Resilient Branding: The Path to Global Success in Digital Marketing

We took what our story really truly was like at the heart what our values were, and found what is the one thing that we can do to support someone or serve them, and who's the one person that we can offer it to?

Welcome to the ReLaunch podcast. And today is going to be the day that you are going to feel the energy through the waves that you're going to be taking in via this conversation. The energy that is packed. In this short episode is going to uplift you recharge you energize you, and who am I talking about? I'm talking about Rhonda Swan, a five time best selling author, renowned international speaker and the esteemed founder and CEO of the unstoppable branding agency, which boasts as the top public relations and branding firm for entrepreneurs by not only Forbes magazine in 2021. She is also the creative mastermind behind wild magazine, a Luxury Magazine catered to women with an impressive global reach Rhonda hosts the Rhonda Swan show which is broadcast across more than 300 networks worldwide and CO hosts various TV shows on you name it, it's there, her exceptional work has been showcased on multiple times square billboards, and she's garnered recognition in a reputable publication such as I mean, you name it Forbes, entrepreneur success business insiders. And Forbes even acknowledged Ronda as one of their Influential Women of diversity to watch in 2021. She is the founder of the wild book series, which I just had the privilege of being one of the authors in wild intuition. And my chapter was all around the angel war sequence. And you're gonna have to read it so that you know what we were talking about. But I have to say so excited. And so let's jump in to the show today. All right, welcome, finally, to the RE launch podcast, you find this, this has been something that I mean, two forces of nature are coming together. And I'll tell you, between your schedule and my schedule,

I think we have 12 hours that we were able to make this happen. I

think samplers and I mean, literally, it's like one minute you're in Cuba, then you're in London, Antarctica. And I mean, you are all over. And why is that? And here's the thing, what I want to talk about first and foremost, is the most significant relaunch story in your life that has truly shaped Rhonda swung into the woman the Phenom that you are today.

Yeah, it's a big one, actually. You know, like you asked me, What's her big relaunch story? And I said, Gosh, I've had several, which I think really adds to resilience of, of who we are, what we can do with ourselves when things go wrong, or when we do need to make adjustments. But my biggest one is in I, you know, I went I was in corporate I was working for a fortune 100 company, running half a billion dollars of advertising. Pharmaceutical Company. GlaxoSmithKline pharmaceuticals. Yeah. I don't always say I'm proud of that anymore, considering I know what they do now. However, back then it was a great thing. And I had a really big shift and many probably of your followers will resonate with this. I went to a meeting at 7am on a Monday. It was our you know, Monday morning start. And I'm sitting there and my boss's name was Jane and she had that perfect Bob here, where her shoes matched her bad her perfect blonde Bob, and she was very uptight to wear Chanel suit every day. And I wanted to be Jane. Right. So you

know, my middle name is Jane Hillary.

You're nothing like okay, well, you might have been.

We were gonna go down. Okay,

so anyway, so I'm sitting in this meeting, and this woman walks in 15 minutes late to the meeting. And Jane is that's doesn't happen. So everyone you could tell Oh, like how dare she do this? And she's like you're late, and the woman's face started to shutter you can see your lip quivering. And she said, I'm so sorry. This was the first day I dropped my six week old baby take care. And you know, anyone's a mother would body and you know, you just drop in like, whoa, and that's what I did. It's a big that's a big, right and She said, I don't care if you know you want to put food in this baby's plate, you will be on time. And I looked at this chain and I thought, what a bet What a bitch. Like, are you kidding me? And then I thought to myself, Oh, you're gonna be that bitch.

Right? If you keep going down this path it will happen. Yeah, exactly.

And I literally switch that day and I went home. And you know, my husband, Brian, I said, Hey, Brian, money, we need to have a talk. I'm gonna quit my job. And he's like, You are crazy. I just want a five bedroom house lawyer. How are we gonna afford this? And I said, I don't care. I'm gonna figure it out. And so that brought me to searching and looking for other ways to replace my six figure income. And at the time, I would never consider typing in work at home mom, like I was corporate. I was like, you know, 30 I was killing it. And but I did. And, you know, something popped up. And it was, and I started to learn about the digital marketing and digital marketing world. I answered an ad and I spoke to this lady. And she said, you know, you need to learn from some of the best. And I started looking and working with Perry Marshall, who wrote the algorithms for Google. And so Perry Marshall. He's like the godfather of Google. He taught me Google ads, I started taking products from like Tony Robbins, Robert Kiyosaki, Jim Rohn, packaging them up and selling them on Google ads, how to help you make more money, quicker your career, all these things. And I would, how do I know this is super ageing? Me? This was in 2003. So this is before any social media watching

this that long? That is incredible. I know. I know.

Wow. Yeah. So I mean, it works. I watched actually this documentary with Steve Jobs, right? And he's like, if you don't figure this out, you're in trouble. So I'm like, Well, I'm gonna figure it out. And Perry Marshall was the number one at the time, and I don't even know how I found him. But I knew he was the right guy. So I was selling these products. And I would literally call 3000 leads, because I made a sales funnel. So this is funny. So I'm gonna can I get like kind of nerdy because I get like, kind of techie geeky, nerdy stuff, which I love that about you.

And that's that, that's because you're kind of mixing everything. We're going to talk about how he started working together, yeah, all these great things that you've done. But you led when we first talked, you lead with kind of the technical and you jumped in right away, you're like, oh, and said, Did you know that you're doing this? I'm not doing that this isn't helping your brand. And I'm a tech girl from silicon. I don't know about digital stuff. Yeah,

but that. That's the thing. That's why I do what I do now, because I learned all this backend stuff. And so just a long story short in there is that I literally built the first funnel, I made a million dollars with a sales funnel. And I was taking people from an ad to a website to an 800 number, because this is an O three and o four. So this is before you had any other way digitally to sell, you're not

going to tell me there's an info commercial here.

Because it was that ridiculous. Like literally I had, I have a picture and I can show you it is so funny. And I would put these signs out in my right drive my Mercedes around, and I would put these signs out CEO income working from home, don't believe me Don't call. It's really good. I know. And they were and it was like, that was my Google ad. And that was my sign. So I would drive around in my Mercedes. I had already quit my job made a friend you know, six figures in the first year retired my husband after like 18 months, you know, made multiple, six figures, and everything was crushing it right. So I was like, yes, I've made it. I've done my thing. And then I started really learning more digitally. However, that was like a big relaunch for me right is to go from corporate to starting a new company online. But then,

then, the biggest one happens because we all will have many relaunches, I think in our life Absolutely. Damn, I was you know, we were killing it. I was decided that Okay, now it's time for me to I'm gonna have a baby. And I'm gonna set this whole family up for the long term, my legacy, we're gonna invest in a lot of properties. Well, we have already been doing properties in California and things are really working well like from Oh fire over from oh three and Oh, four and 20506 it was like every property we bought in California, you know, going, you know, the train I'm on right now. So every property we're like, oh, I have a million right there. We'll buy a new one. But more than this. Well, sure enough. We said okay, we're going to invest now in a golf course development in Flagstaff, Arizona. It's early starts of oh seven. It'll be done in oh nine. Boom, everything's great. We took every dime, every dime at it and put it in. We just went all in. It was like all chips are in. I mean, like we pulled from my dad's my husband's dad's life insurance policy. We pulled from our IRAs, everything we had, it's like, we can't, we're golden. Like we're the golden ones and everything we touch turns to gold. And sure enough, I find out I'm having a baby and life is great. The project project is starting. We decide to sign our names off of all of the projects. So Let the developer build them because I was pregnant. Why keep going out to, you know, Arizona, like you're signing things off. We'll just power of attorney you $26 million homes that my name was on. And sure enough, 60 days before my daughter was born, we get a call from the banks. Hey, it's time to flip over your loans, because now you need to start paying on your full mortgage. No, no, the it's still construction. There's not they're not done yet. They're like, well, they're not done. Where's the money? Because they're all out. The developers sucked all the money out of the construction loans, and ran Rhonda and he was fooling us the whole time, making us think things were moving. He would show us stuff that wasn't even real. So here we go. I find out the bank say you are losing everything swans, congratulations. You've done a really big investment that is dropped due to nothing. My daughter was born 33 days early. I was a complete stress case. I later found out she didn't come early because I was stressed. She came really to save us from the turmoil we were in. Do you see I just got I know. Because if you know my daughter Hanalei, she's gorgeous and she is a Savior. And so I was back now into that next relaunch phase of, okay,

where do I go? Right? Go? Yeah. Okay. And by the way, you're brand new mom, you're trying right

now this tiny baby? Yeah, I'm sitting in this $2 million home in La Jolla. I got to Mercedes escalates, all the things else coming in bills are bumping. And in fact, our phones are set on that crazy ringer in case it was one of the bill collectors. So you just hit mute. Because you couldn't even stand it anymore.

So why did you do? Yeah,

I mean, we had all of our friends were like, Okay, this first off the the fact that you quit your jobs. My husband's a robotics engineer. You know, I worked for Fortune 100 company, we were doing really well. And they're like, Guys, this is now time you had your fun. Now you've a baby, be responsible. Go back and get your jobs. Go back to the corporate go back to corporate. And I'll tell you it was really enticing. However, I remember the day that I had my daughter and even before when I saw it that day, I walked in saw that woman put her baby in daycare, I vowed I'll never put my baby in daycare, I'll be the primary influence in her life. Now find a way. And that haunted me. And I was like, There's no way I'm doing this. This new baby. I'm not going back to Jane. I'm not going to be the one that is 15 minutes late because I cry in my car. Yeah. And we said no. We already knew how to do it. This digital market thing is it's been three years and it was now climbing. Right? Because this is now. Oh 708. So we said, we're done. We literally fire sales. Everything we owned. You want to talk about leaving your ego at the door, sister. Imagine taking all your beautiful things and dropping them on your front yard and saying whatever you want to take it? Yeah, I was selling bugaboo strollers for $300. I mean, you know everything and but we felt so free, because we were actually back in control. And where did you end up going? Well, we sold it all we left with $12,872.62 to our name, and the vision and without it ever my daughter huddling in daycare and she was just eight months, and November 25 will be our 17 year anniversary that we left USA never went back. And now we've built the multiple eight figure company on the road with that vision and that vow and the same skills that I learned from the very start from Perry Marshall, how to create a brand online how to inspire people with your story because right when we left, that's when YouTube Facebook social media started in late oh, eight.

You know what you always will find a way. Yeah, it's really all about who you are down deep. Okay. 12,000 Plus, you're going out, you're leaving the US. You got your daughter, your husband, and you're all you're all in all

this is we're all chips in at this point. Everyone was like, You're insane. I mean, all of our friends are huge corporate executives, right? CFO of Rip Curl like big big time executives. And here we are. The Internet. We're gonna do this with their with our baby. Look, I can call people and I can make money online and sell them things. Right. Like, no one believed it. Right. But you do suffer. I did. But you

did. Okay, so now we fast forward. We're in the Time Machine. We're yeah, here. Yeah. You have all of the knowledge of being able to walk back. Yep. Right. And it's that, you know, hindsight. 2020 What have you learned? What would you if somebody were starting to do? And I haven't you know, we have a stagehand here helping us out just graduated from brand. Yeah, yeah. And he's, you know, trying to figure out like, where do I go next? You do this with people. Yeah. You take them from virtually bottom and you grow them into Yeah,

we are Auto is returning best kept secrets under world renowned brands. Okay, you know, and what

would you do if you had to? You know, Grant Cardone? Yeah. Went out there. And he was, you know, he was in a show he had nothing. Yeah. Okay, Rhonda Swan, nothing. Yeah, what would you do today?

It's interesting you say that because I actually wrote a chapter. It's interesting, because there's going to be actually a show or there's a show. Oh, but I wrote a chapter in Russell Bronson's book and he said, I want you to be in the book. However, do you have your 30 day you have no list? You have all you know, is your knowledge. You have no people that can help you. What would you do? And I was like, Well, I did it. I did it. And so I wrote exactly what we did in his chapter. And that is, I, we took what our story really truly was, like, at the heart, what our values were, and found what is the one thing that we can do to support someone or serve them, and who's the one person that we can offer it to? That's what

I'm hearing unilateral is the one narrow, narrow, narrow, narrow. And what at that time was the one person and the one thing

at that time, it was a woman just like me, who didn't want to put her baby in daycare. And it was someone that wanted to travel be with her kids every day. And we utilize social media video is first it was Facebook then became YouTube. And all we did is tell our story. That's all we did. And we told our our downfall story, right? Like, we this is where we were, this is what happened to us. This is where we are now. And if you want it also will show you how this

is the relaunch journey. This is literally the React effect. Now why did I start it? Same reason? Yeah, I knew I had gone through Matt, Matt Oracle, right, four years there, then starting a whole bunch of other companies, all the ups and downs and health issues and family issues and business issues. And I had this connection. I thought I am not alone here. Yeah. And people going through relaunches. Yeah. So you immediately were like, I'm gonna go all in focus on that. And what did you build up? Because it has morphed? Oh,

for sure. Yeah. So initially, this is before anyone was building brands online. And I found that just by us sharing our story, and I was marketing it because I knew how to do Google ads. People were like, Who is this unstoppable family? Right? First, we branded ourselves were like, We are the unstoppable family. Right? A great name. Yeah, yeah. So my husband's real simple surfer. My daughter was the unstoppable girl and I was the unstoppable mama. So there were like, Who's this persona? And every day, every day, I did a video every single day and uploaded it to Facebook, because that's right in Facebook came out. And so we literally just focused on building people's brands online. How do we do that we did the first few video. Now it's more than we started building, helping them build courses, right. So I've launched about 2500, brands, courses and products in the last 10 years, and then taught people certainly how to market themselves. Now our value ladder of our company was brand image, message strategy, and then PR, right, it went like this. And however, as much as I loved our clients that we were helping them construct it from the start, we then realize the client we really wanted to work with was one that was already established, and then helping them with their PR and media. So we kind of flipped it on its back. And now we focus on starting clients that are best kept secrets in their space like they, they do really well. They're known in their space. But globally, they're not known. And certainly when you search for them online, no one knew who they were. So I took all the techie geeky stuff that I know about, you know, Google and digital marketing. And we give everyone what they want, which is the sexy things like Forbes interviews, on certain shows, all of that. But we do all the backends things that they need, which is Google indexing their name, indexing their company, turning Google on to go, Whoa, we need to create a Google knowledge panel, we need to let everyone know that who these people are. And so that we just merge the two of them together. So that's where we are now. And that's, you know, we've worked with some of the top brands in the world, including yourself. And, you know, I'm always kind of like the behind everyone's I'm everyone's big cheerleader on the back end. Because that's my whole mission. If I can help someone shine, like I was able to do for myself and my family and give them that lift. They not only it increases their revenue, right? Their life is better, their visibility stronger, and they get more stages, they get more interviews, they get more podcasts, they get more, you know, like, you

know what you did for me, you helped me think bigger. It was like I came in, I said, I got a book, I have a podcast, and you're like, that's great, but what are you going to do with it? And with everyone writing books these days, yeah, and even the articles. That's great, Hillary, we're gonna get you here but what are you going to do with it once? It comes out? Yeah. And your your methodology and your way I remember when I first met you, I think there was in Japan.

Yeah, you were on your way there and we were already there. Remember that? Yes. It was you ready to go snowboarding that morning. You

were you were in your your brain and your brain Brian was there, your daughter, we're all doing this conference call. And I was I was like, wow, now this feels so genuine, so authentic. And that's another thing about you, you're a no bullshit. Like, What You See Is What You Get all the time. Now, for me, it was just like instant, like, I just was like, I love I love it, anything that she's working on I want to work on. But for those that are out there that have self doubt, they have fears about like, what is this really gonna mean for me? They don't understand the value associated with hiring someone that is not only you're really you step into that mentorship role. Yeah, right. You're like Hillary, why don't we just show you what you're looking at? Yeah. So yeah. And I hope to help someone understand, like, how do you help them? And it's, it was super easy. And this is what I really want you to get at is that you don't make it hard. Yeah. It's like, Hey, you want to do this? This? Is my pro say

yes, we'll do it. Just say yes, we'll do it. Just say yes. Yeah. Well, you know, impostor syndrome, I think is probably one of the biggest things that all of us experience. It doesn't matter what level we're at, you know, we'll sit in a space and go, should I be here? Is it me that should be helping these people, right? And that's what I see. And especially in PR media, right? When I say, hey, you've done enough, we need to make you bigger the world deserves to see you. And I think that's something that we all struggle with is we're told not to stand out, you know. And so yeah, what we do is we help show our clients their story. So you know, clients fill out their background information, and we start creating titles and telling that story. And they read it for the first time like, oh,

wow, right. You weren't impressive. And you're like, oh, yeah,

I see that interview. But we don't always see that in ourselves. So I love to be the mirror. It's almost like we're the hologram for our clients. Because you know, what, what we're experiencing in our life right now is how they will also see themselves. So I always have to check myself to like, who am I being? Where am I at? Like, am I doing the things? Am I standing out in front? You know, like, you know, I've been on the road since January 6. I've been home. Because I'm saying prepping for the book tour. Yeah. Because we have a new book that we're in, and like, getting everyone ready doing interviews doing TV, because if I don't do it, they won't do it.

Well, and that's really you have so much skin in the game. Yeah. Right. And one of the things as you just said, we are doing this, we are doing it, and from the wild intuition book that's coming out next month, this month. And I have a great chapter. Angel worse. Yes. Which I, which I love. Because you came I had written some kind of nondescript title that was all about it does have to do with Diana Ross and this incredible manifestation story. And my tune in process. Yeah, but you're like, come on, you know, and you kind of dug a little deeper and said, you know, you are about this, Hillary, does this represent you? And I'm like, Oh, dang it. Yeah, I'm going to get juice here. And that's going in. And I gotta tell you, I'm recording it tomorrow in audio. I can, you know, really embrace it. Again, I think it's perfect timing. And as I was going over, and I my, that's what you do for people, you get them to be more than they think you get them to see those. It's not blind spots. But it's that opportunity that you know, the true power that is behind each person. So now as you're about to launch this next bug, and you have these series you did, what was wild? Well, yeah,

wild. So wild is wealth, intuition, leadership diversity. So wealthy already launched intuition this month. Yeah, leadership's next year.

And it is your goal to have like just wild everything. I know. You've got, you know, magazine. Now you've got I mean, what is what is Rondo's vision? I call them skeezy. Goals. Yeah. And yeah, yeah. What do you really? Yeah,

thanks for asking that because I, my company on several branding agency fulfills on the wild company, right. And I took what I do in PR media, and said, Why don't we write this book called Women Gone Wild, the feminine guide to fearless living? It came out of a near death experience. I was literally visited by your council of women that were like, you know, these are witches. Women have been burned at the stake. Their voices have been suppressed. Like we need your voice. And so I'm gonna go was that this was just two years ago, two and a half years ago.

Can you give us a little bit give us some? Yeah,

so I launched the very first book, and it was just a collaboration book with my clients just to let's tell our story, let's you know, do some wild things. And that did well was Amazon bestseller. And I then went in during COVID. I gotten infected my full body went sepsis, and I was in Bali, where I live, wouldn't the hospital and I was literally my whole body was just shaking and they're like, We have to go emergency if, you know calm your body down. I had had a surgery that had left particle in my body, and it got infected. And I almost didn't think I was gonna wake up. And it was one of those moments where I was saying goodbye to my daughter and my husband. It there was no one in the hospitals barley does not have enough, you know biotics. Nothing could come in, nothing can go out people were dying because of infection. And I, I woke up, and I was alive. And I'm American Indian. So I brought my drums. I had my co Paul, I had my incense, I had my, all my ceremonial things, and I'm in my braids, and I'm singing, and I'm singing, and they thought it was crazy. Right? Knees or legs. She's about to get a witch. Yeah, there's a witch in there. Right? So they really thought. And then all of a sudden, it was lucid. It was like these women. These spirits. Yeah. And they were all I can see their faces now. And they said, We want more from you. We need more. We need you to help more women. And like I already do. What are you talking about? It was like no more. And from there, it was like I had this deep download, okay, you're going to do a book series called Wild, it's going to be redefining the meaning of wealth, nothing about money, redefining the meaning of wealth, intuition, leadership, diversity, you're going to run a series, you're going to put 80,000 Women in a Coliseum. At the end of the series, you're gonna have pink, you're going to Beyonce, you're going to have Christina Aguilera, they're gonna be singing, you're going to be a big Tony Robbins of women. Right on stage. And it's it's sharing that energy and bringing them together lifting, dropping all the bullshit, because when I was in corporate, I left a lot of dead sisters their corpses behind. Well, I grew. Right. I mean, that's what we were trying to do. Or chili. Yeah, you know. And so that's that was became my mission, because especially with my 17 year old daughter, like I want her to see that women can work together, that we can do amazing things we can contribute to the world with our work and not have to be a bitch. Right collaboration and connect. Yeah, that's it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's really where it came from. And now the book is really a bigger passion project. For me, I'm turning my company so my company can really work and do its own thing. Because of our connections. Like that's where people come to us. They're like, What can I get? Like? Easy what you know, you're good enough. Now let's move it. So that part can work. And now I'm really wanting to build women going wild. So wild. Yeah. And I have a new hot sauce now I love

amazing, you're getting into everything. What's the brand, but okay, but when people are listening, right? They say, alright, well, this woman is wild. There's a lot there. What can they how can they start to get into your world? Yeah,

I give a lot of free, most of all my content is free. So on Instagram, I give constant amount of content free educating on PR media, YouTube, I've tons of videos on YouTube, and just helping support what you need to understand how to build a brand. And then, as far as women Gone Wild is concerned, we also have an Instagram W GW book page, we are starting a new community called the wild tribe, where women from all over can come just be in the tribe be part of what we're up to, they can become an author if they like however, otherwise, it's more of like being in the energy of wild women that are, you know, holding nothing back totally authentic, working together, building each other up. And you know, bringing better things to the world.

Ah, you know, what I love about you is that with people that you're working with, and people that are just coming in, just to explore a little bit, like what's next for them? Yeah, you have this like sense of here's where I think you need to be here's you too, need to collaborate, you need to be working together. And one of the things we you and I talked about right before this is you know, collaborating on visibility and helping to really become visible because I talked about you got to be invisible first. Get to know yourself, so that you can then show up in that true form. And there's so much goodness come in. Coming your way everyone you'll

hear Yeah, we're gonna That's right. You're gonna create something really fun. Yeah,

it's really fun. You know what, I love that you though, as even we were discussing it, you're like, if it doesn't light you up. You're not doing like, I don't care how you know how little time or time much money once a week and like, yeah, you're like, No, that's not my thing. We'll do half a day, and how we're gonna. And that's what he again, you are very you have this conviction of, this is what I will do. And this is what I will do. Well, this has been incredible. Get to be in New York with you next month. I have so much fun there. And I love that we have a little in person interview today. Lots of energy. Where can people where can they find you? And yes, it will be in the show notes. Yeah, where are they? Yeah,

Instagram is the best. Rhonda swan. That's always the best to find me. Also, we have our book series W GW book.com along with on Instagram as well. And if you just search my name, you'll actually see the work that I do so that you can see what it looks like to have a full visible profile online leveraging PR and media to do that, including being a published author.

And that's the greatest part. Yeah, I guess you even did a post and shared here's what we've done. Yes, yeah. As it's like building up Hillary, here's what we actually found for success entrepreneur a lot, and all this good stuff. And you also were huge in terms of getting me on the wakeup show and starting to be the CO hosts there. So again, fun for me to have you. Yeah, so exciting to see where we're gonna end up doing in the future. And again, everyone, you get to hear these incredible relaunch stories, these journeys that people go on. Don't listen and leave. Let's make sure that you are literally you've got your relaunch experience in front of you. What's yours? How are you going to change your own perspective on what's happening and we always say, live now. Love now, relaunch. Now relaunch your remarkable and we'll see you next week.