After 16 years of building something I loved—but didn’t own—I’m finally ready to birth something that’s mine. In 2025, I’m stepping into a new chapter.
Guest: Kiki L'Italien, EVP of Marketing & Community Engagement | CEO & Editor-in-Chief of Association Chat
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/kikilitalien/
Host: Dr. Deborah Heiser
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/deborah-heiser-phd
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Episode Introduction
Spell All right, so with a little bit of discussion and a little bit of marinating in our talk previously, so in 2025 I would like to level up Association Chat financially, so that I can leave it eventually in a successful place that will survive after I have moved on from that. At the same time, I want to prepare myself by creating on my own domain, create the spot leadership elsewhere, so that I'm not pouring everything as I have for the previous 16 years of my life into something somebody else owns. So what I need help with, I have this really great opportunity coming up to give a two minute speech and to lead people into thinking about me in certain ways, or thinking about the topic, topics I want to be known for.
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A Conversation with Kiki L'Italien | After 40 Podcast with Dr. Deborah Heiser
Speaker 1 0:00
Hold on, I have spell your name,
KiKi L'Italien 0:10
okay, all right.
Spell All right, so with a little bit of discussion and a little bit of marinating in our talk previously, so in 2025 I would like to level up Association Chat financially, so that I can leave it eventually in a successful place that will survive after I have moved on from that. At the same time, I want to prepare myself by creating on my own domain, create the spot leadership elsewhere, so that I'm not pouring everything as I have for the previous 16 years of my life into something somebody else owns. So what I need help with, I have this really great opportunity coming up to give a two minute speech and to lead people into thinking about me in certain ways, or thinking about the topic, topics I want to be known for. And so that's an opportunity in August, that is, we've got our little our time frame for that. I have a ton of channels to to push content out on, and I've been a speaker for many years, but haven't been promoting that since I started working for another company last year that I really enjoy the stability of that, but that complicates things, because I can't go and do all the speaking gigs promoting myself and my my thought leadership when I'm supposed to be their EVP of marketing. So that makes things a little more challenging. In addition to that, there's a lot of time and my own time that goes into creating content for Association Chat, and I'm still on the hook. I'm wanting to elevate that and continue to grow that. So that means if I'm going to be doing any additional speaking, writing, all of that kind of stuff that's not for Association Chat, and I'm not doing the marketing that's supporting bigger than the company I work for, then you know that's going to be a challenge on my time to do that, though, Kiki italian.com probably needs to be, you know, I need to be putting some stuff over there and making that a thing again, instead of just letting it be there dormant.
That's what I got. So I get, I've presented you with some stuff. So having that, and, you know, the magazine, all these, you know, podcast, all, that's all Association Chat. So that's my baby, but I told my baby. And so, you know, what does that look like when eventually, you know, if I don't own it, I'm not benefiting. I'm not incentivized. Right now, I'm too like, if I grow it bigger and bigger and bigger that I get from that is pride, and I get to say that my baby is surviving and lives on. It's a legacy. It's important to me, because there's a community attached to that. Options. Maybe I could buy back in. I could be part of an interview, you know, or it is a you know, maybe once it's healthy and it's, you know, like I feel like I can leave it, and I'm leaving it in a good place and not abandoning people, then maybe I can go to the next thing.
Speaker 2 4:35
So,
KiKi L'Italien 4:38
yeah, that's, that's where I am so immediate help would be helping me to define, you know, what message I want to share when I get up on that stage in front of 1000s of people in LA, that's an important two minutes. And, you know, having a vision for what I'm writing and building toward. I know what I write about for Association Chat, and I know this industry really, really well. If I'm looking to grow beyond that and share some of the lessons and things that I've learned,
Speaker 3 5:22
then what do I want
KiKi L'Italien 5:24
to focus on for that? I talked about a lot of things. I've learned a lot of things. So
Speaker 1 5:32
what's the thing I'm imagining you had a lot of impact on various people over the years? What's the thing that someone has thanked you for that's meant the most most to you.
KiKi L'Italien 5:45
The thing I get a lot is people are thankful that I introduce new ideas to them, and I'm always willing to try new things for other people, and maybe that's just the industry for them. So I one of the first awards I won was for being an innovator in the space. And I'm not innovating anything necessarily, but I'm bringing ideas from outside of the industry to people and so so you know, back before AI got to be the hot topic for all the llms and the generative AI stuff, the chat TPT. You know, I brought a guy on, but I saw on a Netflix thing to the podcast to talk about swarm AI, which, you know, like, if you think back seven years ago, was a little bit of a hot topic for or not even a hot topic. It was a new topic for a lot of people in the association space and so stuff like that. It's like, you know, thanks for bringing these ideas to us. The other thing is, community. A lot of people come to me and they ask questions about, How did you build community? How's it lasted so long? I built chapters or associations before I went into consulting work, work, and then I still, even today, have you know clients that I am working on, like the CFA Society of New York is I was just sharing earlier. I'm working on helping them grow their interest groups and their interest group engagement. So I work on community like, all the time. So
Speaker 1 7:22
that's just like, stuff that people have thanked you for. Are those the most meaningful things to you?
KiKi L'Italien 7:28
Yeah, I mean, the community thing is really meaningful to me, because I do believe, I mean, I don't think I'd be focused on the association industry as long as I have if I didn't really feel this power of bringing people together, and I think that that really, it's important to me, and it's important work. And I think that, you know, I have a lot of pride in being able to carry that and I can share it got me into talking about trust, which trust is another big topic that I like to talk about, and I study all the time. And the reason why is because the big question that people would ask me is, what's the number one reason that communities don't work? And I'd say it always comes down to trust, always, and it's whether you're confident, or whether you you know, or if it's a character situation, they either don't trust your intentions or they don't trust the competency. It's not organized well. You don't have the resources to do what you need to do. But ultimately, all comes down to trust. And so I figured, you know, if we can solve for the trust stuff and cultivate trust on purpose, and know how to do that. Con men do it all the time. How have you done it? What's that? How have you done it? What cultivated trust being consistent with messaging and even visually, and having that alignment on purpose for a long time. I think that's a good talk. Yeah, it's also, you can fast track trust. People say it takes a long time to go there. I'm like, then how did that person cheat that person out $20 after they met him like that? No, you can. You can absolutely. Is it some long, enduring thing? You know, maybe, if it's built for the right reasons, you know, but you can absolutely help cultivate trust on purpose.
Speaker 4 9:26
So this is cultivating trust on purpose for for the for the purpose of communion, doubling my word up is that a part of what you can offer outside of the work that you do now, and that is that the thing that you begin to help others, that you could coach others on. I don't know the answer to that and and so is that the I've been able to do this, I can help you do it. And this is what I'm focusing on as I move forward. That's one concept. The other thing I just want to say is that I'm wondering for you about this concept of pacing, right? So right now you're working for the end you're doing your association newsletter. So those are two Association, chat, association, chat, all of us, right? Those are two big chunks, and your future is in Kiki. Kiki, right? It has to be. It has to be. So the pacing part and the structuring that is how much time right now you're going to get into big red and how much time are you going to give to Association Chat, and how much time are you going to give to Kiki? And those will shift with seasons, right? But I'm wondering about, how are you apportioning that now, and what does it need to be to get you where you
KiKi L'Italien 10:58
want them? How I am apportioning that now is not great, because I've been used to having two things. I have my consulting firm and Association Chat. Association Chat is older even than my own consulting firm, but I've been balancing that for over a decade, and we recently have enjoyed this ability, that salary from somebody else, offers offered me, but, yeah, I haven't been great, because I'm used to really
Speaker 5 11:30
well that
Speaker 4 11:33
it's a great or bad it's not. I don't know that you'd be a decision. Yeah, right. And so it may be that one weekend a month, I'm focusing on Kiki. The rest does do the other things. But what is the structure for getting there?
Speaker 6 11:51
For Association chapter you could be doing for your break
KiKi L'Italien 11:55
and cross promoting. That's a really
Speaker 6 11:58
and what you said you're focusing on is community and trust. Things that are in such diabetes, like the trust
Speaker 4 12:05
in this world is so oh my gosh.
Speaker 6 12:07
If you could teach people how to cultivate the trust and build the communities, like, if you could teach me how to do that for my why not play brand? You know, that's what the world needs.
KiKi L'Italien 12:18
I mean, yeah, I have a whole keynote that I've delivered multiple times on the trust piece that associations is
Speaker 7 12:26
just this little pocket. Yeah, you can take what you've done with that. There's so many other Are you okay being
Speaker 8 12:34
known for cultivating trust? Like, are you happy with that being part of your legacy, part of your name, that's
KiKi L'Italien 12:41
a pretty heavy thing to be like, Oh, hi, I'm the person that's like, I'm the trust. Trust is a big word, but I'm also over here at the bar having drinks at the end of the evening, you know, like, I don't know. You know, what does that have to do with anything? I don't know. I mean, I can trust you while I have a drink with
Speaker 6 13:01
you, if I try to trust
Speaker 8 13:10
you some hesitation around because we're like, it's clearly, you know, cultivating to us like the world. Nobody trusts anything. We don't trust the news like we don't trust our politicians, we don't trust our leaders. And so it seems a big void that you can fill, but there still seems like to be some hesitation. And so thinking about legacy, what you're known for, curious about like that resonance for yourself.
KiKi L'Italien 13:34
You know, what's really interesting about that is that I 100%
Speaker 3 13:39
agree I care so much about the trust topic,
KiKi L'Italien 13:42
and I always love talking about it, especially now because of AI and all of deep fakes and all the stuff, and it's like the way that you can even put your website together. This is why branding and marketing are actually not superficial and very important, because we're all and if we're not thinking about this, we're actually getting in our own way of being able to allow people to make quicker decisions on so I interviewed this Author, mirael, who wrote so he's the he has a blog called near and far. His first name is spelled n, i r, and he has a couple of books. The first book that I read of his has to talk about introduces something called the group model. And he was responsible for introducing to Silicon Valley. He didn't use it bfog And all this stuff, but anyway, for BJ, Fogg, bringing the hook loop model to make it so that apps were more addictive to everybody and everything, he helped to make this happen. And then he came out with another book. He's a really nice guy. Came and spoke to my book club in DC. It's super nice. He ended up creating a book that I personally think deep down inside he created as an answer, an answer to the first one, which is to say, how can you basically, how can you feel? I can't remember the name of it, but it's distracting. Distracted, yeah, and it's, it's so that you can use this information in order to keep yourself from getting distracted by all this other stuff, right? And although he will say that that's not, he doesn't want to take ownership of helping spread the word anyway. I think about his example all the time, because I think I'm interested in how trust is established, even from people who use it for nefarious purposes. And my argument is I want to all the things about how to cultivate trust on purpose to do good. Yes, you know, but people could take that information and totally do bad stuff, which they do all the time. So I do think about that. And I think, do I want to actually teach people all stuff, because for associations and for somebody who's building membership, you know, you know, most associations I work with, you want to bring our members and bring it together. And I'm constantly, like, struggling with like, if your purpose is to bring people together, then why are you talking to your people this way? And why, why does your branding look like you don't care, and why does this look like this? And that alignment and some of those symbols and signs, it's something that I think should be used for. Yes,
Speaker 6 16:53
you can sell that, but
Speaker 4 16:55
here's huge responsibility, like,
Speaker 8 16:58
there's a weight. I waiting I feel responsible for, for, like, if I go out and say, this is the thing I do, like, I'm then responsible for all the bad things that are done with what I've taught and I and I get it and I want to say, that's that's not your responsibility. Yes,
Speaker 9 17:22
you target. So if, let's say you're targeting, you know, people who want to do good in the world, mission driven people, coaches, consultants, authors, dealers, I'm just giving examples of some you know, that really have a higher purpose in mind, and you're teaching them how to cultivate trust, on purpose, you know, ethical, you know, persuasion, that could be their way to be able to, you know, kind of like what you wanted to self promote in a healthy, ethical way, to be able to influence others. You know, I'm a trainer with the children Institute influence. So, so we talk a lot about ethical persuasion, about authentic influence, because all of his seven principles, right, can very easily be used for they have been, yeah, so now he's all about, like, ethical persuasion, and really explaining what that means. So that's, I think, what and so we can talk a little bit offline, a little bit more about what that is. And I think a part of it 40 speaking to right, because that already filters potentially how it might be used.
KiKi L'Italien 18:34
It's true. I was brought into this Georgetown University class. And it was for, it was a Master's class that had to do with or capstone course that had to do with IT management or something. And so a friend of mine, who is the professor for that class, would bring me in, and I talk about trust, and I would introduce it as from, how are you cultivating trust with the technology that you're using in your systems, with these different organizations and businesses and stuff? Because, I mean, even from that perspective, it was something that I think people don't think about they really don't think about it. You think about, is my data safe? I might think about cyber security, but it really does matter, everything from the design to the back end, all of that, to be able, these days, to be able to help people feel safe that they're in dealing with you. So, I mean, yeah, so I really could go on about this. One
Speaker 1 19:45
of the things that's really cool is, like, when you started to talk about the relationship between trust and ethics, like your whole body changed, like you got animated. Because in the beginning you were kind of your energy was maybe a little bit lower and flatter, but as soon as you hit that, you hit your stride. So it feels like there's something really incisive in that. And then when you started talking about the intersection of what you're really passionate about with maybe the constraints or the responsibilities of your current job, it seems like your energy dropped there. And so I wonder if there's even like, if that, if your body like, just showing this where your passion actually lies and where the heart of your attention really is. But you lit up when you started talking about the relationship
Speaker 8 20:30
between also I,
Speaker 1 20:31
one of my best friends runs the ethics and tech program at Stanford, and so if you're interested in learning more, I would love to connect
Speaker 3 20:40
you. She loves talking. I love these dots that are connecting in real time. So we're still recording, right? Okay, so we're going to take two minutes, and then it's lunch, and we can continue the conversations. Okay, I'm going to jump in with both feet. So as always, you push back if you don't agree with it. Number one, do not pour yourself into something you don't own your the dissonance in you. You said, heart wrenching world, I sold my baby. And it's like you have four years of your life. You bootstrap that. That was your vision. You did it when it was like, so you sold your baby. So what is the date of the award? Sound
KiKi L'Italien 21:16
like August? Like eight. August 8. You're
Speaker 3 21:21
going to birth a new baby. Okay? You own those words. You sold your baby. You did it for good reasons, etc, and it has given us 10 questions in ways you have not in years, because you always have autonomy. It was you were pouring it in, and you always reap the rewards of your own efforts. So now there is dissonance. You pour yourself in, but it's like you we all feel. You feel at any given moment. They could yank the carpet out from underneath you, and, you know, just stole the baby. I mean, they they bought the baby, and now they stole the baby from you, right? So you're not going to put your eggs, yes, you're not putting your eggs in that bucket, in a way, but you're going to be birthing your own baby. So now birthing your own baby, you're going to make that announcement, and you have built a business model. And I really believe that we're just playing this. You have brand equity, and now you have a brand extension, so you get to leverage what you built before, so you don't have to recreate the baby, right? So we're just playing if this was the trust chat, right? So you you have the model for that, you've done the podcast for that, you've done the book club for that. We all agree it's in the zeitgeist, etc. We already have people saying an all connection to Stanford. You go right in at the level of sophistication. You have a you have a topic that's in the zeitgeist. You have you can chicken soup. This Jack says they sell more copies of Chicken Soup for the pet lovers soul than they do chicken soup, right? You know, really it's so the trust chat is your mothership. However, it's touch it. Trust with your clients, trust with your employees, trust with your kids, trust your politicians. So look at the array of experts. You know it will be never ending, because there's so many communications of trust, and it is such an incredibly issue these days. You delving into this. It's a heart centered project. It's a corporate Association speaking. And here's the thing, if you put a vertical line down the center, over on the left is authoritative, and over on the right is facilitated. Right? Authoritative is, I have all the answers. I know. I'm the expert. I'm telling you, you have always been Kiki from the day I've known you. You have been a facilitator, not authoritative, right? You can do authoritative. You're good at it. However, with trust, it seems like what would give you, the centering confidence in it, that you're not coming in, you know? No, no, it's like, isn't this important? Can we talk about it? Here's what this person has to say. Here's what I've learned about it.
Speaker 4 23:54
Does that put you in your robots? Yeah,
Speaker 3 23:58
yeah. And on August, on that date, do you see how you can honor what you built and they have rights to it now, it's like, what am I learning all those years of doing that? What do I see in the world today? What does it need and an opportunity that is calling me, as I am proud to announce tonight, thank you for this award. I am so grateful for this and what I'm pouring myself into now. You can transition that in two minutes. Check me, how's this feeling?
Speaker 5 24:30
Good? That's okay. Let's go lunch. I do want to just second one thing about Association Chat, because I've been where you are and I stayed too long to make sure two organizations were completely sustainable, only to watch them,
Speaker 3 24:46
and they
Speaker 5 24:47
built back up, and they'll be fine, both of them, but you can't control it. If it's so it's that how much you're going to put into it. Obviously you don't want to take it down because you're still associated with it, but that's great advice. You just want to be careful that you're not continuing to pour all your energy into it and then you no longer
KiKi L'Italien 25:11
own it. I mean, it's honestly, I don't want to play back so much. But like, honestly, before I went out on my own, there was this, I kept running into struggles because I was being asked to speak a lot, and person, the people I worked for, great people, but they were like, is this for our brand, or is this for Kiki's brand? And I knew that at that point, I'd already started Association Chat, and the visibility was starting to grow, and I thought that this is going to end up being problem. And they were holding on to my speaking fees. I started being paid to speak and stuff. So this is over 10 years ago, and, you know, I went out on my own and everything. I want the stability of having a regular paycheck for a while, like I, you know, I mean, that's just the truth. And
Speaker 2 26:05
so I'm really caught, because, you know, they watch everything I do
Speaker 9 26:10
and put out there and all this stuff. And it's like,
KiKi L'Italien 26:14
if I start building something, people will pay attention, for sure, I promise. And, and including them, though. And so I'm like, What's that gonna look like if I make, if I make an announcement or any if I start posting stuff and just even sharing on my own stuff? Now there's nothing against it, nothing legal, really against me posting my own stuff and building that but I also know that
Speaker 8 26:47
they'll have to be wondering. And at lunch, if you've
Speaker 3 26:51
had like, you've obviously had this experience, you said a keyword legally, there's nothing your integrity. You know, it's like and beholden. And until I really welcome other people in the room going and saying, let's move on with your right to step into adding value and contributing in your full way, and not having misaligned ethics that have us dimming our life because of pressure from someone who wants to own us, right. So, who wants to own us
KiKi L'Italien 27:27
control. Wait a minute.
Speaker 3 27:30
So, I bet women in the room can keep talking to that, because
KiKi L'Italien 27:35
what they want, they want at all they want everything
Speaker 1 27:39
to give it. Yeah, I can.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai