit over the time that I was there. I was there for almost nine years. And when there was a new job that opened up that seemed interesting to me, I applied for the new job within the company was like I'm gonna go learn this now and I'm gonna go learn that now. And then eventually, I landed in marketing. And that took me back to that creative element that I think I always had, which was like singing songwriting, writing copywriting. And then eventually just realized, Oh, I'm a Brander. That's what I brand strategy. That's the thing. That's the part of all of us. I've now done a lot of this. And that's the part that I love that I can really help organizations with. Learn figuring out how to speak about ourselves and tell the story in a way that's really meaningful to the audience. I just find really, really fun and fascinating and I love digging in with our clients and really understanding them, understanding their goals, and then figuring out well how do we meet those goals, but also meet the goals of your audience. So when we're a nonprofit organization, we're speaking to donors, volunteers, advocates. That audience is also a group of people who have large aspirations for the world. And they're supporting your organization because they have an aspiration for the world that fits in with your mission. And they've decided that that's where they want to give either their time or their dollars. And so if you can start to figure out how can we speak to them in a way that helps them know they're really part of, you know, by by supporting our organization, their life's aspirations are also taking, you know, strides. I think that's a really special moment. And I think a lot of times we would get very stuck in the weeds of just being in our four walls of our office and thinking about, well, this is my fundraising goal, or this is my KPI that I'm trying to meet and we're not really thinking about the aspiration of our supporters. And so with the the kind of branding work that we do, to help people take a step back, and I just find that that stepping back are just really, really fun and joyful. And so I wanted to start by Lele in order to give more nonprofits a great resource for doing that kind of work at an affordable price. I think a lot of times that work doesn't get done because well, I don't have a million dollars to go hire a new york agency or an LA agency or a Dallas agency, but you don't have to. We can do that you could get there and it can be within a budget. That is something that more nonprofits can can reach, I think is

great because you're broadening your reach to different nonprofits that wouldn't ordinarily think about what they need to do with their branding. And it's so important to reach the donors from their perspective and their values rather than us when we're when our office and a nonprofit thinking we know what is wonderful about our programs and our mission and what our numbers are and our impact and we think that that is what the donors hear about or our volunteers or board members or the community even if they're not involved within the nonprofit. And most of the time, well, I wouldn't say most of the time but many times it's not. And I have whenever but legacy nonprofits we I tell go speak to your donors, you can find out what they care about. You don't have to just imagine the different scenarios. And so when you're working with the nonprofits that you work with, how do you get them to go and find out what their community or their constituents actually care about?

Yeah, a lot of times it's, we can start internally and a lot of times we do and we just asked them so many questions that helps to pull that story out. I don't ask them questions about what's your revenue goal? That's not where we start. I asked him questions about why are you here? What brought you to this organization? If your organization were a superhero, which superhero would you identify with? If your organization were a song, which song would your organization identify with? Those are the types of things we want to understand from them in order to get a little bit more personal and a little bit more close to the actual brand experience that we think is going to align with them and their audience. And then sometimes we'll do focus groups where we will bring in either you know, sometimes it's advocates who are just very involved. Board members with some of the organizations where we help them with their peer to peer fundraising strategy will bring in like their dedicated team captains, the people that are always there, doing the team and really ask them what they need. Like how can we as an organization support you to be a part of this and then we uncover a lot by having those conversations. We don't do a lot of like, big door surveys ourselves at my agency. That's the kind of stuff we're typically I would go to a partner like a more of a research consulting firm that we would partner with to do that kind of work but we kind of dig in with focus groups and things like that. And also bringing other people from various departments within the organization is really important. So like, don't just talk to the communications team, or the development team, bring in programs bring in other you know, bring in operations bring in a county. Now there's a reason that the accountant decided to go work there too. Right. What's What's that person's story?

Yeah. Oh, I love that. Yeah. Because I love that story. So, speaking of stories, I love a good before and after story. So are there any stories that you could think of? Top of mind that you worked with an organization on their branding and just turn things around with something sort of surprising happened?

Yeah, yeah. It's some of the stuff that we do is very tactical digital marketing work. So it's, you know, okay, we got to figure out how to get in front of new audiences to get your wall program out in front of new people to pull them in. And I would say, in a lot of times, we do that through things like Facebook campaigns, Instagram ads, stuff like that. There's an organization that we worked with and it's kind of funny, they were maybe somewhat resistant at first to doing these types of things. And one of the things that we do that I find fun is to just like, give them nudges and prod them along and say like, I should try this. Here's why we should try it. And then sometimes I'm not so sure. Well, let me show you an example of what it could look like. That's one of the things that I find helpful, give them a visual and so we gave them this video that we made with that footage of their walk with got all of their you know brand colors, everything like that kind of integrated into this little series of just short social promotional videos that really showed the experience of being at their walk. And it was nice because we got pretty good results on the ad itself, where they're like oh, that was actually really affordable to reach new people. We got like a, you know, $1.22 click through rate or some on conversions or something, which is really like pretty low. And they got to see a new way to get out there in front of new people to tell their story. And so it's those kind of day to day things to be honest, that often continued to fuel us where like just someone is a little bit scared to try a new digital marketing tactic. And then we give them those nudges and we that show it with, you know, show what it could look like and then they see it and then you put it out into the world and then it works.

And then you're like that. Yeah, everyone just has that yay, moment.

I love that. Yeah, when you see that it's really you know that it's working right and they can see this working I just reminds you a story and it also reminds you of you that I once trained someone in legacy conversations. They were very concerned about having them really reluctant. They got trained, they their favorite conversation to have with donors and then they were just basically anywhere they went. They always had on them a declaration of intent because they never knew when they were going to meet a legacy donor potentially, and have a conversation and reminds me of when you were eight years old and going around asking everyone for money, right? So always being prepared because you never know when that sort of situation pops up. So yeah. It's amazing when you open up someone's eyes to what can be somebody. Yeah. So going back to philanthropy and the nonprofits you work with, are there other things that you're doing outside of your business that you are volunteering on a board for anything related to philanthropy?

You know, I feel bad to say not right now.

But you did. I know they

did. Yeah, and now I have I am so busy right now being a mom and running a business that I haven't had a ton of time to do extra stuff right now. But one of the things I'll go back to that I used to be highly involved with team and training and Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. And actually was interesting. I started getting involved with them. Also, when I was early on in my career at the technology company. I started working with nonprofits and then I went out one day I had moved to a new city we've moved from Austin to Fort Worth. And I worked from home and I finally got to this place was like I need to meet people like I need to do something that's important to know and meet people. And so I saw an ad for Tina team in training and went to one of their information meetings. And this guy named Don got up and shared his cancer survivor story. And I didn't even really know what I was doing at this meeting of what I was going to do with this organization but something about life make some friends do good and get in shape. And I heard down story and I was in tears sitting there listening to his story. And also at the same time, so inspired. And by after leaving that information meeting, I had signed up to ride 100 miles around Lake Tahoe. I didn't even own a bike at the time. And I had also signed up to raise $5,000 And I walked out of the meeting was like well, I guess I better get a bike. And I guess I better like go start asking people for money again.

So their marketing team did really well by asking Don to share his story.

Actually. And what's really interesting is Don is still a friend of mine. We keep in touch. I just talked to him yesterday. He's sort of a client of ours now. We help him produce his punk asked Nick company, and I do want to get back involved with something like that. I just I need to I got uninvolved because then I had babies and they were growing up and you just juggle so much and I'm one of those people that also was like, show up to the things you can show up well at and doing them well. And there was one point where I was on the board of a nonprofit and I could barely ever make the meetings and I had to just say, I can't do this right now. But I'll come back at some point in the future.

Yeah, it's there. It's a it's a there's always something there when you're ready. Absolutely great, but I know that you have a philanthropic background. So I just wanted to touch on that and it's a really good example of sharing when the time is right, how to be involved. And you're gonna get

upset, because we're looking at our company to do is like how can our company give back? How can we have a philanthropic aspect to our company and so we're looking into things like you know, how can we give more affordable services to nonprofits to give aways and things like that to nonprofits. So that's kind of one of the ways that I'm tackling that now that you know, fits into the day to day work. Schedule, too.

Yeah, absolutely. I hear you with that, to get to my eyes, you know, and that and we can I can help you with that as well figure that out also, because yeah, that'd be good

again. Yeah. So

we're getting to the end of our conversation and I'm always sad when we get to the end. But I do love this question. I love to hear people's answers about what you consider your legacy today.

You know, this has been coming up for me more and more and it really is something that I think is important is leading with kindness. And it's something that a culture shift that I'm really passionate about making within our sector within really just like the corporate professional environment. I think a lot of times like we have these big goals, we have these big missions. And we show up. And we're not that nice to each other at work or that nice to ourselves, and not really remembering why we're here. And when I started my company, one of the reasons why I wanted to start it was to create a culture and an environment where people could show up every day the work, they could have fulfillment with what they like doing from a work perspective and also create a culture where people can go home and take take home a positive energy at the end of the day, and not have burnt out energy at the end. Of The Day. Because guess who gets that your family gets that your kids get that your partner gets that they get that burnt out version of you. And I don't think it needs to be that way. And so one of the things that we're doing is really focusing on kindness as like a core of the company. And for me as a leader. I do some leadership coaching as well like helping people lead with kindness and figure out what that really means and how you can do that and still meet your fundraising new goal, or your revenue goal. And actually get there in a better

way. It reminds me of I once worked with someone that told me he he was very kind but don't mistake kindness for weakness. You can still be a very strong person and be very kind that is absolutely true. So yeah, I do love that. Yeah, great. So Taylor, where can people find out more information about you? Yeah.

If you want to go to bar lele.com, it's var L e l e.com. I'm pretty active, heavily active, I guess I would say on LinkedIn. If you want to go find Taylor Shanklin on LinkedIn. And if you want the more personal side of me go to Taylor. Shanklin on Instagram. I mostly post shenanigans and funny stuff there. But some of the stuff in regards to our business network are doing as well as also there. So yeah, go just among the interwebs out there, Google me and you'll find websites now.

We're gonna add all the links in the show notes so you don't have to go looking for Taylor on the internet. We'll send you a link everybody so definitely check it out. Check out her business, especially if you're a nonprofit and looking to grow your brand and your marketing. So thank you again for joining us Taylor. This has been really wonderful and for everyone listening, hopefully provided some insights and inspiration that you can use for your own philanthropic journey. That until next time. Thank you for joining us, I hope we provided some insights and inspiration that you can use for your own philanthropic journey. You can tune in every week on Wednesdays when new episodes are dropped. We'd love to hear your feedback. So leave comment and a rating about what you like. And what you'd like to hear more about. And if you liked the episode today, make sure to share it to raise awareness about the story to inspire other women to take action. I'm Lori Kranczer And until next time, you can make a positive impact through philanthropy every day.