Building Community and Connection in Business with Leslie Youngblood

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:18)
Welcome back to the show, everyone. I'm Stephen Sakach here again with my co-host Tullio Siragusa, and our special guest who we'll introduce in a moment.
So in business, attention is often easier to gain than trust. According to Edelman's Trust Barometer, 81 percent of consumers say they need trust in a brand before they'll consider buying from it. So that trust is often built through connection and consistent, meaningful communication over time. And today, we're exploring what it takes to build community and connection in business, and how storytelling, strategy, leadership all play a role in creating lasting relationships. Tullio, introduce our special guest today.

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:01)
My pleasure. Our guest today is Leslie Youngblood. She's the founder and CEO of Youngblood MMC.
And Leslie brings more than 20 years of experience in marketing and advertising, helping hospitality brands, service-based businesses and non-profits, as well as membership organization go from overlooked to unforgettable through strategic storytelling and execution. She's also the co-founder of TableTag, a platform designed to simplify communication between marketers and clients and host of the Serious Lady Business Podcast, where she shares real stories and lessons from female founders. Known for her ability to blend creativity and results, Leslie helps organizations build strong brands and mean from connection with their audiences. Leslie, it's great to have another marketer with us on the show and The Bliss Business Podcast. Look forward to chatting with you today.

**Leslie Youngblood** (1:53)
Thank you both for having me. I'm so excited to be here today. I love talking marketing with fellow marketers. So I can't wait for this conversation.

**Tullio Siragusa** (2:02)
The tables turn today. The tables turn today.

**Leslie Youngblood** (2:05)
Yes, indeed.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:08)
Leslie, so you've built your career around storytelling and brand strategy. From your perspective, what role does storytelling play in building a real community and not just visibility?

**Leslie Youngblood** (2:20)
I think it really is everything. It's at the core of who and what a brand is and what makes it unique and special, and how you connect with your audience.
We hear storytelling and I think it's used so much as a buzzword, but storytelling is not a marketing tactic. It's how people decide if they want to engage with you and your brand. Today, with the evolution of AI and the ease of storytelling or almost storytelling, to be able to share your story of what makes you, your brand, unique and special is more important than ever.

**Tullio Siragusa** (3:06)
Now, many brands are very active online, but they struggle to create meaningful engagement. I mean, it's crazy what's going on out there. They're shouting at customers using curse word to get people's attention, desperate trying to create meaningful engagement. What do you think is missing in those cases?

**Leslie Youngblood** (3:28)
Well, that's a great question. I think, yes, you can see so plainly that so many brands try to be clever, or they try to push the envelope. And I think our audience and our customers are so smart.
And when you underestimate your audience, your customer, you're going to fall flat because they are smarter than we could ever give them credit for, and they can feel that. And so when it's off the mark, it's because I feel like you're missing the truth. You're missing that honesty.
And again, people can tell. I think relatable and consistent content beats something that tries to go viral. And so many brands and content creators and influencers are striving for that virality, but really you don't have to hit that light, that proverbial lightning in a bottle. What really makes the impact is consistency over time with content that is truly exemplifying who you are and who you are for. And so, you know, it reminds me of when I helped build Accelerate America, which was a community for entrepreneurs and small business owners. In 2017, we were created with a focus on community and on and what we saw was this gap in the market of organizations for entrepreneurs and business owners, but that we're talking to them. And I think what made Accelerate America a success, we grew from zero to over 40,000 members in under five years, is that we really gave the platform and allowed the entrepreneurs and small business owners to tell their stories and to connect with each other. And so there's real magic in community and authentic connection today more than ever.

**Stephen Sakach** (5:16)
Yeah, I think, you know, today more than ever, like you mentioned, like, we're the most marketed to probably a generation ever, you know, it feels like it's just throttling up even more and more, you know, and I, being in that industry, we're always just thinking about not contributing to problems that that can cause and how we can, you know, contribute to putting a little good in there. And I think when you're, when you really focus on trying to build that connection with an audience and make it, and make it, you know, meaningful and authentic, that feels like you're putting a little bit of good in there because that's kind of what people want. We can sense when something's just, you know, off in a matter of a couple seconds, right?