Leveraging Your Brand to Grow Faster: Key Insights from Kim Adele-Randall
In a recent episode of The Turbo Branding Show podcast, Sue Kirchner sat down with business consultant and TEDx speaker Kim Adele-Randall to discuss how companies can leverage their brand to grow faster, easier, and more successfully. With 25 years of corporate experience and a background that includes leadership roles at Sage and Barclays Bank, Kim shared invaluable insights on building trust, creating alignment, and developing authentic brand connections.
From Operational to Transformational
Kim works primarily with high-net-worth business owners who find themselves trapped in their own success—their businesses work, but only when they’re personally involved. “What I work with them on is how to make your business successful without you having to be there all the time,” Kim explains.
One of her proudest moments came when a client who hadn’t taken a laptop-free vacation in five years texted her from Oslo: “My husband has surprised me with a week away, and I’m not taking my laptop. I know you’ve got this.” Her client’s confidence in her allowed for that unplugged vacation – a benefit that Kim was happy to deliver!
This transformation doesn’t happen overnight. It requires what Kim calls “all the really boring things in life”—risk governance, controls, metrics, and clearly documented processes. But more importantly, it requires aligning operations with the brand story.
The Three Hula Hoops of Alignment
One of Kim’s most powerful analogies involves three hula hoops representing key stakeholders:
- The Company: What shareholders or owners need
- The Customers: What clients need and expect
- The Colleagues: What employees need to thrive
Initially, these hoops may only slightly overlap, making it impossible to “throw a beanbag through the center” where all three align. But as organizations listen more deeply to all stakeholders, the hoops move closer, creating a larger sweet spot of alignment.
“Your brand isn’t just what it means to your customers,” Kim emphasizes. “It’s what it means to your colleagues, and it’s what it means to your company as a whole.”
Dancing With the Right Partners
Not every customer is right for your business, and Kim uses another memorable analogy to illustrate this: dance styles.
“If I were a dance style, I’m probably going to be Jazz or Charleston,” she explains. “And if my client comes on and they’re a waltz, imagine how awkward that is going to be.”
This leads to one of her most counterintuitive pieces of advice: “Your story should repel as much as it should attract.” A strong brand naturally filters out poor-fit partnerships while drawing in ideal clients who resonate with your rhythm and approach.
“For the people that aren’t going to be good dance partners, it should switch them right off,” Kim says. “For the people that are your dance partners, they should be going, ‘I want to be on your dance card. Where do I sign?'”
The Power of Authentic Leadership
Having climbed from hairdresser to bank boardroom despite lacking conventional qualifications, Kim understands the importance of authentic leadership.
“My people are my clients,” she states. “If I don’t deliver to them the experience that I’m promising to my end customer, they won’t deliver that experience to the end customer. They’ll deliver the experience I’m delivering to them.”
In today’s challenging talent market, employer branding has become just as crucial as customer branding. Kim shares how her unique approach to recruitment—spending the first 30 minutes of assessment centers explaining why candidates should want to work there—resulted in even rejected applicants desperately wanting to join her team.
When the Lips and Hips Don’t Match
Kim describes the danger of brand misalignment with a colorful phrase: “You’ve got to be careful when the lips and hips don’t match.” When what you say and what you do aren’t aligned, trust erodes quickly.
This misalignment often appears in today’s hybrid work debates. Kim notes that employees resist returning to offices partly because “they’re going to feel like they’ve had a pay cut”—losing both time and money to commuting without clear benefits.
The solution? Honest conversations that acknowledge these concerns while working together to find solutions that benefit everyone. “Set the intention. Our intention is 100% to find a solution that works for all of us,” she advises.
From Plot Twists to Purpose
Kim’s personal journey includes several “plot twists”—from losing feeling in her hands and having to abandon her hairdressing career to surviving double lung pneumonia that prompted her business pivot. Each challenge became an opportunity to reinvent herself.
After years of battling imposter syndrome, Kim founded International Imposter Syndrome Awareness Day and rebranded to Authentic Achievements—creating a safe space “to be you first and what you do second.”
Her parting wisdom comes from Pablo Picasso: “The meaning of life is to find our gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”
This blog post is based on Sue Kirchner’s interview with Kim Adele-Randall on the Turbo Branding Show podcast. To hear the full conversation, including more insights on employer branding, customer alignment, and authentic leadership, listen to the complete episode here. Kim can be reached at kim@authenticachievements.com or found on social media as Kim Adele or Kim Adele-Randall.
