179: The Power of Personal Branding and Building Trust With Your Ideal Customers Featuring Nikki Gonzales

Manufacturing Happy Hour

Does personal branding have a place in the manufacturing space? It might be something you associate more with marketing or creative industries, but this week’s guest has seen her personal branding efforts open doors to new and exciting opportunities.

Nikki Gonzales, the Head of Partnerships at Quotebeam and Co-Host of the Automation Ladies podcast (amongst many other projects) joins this episode to talk about personal branding and the importance of trust. Trust is a key theme in this episode, and personal branding can go a long way in building it within your network. But it also comes up when we chat about why companies are sometimes hesitant for employees to work on their personal brands. For Nikki, it’s important that companies trust their employees, like Quotebeam did for her.

We dive into how Nikki has built her brand and network and the benefits she and Quotebeam have experienced as a result. We also talk about Nikki’s background, having moved from Iceland to the UK to Texas, where she learned about the world of tech sales and the importance of networking.

In this episode, find out:

• What Nikki learned growing up in Iceland, moving to the UK and eventually to Houston
• Nikki shares the story of her first sale at her dad’s company
• Why Nikki made the jump to software based on the kind of lifestyle she wanted
• How a long networking relationship led to Nikki getting her role at Quotebeam
• Why Nikki decided to focus more on her personal branding
• How Nikki’s personal branding efforts are also benefitting Quotebeam
• Why companies are hesitant to trust employees working on a personal brand
• Nikki shares how she came to start and co-host the Automation Ladies podcast
• Nikki explains the work Quotebeam does and teases some new developments in the future

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Tweetable Quotes:

• “Network effects are real, and we are a technology business, yes, but the backbone of that is the people."
• “The owner or the leadership team at that organization needs to take a look in the mirror and say, are we fostering the type of culture that's going to result in a positive perception of our company from the folks that work here?
• [On personal branding] “I think getting buy-in is really important. You can go out on your own and do all kinds of stuff. But if you do it completely without discussing it with your employer at all, then you're probably setting yourself up for some sort of conflict down the road.”

Links & mentions:

• Quotebeam, a platform that brings products from many supply chain sources to one place to help customers source their parts without endless searching
• Automation Ladies, join Nikki Gonzales, Ali G, and Courtney Fernandez as they chat with people from all walks of life and all corners of the industrial automation industry
• Process & Controls Engineering, LLC, the Northwest's leading woman-owned control systems integration firm
• Saint Arnold Brewing Company, established craft brewery featuring facility tours and a beer hall that’s basically a beer cathedral, plus a beer garden with amazing skyline views of Houston, TX

Make sure to visit http://manufacturinghappyhour.com for detailed show notes and a full list of resources mentioned in this episode. Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty.