“What is catnip? Catnip is powerful, memorable, and very fast. Everybody has a story, but the decisions that you make about people and brands is much faster than the story.”
Marie Griffin is the sought-after authority in media and communication training for leaders and personalities in business, film, fashion, music, beauty, sports, media, wellness and design among other areas. Her immersive process is informed by a profound understanding of people and a deep knowledge of the media, branding, marketing, and public relations landscapes. Her hallmark is her one-on-one work from the inside out to elevate clients to their highest potential, to help them answer the question, “what’s your catnip?”.
When we see those people who dominate our field, it’s almost impossible not to know their work when we see it. But often, creatives have a hard time figuring out what sets them apart from their peers. This is where Marie comes in. She has a trusted, holistic method to find this part of our brand, our “catnip”, and the process has been described as “honest, insightful, grounding and transformative”. Marie goes over this process in today’s interview and how it has helped many of her clients become unmistakable and unforgettable. Her work helps clients understand “what makes you uniquely you”, and you can hear this happen in real time in today’s episode, as we go over my own work to help discover some next steps with my own brand.
So Marie asks you: #whatsyourcatnip? Listen in to learn how to find what is uniquely you, some of Marie’s tips for finding your catnip, what helps you stand out in a world full of competitors.
“We are excavators. We can dig and get the gold nuggets out, and figure out where the problems are [with a company’s spokesperson], and then come back with solutions.”
Some things we learn in this podcast:
How Marie and her company works with different brands [5:25]
How brands find their best spokesperson [8:45]
Marie’s early life and how she found herself on a 48-city tour when she was 19 years old [17:55]
The difference between being message trained and media trained [21:05]
Why entrepreneurs and marketing teams couldn’t figure out their own catnip for their brand [27:00]
What Marie means by finding your catnip [29:15]
How you can start finding your catnip [37:45]
What to do when you are interested in too many things [40:45]
How to fight for your vision and why you have to do it [43:30]
Why the process of developing our catnip is almost involuntary [53:00]
How to distill your catnip down to their three most important traits [55:15]
Marie’s assignment for those getting started in their career [1:01:45]
What “live inspiration” means to Marie [1:10:10]
Links mentioned:
Join the community at nionlife.com
Take the creative quiz here
Check out #whatsyourcatnip on Instagram