Building an Authentic Leadership Brand in an AI World with Elizabeth Rosenberg

Mike: Elizabeth Rosenberg believes the future of leadership belongs to those who trust their authentic story, their purpose, and their intuition. Companies turn to her for unfiltered good advice, and leaders seek her out when they’re ready to grow.

Elizabeth is a serial entrepreneur and visionary who drives authentic change through her work. She’s the founder of The Good Advice Company, a marketing and communications consultancy specializing in C-suite personal branding. I need to specialize in how to speak.

Specializing in C-suite personal branding, thought leadership, and PR strategy. She’s also the founder and chief spiritual officer, we’ll get into what that means, a leadership development platform that helps executives cult- cultivate intuitive intelligence as a competitive advantage in an AI-driven world, enabling leaders to develop uniquely human capabilities and make more grounded, purposeful decisions.

I definitely need some speech coaching after that intro. We’re gonna

Elizabeth: It’s a lot. It’s a lot.

Mike: It’s a lot. We’re gonna talk about leadership, intuition, branding. We’re gonna see where it goes, a whole bunch of stuff. Elizabeth, welcome to the show.

Elizabeth: Thank you for having me. I’m very excited for this conversation

Mike: and you know I’m go- where I’m going with the first question.

Elizabeth: Yes

Mike: from all of your experience, what do you believe is the most important characteristic of a great leadership team?

Elizabeth: Thank you for giving me the heads-up on this, and I can’t wait to hear what everyone else has to say too. Um, I believe it’s accountability. I think it’s holding each other accountable, not only for, the decisions that are made, but the kind of like empathy that is also curated, and cultivated within a, uh, culture and environment

Mike: So important, ’cause from so many CEOs, the biggest challenge I hear is, “What do I need to do to hold people accountable? Do I just need to fire everybody?” and a big part of it is because they don’t even, they don’t even know how to define that word. and so, so how do you…

when you say accountable, accountability, how do you define it?

Elizabeth: I think as a leader, we have to make very tough decisions. So I also think we need to walk the walk. When we say we’re gonna do something, we actually have to do it. But a lot of the time, those decisions are very hard, especially in the world that we’re living in right now. We have to make some very tough decisions that are going to affect the livelihood of others.

I have a real problem when leadership call, companies and the people, the employees within their companies family, because we don’t pay our family to hang around. We don’t take our– You know what I mean? Like, we don’t give our family ti- it’s not family to me. It is work. but I think it’s really important for leadership teams as you’re working as a cohesive group to hold yourselves accountable to the decisions that are made, but also just to be the kind of leader that you all have set out to be when it comes to the mission of the company and the values that you’re trying to, I think, create within the culture.

Mike: Elizabeth, you call intuition a competitive advantage. Dig into the lot of that deeper, especially for the CEOs, leaders listening that are more data-driven, and intuition just sounds like soft skills crap. what does that mean, intuition as a competitive advantage?

Elizabeth: I think intuition is one of those things that’s become very woo-woo, which to me is crazy because intuition, I think, is also that thing that’s keeping us alive. It is that thing that we have evolved with from the beginning of time. I mean, without intuition, we would just stand there and let a predator take us instead of actually moving into fight or flight, right?

You’re intuitively like, “I don’t know if I should be going into that cave where that bear is or not.” I think as leaders, we have really started to not listen to our intuition, and we are leaning so heavily into data that innately we feel like something is wrong, or innately we feel like we’re not making a decision that’s best for the business or best for the culture or best for the employees, and we are talked out of it, through data.

Now, I think we need to find a happy medium between the two. The thing that AI has done– I mean, I am a AI fan. It’s one of those things like when people are like I, I just, leave me behind when it comes to AI. That’s like saying with electricity, like everyone on your block is going to have electricity, and I still wanna have candles.

Or I’m gonna write letters while everybody else is using email. It is happening with or without us. when it comes to AI, what’s happening is we are then taking all of the answers that we are getting from AI as fact instead of intuitively thinking about what that means, and we are all moving so fast that we are accepting that as the final answer.

So for me, intuition is just, I think it is the skill that like we ignore the most and is the thing we need to listen to most.

Mike: Yeah, that’s so important. I hear, and I’m also, my, I was joking with my wife yesterday, I’m not handy around the house at all, so I’m not the kind of guy that has a hobby. I don’t have the wood shop in the garage. I’m not working on my car. But late in life, my hobby has become I go down to my office and I vibe code, and I’m creating all this stuff.

So I am an incredible fan of AI and what it can do, and I use it all the time. But to your point, too often when leaders need to make the decision today here, “Well, well, I asked Claude,” or, “I asked ChatGPT,” and he- And it’s like that’s all good. Use that maybe to help you confirm an idea you have or extend it.

But I think to your point, too many of us are relying on that and saying, let me go get the answer there, and then once I get the answer, I’m gonna assume it’s right,” versus treating it like an employee and saying, “I gotta check their work too.”

Elizabeth: Go to LinkedIn. I mean, LinkedIn is the perfect example of people who are using AI as their thought, I think their thought leadership engine versus partner. So I actually think LinkedIn is a perfect place so you can see who’s using AI and who’s not, and who’s using it the right way and who’s using it the wrong way.

Because everything has become so, um, templatized because AI was obviously trained on us, right? It’s like, here’s the problem, here’s the solution, here’s a, the three-sentence structure. But now everyone is just dropping in “Write a post about this,” and then is posting that as if it’s their thought leadership.

So I even have on my LinkedIn profile, like all posts are written by me. And I have used Claude. I prefer Claude as a writing partner to– I just think it’s, it understands my voice better. But even when I upload something and say “Write a post on this,” it, it is awful. It does not sound like me at all.

It sounds like AI wrote it. So yeah, I just think it, we, there are ways that we need to learn how to use, um, AI as a creative collaborator versus just the end-all be-all of, an answer.

Mike: Elizabeth, what is a chief spiritual officer?

Elizabeth: It is not religious, so let’s start there. I know. I am also an intuitive medium. If you go on my LinkedIn, you’re gonna know this. I don’t hide this anymore. it, as we were talking about intuition, it was one of those things that, came up in every one of my reviews. even as a child, like in elementary school, it was like, “She’s a very intuitive child.”

so I always

Mike: Does that mean we, hold on, does that mean we could talk to dead people on the podcast?

Elizabeth: no, not right now, but yes, it does. I do. No. we could talk about, uh, it, we’ll get into it, but it is part of my kind of kind of proprietary process with my clients. Um, I get to know them better than they know themselves, which truly is it’s… I can’t believe I get to do this as a job.

It is so fun. But let’s get back to what a, a CSO is. McKinsey has actually even done studies on the importance of spiritual health, and spiritual health is that, that thing that drives purpose. it is that thing that makes us wanna get up in the morning. It’s that thing that w- is our legacy that we leave behind.

So when I think about a chief spiritual officer, to me, it is permission to lean into those things that allow you to find whatever that spiritual health is that’s gonna make you the best leader possible. For some, it’s meditation. For some, it’s tarot. For some, it is surfing. For some, it’s cooking. So I just think that we have gotten so…

There’s so much stigma around what, um, can actually, like, calm our minds and really allow us to lean into that intuition. I just blew it all up and was like, “Let, I, let’s go. Let’s start thinking about ourselves as a chief spiritual officer. Let’s de-stigmatize what spiritual health actually means in corporate America, and let’s find the other people that are like us, that are actually going to innovate and lean into that intu- intuitive intelligence as we are building what the next, I think, world is gonna look like.”

Mike: A- and are you… I want, I wanna know how literal to take that. is there… Are you suggesting that within an organization there might be a chief spiritual officer, or is it all of our jobs to become our own chief spiritual officers? how should we be thinking about that?

Elizabeth: I mean, some companies already have them. Now, how it’s defined I think is not necessarily defined how I would define it. I believe it is something that we all need to lean into and we all need to, I think, figure out. So when I talk about also again, spiritual health, it, we right now as a society focus on mental, emotional, physical, and,oh my God, I’m blanking now.

we focus on all the emotional health as well, right? And we don’t think about the spiritual health. We don’t think about what it is that is, I think, grounding us in everything. And I think the beauty of all of that, too, is that’s all brought together with community. And I’ve also noticed that we’re coming together as a community so much more in, in corporate America, I think with getting back into the office, I think with, like, doing experiential events and getting back out there.

I think we’re connecting on a larger level. but when it comes to that role, I think that’s an independent role for yourself because I think it’s gonna be different for everyone

Mike: Yeah,and I, there are,I just think about the CEOs I work with, and I think there are some that would just go, “Oh my God, what a great idea,” and others that would, you know,the 60-year-old, guys like me are g- look at that. And by the way, I’m not this way.

in fact, just last weekend my wife who’s a health coach did a full kind of VIP health day, and half the whole day was an energy healer that was there. So I can get into that, what some people would say is woo-woo kind of stuff. But I think there are a lot of people who would look at that and go, what are you talking about?

That, that’s got nothing to do with business. We’ve gotta do business.” but if you’re not take care, taking care of yourself, then you can’t take care of business

Elizabeth: No, and as a leader, what I would say to you if it’s something you’re not into is it’s not gonna hurt. what is this hurting? And especially there’s going to be people within your company that are into it, so acceptance of what that looks like is going to be your number one job as a leader. They are not doing anything, especially,the Gen Z generation is very into astrology.

They’re very into, numerology and what their zodiac signs mean and how they work together. They’re very into behavioral analytics. They’re very into boundaries and creating, a personal space around that. We as leaders need to understand how to work with what that means for them and then also how to help them show up as the best leader of themselves.

So it’s a managerial thing as well. I’m never gonna tell somebody if they’re showing up in a room with a tarot deck,how are you distracting everybody? Maybe that is the icebreaker that is then driving everybody to actually think more innov- like innovatively and differently, right?

but I also think that as an intuitive medium, there’s a lot of spiritual grifters out in the world right now. I mean, there’s doc- there’s a gazillion documentaries that are fascinating. So I am that person that is always kind of doing that dance between the corporate world and the spiritual world. I have almost 30 years of experience working in corporate America.

I’ve worked for some of, the m- the biggest brands in the world. you gotta know when to walk into a room and be like, “All right, you guys, we’re gonna talk about, energy healing and zodiac signs,” or you have to walk into a room and talk about, earnings calls and operational structure. So I just think there has to be a happy medium between the two because once you go too far into that spiritual world, you lost corporate America completely.

Mike: So let’s shift gears a little bit from intuition, chief spiritual officer, and talk a little bit about branding, which is such a big part of what you do, and I wanna spend some time digging into it. You work on C-suite personal branding. what does that mean, right? ‘Cause wh- when… And I’ve had folks on the podcast before that have talked about personal branding, but what’s your view?

When you ta- when we talk about C-suite personal branding, how is that different, or is that different than company branding?

Elizabeth: Oh, it’s 100% different. I think that they work hand-in-hand together. There’s a reason if you are at a company or you’re an entrepreneur within that company that, your brand is going to ladder up to the company’s brand or vice versa. But your personal brand is people knowing who you are before you walk into the room, and I think what’s really interesting is that people think that their personal brand is solely work-focused.

And I’m gonna tell you right now, work is a means to an end, right? on, on your deathbed, no 90-year-old is gonna tell you, “The days that I spent at work were the best days of my life.” They’re gonna say some amazing things came out of that, but I think that we also need to be thinking about what that next chapter looks like.

Like, how do we want to be remembered? How do we wanna be seen? I think a lot of leaders think of themselves as empathetic when really they’re sympathetic. what does that mean for the people that are working with you as well? So when we talk about personal branding, it is how you’re showing up in the world, but I do think there is this, this layer of a personal storytelling that always falls into that brand, and the best brands are the ones that have some vulnerability and authenticity to it.

The worst thing that you can ever do with your personal brand is really kind of build and create your personal brand according to what everybody thinks it should be, and then when people don’t like it, changing it to be, again, what people want you to be. That is an exhausting venture. that is often the life of a content creator, and that’s…

I mean, that’s just a lot of work to constantly be changing your brand, so it is, appeasing the masses, right? not everyone’s gonna love your personal brand. I just think you need to be aware of that, too. But I… Either way, your brand needs to be authentic in how you show up in the world.

Mike: And is that when you think about executives and their, th- their brand and their public presence, and whether you’ve worked on personal branding or not, you have a personal brand because you’re out there.

Elizabeth: Yeah

Mike: in thinking about the biggest mistakes executives make when they’re trying to build that public presence, is it what you just mentioned?

Is it this, this building a brand that’s not authentic?

Elizabeth: it’s two things. I think it’s… Well, I think it’s a bunch of things. it’s building an inauthentic brand, yes. I think it’s also allowing your corporate PR people to drive your personal brand according to what they believe it should be for the sake of shareholders. and then I also think it’s building a brand that is solely based on the job that you’re in.

What if you go to another job? and you just spent the last three years posting solely about the job that you’re in. your brand is too tied to that place. Now, as an entrepreneur and a founder, I think it’s a little bit different because I do think you are building your brand while you’re building your company.

But we do get very caught up in… And I’m coming from this as a corporate PR person, we get caught up in what we believe, our corporate PR people are telling us our brand should be versus what authentically, actually, it actually is. People buy people. be a person. Be real

Mike: Yeah, it’s weird. I find I, I do so much posting on stories from clients and lessons that I wanna teach, and that’s all great and I want it to add value and I hope it adds value. But when I get the most engagement is when I post something that’s a lot more personal and may have nothing to do with my business.

So I th- I think that’s interesting and I don’t see a lot of leaders posting the personal stuff. And is it just about when we think about public presence, is it, you know, automatically my mind goes to social media, but what, i- is it really kind of 90, 95% social media or is there a lot more to it?

Elizabeth: I mean, there’s a lot of leaders that aren’t on social media at all, and it’s just, their reputation is preceding them of what their personal brand is. So, and maybe their personal brand is not being on social media. I mean, I have an old boss and a mentor who’s not on social media at all. Zero. And his personal brand is amazing because he’s so, engaged one-on-one with the people that he has worked with in the past and the people that he continues to mentor.

And I think that’s the brand that everybody knows, and that’s also part of the legacy he’s gonna leave behind. So it’s not just how you show up on social media because we all have to remember that most of social media is curated, it’s not real.

Mike: is there, what I’m gonna ask may, you’ll tell me it may fly in the face of being authentic. I don’t think it has to, but it might, is when an executive, when a leader thinks about their personal brand, is there, do they need upfront to define what their personal brand is? I know for me, I’m one of those, like you mentioned, I’m a founder entrepreneur, so my business and me are so tied together that my personal brand is very much about my business, and it’s what I love to do.

And I think on my deathbed, hopefully at about 140, I might look back and say, “The best times I’ve had were, i- is the work I did.” But do we need to do something to define where our personal brand is, or do we just be authentic and our personal brand automatically comes out of that? how should we be thinking about it?

Elizabeth: I mean, I think it’s a little bit of both too, ’cause it depends too, is your personal or, as a founder, is your company publicly traded? Do you know what I mean? that is actually makes a big difference ’cause you have shareholders that are, You have to keep in mind as you are creating, or as you’re amplifying your brand in whatever way possible.

I still truly believe that, everyone already has a brand, and it needs to just be kinda like pumped up in the world if that’s what you wanna do. and if it’s not what you wanna do, if you don’t wanna be on social media and you don’t wanna be on LinkedIn and you don’t wanna be doing those things, it’s also just, again, how people are talking about you.

But the reality is that your brand is never really going to totally change. It will evolve as you evolve, I think, as a leader and, as a mentor and as a teacher. And, I think there’s something that’s really beautiful there. But I’m sure every single solitary person that you’ve had on here that’s talked about personal branding, and ones that you’ll have in the future, it all comes down to authenticity.

you have to be real. it’s, there’s a word personal in there for a reason

Mike: where is the line between, and may- maybe it’s fuzzy, maybe there is no line, but is there a line between being kind of authentically bold,and damaging your brand, right? there– I can remember, and I’ll give you an

Elizabeth: Oh, yes. That’s, yes

Mike: there…

and there are two different ways I could think about it. One is being authentic with your opinion. I could remember,back when,the Black Lives Matter became really big, when I forgot the, who, the name of the guy that died with his, with his, neck under the foot of the policeman.

A- and, there were some leaders of organizations that came out and spoke, for that. On what, on one side or the other, and there were some that were like, why are you speaking out? you just lo- you know, half of your clients and prospects you just lost because you just spoke to that half.”

So when it comes to how polarized our society is, even just talking about right versus left in politics, if you authentically have some political beliefs, where’s the line between how authentic you’re going to be there and when you might say, “Well, wait a minute, I don’t wanna lose clients for that”?

Elizabeth: Yeah, as someone who’s been in a lot of organizations and somebody who has hel- dealt with a lot of crisis comms,I really… There’s not a great answer for that, to be honest. I… There– We are in a time where it almost feels worse to not say something, especially when you have a platform.

But we are also running a business, and you need to keep in mind who your audience is. So as a, as an independent founder and, like comms exec, I want people to be using their platform in a positive way, and I want people to know the difference between something that feels political and something that feels like human rights.

But I’m also very cognizant of, again, like what the market looks like and how we are polarizing clients when we do or do not say something. So, you’re always gonna you’re… We’re always gonna be in this place of kind of two camps of how PR people feel about this, whether you should say something or you shouldn’t say something, whether you’re gonna get canceled or whether you’re not.

and I think it really comes down to how strongly you feel about something, and if you get to the point you’re just like, “I just can’t not say anything anymore.” and it’s been really interesting, on, especially on LinkedIn, of seeing how some people really are using that platform as a place to be talking about issues that matter to them and are just you’re agree with me, great.

If you don’t, that’s fine too, but this is how I personally feel about this.” and then seeing the engagement of what that looks like. If you are a leader who wants to say something but is also very nervous about saying something, I say always lean into the people. Lean into, “I am, I’m protecting my staff, and, I wanna ensure that like the human rights of people feel safe, and that they’re being heard,” versus leaning into something that feels more political.

But it is a very tricky and a very gray area, that there is no single answer on. There just isn’t

Mike: and making it even trickier, and I’m remembering a very specific client situation where, and what I’m getting at through this situation I’ll communicate, is how we should be thinking about this as a leadership team, right? Not just about our own personal brands, but what about the personal brands as we cascade down through the organization.

And the example I’ll give you is, very much back to the Black Lives Matter I mentioned before, and there was some, backlash against the police, and it was some pro-police, anti-police. It w- it was craziness. And I was working with an organization, and one of, one of their, kind of mid-level leaders.

So they were leader in the organization, but not senior leadership team. but one of their mid-level leaders was very outspoken. Very outspoken in a way that happened to be on the opposite side to the majority of members of their company, and it was a fairly small company. but very outspoken on social media.

and it was a very difficult thing for them to deal with as a company because people came to leadership and said, “That’s making me very uncomfortable

Elizabeth: Oh, yeah.

Mike: she’s out there saying these things.” So, but on the other hand, you look at it and go, should we muzzle our people, and do we all have to agree?

do we all have to be on the same side of the political craziness? So how do you deal with managing the personal brands that are being built on the team, and whether that fits or not with who you are as a company?

Elizabeth: And again, there’s 17 different ways to answer this question, so it’s a good one.

Mike: let me look at my watch. How much more time do we

Elizabeth: oh my God. it is very hard ’cause I imagine everybody who’s listening to this is dealing with something like this right now. I think the very first thing that you have to do is obviously have a code of conduct of how your team is working.

So there’s a few things that I always recommend to a, like to companies that they need to focus on first. The first one is, always ensure that you’ve got a good HR person in place, and if you don’t have… Like your lawyer should not be handling your talent. that is like the number one no. You need an HR consultant.

SoI have lots if you need recommendations, I’m happy to send them. The other thing that you’re gonna need is, obviously then you’re gonna create like a culture that is, you’ve got a code of conduct. You’ve got,and that includes a social media code of conduct. You also have a mission statement and a value statement.

And y- and everybody kinda knows the rules per se, right? ’cause I’m never one that wants to like silence somebody if somebody feels really strongly about something. But if it is e- eventually at some point affecting the culture within the company and your clients, that is something you need to address.

Mike: And there’s ways to do that. the other thing is make sure that you always have a crisis communications person that you can call. Do not wait for the crisis to happen. Make sure that you just have a name of somebody in case something happens. And is that typically, so a crisis communications person, is that typically someone within a PR firm? Is that where you find those folks or

Elizabeth: yeah, it tends to be a PR person. There’s some really great consultants that handle that as well, but something… Once you’re in the crisis, you are losing seconds very, very, very, very quickly, and often you need to work much faster. and internal comms is the best way to kind of like circumvent a lot of issues.

Make sure that, like,how you’re talking as a leadership team to your, to your employees is really important. and ensuring that everyone also, always feels that there’s a safe place to have communications and where to have conversations and where not to. So I think now that we have Slack or, Google Chat or any of those things, everything feels just like a free-for-all, and everybody can say whatever they want to say.

Again, that, goes back to a code of conduct of where things are actually, okay to have discussions and where they’re not. Um, but all of… I mean, we’ve are all getting to this point where we don’t have any kind of structure in place for any of this, and then it’s happening, and we’re like, “Oh, no, I don’t know what to do now.”

So yeah,a consultant can help so much with just setting up kind of the guardrails, and everyone’s gonna get annoyed, and everyone’s gonna feel like their speech was, like, hindered. but in the end, it’s actually going to just be like a hard reset, and everyone will understand why. It takes a while, though.

It’s hard. It’s just, it’s this is hard right now

Mike: I’m gonna, I’m gonna pull us out of the political crap that makes it hard

Elizabeth: and, back to, the idea of creating this authentic personal brand. for the leader that hasn’t thought much about it, they’re posting on social media some personal stuff, some professional stuff, but they haven’t really thought about their brand, what are the f- you know, what are one or two things they ought to be thinking about or doing if they’re hearing this and saying, “Wow, I need to focus on this more”?

Mike: what are they sh- what should they be going and doing?

Elizabeth: So the number one thing is just because you’re a thought leader does not mean we need your thoughts on everything. you do not need to comment on everything. there… Create buckets. So I always tell people there’s, professional, there’s personal. we need to f- we’ve, we need to find the fine line between all of them.

I have, a three bucket structure that I work with too, that is, hard skill, soft skill, passion point, which always kind of, helps you make sure that you’re staying within that, those buckets and that space. But it can be broad. I mean, it can be… Like, mine is, comms and communications, spiritual health, and then just, I kind of, I do touch on, culture things, but I always bring them back to comms and something that’s going on spiritually.

but I really try not to veer too much. Once, when… I’m not gonna be talking about, engineering at any point, or I’m not gonna be talking about,big political things that are happening. That’s just not part of my brand. if you are not somebody who wants to be a thought leader, which to be honest, not every leader needs to be a thought leader.

Your personal brand could live and die strictly of how you talk to your employees. That’s it. It could just be that. but if you don’t wanna be a thought leader, just know that’s okay. Making sure that your LinkedIn page is as somebody said the other day, which I just love so much, her name’s Courtney Harmon, it is the, window to your storefront.

What does that look like? it, it’s a microsite of what’s happening in your world. Just make sure that your LinkedIn looks professional. That is your personal brand. That’s where it starts is almost like the microsite to your, to, your store, right? you don’t have to post. Just make sure it looks nice.

Make sure it, it says exactly what you want it, what you want it to, people to read back. and if you don’t wanna post, comment. Commenting is the easiest way for people to, for, to drive traffic, but to also engage in a way that doesn’t feel like very high stakes

Mike: And what’s, and maybe I should have started with this question, but what is, what’s the value of doing that? So I’m a, imagine, we’ve got someone listening who is the CEO of a $30 million company. They’re doing well. They’re profitable. they don’t know what their brand is. They just know, they’re, they’re a good leader.

They’re doing some great stuff. is there, what, w- is there an ROI of, y- but hey, if you created a, a clear personal brand, this is what it would mean for you. what’s the value of thinking about this more and spending a little bit more time on it?

Elizabeth: People want to work with you and for you. that’s the ROI. That’s it. That’s, I mean, honestly,the number one thing that I hear from people right now is that they wanna work for leaders that care about people. I think right now is there’s so many holding companies that are going through restructures.

There’s so many tech companies who are laying people off. There’s people who are going so far into AI, they’re getting rid of everyone, and I think we’re gonna have a balancing at some point. but it all feels very, that there’s a lack of any kind of care when it comes to human, and when it comes to, um, tenure, and when it comes to loyalty, and when it comes to kind of just,who we are showing up as a society.

So I think if you’re a leader who has empathy, who shares that they care about their people, who understands and talks about the fact that they understand the world that we’re living in right now, and that it’s all very heavy and a lot, and how you need to show up in your personal life and your professional life can be a challenge on a daily basis.

that’s what people want to work for. They wanna work for somebody who kind of has some kind of understanding of what the people,of what it feels like to be a regular person working a job, not necessarily running a business

Mike: Yeah, I’m gonna summarize what you just said and just add to it, ’cause I think it’s so important, and you just,you taught me something that I’m kinda processing as I’m talking. but, what I hear out of that is when you are building a personal brand that is authentically you and your peers on the leadership team and CEO are doing the same thing, I think what it does is it makes you way more attractive to the people you want to attract, whether it is, as you said, potential team members, I wanna work there.

and by the way, your authentic brand may repel the wrong people, and that’s okay. But I think it’s team members, which you said, and I also think it’s about clients, right? The right authentic brand is gonna, it’s gonna make you attractive to the right people and not so attractive to the wrong people, and that’s a hell of an ROI, I think

Elizabeth: And I think when you have a leadership team, you always need to think about the fact that, everyone on the team is going to bring in a different… It’s kinda like a recipe, right? They’re gonna bring in a different spice or a different something that’s gonna make that team really gel together and make that team really attractive to different people.

So if you’ve got the woman on the team that is the, the mom of three who is the, executive CEO who’s running everything, you’ve got other mothers that are looking towards this woman to be like, “She can do it, so can I.” Then you’ve also got, the, y- you’ve got the, the male leader who is, I’m like, “What is the male leader doing if he’s not the CEO?” We’ve got… Sorry, we put the woman as the CEO. She’s running the sh- running the show right now. we’ve got the, y- the male leader who’s the HR executive who is running all of the talent. and you’ve got young people looking up to see that they can do that, too.

I just think that we need to start thinking about what everyone’s strengths are within the leadership team, and how they’re balancing out the weaknesses as well, and that you always are gonna have an another generation of workers who are looking up to them to be the succession plan of what that looks like, too.

I really worry that AI, not AI, but also the last few years have, have really made a dent in mentoring and, really focusing on what, the next generation of leadership looks like. So I do love that your podcast is kind of talking about how teams can come together and how important that is, because I think there’s another generation that needs to look at the fact that it’s not just one person running everything, but really a well-formed team that is, that’s gonna make or break a company.

Mike: Yeah, and I’m actually happy to see, and I’m gonna sound, maybe I’m gonna sound like, like an old traditional guy when I say this, but I’m happy to see, that more and more companies are going back to the office. And it’s not happening every- and there are so many advantages to remote and hybrid.

You can now recruit across the country for great people. I see the value there. But I think, and you made me think of this when you talked about mentoring. I had a client I worked with a number of years ago, and there was a gentleman who was on the senior leadership team who was about 78 years old. Amazing guy. He’d been at the company for over 50 years. If you wanted to know anything about the history of the company, this is the guy you talked to. He was starting to slow down and work less and not work as hard, and I don’t even remember what his position was. But he was the guy that, you’d…

The meeting would be over, and he’d just talk to you in the hallway going back to his office and just, the wisdom from this guy was incredible and he had so much value, even if his job function w- was nothing. if, his value

Elizabeth: the institutional, yeah, the institutional knowledge

Mike: A- and

Elizabeth: culture, of history, of everything. Yeah. Yeah

Mike: what happened when COVID hit and we all had to go remote and we learned what Zoom was, is when the meeting was over, the screen went black. And the ability to talk to this guy literally at the water cooler or in the hallway or over lunch was gone, and he wound up retiring. And part of it was, and I think he was get- he was getting near that point anyway, but part of it was he realized he wasn’t that useful to the company anymore.

People weren’t… You know, he wasn’t necessarily the kinda guy you were gonna call with a specific question. There’s certainly some that would, but it was the more informal mentoring. And I have a daughter who’s 30 years old, and she works remotely, and she loves working remotely. And I think part of it is, at her age, like most of her working life has been post-COVID.

And I think we miss some of that informal mentoring, when we’re just on a Zoom call, off a Zoom call. it’s sad, but I think more companies are getting back to the physically being in person

Elizabeth: there’s pros and cons to both for sure, because I agree with you. That’s part of my process is I actually do behavioral analytics with an HR executive as a partner, because there are some people who do best remote because they have a low need to connect, and their mental energy is so fast that they actually, need to be a-away from people and in their space to get their work done, right?

But I also then think having them in an office is a challenge to push them outside of their comfort zone and to be mentoring and to be communicating and when we live in this world of, I think that we’re constantly digitally connected, but we are not physically connected, and the loneliness that’s coming up between so many people, it’s so important that we all need to kind of connect in different ways.

So I, I actually think that hybrid is a great way to kind of, find a good balance. It was– There was just an article that came out in The Wall Street Journal about talking to strangers and how it’s actually gonna be like a wellness trend of 2026 and how it’s good for your health.

and I think about that all the time because in, even in corporate buildings, right, there’s people in the lobby that you don’t know, and you’re like: “Oh, I think you work on th-the third floor instead of the sixth floor.” and people who aren’t dating. I mean, just getting to know different people just on your commute, or sitting at a bar after work, watching a hockey game.

I mean, I just think that there’s so much that happens with humans in life that we are missing by just being at home with the, however many people are in your home. So I don’t… Yeah, I think there’s a lot of good that can come from that too.

Mike: Yeah. 

Talk a little bit, Elizabeth, what, about what your company does. We’ve talked about … and I’m thinking as I’m talking, I’m like, “I don’t even know what I’m gonna name this episode.” We’ve talked about so

Elizabeth: Thank you so much. I know

Mike: but what ta- you know, so, so, so your company, The Good Advice Company, talk, talk to me about what you do, what kinds of clients you work with, and how you help

Elizabeth: I mean, I was that person that quit my job on March 2nd of 2020, right before the world closed down, and then was like, “Oh, I guess, I guess I’m gonna start consulting now.” and it all happened via Zoom, and it all That, that was… There was such a… For me, at the pandemic, there was actually a lovely thing that came out of it, ’cause I was really able to figure out what I wanted to do, what brought me joy, but also kind of like where I could be the most useful.

So I do very high-level strategic consulting for communications and marketing when it comes to, the, pretty much everything. I’m that person that kind of brings me– that people bring me in for a third-party kind of POV when they just have no idea where to go next. a lot of people will send me their, ChatGPT PR plan, and s- they’re like, “I wrote a PR plan.”

I’m like, “Oh, please do not do this. This is not going to work at all. this is… No.” so I do love to do that. I work mainly with, creative agencies and marketing agencies because that was my background, in corporate comms and entertainment. I was the, director of comms globally for Apple’s ad agency for a long time, and then another creative agency that, represented the NFL and Target and Starbucks and all the fun consumer stuff.

but then as I was building my own personal brand, ’cause as a PR person you’re normally told to stay quiet and have everyone else speak while you are telling everybody else what to say, I was really learning kind of what works and what doesn’t. And I told a, my story about burning out. I ended up in the emergency room with a migraine where I lost all my motor skills, and I wrote an op-ed about it, and it went viral on Business Insider in 2021.

and then from there, I started helping other people tell their story, and I realized that when you can connect a human truth to your personal brand, your personal brand will flourish from that. So, yeah, I started working with executives in all walks of life, so everything from a tech engineer founder to a cr- creative designer to a finance person.

I mean, literally I’ve done… it does not matter what industry you’re in, like I, m- I will figure out your personal brand and help you figure out how to amplify that into the world in a way that makes sense for you.

Mike: course you give good advice because that’s the name of your company. So we,

Elizabeth: I’m a Virgo. I also, like we just naturally give good advice. I think it’s just our like lot in life.

Yeah. I love it. 

Yeah.

Mike: should people go if people, i- if they wanna find out more about you and how you might be able to help them?

Elizabeth: Yeah. just thegoodadvicecompany.com. And then, you can also find me on LinkedIn, just Elizabeth Rosenberg.

Mike: Beautiful. And you better have a good LinkedIn. You gotta be eating your own

Elizabeth: I think I do. I think I do. I write a lot. it brings me a lot of joy, and I write about the things that people are always wanting to say, but, don’t say out loud. So I’m willing to take those risks, and they have, rewarded me very kindly.

Mike: Beautiful. 

Well, I always say i- if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team. We talked about intuition, we talked about spirituality, we talked about branding, we talked about politics. We … I don’t know, I’m probably

Elizabeth: We talked about

Mike: all of that, uh, you know,I really appreciate Lisbeth helping us create a great leadership team together.

All great stuff. Really, appreciate the time we just spent together

Elizabeth: Yeah. Thank you. I really appreciate it 

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