During this interview, we discussed Daniel's background, upbringing, and career path, including his experiences in show choir, his passion for water, and his shift to business and communications. We delved into his journey in digital communications, the importance of social media for organizations, the value of understanding and connecting with their target audience, and the importance of seeking good mentors and helping others.

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Seek Out Good People In Your Life And Be That Person To Others With Daniel Lemin

Welcome to this episode where I interview Daniel Lemin, a bestselling author, podcast host, and advisor who helps brands and executives behind them build and protect their digital reputation. He delivers thought leadership consulting through his firm, One Good Brand and reputation intelligence threat assessments and advisory services through Repwise Group.

He has worked with some of the largest and most iconic brands and executives in the world. A native of Ohio, Daniel earned his MBA from Quantic School of Business and Technology, and his MA in Communications and Leadership from Gonzaga. He lives in Los Angeles with his rescue dog, Olivia. He also loves small venues, live shows, heist movies, and airline libraries.

In this episode, we discussed Daniel’s background, upbringing, and career path, including the experiences in show choir, his passion for water, his shift to business and communications. We delved into his journey of digital communications and the importance of social media for organizations, the value of understanding and connecting with your target audience, and the importance of seeking good manners and helping others. I hope you enjoy this interview with Daniel Lemin.

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Welcome to this episode of the show. I am with Daniel Lemin. Daniel, do you want to give a little background on yourself before we begin? Yeah.

Thanks for bringing me on and having me on the show. I am the Founder of a new company called Repwise Group. That’s my most recent bio bullet as it were, but a long-time practitioner of communications and digital marketing. A lens on online reputation and search engine optimization. I’ve written a couple of books along the way about word of mouth marketing, online reviews, all things troll and shadowy figures on the internet but it’s been a meandering path. I don’t think anyone would have said at the beginning, “This was what I’m going to end up doing.”

Me either. I’m with you. All of those things that you are talking about are things that everybody needs information on. We will get there in that journey of how you got to this place of what you do. Do you want to just start off letting us know where you were born and grew up? What did your parents do for a living?

I have the distinction along with my brother, technically. He probably would hold this title first, but first college graduates in our family. I grew up in Ohio, a small town, known for one thing and one thing only. It’s the town where Wilson manufactures the Super Bowl footballs. Every year around January, the news crews roll into this small town. It’s the same ladies who have been making those footballs for years and their hands, frankly, look like footballs themselves. I grew up there and I ended up in college there, too. My mom.

What was the city?

It’s a town is how you say that. It’s Ada, Ohio.

I’ve grown up in Ohio and never heard of it.

Unless you follow the Super Bowl, you probably wouldn’t have had a chance.

What’s the closest city to it? What bigger city?

College And Early Career

It’s triangulated between Fort Wayne, Toledo, Dayton, and Columbus. It’s in the Northwest corner of Ohio. There’s a gorgeous Air Force Museum in Dayton Wright-Patterson. It’s not far from there. My mom worked at the university where I ended up at undergrad, so that was nice and led to a somewhat free education, which is a very rare thing. Looking back, I probably should have been more grateful for it at the time. My dad is an electrician. He’s a technical guy. He worked at Procter and Gamble, where they make all the soap.

Did he work in Cincinnati at Procter and Gamble?

They have a big manufacturing facility in Lima, Ohio.

With what your dad did as an electrician, did he ever teach you anything he was doing?

He’s my dad. He’s taught me so many things over the years. I’m just not super like electronically inclined. I’m technology inclined, but when it gets into the actual thing like the components, my brain doesn’t compute those things. When it comes to electrical work even around the house, I’m like, “That is a thing to hire somebody for.”

Are you the oldest or was your brother older?

I’m the youngest. My brother’s five years older.

What was your favorite thing to do when you grew up?

I did so many things. I wasn’t early into sports. I did the high school choir. I was in the show choir, the full on Glee choir. Fun fact, the show Glee, if you’ve watched it. It is based on a school in Lima, Ohio. We used to compete against them all the time and went to the state championship and beat them even. I must say, I’m not bad at the show choir. I can dance and I look great in sequence.

Do you still sing or dance?

No, I don’t. That was a defined period of time in my life.

When you were young, what were the things that you wanted to do when you grew up then? You weren’t electricity inclined, things that your dad wanted to do. What things interested you?

I have a genuine fondness for the animal kingdom. All animal kinds. Some people are drawn to people. I’ve always been drawn to animals. I thought at the time I went to undergrad, I was like, “I’m going to become a marine biologist,” because I lived near water. I don’t know why I thought of all of the things marine biology was my calling but I did great up until like chemistry class in biochemistry.

I thought maybe I’ve made a wrong choice here. I ended up switching to business and communications as my area of study, which was by accident. The only reason I chose it is the professor, the mentor who ran that program. I just knew I wanted to be around him and study with him. I chose him more than the actual work. I didn’t know what that work was going to be, but he and I are still good friends now.

As far as animals, what drew you to marine animals? Why was that the specialty you wanted to go into?

I’m a water baby. I love the water and the ocean. I live near the ocean in Los Angeles now. I could never imagine living anywhere but near water. I was drawn to it. It’s so mysterious. It’s like another planet down there.

Do you skip a dive?

The other irony is I’m a little bit claustrophobic. Fifteen feet under the surface or less, my comfort zone.

Take us on this journey. You went into business and communications because this professor was influential. What was it about the professor that changed your mind to go into such a different field?

Importance Of Good Mentors

I had a sense he was a good mentor and I didn’t know what I wanted to do at that point but I knew he would help me. I couldn’t say the same for professors in any other department or program. It’s about like, “I’m going to be in good hands here. I don’t know what I’m going to end up doing with all this information. I feel like it’s going to be a good experience,” and it was.

A classic good mentor. He’s also got a sense of humor that is very rare and makes class always an enjoyable thing to show up to. I was part of his magic. It was getting students to attend class. He was a good coach. He guided me. I ended up being part of the National Student Association that was in our industry, public relations. He was a good general mentor.

How did you encounter him in the first place? How did you know he was a professor?

Everyone has to take classes. I was like, “That was fun. I quite like him.” The subject matter was interesting too. It’s communication. It’s not earth shattering, but it was of interest to me. I knew I couldn’t do marine biology any longer. I was going to be kicked out of that program pretty quickly. It’s just a natural transition.

You said, that your brother and yourself were the first generation to go to college. How did you even take that leap to go to college in the first place or think that was possible for you?

It was just my parents. They pushed us to do it. Quite fortuitously, my mom had gotten a job at the university, so we would have a heavily discounted private school education, which is worth a lot. Not quite free. It pushed my brother and me both to go do it, no matter what we ended up doing with it.

It sounds like when you found him, you were looking for that mentor or someone to navigate this for you since no one had done that for you in your life.

That’s probably a good way of saying it.

With that, how did this evolve into work for you? What was your first job coming out of school?

I stuck to the knitting on the PR front, so I studied public relations and I went for it. I had a couple of internships while I was in college and got to live in different places. I spent a summer in Washington, DC working for the Points of Light Foundation, which was awesome. A good experience. I had an internship working for Microsoft the other summer, and I’m being drawn to the water. I knew I wanted to move to one of the coasts. The West Coast seemed the most intuitive one because the weather is frankly better. I had an interest in technology at the time. It’s like the gold rush of everyone going into technology, so I ended up in San Francisco. I accidentally fell into a tech PR career.

Maybe explain what that was like and how you navigate it to become successful in that. I know from being around PR people, it’s a pretty competitive market and it’s very hard to be successful.

That’s true. What’s funny is I’m a genuine introvert, so it’s never been an intuitive profession for me because of that. Being an introvert, I’m a student of people. I study people deeply and that was something that has been beneficial in my career. Talking genuinely about the power of having good people in your life.

My first job out of college, I worked for a credit card start-up company in San Francisco. That company ended up going bankrupt and going out of business but my boss there, Camille, was quite fond of me. After she had to give the news that the company was pretty much laying everyone off and having to get laid off herself one of those days. We kept in touch and she knew I had applied for a position at a little company called Google and took it upon herself to go to an industry event. Seek out the vice president of communications at Google and let her know that I’m the one that they should hire.

I didn’t know she was going to that event. I didn’t ask her and certainly would never have asked that of her. She didn’t tell me she was doing it. I didn’t even find out about it until I got the call that, “You’re getting an offer. You need to thank Camille LePri for pushing us over the edge on you.” I was like, “What do you mean?” They told me the story. That’s the power of having good people in your corner. Part of that’s showing up that way for other people, too. I think that’s always been the case.

You had to have done some pretty amazing things for her to go out of her way like that.

She was fond of me.

That’s important, having this network of people that you can go to and people that support you and you support them back. Did you end up taking that job with Google?

For sure. I don’t know why they hired me, to be honest with you. I took the job and it was amazing.

What was the role? What did you do there?

It was a PR role. I was the young kid on the team and did a lot of things there, including manning the press hotline, answering inbound questions from media, and a lot of users too who wanted T-shirts and free stuff. Everything from that to running press conferences is the full gamut. We joked it was like the White House press office because there were only about 10 or 12 of us on the team. There are hundreds and thousands then tens of thousands of employees. There were still a few of us on our little team, so it felt very much like a high-pressure press office.

Being an introvert in this type of role, I would guess when you’re getting questions from a hotline and any inbound questions and you’ve got to give answers right away. How did your communications background help you with that to be able to answer on the fly?

Media relations is something you learn by instinct and it’s not a skill that you learn. It’s a skill that you practice and you have to do it to be good at it. I wouldn’t say I ever became great at it. It was my least favorite part of the job, to be honest, but I kept myself honest on it by just staying on script, staying on point, and speaking in background about some of the tricks that PR pros have to use to stay sane.

It wasn’t something I was ever super intuitive, though. The others on my team, other people I’ve known in my career who are genuinely amazing at that skill. They know how to handle the media and it’s a different thing than handling a crowd. I speak now in front of thousands of people at conferences. It’s a totally different skill set.

From there, what did you end up doing?

Transition To Digital Communications

I spent a few years at Google. That team ended up taking a sabbatical after. It’s a pretty intense work environment and I needed to unwind a little and focus on health after that experience. I met somebody and decided to move to Los Angeles where I live now and got back into the field. I got back into the communications field, but more on the digital on the marketing side. I don’t do media relations anymore. I decided that was not my first skill, but I am good at digital stuff.

Maybe give a little more explanation of that and what that is.

I started that. It was the beginning of what became like social media. It was MySpace and Facebook at the time. Brands and organizations were figuring out how to adapt what they do to that environment. That’s been the thing I’ve focused on is staying on top of those innovations and helping organizations fix themselves so that they can take full advantage of what has become the media at this point.

Who watches TV or reads newspapers anymore? Our attention is on these platforms. It’s remarkable to me even now. There are times I’ve worked with, I would say somewhat recently, they’re like, “We should get started on social media.” You probably should. That’s a good idea. I’m with you on that. It is still an evolution that’s happening.

I speak a lot in the accounting profession and probably my profession would be a laggard in social media because there is a stigma of what’s appropriate for an accountant or a CPA to be doing online. There’s also generational differences between partners of one generation and new professionals that are coming in that have used TikTok, Snapchat and Facebook and all of these other applications where they’re ready to go on TikTok. I’ve still heard people in my generation and older be like, “We wouldn’t go on TikTok.” How do you help people get over that mindset? What is the appropriate way or strategy for them to be able to utilize it?

It comes from one of two places. First, we want to be on the channels so that we’re present and accounted for. There’s a lot of good reasons to do that. If you don’t do it, someone else will do it in your place. May even impersonate Amy Vetter on TikTok and stand in your place. The work I’ve been focusing on is scams and impersonations. That’s an area I find super interesting.

The alternative is that you want to be focused and engaged on those platforms because you see them as an opportunity to reach a new generation of people or transform your business. Neither is the wrong answer, but the latter answer requires the audience to think first. What value do you have as an accountant or do you have no matter what space you’re in? What value do you have and how can you help? Focus on what the audience wants and needs. Not so much on the format.

I’ve seen some amazing TikTokers who, if you were just objectively looking at their content, it’s terrible, but it’s the thing they’re sharing that is so powerful. There’s someone. We interviewed her on the show. I am a co-host on Social Pros. She runs a piercing shop in Phoenix and has a very specific way she does social media. It’s just a before and after pretty much.

She describes why I chose this particular pattern on the ear. It’s pretty rudimentary the way she does it. She doesn’t sway from that format, but it works. She has over a million followers on her account who some of them seek her out in real life and fly to her to get a piercing done. She’s an artist, but she’s a good storyteller.

This is hard, what you were saying about think about my audience first, which is whether you’re doing a website or any marketing. I was in a session with a number of accounting firms and just to get to a two-minute pitch of what they do or why they do it versus what they’re doing. Usually, it comes out when we offer tax-compliance services or things like that. Not the why behind what they’re doing, what is the value that they’re creating, and what would be the person’s pain point of why you’re different than the accountant down the street. It can sound so easy to say, “Think about your audience first and what value,” but it’s the work to figure out what your value is and gain agreement on it.

Challenges And Opportunities In Social Media

It doesn't always manifest right at the beginning. Sometimes you have to start and then you figure it out. It’s not always easy to know what your audience needs. They may not even themselves be able to articulate what that is to you. If you’re waiting for that a-ha moment, you’re not going to get it until you’re starting like, “That didn’t work, but this did. That’s surprising.”

How would you know something worked or didn’t work?

You’ll see it. You may see it like something goes viral. Frankly, it doesn’t happen all that often, but what you may see manifest are comments that speak to you like, “I didn’t know people would see that topic that way, or think about that topic that way.” When you see that, then you’ve got the moment. You can build on that and that’s part of the magic of marketing but it is a special thing to social media because it happens so quickly. It can be a very fleeting insight.

What’s been interesting for me and with my market, they’re not necessarily people that are going to comment or like because they don’t want to show it out there. However, when I see them in person, they’ll tell me how important the content’s been to them, or how much they enjoy it. When you’re dealing with an audience that isn’t necessarily going to say it or show it, how do you evaluate?

You just nailed it. If you have the instinct, maybe this isn’t an audience that is likely to comment, but you think they’re watching. You can see either in views or downloads. You know that there’s an audience there, then you have to find other ways of asking like, “Have you seen my stuff? Have you found it useful? Has it been helpful in any way in any fashion?”

That’s a thing a lot of organizations overlook. It’s that opportunity for secondary feedback that isn’t on the platform in the moment. Even asking us for small business, “Where did you find us? How did you come to us? As a referral from a friend? That would be great. Did you see me on TikTok? I love that.” A lot of people forget to ask that question, “Thanks for the call. Where did you hear about us?”

That’s important because too many times when I’ve been in corporate environments, it’s always these metrics that don’t necessarily correlate with the audience and who you’re trying to attract or that’s how relationships are built. It’s an interesting thing of how you figure it out for each audience of what’s appropriate. How did you get into speaking?

Also, quite by accident. When I moved to Los Angeles, I took a role at a PR firm. Anyone who works in any firm, be it PR, ad agency, or accounting firm, often part of the job is a sales job. You have to get out and do pitches. Often, that means conferences. I started doing industry conferences and it snowballed a little bit from there. I accelerated after I wrote my first book on ratings and reviews.

That’s when my, I wouldn’t say speaking career, but my time as a speaker accelerated. I started doing more events, bigger events, and more regular cadence of events. I’ve focused on trying to grow it and build it as one of the pillars of my business consulting, speaking, and I say books. Maybe there’s a third book for me. I’m not entirely sure yet.

What is your value that you provide that you’re trying to get out there?

It’s varied over the years. I’m a very content focused speaker. There are different kinds of people who speak who are more inspirational or motivate you to go do things. I tend to be more of a teacher content heavy person. I’m usually intensely focused on the material that I have. It was a whole set of workshops on ratings and reviews and how to use them for your business. That was a track that I did for a long time.

I’m focused on reputation management, online reputation, avoiding scams, and hackers. The thread through all of it is trying to be an inch ahead of where people are. Not necessarily a future casting type of thing, but to pull people along whatever journey evolution they may be on in terms of social and digital marketing. It’s like a marketing Sherpa, as it were. I’ve been up the mountain and now I’m coming back for you.

You’re saying you’re an introvert but some of your hobbies are choir and dancing. Now being a speaker and being in front of the press. How do you reconcile that or feel comfortable in those situations?

Reconciling Introversion With Public Speaking

I think about this all the time, “How did I end up here?” I’m the type of person I thrive on adrenaline and nothing gets it pumping faster than being super far outside my comfort zone. I walk on a stage in front of 10 people or 1,000 people. It doesn’t matter. I get the same, “What am I doing here?” That’s a good feeling. I feel like when I have that, I’m doing the right thing. That’s what has fueled a lot of it and you can’t be an introvert in every aspect of your life.

It’s good for people to know that. Why do you think you need that to be pushed outside your comfort zone?

If you don’t, you never grow. Its comfort is nice but maybe there are people who say, “I want to be comfortable. I don’t want to push myself.” For me anyway, I don’t like feeling stagnant.

How do you think your small-town roots have helped you in one of the largest cities that you could live in?

I work from home. My view of Los Angeles is like the community that I live in, my neighborhood, and my neighbors. In a weird way, it feels like a small town that happens to be surrounded by a lot more cities. For me, it’s just a community.

It’s striving for that comfort level of community wherever you are at but still, with all your jobs and so forth, the navigation you’ve had to do from the background that you’ve had is pretty impressive.

I could have never told you at the beginning this was where it’s going. I don’t know where I am now and how I'll end up in 2 years or 5 years. That’s part of the joy of it.

You have to have that innately inside you. There’s so many great things that we’ve talked about. I’d like to close up with some rapid-fire questions and you pick a category, family and friends, money, spiritual or health.

Rapid Fire Questions On Spirituality

Let’s talk about spirituality. That’s always a good one.

Things or actions I don’t have that I want with spirituality.

A daily meditation practice which leads to a deeper enlightenment.

Do you meditate at all?

Yes, just not daily.

Things or actions I do have and I want to keep.

I’d say a sense of self and the knowledge of what separates self from body. That’s a helpful thing to study and understand and a whole bunch of different reasons why but it’s come through a lot of meditation.

Things or actions I don’t have that I don’t want to have as far as spirituality.

I don’t have and I don’t want to have suffering, honestly, or struggle.

That’s a good one. Last one, things or actions that I do have that I don’t want?

I just said I don’t have to struggle, but I do. This is even a good reminder to focus on that and meditate on it. It does go away. You embrace it and you can see your way through it.

How important is whatever you’re struggling with and getting outside yourself because our brains all monkey mind that over and over. That’s the benefit of a meditation practice.

I remember saying during COVID to my husband, like, “Between meditation and yoga, as humans, we have enough. That’s all we need.” If we can just have those two things, it’s enough. I do believe that.

I’m a yoga teacher and when I train yoga teachers, that’s one of the things because when you’ve gone through the process, you see how much you feel better. You have this toolkit to help you, especially when you’re going through teacher training, and you’re learning even more. You’ve got to not tell everyone, “If you just do yoga, don’t fix it.”

It may address the short term.

You have to know where people are on the journey and help them along the way. As you go through it, it seems too simple that we have this natural toolbox to help us through these things. It doesn’t make life simpler, but that there’s something to support us. Is there anything you want to make sure the audience takes away from our conversation that we haven’t talked about or you want to emphasize?

For me, it’s the theme when I look back on the weird journey I’ve had professionally and personally too. Good people are the thing that always speaks to me, mentors and people trying to help you. Seek those people out in your life, but also try to be that person for others because everyone deserves it. Someone is out there in need of help from you probably now. Seek opportunities to be that person for others.

It's so true. Thank you so much for being a guest, Daniel. I appreciate it and I know our audience does, too.

Thanks so much.

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Now for my mindful moments with this interview with Daniel Lemin. Hopefully, all of you enjoyed the takeaways from this interview. We talked about him coming from a small town in Ohio and making this transition to going to college when he didn’t have anyone. That was an example of that, but the sacrifices his mom made to make sure that his brother and him could get to college at a reduced fee by working there.

One of the things that was a real focus of this conversation was all about how those people that take notice of us and reach out and help us can gear our pathway. A lot of times, we forget the important part of taking time to be able to reach out to help someone or make sure our work is helping someone. When we talked about his college professor, he was someone that he took the class but resonated with. It’s so important because even myself being in college or seeing my kids go to college as well. Those teachers that take the time to go beyond the content of the textbook but bring it to life.

It shows that they are keeping up with the times of the content that they are educating on but also doing it in a way that resonates with the teens, the young adults that they’re working with is so important. Even as professionals, we need to think about this ourselves that what worked for us, however we like to be managed or led, isn’t necessarily the way that a new person coming into our workplace or profession needs to be led or managed as well.

We don’t know what’s going to resonate for them if we don’t open our eyes and look to see what are the things that resonate for them, and how can I bring that into what I do every day so that I can draw those people in. It’s important that we think about where we can shift that might make an impact on someone. Maybe we never know that impact, but the fact that they go down that journey. You can see that with his professor because that professor resonated with him, that pushed him to take another direction in his career because he shifted his degree to follow that professor and look to him as a mentor.

The other mentor that he talked about as well was a woman by the name of Camilla, that was his boss. When they had the unfortunate experience of going out of business, she went above and beyond not just having to let people go but helping him get his next role. The way she went about it was to go to a career event for Google and talk to them on his behalf. Showing up in that way for other people goes such a long way.

Think of the impact that it made on him and the growth in his career because of working at Google. It’s all because someone reached out because a personal connection to someone, you’re going to hire versus someone that’s just on paper is so important. The other thing that we talked about that was important is that just because we may be naturally an introvert or we could be a mix of an introvert and an extrovert, we’re an extrovert. Whatever that is, it doesn’t mean that we have to put ourselves in a box and not allow ourselves to grow and take on things that might be uncomfortable.

Many times when we get labeled a certain way, we decide that is our fate and if something’s going to go against that label or wouldn’t be typical for someone in that label, then we don’t go down that path. I can just use an example. Again, this goes back to the power of the words of an educator. In the last couple of years, my son was going to college orientations. He was deciding between architecture and finance. We happened to have been at an orientation and a finance professor was in the room. We started asking him questions and he was curious what my son’s major was and why he was minoring in finance at the time.

When my son said he was going to do architecture and finance. He said, “That’s not usually the case. Right and left brain people don’t exist,” which was very hard as a parent to hear a teacher say that to somebody because I do believe myself that we use all sides of our mind and our brain and we don’t limit ourselves. To limit ourselves based on whether we’re good at numbers or creative. We all have to push ourselves out of that thinking that there isn’t a cookie cutter for every profession and every type of person.

We all have the opportunity to push ourselves to do things that are uncomfortable, which is what Daniel was talking about, pushing yourself outside that comfort zone so that you can get comfortable and find ways for you to be able to accomplish the things that you want to accomplish in life. I hope that this episode was very helpful for those of you thinking about how you can either reach out to someone or be able to find a mentor yourself that will help you along your journey. If you liked this episode, please share it with your colleagues and friends. Subscribe to this episode and make sure to leave us a testimonial. We love to read them and we so appreciate the fact that you’re our audience and you resonate with the types of conversations that we have on this show. 

Important Links

• Daniel Lemin

• One Good Brand

• RepWise Group

• Points of Light Foundation

• Social Pros

• LinkedIn - Daniel Lemin

About Daniel Lemin

Daniel Lemin is a bestselling author, podcast host and advisor who helps brands and the executives behind them build and protect their digital reputation. He delivers thought leadership consulting through his form One Good Brand, and reputation intelligence, threat assessments and advisory services through Repwise Group. He has worked with some of the largest and most iconic brands and executives in the world.

Daniel was an early member of Google’s global communications team and led the launch of products in North America, EMEA, and Asia Pacific, and edited the Google Zeitgeist weekly research report featured in over 40 markets worldwide.

His last book with co-author Jay Baer, Talk Triggers, explores word-of-mouth marketing and lays out an indispensable framework for deploying it in your own organization. His first book, Manipurated, breaks down how brands and businesses should think about and manage online trolls, ratings and reviews.

He is a co-host of the award-winning Social Pros podcast, a weekly show that features some of the industry's brightest social media voices.

A native of Ohio, Daniel earned his MBA from Quantic School of Business & Technology, and his MA in communications and leadership from Gonzaga University. He lives in Los Angeles with his rescue dog, Olivia. He also loves small-venue live shows, heist movies, and airline liveries.