The Power Of The Welcome: Women, Intuition & Creative Leadership

[00:00:00] Tessa Burg: Hello and welcome to another episode of Leader Generation, brought to you by Mod Op. I’m your host, Tessa Burg, CTO, here at Mod Op. And today I am joined by Nicole Purcell, the CEO of the Clios. I’m very excited about this conversation because a lot of our episodes focus on AI, tech, navigating the tension around them and the anxiousness.

[00:00:25] Tessa Burg: And what we’re gonna dive into today with Nicole is a completely different topic, but it’s one where your team, each individual person will feel seen. Will know that creativity can thrive within them and can help them make big decisions and advance their career in any environment. Using instinct, using the things that make us human.

[00:00:50] Tessa Burg: So, very excited to have you here today, Nicole, to share your leadership style and your journey with us. I think this is just great timing to have this conversation.

[00:00:59] Nicole Purcell: Thank you so much. I mean, everything you just said, I’m, I’m excited now too to have the talk.

[00:01:04] Tessa Burg: That’s awesome. So the Clios is such a big deal.

[00:01:08] Tessa Burg: I mean, I’ve been in the marketing advertising space. For forever.

[00:01:13] Nicole Purcell: Mm-hmm.

[00:01:13] Tessa Burg: And when my, uh, colleague Frank said that you were gonna be joining the podcast, I was like, holy crap. I’ve, I’ve never even gotten to go to the Clios. Like, I know our agency has won some, but

[00:01:25] Nicole Purcell: Oh, that’s gotta change.

[00:01:27] Tessa Burg: Yeah, I know.

[00:01:28] Tessa Burg: Seriously, we have to tell Eric that.

[00:01:30] Nicole Purcell: Yes. You get No, I guess you’re getting an invite from Nicole. Okay.

[00:01:34] Tessa Burg: Oh, good. Yes. Thank you. So I am very interested in your journey. Tell us a little bit about your career and what that has looked like up until this point.

[00:01:43] Nicole Purcell: Yeah, so first I’m gonna start my career and then I’m gonna go probably back a little bit about.

[00:01:48] Nicole Purcell: Family life and growing up, which I think is so important to who we become and who we are. But I started in events, events, marketing, doing different things. I was, uh, grew up in New Jersey, started there and at 30 years old, uh, moved to New York City. And so I was like ready to take on the world and always from an event side, always from a client relations side, marketing.

[00:02:11] Nicole Purcell: And I actually, in my early thirties, went into business with someone that I met, um, in New York City who had a company doing fashion weeks and stuff like that, and I thought it was very interesting, and I’m an entrepreneur and I was like, let me try this. I loved doing the event side of it. I loved working with the sponsors. I loved working with the designers, doing everything.

[00:02:34] Nicole Purcell: Unfortunately, and I’ll try to make this quick, he turned out to be what I like to call a Bernie Madoff character. And stole a lot of money from me and my family. Um, in the two years we worked together, but for some reason it was something I had to learn.

[00:02:47] Nicole Purcell: I don’t wish it on anyone else. It was not fun, it was not glamor. It was horrible, but it really put in this humbling mindset to me. And then I found this position for a year. I was searching for a job after that. Feeling low about myself and whatever, and I saw this position for events, head of events and conferences at Prometheus Global Media.

[00:03:11] Nicole Purcell: And this had Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, Adweek, Film Expo, um, Backstage and the Clios in it. And so I was coming in to run all of them from the event and conference side. And oh my God, being humble and learning everything and working with every publisher and editor taught me everything that I needed to know and where I wanted to go.

[00:03:34] Nicole Purcell: And I also looked at it as, you know, from that humbling standpoint. I’m gonna help everyone and I’m gonna work with everyone in a lovely way. And I maneuvered myself away around this company. And that’s another story for the company or maybe a book in the future of how it happened. And probably my second year, a year and a half in the CEO of the company came to me and said, I know Nicole.

[00:03:57] Nicole Purcell: This is a lot. I’m in meetings constantly because I’m working with every single brand. We’re gonna separate that you already separated your team by brand. What do you want? What do you wanna do? And he’s, we just relaunched Billboard Music Awards, you know all this, all the stuff that’s going on, the sexiness.

[00:04:13] Nicole Purcell: And I go, I would like the Clio Awards and his face. And he was like, you want what it, Nicole? What do you talking about at this event once a year? I’m like, you know what? No, it’s a brand. And I met these amazing creatives that I fell in love with and no one else here in this company’s paying attention. I see this brand and what it could, what it was, and what it could become.

[00:04:35] Nicole Purcell: And I have to tell you, because I hate to say he didn’t care. It was the best thing that happened to me. And he is like, that is yours, you. He goes, I’m still pulling you for everything else, by the way. He goes, I still help, but that is yours. And that’s how I got to, at an executive director level, still at that time, run the Clios and take over the Clios.

[00:04:56] Nicole Purcell: It was a blessing that I opened my mouth. It was a blessing that I got to see all the different brands and how they worked. So for instance, if I’m working with Billboard, I’m working with the publisher and editor. Not so fun all the time. You know, so this from my background, let me take on a brand completely on my own that they thought was just a one award show once a year, and now we’re six-

[00:05:18] Tessa Burg: Incredible.

[00:05:19] Nicole Purcell: Six award shows and so much more than that.

[00:05:22] Tessa Burg: Well, it takes a lot of vision to see. That potential. And I only recently have been exposed to what it takes to hold an event and it like Mod Op, we’ve grown through acquisition. We acquired an events company and they wanted to see where AI couldn’t make a difference, so I’m just like riding along.

[00:05:44] Tessa Burg: I was blown away. By the level of personal attention that you have to give the folks who you’re creating the event for the folks who are running the event, the speakers, if you have awards, the judges, there are so many different types of people that have to come together and. Just, I will never walk into an event again.

[00:06:10] Tessa Burg: And underappreciate-

[00:06:12] Nicole Purcell: Yes.

[00:06:13] Tessa Burg: Like just the, the flow, the way things are set up, the lighting, the color. I would, I mean, you are truly making every decision.

[00:06:23] Nicole Purcell: Oh, every, which helped me become a CEO actually too. So really quick, I’m gonna jump back personally to. Why that event side or maybe hospitality side is in me as well as an entrepreneur Growing up, um, we had a family business and it wasn’t funny enough in the warehouse side, um, and doing different things that what I’m doing now.

[00:06:45] Nicole Purcell: Every day my father would come home and have dinner with us and he would talk about business to me and my brother. I have one older brother. And there’s another twist here because it was never different between the two of us. Whatever my brother could do in business, I could do in business. And my father’s an old school Italian from Jersey, but spoke to us the same and was like, Nicole, you know who you could go run something, you could go do this. Like there was never a difference in there.

[00:07:08] Nicole Purcell: So that was always a part of our language. We always wanted to work and build something, learn from the family business, or do other things. So that started me off. And being Italian, what do we always wanna do? You wanna cook for people, you wanna have the great experience for your family and friends. You’re always having them over. So that came naturally.

[00:07:27] Nicole Purcell: So all of those things I feel like were built into me already. And then even before coming to, uh, Prometheus. I loved events, whether I started in television or you know, and then went to marketing. There was always that event factor, and I always say, where I am today as a CEO comes from that because exactly what you just said.

[00:07:47] Nicole Purcell: I had to deal with budgets, I had to deal with the staff, I had to deal with clients, I had to deal with, um, timeframes. Something’s always gonna go wrong at an event. I don’t care who you are. And it’s just how you deal with it and how you react to it. So it really set me up to become a CEO. I always say that.

[00:08:06] Nicole Purcell: I’m like, whoever wants to do events, think about all the things you’re doing and have to deal with. And that’s what I deal with every day today. Well, 10 times more, but yes, every day.

[00:08:16] Tessa Burg: So what does that look like in practice? You’re talking about hospitality and the background of that hospitality, like how are you bringing that in to the way that you are running a high performance organization and building a brand?

[00:08:31] Nicole Purcell: Yeah, so it’s twofold because it’s internally and it’s externally. So, I read a lot of books. I, I be living in the city, working in the city, which I love. And being with clients, I think face-to-face is the most important thing. And to me, sharing a meal with someone. Again, there’s the Italian background maybe, but sharing a meal with someone, having a face-to-face conversation and getting to know them is so important. Giving them a great experience.

[00:08:55] Nicole Purcell: So if you think about our outside things, it’s not just the award shows, it’s, you know, we bring tons of people together for judging. We do private salon dinners where we have executives sitting together meeting with a music artist or an athlete, and it’s about giving them a great experience to connect with each other, connect with us and who we are as a brand, and making them feel good. Again, nothing’s always gonna go perfect, but how do you make them feel good about it?

[00:09:22] Nicole Purcell: No matter what it is, I do it in my personal life as well. I love going to Napa or Italy and taking different groups of people and giving them different experiences, and that’s lifelong memories together. Like even our judging is people come away together and maybe we went to the um, falls and the Agao falls and we, we had fun together, or we did a fun dinner with entertainment. You’re gonna remember that and you’re gonna stay connected.

[00:09:47] Nicole Purcell: And so from that aspect to clients outside, that’s one way. And then internally it’s about more, you know, okay. Looking at things from a different perspective and also saying, Hey guys, I want you to be the leader of this industry. Get out there, run your business, and all of these different ways.

[00:10:06] Nicole Purcell: It’s not like you’re coming here and you’re like, I’m just gonna do this, and that’s it. And especially in many smaller mid-size companies, you’re not doing that, which I love. I like to see everything. So for them it’s more about how they are treating their clients, how they’re treating each other, and also, you know, what can we do for them that’s fun?

[00:10:25] Nicole Purcell: What is the experience that they’re gonna love? It’s the ones that we do, we have to do for work, like the award shows, which they love. They love the judging because they’re meeting with their clients and they’re having a great time. And then it’s us just taking a boat trip in New York or doing something different.

[00:10:40] Nicole Purcell: And then internally, I always say, we’re going on these trips for judging or something else. Book something and go away, see another culture. Go do something else that you haven’t done. And guess what? A lot of them here now, which is wonderful, they go together. Unfortunately, we just cancel our, this year’s judging, our main judging trip, which was gonna be in Dubai.

[00:10:59] Nicole Purcell: Um, and hopefully we could go back there in the future. Um, but right now we had to cancel that. But they had plans to go to Egypt together.

[00:11:06] Tessa Burg: Oh, how cool. That is amazing.

[00:11:09] Nicole Purcell: So it’s really a lot of fun, and that’s what I think. Listen, things are stressful. You have to deal with stuff, but if you can make things fun, uh, for your clients, for yourself, for your staff, then that’s important.

[00:11:22] Tessa Burg: Yeah, I, I agree. One, now I wanna work at the Clios because, I mean, I love eating. I love traveling. I’m down all things, and I, but I know that there are, anytime you’re running a business, a lot of stressful moments, there’s conflict. We’re all people. Where does hospitality come into play, and are there other kind of soft tools that you use to navigate those more high stakes situations?

[00:11:52] Nicole Purcell: I do try to. I, I, listen, I’ve had to learn over time myself. Um, when I started I thought I had to be a man running a business, and that’s not true. Um, I thought I had to be tough. I thought I had to answer things in certain ways, and I’ve learned not to. I read a lot of books. I’ve just, uh, “Setting the Table”, uh, by Danny Meyer, who I think he is a genius in hospitality and everything that he does.

[00:12:14] Nicole Purcell: Um, and there’s other books, I can’t think of all the names of them currently, but. That I say, oh wow, that makes sense. You’re always gonna deal with different people in life and in business. And what I always say is two things always be the better person. And that’s how, again, how I made it through the first bigger company. ‘Cause now Clio’s is, is its own um, own company.

[00:12:37] Nicole Purcell: But that’s how I got through it. Always being the better person, always there helping others. If someone says something snarky, I’m not going to go back at them in front of a group. You’re gonna try to have a private conversation and say why that affected you. Um, so that’s my, my line that I say to everyone.

[00:12:53] Nicole Purcell: And again, and I just had this this morning, there are different personalities again in life and in business. To me, the events background or the hospitality background helps me say, okay, how do I work with them in a different way? This is not the same person that I’m working with from the marketing side, who’s constantly communicating with me or doing something else with me and showing me things and more up to date.

[00:13:17] Nicole Purcell: This person doesn’t communicate as well, or they have a chip on their shoulder or something else is happening and it’s like, okay, how do I work with them in a different way? So. I’ve learned it, thank God, and it takes a while, but I’m also, how do I teach my other executives or other junior people how to do that?

[00:13:35] Nicole Purcell: So every time I see that situation happens, I, I say a couple of things. I let it go again. I don’t like doing things in groups because I think people feel uncomfortable with that. And then I have my conversations afterwards and I’m like, from both sides, maybe you could have done something better. And yes, they’re tough to work with, but how do you make it better for you so you don’t feel this anxiety or this frustration, uh, so much and, and show up in a bad way that you shouldn’t be showing up in.

[00:14:03] Tessa Burg: Yeah. You said a couple of really important things that I think are very necessary for the moment that we’re in with a lot of anxiety and a, a lot of different perspectives being I, I don’t know how to put it, but like just sort of being thrown around or people are thinking out loud.

[00:14:22] Nicole Purcell: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:23] Tessa Burg: And that is the anxiety of like, what is happening like with AI, and you hit on something that’s like gonna stick with me. And really thinking about how this person communicates, how they receive the information, and how you can serve them. And recognizing it in that way. If you, when you at that point of struggle, putting yourself in a seat of service instead of having to have a seat of dominance or a seat of, let’s see who’s right.

[00:14:51] Tessa Burg: I think really diffuses and would brings it to a more productive level.

[00:14:57] Nicole Purcell: It really does. And again, I had to learn it. I, you know, at the beginning, in my twenties and even in my twenties, even though maybe it was an executive director title or something else, I was still leading teams and sometimes I wasn’t great at it.

[00:15:11] Nicole Purcell: And you know, there were people that were. I wouldn’t say bosses, but peers that were close to me and would take me aside and say things. And I really wanted to always better myself. Um, and I know how hard it is too. So do you flub sometimes. And you’re not gonna be on point all. No, you’re not. But if you could think that way and keep focusing that way, I do think it’s helpful.

[00:15:34] Nicole Purcell: It is very hard, but I, I do think it helps every aspect of the business and how you deal with people also outside of business in your perspective.

[00:15:43] Tessa Burg: Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I totally agree and that I love that aspect. Like when I was looking through your amazing content on LinkedIn and the position you take as a leader, and there was another piece that.

[00:15:57] Tessa Burg: I think is ’cause what you’re doing sounds like it. It actually would take much longer. But because you have practiced this skill so much, you get to a point of productivity with each person actually faster. And so it’s very worth investing in that skill. And something else that you do as a leader is. You create a culture of creativity.And not just like design creativity, but-

[00:16:24] Nicole Purcell: Right.

[00:16:25] Tessa Burg: Being creative and protecting creativity. Can you tell me a little bit more about what that looks like at the Clios in your leadership style?

[00:16:34] Nicole Purcell: Well, again, when I first got here, and again, it’s something I had to learn, um, when I first got here, there were probably four people on the Clio team doing one award show and doing it a strict way.

[00:16:46] Nicole Purcell: It was always strict, you know, like, this is how we do it. This is how it has to get done. I listened, but I didn’t listen and I think I was the first leader to go out to the industry and ask questions instead of telling them this is how it’s, and I think that changed the game as well. What I just kept seeing was.

[00:17:04] Nicole Purcell: Guys, we don’t have to do it because maybe, and clearly this has been around since 1959, I get it. But it’s changed over the years. And yeah, people think that I started it. I went, I’m, I look really good for being born in 1915 or born 20. I don’t know. But, um, it’s just funny because I would always say, think outside the box.

[00:17:22] Nicole Purcell: Let’s, what if we did something different? Is this gonna hurt us? No, we own it. It’s okay. As long as it’s good for the community and they agree and we’re all talking together openly, it’s fine. So what I found was. Even though I was the business side and I understand the business side, and I wouldn’t say that I was a creative, I had to become creative in my, my business role at first and then CEO role to say it’s okay to do different things and change things up and think of them in a creative, fun way.

[00:17:53] Nicole Purcell: We would not be here today with coming up on six award shows if. I wasn’t creative. If I didn’t say, I know we could do this. Maybe at first it’s not gonna be the number one experience or the number one thing, but I know coming to this community and talking with them and asking questions and getting them engaged is gonna help us.

[00:18:12] Nicole Purcell: So as a leader today, I always throw that out to my teams. I’m like, what if we didn’t do it that way? What if we had, what if God forbid, a war happened and we had stopped judging? You know what if. We’re learning so much that things do get canceled. Things do happen. You have to pivot. You know, even when you’re talking and you were talking about events before, like there’s been times where an hour before the award show.

[00:18:39] Nicole Purcell: Um, we were honoring someone, and I’m not gonna say the name, who in music and their management team came, and we’ve been asking, we do these beautiful sizzle reels. This is why we’re honoring you in marketing and advertising, and it makes sense. And our show, what we put on the screen is amazing. So if this piece isn’t good, it will look really bad on your, your client.

[00:18:59] Nicole Purcell: And, um, we got it an hour beforehand. It was a PowerPoint presentation that looked so bad. My head of marketing looked at, walked away. She didn’t even know. She couldn’t even breathe or talk. And I just stood there and went, okay. Right now we’re not streaming the show. We don’t have to worry about rights right now for certain things, but we wanna honor this creative genius in the right way. That’s up to standards for our show.

[00:19:23] Nicole Purcell: And I talk to my production team. I go, who’s in the office or who’s sitting around with the computer? I’m like, can you just go online and create a sizzle reel that shows really who he is and why we’re honoring him and make him feel good?

[00:19:34] Nicole Purcell: They did it within a half hour. The show starts. We have a new reel. Nobody else knew what was going on. The person that gave it to us didn’t even say a word about. Like you have to be creative and say it’s okay. Not everyone knows what’s going on. And even if they knew a little bit, they’re gonna be okay because you’re trying to make things better or make it work.

[00:19:51] Nicole Purcell: And I had to be creative in that moment. Pulling people and thinking of different ways to do something, again, which comes from my events side, hospitality side, to be creative and make the best experiences for people. ’cause they don’t know what you’re, before they get in, they don’t know what they’re seeing.

[00:20:08] Tessa Burg: Right. Oh, that’s exactly right. That is such a, well, one, it’s a very funny story. And then just also, I love that you just go back to the values, like our value here is to make this a great experience.

[00:20:22] Nicole Purcell: Yeah.

[00:20:22] Tessa Burg: We’re not like you’re helping people think of bigger solutions ’cause you’re kind of pulling them out of all the details and all the things that I know. We, we all know things.

[00:20:32] Nicole Purcell: Yeah.

[00:20:32] Tessa Burg: But if we just start with how do we make this a great experience?

[00:20:36] Nicole Purcell: Yeah.

[00:20:37] Tessa Burg: What can we do now in that mo in this moment to do that? Like, we’re not gonna go back and solve all, all of the issues and all the problems. We’re gonna have all these details iron up, but we can, we can, we do.

[00:20:47] Tessa Burg: And I, I love that direction and reframe just to keep people moving and, um. I think it’s, you know, it’s a great, it’s a sign that you are a great leader. And I imagine that as people practice that more and more they start to emerge as leaders.

[00:21:09] Nicole Purcell: Yeah.

[00:21:10] Tessa Burg: And what kinds of, I know you’ve spoken a lot about what it means to be a leader and what it means to be.

[00:21:17] Tessa Burg: Uh, a female leader. What kinds of coaching, other coaching do you give your staff or other females in the industry to keep leveling up and advancing their careers in this industry?

[00:21:29] Nicole Purcell: So I’ve always geared towards hiring more women, and there’s a lot of reasons for that. And I think people are like, oh, you’re, you know, okay, well you’re a woman, they’re women.

[00:21:40] Nicole Purcell: But I also think women are great communicators and. Doers and, and want to see the, the perfection. Not that I want perfection all the time, but the greatness in everything. And not saying every woman’s this, I’m not saying every man is not that, but I do believe in that book. Men Are for Mars. Women Are for Venus.

[00:21:58] Nicole Purcell: I never read it, but the title is right there. Yeah. Um, so, um, I, my goal is, is to bring them in and teach them from, uh, you know, whether they’re coming in to run marketing, whether they’re coming in to do events, whatever the case may be. Put my beliefs in them and then whether they wanna move on and do something else and help them grow and give them recommendations or guidance on that.

[00:22:21] Nicole Purcell: I’ve done that before. I have someone that left here and became a creative at a agency and we’re still friends. Like I, I, I’m not mad that you’re leaving and you’re growing. I want you to do that. And then we have a lot of people that have been here with me for 8, 10, 11 years that. We work with, okay, what’s a new job for you?

[00:22:39] Nicole Purcell: Or how do we grow what you’re doing? Because you could take this on, you could take this on and you could take this on. But right now, that’s not a job. How do we create that to make it work for you? Okay, someone wanted to go be a writer, okay? Are how are you gonna go do that if you leave here, if you stay here, you can work with our editors at Muse and you could create content and start learning how to write.

[00:23:00] Nicole Purcell: So then when you’re writing and wanna go do something that you can get paid for, then you can do that. You know, like trying to really help and look at all the different angles of how it helps them to grow internally, but also externally. And I, you know, listen, we have great men and women that work here.

[00:23:19] Nicole Purcell: It’s wonderful. And there’s also some that aren’t great and we’ve had either had to let go or they moved on, or whatever the case may be. And it’s, you know, about trying to make people that are staying here feel comfortable and saying. It might not be a normal path of a bigger company, but there’s paths here for you to grow.

[00:23:36] Nicole Purcell: And even getting their faces out there. And I ask them all, do your LinkedIn, do social media. Put your voice out there. I want to hear that. So it’s exciting to push them to do that and see them get engagement and build their own community. Like I don’t need to be the only face. I don’t wanna be the only face that’s too much.

[00:23:57] Tessa Burg: And I, I will say, like you see that, you see those multiple faces, you see the community that you’re building with the Clios. I want to, you know, we’re talking a lot about leadership, but I wanna talk about the output that’s actually very visible from how you’ve evolved the Clios. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

[00:24:18] Tessa Burg: Because all everything we’re talking about is like. It’s so effective. And you have the result right there, like the, the-

[00:24:24] Nicole Purcell: Yeah.

[00:24:25] Tessa Burg: It’s the Clios and really leaned into what it means to be an integral part of this community. Give us a little bit of that story.

[00:24:34] Nicole Purcell: So, um, when I started, like I said, it was one award show and then health had started like right before I got in.

[00:24:42] Nicole Purcell: Um, and then being under a bigger company with different brands was very interesting and eye-opening and really helping look at these different industries too, actually. And, uh, the publisher of Hollywood Reporter came to me one day and said, Hey, we have something called the Key Art Awards. It’s theatrical advertising and marketing that we look at.

[00:25:00] Nicole Purcell: We’ve owned it for 30 years, but we need help. We are not, we’re not focusing on that. We’re focusing on other things obviously. I said, wow, that’s funny because this, if it’s advertising and marketing for theatrical films, this fits into what Clio stands for and what it is. So they said, can you manage it?

[00:25:18] Nicole Purcell: Can un Nicole manage it for us? I said, I’m gonna work with the Clio team. This is where it fits. Um, what we did was, again, went out to the community and asked questions and didn’t tell them everything, and we added television and gaming. And within the two years we managed it, it skyrocketed up so high because the way that we built things for Clio, um, and how we worked with people on judging and it was legitimate.

[00:25:45] Nicole Purcell: And having people talk in person and, you know, doing all of that with the community and making it a big deal for them to win a key art award at the time. Changed it immensely. And after two years, you know, it was like, you know, Hollywood Reporter was making all the revenue not Clio, and I said, you know, this needs to come under our umbrella.

[00:26:06] Nicole Purcell: So we wound up taking it under our umbrella, kept them as a part, a media partner for some time. But as we kept growing that one, I’m like, they take, they talk a different language. In the film and TV side. Then in the main advertising side, I’m like, this is so interesting. They’re never gonna win or enter into Clio back in the day because of the different people that were, that were judging it, they wanted their peers and they also wanted night for themselves.

[00:26:33] Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:34] Nicole Purcell: So it clicked on me. I was like, oh, this is not the only industry. So we probably were running that two or three years. And then in 2014 we started launching fashion and beauty, sports, music and just, you know, of course my team thought I was nuts. They’re like, you know, there’s now only eight of us.

[00:26:52] Nicole Purcell: What are you doing? I’m like, it’s okay. We’re just, let’s just start it going. Talk to the communities and like start seeing, and we just started seeing it grow that people were like, yes, I wanna be judged by my peers and we want our own night to celebrate. So we kept seeing that and I was like, okay, there’s something here.

[00:27:10] Nicole Purcell: And knowing that Clio was always part of culture, Clio was on television, was in Mad Men, we have a sizzle reel, which is so fun to look at. That shows every TV and film that we’re a part of, whether they’re talking about advertising, writing, or creativity. And I’m like, we need to be everywhere. Like this is what we have to bring the brand back to, but in a different way.

[00:27:31] Nicole Purcell: So that’s what helped us grow. That’s where my mind started clicking on things. Um, the great thing in, in March 26th, I think, is we’re launching our sixth show called Clio Creators, um, awards for Influencers and Creators, which for every platform, so it’s really exciting to. Keep going into culture more and more, you know, and seeing that grow.

[00:27:54] Nicole Purcell: But that’s where my brain just started saying, oh, we can do anything. Oh, we can do art. Oh, we can do music. And when we have Clio Music, it’s not just music and the advertising work. It’s also how the musicians or their managers or whoever are marketing them and them, their music.

[00:28:13] Tessa Burg: Oh, I love that.

[00:28:14] Nicole Purcell: Yeah, it takes on a little different, we do it during Grammy week right now, the show, we just had it, which was great.

[00:28:19] Nicole Purcell: Honoring amazing people. We honor people that are celebrities, that are creative geniuses and they touch advertising and marketing as well, so. The wall behind me is what we call the wall of fame of all the honoraries and hosts that we’ve been having, and just took it up to that next level with Clio. So I’m very proud and excited of what we built, but of course that that lasts for two seconds and then I’m onto the next. So.

[00:28:44] Tessa Burg: Well, Nicole, I can’t believe we are actually at time, which is insane.

[00:28:49] Nicole Purcell: So sorry.

[00:28:52] Tessa Burg: This has been an amazing conversation and I think. Everyone can take away what you’ve really unlocked and where you’ve started and how you’ve opened up these new ways of expanding the brand and connecting is listening, community empowerment and doing it all through this concept of like how hospitality led leadership.

[00:29:13] Tessa Burg: And it really, it’s, it’s amazing and congratulations on all your success. It’s been just a great conversation.

[00:29:20] Nicole Purcell: Thank you so much, Tessa.

[00:29:23] Tessa Burg: Uh, if people want to reach you or have questions, where can they find you

[00:29:28] Nicole Purcell: All over. I’m kidding. Um, LinkedIn on Instagram. Um, and then, you know, my email is very easy.

[00:29:36] Nicole Purcell: [email protected]. I do answer everyone, even on LinkedIn. Because I also believe in that communication is so important. So happy to always chat with people because you never know the next great idea where it’s gonna come from.

[00:29:51] Tessa Burg: Yeah. That is amazing. Thanks so much for being on the show. And for listeners who want more Leader Generation episodes, you can find them at modop.com/podcasts.

[00:30:03] Tessa Burg: That’s modop.com, or just search Leader Generation wherever you listen to podcasts. Until next time, Nicole, thanks again for joining us.