Becoming Before Leading with Rhonda Joy McLean
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Description
In this episode of Branding Room Only, Paula T. Edgar is joined by Rhonda Joy McLean for a thoughtful and deeply personal conversation about where leadership and personal brand truly begin. Long before titles, platforms, or visibility, Rhonda Joy reflects on the experiences, values, and identity work that shaped how she shows up as a leader.
Rhonda Joy shares stories from her upbringing in the Jim Crow South, integrating schools as a teenager, and learning early lessons about resilience, collaboration, and self-trust. She explores how faith, culture, and intergenerational legacy informed not only her career path, but the way she leads people and navigates systems. Together, Paula and Rhonda Joy unpack personal branding as presence rather than performance, and leadership as something practiced long before it is named.
This episode centers the idea that a durable personal brand is not built through optics alone, but through lived experience, integrity, and clarity about who you are. It is a conversation about formation, grounding, and becoming before leading.
Chapters
2:36 – What personal branding means to Rhonda Joy, how she describes herself, a quote she thinks about often, and her hype music
6:46 – How school integration was a daily test of courage, discipline, and collaboration
12:39 – Rhonda Joy’s reflection on what’s happening now, decades after being a part of racial justice history
16:19 – The foundation for Rhonda Joy’s fearless leadership, from childhood to law career
21:31 – How being rejected opened doors to excellence for Rhonda Joy, instead of shrinking her ambition
25:42 – Rhonda Joy’s impact on others and her values-led, continuously evolving brand
Connect With Rhonda Joy McLean
Rhonda Joy McLean is the president and CEO of RJMLEADS LLC, a leadership consulting and career advancement company based in New York City. She is the former Deputy General Counsel of Time Inc., a global media company, where she managed one-third of the law department and provided legal counsel to over 200 clients for nearly 20 years, including Time, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, People, Essence, and other global brands. Her client roster includes international law firms, other for-profit and nonprofit organizations, and academic institutions, as well as senior executives at private and public companies worldwide and entrepreneurs.
A noted public speaker and executive empowerment coach, Rhonda Joy also co-authored the popular book series The Little Black Book of Success: Laws of Leadership for Black Women, with her longtime business partners Elaine Meryl Brown and Marsha Haygood. In 2022 and 2023, the book was named as an essential resource for Black executives in the United States and Canada. The sequel, The NEXT Little Black Book of Success, is now available and explores the expanding and evolving landscape of leadership in the post-pandemic era.
The Little Black Book of Success series by Elaine Meryl Brown, Marsha Haygood, and Rhonda Joy McLean
Rhonda Joy McLean on Instagram and LinkedIn
Mentioned In Becoming Before Leading with Rhonda Joy McLean
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Sponsor for this episode
This episode is brought to you by PGE Consulting Group LLC.
PGE Consulting Group LLC empowers individuals and organizations to lead with purpose, presence, and impact. Specializing in leadership development and personal branding, we offer keynotes, custom programming, consulting, and strategic advising—all designed to elevate influence and performance at every level.
Founded and led by Paula Edgar, our work centers on practical strategies that enhance professional development, strengthen workplace culture, and drive meaningful, measurable change.
To learn more about Paula and her services, go to www.paulaedgar.com or contact her at info@paulaedgar.com, and follow Paula Edgar and the PGE Consulting Group LLC on LinkedIn.
Transcript
Paula Edgar: Welcome to Branding Room Only, the podcast where your personal brand gets a front-row seat. I'm Paula Edgar, and if you're here, it's because you know your brand isn't just about what you do. It's about how people experience you. In each episode, you'll hear stories, strategies, and lessons from leaders and influencers who built their brands and made their mark. And I'll share the tools you need to do the same. Let's go.
Hi, everybody. It’s Paula Edgar, and this is Branding Room Only. I am so excited about our guest today because she is a phenom. Her name is Rhonda Joy McLean, and she is the president and CEO of RJMLEADS LLC and co-author of Little Black Book of Success Leadership Trilogy.
Some more about Rhonda Joy is that she is a leadership thought leader with many years of experience as an attorney, corporate executive, law professor, published author, board director, community activist, executive search coach, and a performing classical musician. Like all the commas, right? Okay. She leads people across cultural, ideological, geographical, and generational divides to accomplish extraordinary results.
She believes that compassionate, emotionally intelligent leadership can change the world. I know this for sure because she has certainly changed the world and changed my world. She’s one of my favorite people. So everybody, welcome Rhonda Joy McLean to the Branding Room.
Rhonda Joy McLean: Thank you, my darling. Oh, my goodness. I am so excited.
Paula Edgar: I am so excited. Again, this is something that has been in the works for me, in my mind, for a very long time. So before we even get started, I want to give everybody a background. So you all know I’m a lawyer, but I don’t practice. But I remember when I was in my junior practice, people would be like, “Rhonda Joy McLean. Rhonda Joy McLean.” I was like, “Who’s Rhonda Joy McLean?” And then I met her.
There are some people who you meet, and you immediately know that they are touched by the Lord. Immediately. You don’t even hear me say the words “touched by the Lord,” so you know that I’m feeling this the way I’m feeling this, right? And Rhonda, you have always been somebody who I feel closer to myself, closer to God, closer to all the things because you exist, and I appreciate you.
So before we even get into it, just know that you never see me fan clubbing on my own podcast. But I am certainly fan clubbing for Rhonda Joy McLean.
Rhonda Joy McLean: Oh, my goodness. Bless you. Bless you. Bless you. I feel the very same way about byou.
Paula Edgar: Thank you. Now let’s get down to business. We have a lot to talk about. Rhonda Joy.
Rhonda Joy McLean: Yes, ma’am.
Paula Edgar: What does personal branding mean to you? How would you define it?
Rhonda Joy McLean: To me, personal branding means that your brand speaks for you. So whether you are there or not, if they see it, if they hear it, if they sense it, you are present.
Paula Edgar: Okay. I love that definition. What are three words or short phrases you would use to describe yourself?
Rhonda Joy McLean: Three? You mean like as in one, two, three?
Paula Edgar: One, two, and three. Start with the top three.
Rhonda Joy McLean: Thirty. No, no. Okay. No, no. I will start. I am spiritually serious. I am loving but not stupid. I am doing my best to live a purposeful life.
Paula Edgar: Yes. All of that resonates. Let me just add one more.
Rhonda Joy McLean: Uh-oh.
Paula Edgar: You are wonderful.
Rhonda Joy McLean: Oh, my goodness.
Paula Edgar: So there’s that. There is that.
Rhonda Joy McLean: Thank you.
Paula Edgar: Okay. Do you have—and I’m fairly excited about your answers for these—do you have a motto or quote that you love?
Rhonda Joy McLean: Wow. I’m not sure about mottos, but I do think of things like this. One would be love endures. Particularly knowing what we’ve come through in our lives—loss, grief, very unexpected changes or shifts. Some we’ve chosen, some were chosen for us. So for me, love endures and lifts us up.
Paula Edgar: Okay. Now you’re a musician.
Rhonda Joy McLean: Yes, ma’am.
Paula Edgar: So tell me this.
Rhonda Joy McLean: You want me to sing for you? I will. No, go ahead.
Paula Edgar: So the answer was always going to be yes. So what is your hype song? What is that when they are going to get RJM leading, what’s playing in your head? What’s that song?
Rhonda Joy McLean: Well, see, this is hard because I like many genres of music. My parents were music teachers and ministers of music. So please. But this may surprise you. This is someone I’ve just learned about in the last year and a half. His name is Jacob Collier. He is British, I think Eurasian. I don’t really know what his race is, and it doesn’t matter. He’s a genius. He’s like a prince in the classical music world, except that he plays with everyone.
Herbie Hancock and Quincy Jones found him online. He posted on Instagram. That’s where I found him. He taught himself to play all these instruments. He has so much music in him. He’s created instruments of his own, a new kind of guitar. But anyway, he sings, he writes, he sings with everyone. So there is a song called World of Worlds, and it actually is about the passage of time and people’s life transitions.
He went to a Black choir at Oakwood College. It may upset me to talk about it. I don’t cry in public. But I’m here to tell you, I lost my mother a few months ago, and I’ve been driving back and forth. It’s about 700 miles. So I’ve been listening to him on the road. But also, I’ll just throw a few names out there. Give me Donnie McClurkin. Give me, at really any time, day or night, any jazz musician, but Shirley Horn is one of my favorites because she is both an artist and a performer. I’ll just stop because I could do that all day.
Paula Edgar: I mean, and I would just sit and listen. So I love that it’s somebody who you recently found out about, because my daughter’s Spotify has this thing where you can jam with somebody else. My daughter’s like, “You only stay in the ’90s.” I’m like, “That is correct.” I only want to live in the ’90s in terms of my music, and I’m sure about that.
Rhonda Joy McLean: I hear you. I hear you, my sister.
Paula Edgar: Okay. Tell me where you grew up and how that shaped your brand.
Rhonda Joy McLean: Thank you. Well, I am a child of parents who were born in the North whose parents were born in the South. So all of that story, all of the stories about the Great Migration. In fact, my grandparents moved from Virginia to Buffalo, New York, my maternal grandparents.
But I won’t go through all of that except to say my parents, who met at Talladega College—go HBCU—in Talladega, Alabama, right after World War II, trained for five years to become music educators. And, of course, they were very faith-filled, and so they went right into the church. But they went back to Chicago, where I was born.
No one would recognize their degree, so they weren’t allowed to teach because it was an HBCU degree. You would think at that time, but again, this is 1950 when they graduated. And, of course, they worked for a year to get married because they didn’t have any cash. So then they went back.
Mama went to Buffalo, where she grew up. Daddy went to Chicago. Then they got married in ’51. I came in ’52. Early in ’52, I was six weeks old. They were recruited South because Jim Crow was legal. There were double-track schools, thousands of them. So for many Black graduates who probably should have been astronauts or scientists or researchers, the paths open to them were teachers, nurses, sanitation workers, bus drivers, and all the things that we know. So they were recruited South by Mom’s college roommate who was from Durham, North Carolina, and they never left. They brought me with them. I was six weeks old. I didn't have a vote.
Paula Edgar: I was going to say.
Rhonda Joy McLean: Because we were in this little one—I'm like, “How did we get here? Why are we still here?” But at any rate, the wonderful thing about being in an all-Black community that I’m grateful for and worry about now is I always knew who I was. I always had a rich sense of history. Every Friday, going to an all-Black school until the eighth grade, there was an assembly.
You heard about Langston Hughes. You knew who Booker T. Washington was. You knew who Bessie Coleman was, the first Black aviator, and so forth. Then we also learned to speak, both in church and in school. So I’m grateful for that.
But when Brown v. Board came down, I was two years old. Twelve years later, nothing had happened. They changed nothing. We were still doing the same stuff. So finally, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund began to sue some school boards.
Paula Edgar: Shout out LDF.
Rhonda Joy McLean: There it is. We were out of compliance. We finally got this little piece of paper that said freedom of choice. At the end of my eighth-grade year, my parents and I sat down in the kitchen, and they said, “Well, it’s super for you to go way over there when our taxes are paying for—” I won’t say better school because that’s problematic. I think I got a quality education.
But the books were old, if they ever got there. We didn’t have good lab stuff, the equipment, and so forth. We didn’t think we were doing anything at all complicated. The school was there. We had the legal right to go to the school. My parents both went to integrated schools, so they were like, “No big deal.” Well, apparently it was a big deal.
Two other families made the same decision privately. So in August of 1965, I was 13, we integrated the high school in our town with a sheriff with a gun. Teachers were outside. I can’t say all the students were there. That wouldn’t be fair. But a lot of students were there. Some other parents were there with signs that said unkind things.
The principal, much like the governor in Alabama, stood in the door. He clearly did not want us to come in. So we were escorted in past him. Not only was he a redneck, but his neck was, in fact, red. I could see it. I’m like, “Something wrong with that man.” But anyway, we were escorted in. They kept all the other students out. We were assigned to a homeroom. Two girls, Jackie and Patricia, we’re both still friends now. I was 13.
What riot could we start? I am five foot nothing and getting shorter. They’re not that much taller. So I don’t know what all this fear is. What is it? But anyway, let’s not go down that road. From then on, we were kept separated except for meals, and we ate together because no one else would eat with us.
However, the cafeteria workers were Black. The janitors were Black, and it was a husband and wife, and they knew my parents. So they would check on me, make sure, because sometimes people would throw things at you or do ugly things. They sprayed our lockers shut. I couldn’t get my books. They threatened our lives. Because I think that, for me, a lot of racism is about fear and ignorance, mostly fear.
I don’t know what power it is they think we have, but apparently we do have it because you see how hard they’re working to try to stomp it out. But it can’t be done. So I will close out this by saying I’m very grateful for that time. It was very difficult. We learned, the three of us, because we found out we were two years behind academically. We had never seen the books they had. We didn’t know anything.
Every night that first year, we went to one of each other’s houses and we studied together. I was good at words and writing. Jackie was, and is, a math whiz. Patricia was, and is, everything about science. Girl, we kicked ass. We just tromped them. I graduated third in my class. All of us did well academically and went on to do well. So I learned to stand alone against foolishness and then to collaborate with others. You get stronger that way.
Paula Edgar: That is a lot. I’ve heard you tell this story many times, but each time you tell it, there’s a different nuance for me at the different stages in which I’ve heard it. So now I have to ask you a follow-up that’s not in what we planned, but it’s calling to me.
How is having integrated your school, literally being a part of history, and then seeing what is happening now in the world? I know that you’re a resilient person because I know you, but what is the lesson, reflection, that you have for having seen the pendulum swing?
Rhonda Joy McLean: Thank you for the question. It’s one I think about a lot, and particularly—and we’ll get to our books about leadership—but my girlfriends and I, who are also my business partners and co-authors, talk about this amongst ourselves. I have had to just—we’re always going to go to God, whatever you call her—but I’m going to go to my parents and my grandparents. We go back five generations.
My youngest aunt, who’s now 91 and the only member of my mom’s four siblings left, did the work. So what we know is whatever we’re facing now, and it’s a lot, and it’s scary, and it can be dispiriting. But I hold on to my faith and my fury because it does make me angry, and I think angry can be righteous and necessary. So I’m not saying don’t get mad because that wouldn’t be real.
On the other hand, how can you channel that energy to be productive, to keep yourself, keep your fires burning, keep your family okay? You’re raising beautiful children. We want to keep them inspired. I have a son who’s about to get married. I’m so excited. But we want them to live happily.
So when I look back, my grandmother, who desperately wanted to go to college—my mother’s mother—but couldn’t go. My father’s mother, who was a classical pianist, had a scholarship to Oberlin. Then, because her father was a barber, they had a little bit of money in Ohio. But then the Depression came and everything crashed, and her father lost his business, so she had to go to work, and she became a short-order cook.
So I see that both of them were under five feet tall. They lived. Not only did they live, they raised the people who raised me. So what? And I can’t answer fully because I’m struggling myself. I don’t know what it is, but there is a fire. There is what you call resilience. I’m going to call it survival. It’s not just survival. Well, they survived defiantly. They gave us joy. We had fun. We didn’t have a lot of money, but we had each other. We had love.
So I feel like we’ve got to go back to basics. We’ve got to get fundamental here. How did you come by here? Your people, parents, whatever you call your people, whatever you call your family, I think we’re going to have to be there for each other to bring us through this time. I don’t know what else I can say.
Paula Edgar: No, I mean, I usually don’t veer off of my first five, but it really just came to me in terms of thinking about who you are, who I know you to be, and your brand. In that, I feel a little bit more confident that we can do this. Because you are literally proof of that. But I wanted them to hear this as well. Because while they don’t know you, trust me, but I want them to get to know you. Can you tell us about your career path?
Rhonda Joy McLean: Oh, Lord. How many hours do we have? Okay. No. All right. I’m going to shorten it up.
Paula Edgar: Yeah. Do what you need to do.
Rhonda Joy McLean: All right. Well, thank you, my love.
Paula Edgar: You’re welcome.
Rhonda Joy McLean: I will start by saying my mother’s mother had a beautiful voice and sang in the chancel choir at Shiloh Baptist Church on Pine Street. Let’s just get it straight, in Buffalo, New York. So every summer, my parents would—my poor little father, who was the only one with a driver’s license, who could barely see over the wheel—would drive 36 hours, because this was before interstate highways, to take my brother and me to see our grandparents.
Then we also saw Mama’s siblings and cousins. We would go to Chicago from time to time, but not so many children there. They lived in apartments. I think I got my finger caught in an elevator door. My mom was like, “Okay, we ain’t going there no more.” So we go where people got houses and backyards and Humboldt Park.
Also, the thing that changed my life is that we went to Canada every year because it was just over the border. As you can see, at 73, I still talk way too much. I just talk because I have what’s called busy brain. My brain never stops. I have to beg it, “Could I please just rest? Please, Jesus. Could I just go to sleep?”
I thought it would get better. As I got older, I’d be more patient, nicer. No. None of that. There’s just more. So I’m learning to be grateful. But what I learned is that not only in Buffalo—of course, things were much more interracial and so forth—then across the border, people didn’t care what color you were if you asked an intelligent question. They didn’t mind that you were younger but had questions about how did Niagara Falls come to be. We went every summer.
So I’ll stop there. So every summer, my younger brother and I had this trip. So we had the benefit of seeing what it looked like to be raised in Jim Crow. There were some benefits, I still feel, about being in an all-Black society, even though maybe that wasn’t our choice. We enriched each other.
Now, there were some other things maybe not so good. But for the most part, I feel that I’m standing on that foundation. Then the integration came. The first year was the toughest year. Then the second year, they bused other people, and my mother integrated the faculty. So she was the first Black teacher, and they threatened her. It was crazy.
But anyway, Mama came on in there with her little 98-pound self and proceeded to create an award-winning 200-voice choir. So having started with an all-girls choir, where half of them quit once they saw her, she went right on down to the eighth grade, recruited some little boys when they had some high-water pants on. She said, “Can you sing, honey? Come on up here.”
I want you to know that woman made albums, vinyl albums. So that’s where I come from. It’s not even about turning lemons into lemonade. It’s like just grow your own orchard. Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t. So from high school—and again, my girlfriends and I really worked hard to help each other—then I still am grateful to say there were white American people and also two Jewish families.
One of them, Laura Isley, reached across the aisle to be friendly. We remained friends and remained friends with her family. So the short version of all of this is that graduation came in 1969, and they did not announce I had won a whole bunch of money and scholarships. None of that was announced. It was like it had not happened.
So I thought, “What do I do with that?” I was so disappointed. My grandparents came. All these people came. But you know what? God is good. The editor of the Smithfield Herald, our little paper, put it all in the paper. He sent somebody to our house to take a picture. All up in the paper. So I’ve learned, because it can be really hurtful when people discredit you or dishonor you. But again, I do agree, although it’s so hard.
Don't take revenge. Just be a better you, and it will work out. So then I went to college. I got a master's from A&T. I was seen by my first mentor. She's still my friend now, Barbara Ann Ferguson Kamara, who was in, I believe, the first class of the Peace Corps with Sargent Shriver. Black woman from Wilmington, North Carolina. She went to Johnson C. Smith. She was in Sierra Leone. She ended up marrying a beautiful Sierra Leonean man, but she wrote about the fact that the little children could speak more than one language. They spoke three languages.
She came to Bank Street, tried to get her master's. They didn't believe her. So it took a long time, but they eventually believed her and honored her. So I'm just saying, from my parents to my grandmother, here was this fierce woman who just picked me up with my little 20-year-old self, and said, "Well, honey, why don't you go to law school?" I'm like, "Why would I do that?"
But in the meantime, we were politically active, worked on campaigns. I worked on Jimmy Carter's campaign. That was my first political outreach, so forth and so on. Very active in the community, still singing, still playing, had a choir, whatever. I thought everybody did that because my parents did that. She was the one who encouraged me to at least apply.
Then I'll just tell the story because I think it's important for all y'all listening, particularly for young sisters. I thought I was in love. I swore. The man took me to meet his mother. You know they don't do that with just anybody. So he was already a lawyer, and he encouraged me to go. Not only go, but to quit my job. I had a job setting up Head Start programs. Yeah, I was doing what I was doing. I had a little duplex. I had a little piece of car. I was trying to do a little something.
Well, got into University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I liked law school. I guess that was my crime. He had had a difficult time. I didn't know all that. He looked very successful and smart. He still is, as far as I know. But all of that to say, he dumped me.
Paula Edgar: He dumped you while you were in law school?
Rhonda Joy McLean: My first term.
Paula Edgar: Because you liked it?
Rhonda Joy McLean: Because I liked it, and I did well academically.
Paula Edgar: Y'all.
Rhonda Joy McLean: So I'm just saying, and here's the number one lesson, I'm not saying don't be in love. Please do. Make sure it be real if you can. Sometimes you just have to learn like I did. But the second thing is, if it's competitive, then it's not. Yeah.
Paula Edgar: I'm so glad. So I'm going to pull that one out to make sure that you heard that, because one of my core pieces of branding is about your community, your connections, and the people who are part of your squad. And that usually involves the person you're dating or with. If that person is not your biggest cheerleader, that ain't it, right? Let that love pass you over. We want you to have love where you're not in competition with anybody. So anyway, about this loser, what happened in that?
Rhonda Joy McLean: Okay, so, and I didn't mean to go this far. So what I will say is these things that we think of as rejections or stopped doors can be blessings. Because I only applied to one law school because I thought we were going to open a firm together and live in that place. Well, the doors just opened right on up.
So I then was encouraged by, I took some summer courses at the end of my first year, did very well academically my first year, got a job working for a professor, and wasn't that much to it. I can say that now. So I said, well, let me just take these courses because I'm coming every day to campus.
There was a professor from Yale and a professor from Fordham. I took their courses. They both said, "What are you doing here?" And I said, well, I'm just going to school and working. What do you mean? I didn't understand.
They said, "You don't belong here." Well, that was frightening. Because all of my life I've been a little unusual. So the main thing anybody wants is to belong, to feel like you fit in. I tend not to do that. So I've learned that I better love myself. I better love God and love me and accept that I'm a little unusual. And that's not a bad thing.
Paula Edgar: It's your unique value proposition, the Rhondaness of it all.
Rhonda Joy McLean: Miss Paula with the Paula-ness of it all.
Paula Edgar: That part.
Rhonda Joy McLean: Teaching us how to brand. But what I have come to know and be grateful for is that these gentlemen saw something I didn't see in me. I had no idea that you could transfer. They said, "Oh, all you have to do is apply." I'm like, "What?" But I finished one year. They said, as long as you finish two years at the school, you get the degree from that school. Thus, I got to Yale, drove there in 1981.
My mother cried the whole way because this whole notion of not starting, not finishing where you started. You know, it's like you make your bed, you get in it. I grew up with all that stuff. So this was very risky, but just life-changing, best decision I ever could have made.
So just quickly, had a chance to clerk for Honorable Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit, first Black woman judge appointed by Jimmy Carter. She was amazing. She too became a mentor throughout my life and career. She wrote letters that the people who were interviewing me were saying, "What did you do? How did you get this woman to write this letter?" I'm telling you. So I'm grateful for that, grateful for every mentor, grateful for every setback because I've done my best to learn from it.
So I've been a litigator in a law firm. I've been a prosecutor at a Federal Trade Commission. They ran that office as a vice, whatever you call it, assistant director, and then hired a bunch of people, hired a bunch of interns, went around to all the New York law schools because none of the Black students would apply because we had antitrust law and they thought they didn't know it. I said, "No, no, no, you can learn it. I learned it. I didn't take it in law school either." You learned it.
So I brought hundreds of students in who worked for us as investigators. It was wonderful. Then the man that I was working for at AFTC got promoted to someplace else. It doesn't matter. He went someplace else, and after a couple of years, he invited me to come to where he was. That's how I got to Time Inc., where I stayed for the last nearly 20 years as an in-house attorney managing a bunch of people and servicing 200 clients.
They were the marketers for Essence, Fortune, People, a whole bunch of magazines that you probably still have some of them on your card for Time. So I'm very grateful for that.
Then you, Missy, began to invite me to speak to groups of students, which I know you do so beautifully now. So there's always been that, I don't want to call it community service piece, and I don't like reaching back. That sounds arrogant to me. But I do like sharing. I think if you're given much, you share much. I'll stop right there.
Paula Edgar: Yes. So I'm sure you all can figure out now why I wanted you to hear Rhonda Joy's story, because it is so full, that you've done so many things. You know, reading your intro and listing all the commas, I'm like, there's probably 12 more commas that we haven't even put in here. But each time I have seen, interacted, spoken with Rhonda Joy, I always feel edified. I wanted that for you as well, too. So thank you for that deep breath of what you've done and how you have impacted lots of lives.
You mentioned being grateful for your mentors. One of the things that I think I realized about you really quickly is not just who you are, but how you impact other people. That people are like, again, "Rhonda Joy, Rhonda Joy, Rhonda Joy." Oh my God. We're going to talk about the book in a minute, but there was one of the book events I went to at a law firm. Somebody stood up and they were talking about how you had been their mentor.
I just remember being like, "I want somebody to talk about me like that." Listen, forget about when I grow up. Right now, I want somebody to talk about me that way.
Brand-wise, and I'm thinking about why I want people to hear your story, is because you are somebody whose values led, and also always wanting to get better. Like, a lot of people get stagnant. But it's like there's always something next. I'm a fan of that. You know, my business tagline is engage your hustle. What's the next thing that we're going to do? And so I wanted to pull that thing out in that your brand iterates as you change, grow, learn, experience. You are a perfect example of that.
All right, y'all. I'm going to stop us right there. That is it for this episode of Branding Room Only. I want to pause intentionally because what Rhonda Joy has shared so far deserves some reflection. This first part of our conversation was about becoming. It was about identity, values, and the experiences that shape how we show up long before we ever carry a title or a platform.
So I'm going to stop you right there, and I want you to think about what you've heard already. Think about your roots, your values, and how they have shaped your personal brand so far.
Part two, we're going to pick up with how Rhonda Joy translates all of that into her leadership. If this episode moved you, and I know it did, please help others find it by leaving a rating at ratethispodcast.com/branding. I will see you in part two. As always, remember, stand by your brand.
That's it for this episode. I appreciate you hanging out with me on Branding Room Only. Now, please do me a quick favor: head over to ratethispodcast.com/branding so more people can join this conversation. And make sure to stop by at paulaedgar.com/events to see what's next. Whether I'm live, online, or in person, I'd love to see you there. See you next time in the Branding Room. And until then, stand tall, shine bright, and always stand by your brand.
