Professional learning and growth can bloom from unexpected relationships — and these opportunities are abundant in technical industries like architecture, engineering and construction.
In this episode of “Spill the Ink,” Michelle Calcote King sits down with Reagan Branham, Chief Marketing Officer at HERA laboratory planners, to discuss the benefits of embracing mentorship opportunities outside the marketing department’s traditional hierarchy. Reagan tells us about a turning point in her AEC marketing career that led her to view each colleague, regardless of discipline or department, as a potential mentor. She also shares how this mindset shift is helping her build a culture of collaboration, knowledge-sharing and shared success at HERA.
Here's a glimpse of what you'll learn
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About Reagan Branham transition from journalism to AEC marketing and what skills carried over.
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The importance of mentorship beyond traditional hierarchies and how to build symbiotic learning relationships across an organization.
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How AEC marketers can identify cross-departmental learning opportunities with their technical staff and make the most of them.
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How HERA laboratory planners leverages open communication and collaboration in its culture to improve employee retention and enhance professional growth.
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How to navigate billable-hour constraints to pursue impactful mentorship relationships.
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The role mentorship plays in empowering professionals to grow and succeed, especially in remote work environments.
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A real-world example of how constructive feedback can shape long-term career development.
About our featured guest
With more than 25 years of experience in AEC marketing and journalism, Reagan Branham’s diverse background includes graphic design, writing, editing, social media and product design. Reagan is an active member of the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS), writing articles for its magazine and speaking at conferences. She also serves on the board of SMPS St. Louis as education director. Reagan has worked at HERA laboratory planners for eight years, starting as a marketing manager. She currently serves as the firm’s chief marketing officer.
Resources mentioned in this episode
Sponsor for this episode
This episode is brought to you by Reputation Ink.
Founded by Michelle Calcote King, Reputation Ink is a public relations and content marketing agency that serves professional services firms of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including corporate law firms and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms.
Reputation Ink understands how sophisticated corporate buyers find and select professional services firms. For more than a decade, they have helped firms grow through thought leadership-fueled strategies, including public relations, content marketing, video marketing, social media, podcasting, marketing strategy services and more.
To learn more, visit www.rep-ink.com or email them at info@rep-ink.com today.
Transcript
Disclaimer: What you’re reading is an AI-transcribed version of our podcast. It may contain mistakes, including spelling and grammar errors.
[00:00:00] Reagan Branham: Continuing to have the tough conversations, it's from such a good place. It's coming from a place of, I want to make you better. I want to make the firm better.
[00:00:13] Announcer: Welcome to Spill the Ink, a podcast by Reputation Ink, where we feature experts in growth and brand visibility for law firms and architecture, engineering and construction firms. Now let's get started with the show.
[00:00:30] Michelle Calcote King: Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us today. I'm Michelle Calcote King. I'm your host and I'm the principal and president of Reputation Ink.
We are a public relations and thought leadership marketing agency for B2B professional services firms, including many architecture, engineering and construction firms. To learn more, go to rep-ink.com..
A lot of us think about mentorship as senior staff passing down wisdom to junior employees. In reality, some of the best learning moments will be entirely blind to org charts. Today we're going to be talking about finding learning opportunities in unexpected places and how looking beyond titles and departments might just be the key to building stronger, more integrated firms.
I'm very excited to welcome Reagan Branham to Spill the Ink. Reagan has over 25 years of experience in marketing and journalism. She's the chief marketing officer at HERA laboratory planners. She serves on the board of the Society for Marketing Professional Services, SMPS, St. Louis, and she's the organization's Education Director. Thank you for joining us, Reagan. Really excited to talk about this.
[00:01:45] Reagan Branham: Thank you for having me.
[00:01:48] Michelle Calcote King: I gave that really brief intro, but I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about your background, kind of how you got into AEC. I always love hearing about that.
[00:01:55] Reagan Branham: Probably like many people, this career sort of found me, I didn't find it. I was a journalist for many years. I went to journalism school and always thought that's what I would do. I was a graphic designer for newspapers for many years and newspapers are not doing well these days. When I had the opportunity to leave newspapers, it felt like a good fit. A lot of the things I was doing in the newspaper industry — doing graphic design, working under really tremendous deadline pressure, juggling multiple things, writing, editing, being creative — all of that transferred over to AEC so nicely.
It's been a good fit for me. I have been in marketing for AEC for 13 years now, for the past 8 at HERA, and started as a marketing manager and have worked my way to chief marketing officer.
[00:03:05] Michelle Calcote King: That's great. We are a big believer in hiring journalists. We have a team full of former journalists. They have some really good skill sets, especially when working with experts — being able to interview, draw out those stories that are kind of hidden in a firm, being able to work multimedia. Journalists today have to be versatile; they can't just be a one-trick pony.
Before the interview today, you were telling me you really believe that AEC marketers and really professionals throughout AEC firms can benefit from expanding the horizons of those they learn from, that sort of old traditional mentor model. I think we all go to college and we think we're going to enter into the field and have this one person that shows us the ropes, but you're saying we need to expand our thinking beyond that. Tell me what you mean by that.
[00:04:19] Reagan Branham: You're absolutely right. The traditional definition of mentorship — you think about what's the org chart within my discipline. If I'm in marketing or business development in an architecture firm, I look above me and who's in that job title that I want to be eventually. Maybe I try to learn from that person, and if I feel like mentoring, I look at the person below me in the chart and try to pass on some knowledge to them. That's all really good; we should be doing that for sure.
My firm HERA laboratory planners is 40 people with a two-person marketing department. That's really not unusual for AEC or for other companies. If I think about mentorship and having those relationships with just the two people in marketing and business development, I'm really limited. But if you think bigger picture — who else can I learn from? I've got 38 other really smart people in my company that I can glom on to and figure out what they're doing, what they're excited about. That helps me understand what I can learn from them.
One thing I will share: HERA does laboratory programming and planning and design. It's a really technical discipline, a specialty consultant. When I started here, I felt really intimidated because I didn't know hardly anything about science. It just wasn't a passion of mine. I didn't care about it. I felt very uncomfortable, but I had to learn this stuff because I have to know it. That's been one really important aspect for me — where can I find those people who are going to help me understand what we're doing? I've found those people, and it's made me a better advocate for the firm.
[00:06:38] Michelle Calcote King: That's so important. I talk a lot about how marketing and PR people really have to learn the business that they are marketing or publicizing. They have to know it really well, because you are the public face, even if you're not the spokesperson. You're setting that up. You're that go-between. If you don't speak that language and understand those technical concepts at some level, you can't be scared to ask those questions.
Tell me how you were able to make those connections. What did you do? How did you find those right people to go out and say, "I want to form this relationship or this mentorship with you," or "I'd like to learn?" What did you do?
[00:07:31] Reagan Branham: In my case, I would say I probably never really had that sort of conversation. It's been really organic. It's about me just connecting with people, but the first step probably for myself and for everyone is to just really understand yourself and what are your strengths and your weaknesses. Once you understand that, then you can figure out what you can do to make them better.
Of course, there's a million personality tests, assessments and things like that online. A good starting one would be the Myers Briggs assessment. They ask you so many different things — do you connect easily with new people, are you organized, do you like to start conversations, are you impulsive, do you follow plans? They gather all of this data and, assuming you're being honest, they're going to spit out where you fall on the scale of all of these different components.
I think doing that is really important. The reality is, there's bunches of them out there. I have taken several and there's some where I understand the language or the words that they're using, so I connect better with those. You take a few and you see which ones stick, but you're going to see a pattern about yourself emerging. It might be things you already know. It might be just confirming what you already know about yourself. To me, that's a good first step.
At HERA and even other firms I've worked for, I had to do these personality assessments when I got hired. If anyone hasn't looked at those responses, you should ask, "What do you have on my file from my hire? When I did this assessment?" It's good for you to know what your bosses know about you.
One word of caution — they're a snapshot in time. I don't think my assessments that I took 8 years ago when I started at HERA would be exactly who I am today. We're always evolving, but they're still a good place for a starting point to think about your own strengths, your own weaknesses.
[00:10:16] Michelle Calcote King: That's a really great point. I hadn't thought about that, looking at it from those personality tests, which is a great idea because that's key to looking at your gaps and where somebody could help you level up in your work. So once you've done that kind of assessment, how did you then identify the right person? How do you look for the person that kind of meets that gap that you might have?
[00:11:04] Reagan Branham: I'm definitely someone who is probably hyper-aware of my weaknesses. I know my strengths too, but I'm very hyper-aware of where I'm weak and I'm always looking to make myself better. When I see somebody who is just really strong at something that I know I'm not as strong at, I'm just amazed by them. How do they do this thing? I can't do — or I should never say I can't do it, but it's just not who I am naturally. It doesn't come naturally. How are they doing it?
That's how I glom on to them — I just want to be around them as much as possible and understand how they're doing these things.
[00:12:05] Michelle Calcote King: What do you see as some barriers that some people might face when trying to do this at their firms?
[00:12:15] Reagan Branham: I think company culture would have to be at the top of the list. HERA has an amazing culture. They want us all to collaborate, all work together. I've always felt really encouraged to ask questions of people, certainly in the marketing department, but I'm working a lot with the technical staff and I'm working a ton with the principals and I'm working a lot with the other administrative staff.
That's important — I'm reaching out to all these different people and I've definitely worked at firms that — no firm is ever going to say, "We don't want you to do this," but there are firms that have the culture of encouraging it or it's already sort of baked in that you do it. Then there are other firms where it's just not there yet.
When we're talking about company culture, I'm a firm believer that no matter how big or how small your firm is, everyone makes up company culture. We're all a part of it. If something is important to me and I want it to be a part of our culture, I can help make it so. I want to have relationships with people. I want to learn from lots of different people so I can do it and I can start making it part of who we are as a company.
[00:13:54] Michelle Calcote King: I love that you can impact the culture. I love that perspective to not just sort of sit on the outside of a company and talk about its culture, but to feel some ownership toward it and say, "No, I'm part of it and I can impact it."
[00:14:10] Reagan Branham: Along those lines, I think another barrier, particularly with companies where the technical staff is billable and their hours are really accounted for, and they have targets that they have to meet — another barrier is that idea of "I have to remain billable." It's tough for me to take time out and have conversations and just teach you things because I have metrics I need to meet.
I do understand that. I think it really does go back to a culture. If you have a company culture where that billability metric is so important that somebody feels like "I don't even have time to get to know other people" — I don't have an answer for that. I think what I would say is that individual might not be the right fit for this sort of relationship that you want to have.
One other really great benefit to having a culture that loves having these relationships and intermingling and sharing of information up and down the org chart and outside departments: you are creating really great relationships, network, friendships, and a side benefit to all of this is employee retention. Once you feel more connected to people, even outside of your department, all of a sudden you're growing this company together. You're doing things together and you want to help each other succeed. You want to help the business succeed. You want to stay and see it succeed.
[00:16:23] Michelle Calcote King: Absolutely. As any company owner knows, it's so much more cost efficient to keep an employee than to find a new one. The value is so much higher to your clients to retain employees.
If a company owner or someone in leadership is listening and they say, "I want to encourage my team to build these kind of relationships," do you have any tips for what leaders can do? Are there any tools or tips to help them along this path?
[00:17:12] Reagan Branham: If somebody is asking, then they're already in the right mindset, in my opinion. If they're interested in it, they probably already have a really great culture for it.
I'm going to go back to my own firm because we're remote. I'm working from home here. We haven't been in the office for 4 years. But we still have this culture of reaching out to each other via Teams now, and all having these really great connections to each other. So, it doesn't even have to be in person. It can absolutely be virtual.
[00:17:58] Michelle Calcote King: That's right. You can have mentors that aren't within your company. They don't have to be in the same office. It's definitely a timely debate — can you build those relationships remotely? Do you have to be walking the halls? I do believe you can still build them virtually. Being in person does help, but it can still be done in a remote environment.
[00:18:30] Reagan Branham: One of my first people at HERA that I had this relationship with — I'm going to tell this story and it's embarrassing. I don't look very good, but it's a great story.
I had been at the firm for maybe a year or so and was working with this woman who was just an absolute rising star, just really good, really detail oriented. The way HERA works, because we are a consulting firm, we typically work under a prime architect. So I'm sending out my qualifications and I'm sending it to that prime architect who's getting it from all of their consultants, and then they'll put it all together in one package and send it off to the client.
It's all really straightforward stuff. Give a resume and give a couple of project sheets and a list of our similar experience. I felt very confident even just a year in. I could do this. So I did it, put it all together. I cc'd this woman whose resume I was using, sent it off, checked it off my to-do list and moved on with my life and went on to the next thing on my to-do list.
About 15 minutes later, she emailed me and proceeded to point out everything I had done wrong. Not nasty, not mean, but her point was, "Reagan, this was totally sloppy. You missed things, you didn't update our project list."
Of course my first reaction was like, "Calm down. This isn't even that big of a deal." That's a terrible reaction, but I'm human. And that was my reaction. I didn't ever say that to her, thank goodness. Because that's not a good reaction.
[00:20:36] Michelle Calcote King: Not the best reaction.
[00:20:38] Reagan Branham: But I thought about it. Of course, the longer I thought about it, the more I was embarrassed and thought, "Yeah. Everything she's saying is absolutely right. I did get this stuff wrong."
I called her and I apologized and I said, "It's not going to happen again. I will be better." But the thing that I really thought about was, it's not just going to get better. I was in a hurry and I made sloppy mistakes and I think I'm prone to do that as many of us are. So it's not just going to get better because, going back to one of my weaknesses, that's it. That's one of my weaknesses.
I needed to have a plan for how I can make myself better. I realized that is one of her strengths. If I can work with her as much as possible, I know she's going to check everything that I do. But I don't want to get that email ever again that's telling me all the things I did wrong. That felt terrible.
So in the past eight years now, I have worked with this woman all the time and I'm constantly learning from her. I think I have developed new habits from this relationship where I am less likely, less prone to be making these little mistakes. I've learned some of her really great habits.
[00:22:13] Michelle Calcote King: I love that story because it says find someone who will be willing to put themselves out there and tell you something difficult. A lot of people don't like having tough conversations nowadays, and that's where the real value is.
If you can find someone who will risk you having bad feelings about them to have a difficult conversation with you so that you learn — that's really valuable. She's risking something by doing that. She could have taken the easy road and not had the conversation with you. Find someone who will give you the direct feedback. To me, that's what great bosses are — the ones that will give you the tough stuff you need to know.
[00:23:15] Reagan Branham: No surprise, she is now a principal and she's continuing to do that — continuing to have the tough conversations. It's from such a good place because it's coming from a place of, I want to make you better. I want to make the firm better. It was terrific and it was really the start of a great relationship with her.
[00:23:37] Michelle Calcote King: Great example. If there's one final lesson you'd like to leave our listeners with to build off of this idea, what would it be?
[00:23:58] Reagan Branham: I would say your firm does not have to have a formal mentoring program to have this happen. In fact, it might be better if it's not formal because you can have lots and lots of these relationships. I mentioned the woman who's now principal and I've had that relationship with her for a long time. I can probably name four or five other people that I have this really great open dialogue with all the time.
I'm finding things that they can teach me. And then I'm also thinking about what kind of value can I add to them and what they're doing every day. None of that is because HERA has a mentoring program. It's all because I'm finding people that I can learn from and that can learn from me.
[00:24:55] Michelle Calcote King: Thanks so much for highlighting this topic and giving people the instigation they need to do this because I think constant learning is really critical nowadays, especially in marketing. We have a field that is changing rapidly, and you can't stop learning. It's really important to constantly learn. So we've been talking to Reagan Branham of HERA laboratory planners. Thank you so much for joining.
[00:25:29] Reagan Branham: Thank you very much for having me.
[00:25:34] Announcer: Thanks for listening to Spill the Ink, a podcast by Reputation Ink. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.
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