Jen Kem is the CEO of Master Brand Institute, a company that helps entrepreneurs build influential and profitable brands. With over 20 years of experience, she has built multiple seven- and eight-figure businesses and consulted for Fortune 500 companies like Verizon and Blue Cross Blue Shield. Jen is also the creator of the Master Brand Method, a framework that leverages brand archetypes to win customers’ hearts. Her work has been recognized by Forbes, naming her a top brand strategist, and she has collaborated with iconic brands such as the Oprah Winfrey Network and Oracle.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [2:17] Jen Kem shares childhood experiences that shaped her curiosity and resilience
- [4:54] How encyclopedias and newspapers sparked Jen’s passion for business
- [11:08] Navigating unexpected life changes and the impact on career
- [15:08] What drew Jen to entrepreneurship?
- [18:42] The need for a supportive team to bring ideas to market
- [24:34] How Jen built an eight-figure retail business in under six months
- [28:34] Losing everything in the 2008 financial crash and rebuilding from the ground up
- [32:11] Why she wrote Unicorn Team before a book on messaging
- [35:07] What are the nine leadership energy types for building strong teams?
- [37:00] The inspiring story of Kendra Scott’s persistence in building a billion-dollar brand
- [42:56] The three leadership energy types that determine success in any business
In this episode…
Building a successful brand and business isn’t just about having a great idea — it’s about having the right people to bring it to life. Many entrepreneurs struggle with finding the right team, leading to stalled growth, burnout, and missed opportunities. How can leaders identify and attract the best talent to scale their vision effectively?
Renowned brand strategist Jen Kem believes that success starts with understanding leadership energy types and assembling a complementary team. She shares insights on the three concepts the nine leadership energies are based on — visionary, strategist, and mobilizer — and explains how they impact decision-making and execution. Jen emphasizes the importance of self-awareness, strategic hiring, and cultivating relationships to build a team that not only shares the vision but actively drives it forward.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Jen Kem, CEO of Master Brand Institute, about harnessing your inner unicorn to elevate your brand. Jen discusses the leadership energy framework, the lessons she learned from scaling and losing an eight-figure business, and the importance of resilience in entrepreneurship. She also shares insights on brand positioning, effective messaging, and what it takes to become a true unicorn in business.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Jen Kem on Linkedin | Instagram | YouTube | Website
- Master Brand Institute
- Unicorn Team: The Nine Leadership Types You Need to Launch Your Big Ideas with Speed and Success by Jen Kem
Quotable Moments:
- “Each one of us is a unicorn. We have rare skills, natural gifts, and talents.”
- “The best gift my parents gave me was an education because they saw my curiosity early on.”
- “It wasn’t just about work ethic — it was relationships that determined who got the biggest opportunities.”
- “I realized I was the biggest next idea I wanted to bring to market.”
- “Your energy, not just time, determines how successfully you bring an idea to life.”
Action Steps:
- Identify your leadership energy type:Understanding whether you are a visionary, strategist, or mobilizer helps you align with the right team. Self-awareness allows you to delegate effectively and focus on strengths while filling in gaps with complementary skills.
- Surround yourself with the right people: Building a successful business requires more than just a great idea — it takes a team that shares your vision. Hiring or collaborating with those who complement your skills ensures smoother execution and long-term growth.
- Cultivate strategic relationships: Success isn’t just about hard work; it’s about who you know and how you leverage those connections. Prioritizing relationship-building opens doors to opportunities, mentorship, and partnerships that accelerate business success.
- Stay adaptable through setbacks: Jen Kem’s journey highlights that even after losing an eight-figure business, resilience led her to greater success. Viewing failures as lessons rather than defeats allows for reinvention and continuous improvement.
- Focus on energy management over time management: Having enough time isn’t the issue — having the energy to execute is what drives success. Prioritizing tasks that align with your strengths and passions keeps motivation high and productivity sustainable.
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Episode Transcript
John Corcoran: 00:00
All right. Today we’re talking about how to be a unicorn for your business, for your brand, and also how to leverage other unicorns to build your brand and build your business. My guest today is Jen Kem. I’ll tell you more about her in a second, so stay tuned.
Intro: 00:16
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:32
All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here. I’m the host of this show. And you know, every week we talk with smart CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs from all kinds of companies. You check out our archives. We’ve got Netflix, Grubhub, Redfin, Gusto, Kinkos, YPO, EO, Activision Blizzard, lots of great episodes for you to check out. And of course, this episode is brought to you by Rise25, our company where we help B2B businesses to get clients referrals and strategic partnerships with done-for-you podcasts and content marketing. And Jen, I know that you appreciate the importance of relationships. That’s what it’s about for me.
It’s always been the most important thing for me to meet someone interesting like you, highlighting their story, telling others about them. I’ve always loved doing that, and I love the ability to do that. So if you want to learn more about what we do, go to Rise25.com or email us at [email protected]. All right Jen, so excited to have you here today. You are a brand strategist and Chief Executive Officer of Master Brand Institute.
You’ve helped thought leaders to reach millions by helping them to build their personal brand. And you’ve represented influencers and celebrities, CEOs, experts, all kinds of different people in their journeys. And we’re going to talk about your journey. And you also have a great new book out which is called Unicorn. It’s All About unicorns.
I previewed it in the beginning there, and we’re going to talk about that. But first, I’d love to know a little bit more about what my guests were like when they were growing up. And I was reading about your background and you had a habit of falling off buildings when you were a kid. That seemed to be like a pastime. Joking about it now, but that, that that, and also combined with a car accident were two foundational, pivotal experiences that you had that really affected you. So tell me a little bit about what that was like in your childhood.
Jen Kem: 02:17
Yeah, thanks for that. I mean, yeah, it was, I think if you asked my mother today, well, she says it a lot. You know, it explains a lot. You know, me falling out of a three story building when I was two and falling on my head, and, you know, and this is back in the 70s, friends. You know, I tell people I’m a seasoned chicken, not a spring chicken.
And so back then, we didn’t have cell phones. You know, if your parents left you home with the sitter, it was very hard to get in touch with them. So at a very young age, even surviving a car crash where there were no other survivors in the car crash. It’s interesting, right? How those things you don’t even realize because you’re young.
I was, I was young. I mean, both of those accidents happened when I was three and five respectively. And then you add to that that I grew up in a very tiny, tiny rural plantation town in Hawaii, on the North shore of Oahu, and my grandparents immigrated from the Philippines and worked in the sugar and pineapple industries as laborers, basically. And so I grew up in a, in a, in a house and in a town where there weren’t more than 2000 people. And so it was.
But I, my mom will tell you and I’ll tell you now that I came out of the chute super curious about the world. Like everything that was around me, I questioned. And even in my own cultural upbringing, that was different because, you know, in my own culture you kind of compliance and obedience are given rewards, not questioning and rebellion. And so for me, where I found my solace because I felt so different, truly a black sheep in my family and in and in my community, even though I did feel very cared for because of the community aspect of it, I still felt super different. I kind of found my biggest respite besides surviving those two weird physical things in the little rural library that had about, I don’t know, 300, 400 kids books and then the rest adult books.
And I, even from a young age, found books to be a way to understand the world, you know, including encyclopedias and the almanac. You know, if you put a book in front of me, John, I was that kid that just loved it. And I’ve always had this love of reading.
John Corcoran: 04:37
And to the young ones, listening, an encyclopedia was like the internet, but in book form, and it was cool if you had a good set of them, which which was kind of hard to find sometimes, but if you had a good set of them, you could read about almost any topic, or at least whatever fit from here to here. Oh my.
Jen Kem: 04:54
Gosh, John, like, you know, I was talking about this with a group of friends who are all about a certain age. And I remember, like, the best gift you could get from your parents was like an encyclopedia set, right? Which now we take for granted because Google is like the master encyclopedia indexing all the things. But yeah. And so that might give you a little insight for those of you listening, you know, the kind of, let’s say, kid I was and the kind of environment that I was in and understanding that a lot of times some of the biggest thinking and ideas and innovation and vision comes even in places, especially in places where that’s not readily available.
But there are a few people that are kids, especially young people who are curious and wondering and natural problem solvers. And I feel like we’re everywhere, and we always have been everywhere. And that’s kind of like how I navigated forward. What I thought it was going to be like in second grade, for example. you know, I went to this tiny little Catholic school my mom and dad realized because I was such a voracious learner, that the best gift they could give me is an education.
Like, really invest in my education because I. And so the best education I could get in that little town was this Catholic school where there were like 15 of us right in that classroom. And in second grade, Sister Fatima asked us, you know that question? Everybody gets asked in second grade, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? And, you know, all the boys in class were saying they wanted to be doctors and police officers and firefighters. And then the girls in my class were saying they want to be nurses and teachers and moms. And my answer was, I want to be the general counsel of Coca-Cola international. And this was in second grade.
John Corcoran: 06:40
You said that?
Jen Kem: 06:41
Yes. And I don’t want anybody to get any thoughts that I was like that brilliant at in second grade. What I was was my grandmother, who I mentioned was an immigrant. You know, she had not more than a second grade education, and every morning before she would bring me to school, I used to sit next to her and she would have Lipton hot tea and peanut butter toast, and she would read the newspaper and she would hand me the business section and say to me, I don’t understand this part of the newspaper, but you might be interested because you like to read everything. And so here I am, this second grade kid reading the business section, because my grandmother, who had a second grade education, gave it to me, and I, I don’t remember the actual article, John, but what I do remember is like, I must have picked it up from the business section of this idea of general counsel of Coca-Cola international, you know, and when I said it out loud, I, I, I got in trouble in class. Sister Fatima was not pleased that I had.
John Corcoran: 07:38
You were messing with her or what.
Jen Kem: 07:40
Basically like making up stories that didn’t make any sense. And I was devastated because I was such an A student. Like I loved learning, and that was the earliest memory that I can remember not just thinking I was a black sheep, but feeling like outside. They were calling me a black sheep because it was like I got in trouble for naming what I thought would be a cool thing to do when I grew up. And I remember going home and my parents telling me, you know, and they were my parents really did try to stroke my, my vision and my curiosity.
And, you know, they said, look, people aren’t going to understand you when you use words that they don’t understand. But there is a there’s plenty of places in the world where you’re going to belong, and you just have to know that that’s true. And that’s kind of that premise of each one of us is a unicorn. We have rare skills and natural gifts and talents, and that what we need is to be surrounded also by people who will see that and help cultivate and shape it in a way that’s actually nutritive and generative, instead of like thinking, okay, you’re weird. Go in the corner, you know, that type of thing. And it’s funny. The aftermath story from second grade is that Sister Fatima is now my friend on Facebook. She’s still around and she’s so proud of me. And you know, this is what we’re talking about? Gosh, 42 years later, right?
John Corcoran: 09:05
And I think there’s a different understanding of how to react to kids that have big dreams today. Totally, totally. Back then, especially growing up in a, you know, small plantation town where kids didn’t grow up to be general counsel of Coca-Cola at that. Yeah. Yeah. In that era.
Jen Kem: 09:23
Yeah. And, you know, even the word general counsel or the title general general counsel. My mom even said, and my mom is pretty smart, she’s an educated woman, but she was like, what is a general counsel? And I said, it’s a lawyer. It’s the top lawyer in a company.
John Corcoran: 09:35
I ended up going to law school. And I can tell you, when I was seven, I had no clue what a general counsel was. I don’t know if I would have been able to guess what it was. Yeah.
Jen Kem: 09:43
And so my mom and it was interesting because my mom said, here’s the thing, Jenny. In my family, I’m called Jenny, not just Jen. She said, Jenny, you know, sometimes people, they just need to hear the simple word, not the more like the big word. And again, it was kind of a nod to wow. Like I have to shape myself in order for people to accept me.
And so, you know, that’s really what I call it being like some of my values that I have today are very much shaped from some of those experiences that I just shared. And, you know, on one hand, it didn’t feel good sometimes, but on the other hand, I’m grateful for it because it helped me go, you know what? There I know I’m not the only person like this. And as I navigated through life and even in my own career now, whether it was in corporate or now, you know, owning my own company, it has really shaped a lot of how I see why I want to elevate people’s voices. And, you know, people’s ideas because we need them.
John Corcoran: 10:48
It seems like you had a pretty Supportive, nurturing environment growing up. But you had this weird experience where you thought you were going to Boston for college after graduating from high school. And then your mom said, we’re going to Disneyland. You’re like, on our way to Boston College. And you didn’t end up at Boston College?