The hidden economy: what’s working in your favor in rooms you’re not in, but your name is
Lessons from Kim Chappell: Chief Brand Officer of Bobbie
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As everyone does… I logged into my email expecting to see to do’s, tasks, things I needed to respond to. So when I saw an email with a green heart emoji and a “Hi” next to it, it was clearly the first one I clicked on.
It was from Kim Chappell, Chief Brand Officer of Bobbie.
It was totally unexpected since we haven’t talked in months. We’ve shared a few LinkedIn likes and the occasional cheering-you-on posts in the comments, but nothing more formal than that. She’d just been thinking about something positive and decided to say it instead of letting it die in her head.
I read it twice before replying and it made my whole morning.
I’m dedicating this piece to her. Partly because of the gesture she made with that email, but also because she would’ve been a perfect example regardless. This is just how Kim is on a Tuesday, and every week, whether or not anyone’s watching.
For anyone who doesn’t know her yet.. here’s some detail.
Kim is the Chief Brand Officer of Bobbie, the organic infant formula company (the best one on the market, in my opinion, though I’ll admit I’m biased). She built her career the long way, starting as a journalist of all things then transitioning to brand and marketing roles before landing in the CBO seat. She now no doubt one of those people other founders probably text when they need a real answer instead of a nice one. She’s also become a genuinely vocal advocate for family policy in this country, the kind of issue most brand executives wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole.
She’s in her early forties, so don’t picture someone decades into a corner office when you hear Chief Brand Officer. Picture someone taking a call during swim practice. Picture someone who’s put a hard line on her calendar because a call before 9am is simply not in the cards right now.
She’s open about how hard being a working mom actually is. And in the same breath, you can tell she’s enjoying the ride. Not white-knuckling it or beating herself up over the chaos. Just letting the season be exactly what it is.
So let’s get into what I mean by “the hidden economy”
There’s a kind of professional capital being built right now by some of the most interesting women I know, and it doesn’t look like anything we usually track. It’s not on a resume or a follower count or a title change you’d post about. You can’t buy it. You definitely can’t optimize your way into it.. no matter how good your content calendar is.
It’s the economy of people wanting you around. Wanting you in their orbit. Because you make the world a little better to be in. Because you bring energy instead of draining it. Because you open doors for other people and give freely, without doing the math on what you get back.
Whether or not we have a word for it yet, the people who are operating this way have an upper hand right now. And I don’t think it’s new. I just think it’s just gotten louder because we’re all so starved for the real thing. So when you see someone like this you’re like.. “thank you!!” with a big exhale and sigh of relief that someone’s being real and positive and enjoyable to be around still.
In a world full of noise and copy paste everything.. all anyone actually wants is this, Authenticity. Energy. Realness. To feel like a whole person to someone else for five minutes. So when someone like Kim shows up just being Kim, she’s sitting on a kind of social currency most people don’t have. Not because they couldn’t or don’t. Because they haven’t exercised the muscle yet or put it into practice.
The thing she calls “flying around Slack”
A few months back I interviewed Kim for a BONDE session, and she told our members about a habit she calls “flying around Slack”.
At the end of the week or at night, sometimes with a glass of wine in hand, she goes back through everything that happened and sends the compliments she meant to say out loud and didn’t. Doesn’t matter if it’s late. Doesn’t even matter if it’s a week later. That deck was stellar. You nailed that pitch. I really needed that advice. You handled that with so much ease.
We think these things constantly. We’re just moving too fast to say them, and the day swallows it before we get the chance. I’m guilty of this too.. you notice everything your spouse did, your friend did, your team did, and somehow it’s gone by 6pm like it never happened.
You thought the compliment. You just didn’t think to say it out loud.
Kim’s reminder was a good one. The compliment that lives in your head helps absolutely nobody.
An example of an opportunity accumulating in a room she wasn’t physically in, but her name was.
Reading this will be the first time she’s heard this story, so this is fun!
A few weeks ago, my co-founder, our head of brand, and I were on a call prepping for our BONDE retreat in Austin this November. We were dreaming up the idea of having an external guest panel made up of high caliber women who are local to ATX. Kim was the first women we thought of, excited about the idea of her energy and the insights she’d bring that’d tie in perfectly to our retreat theme. Bonus that she knows other incredible local founders like Poppi founder Allison Ellsworth and Bala Bands founder, who would be dream guests!
At the exact second we were ideating this, my phone buzzed. A LinkedIn notification.
Kim commented on a post of mine from two weeks earlier on brands getting involved in the retreat. Her comment: “Bala Bands is here in Austin, Poppi, Ladder, Fields Good, Y7 Studio. I would love to swing by!”
The timing could not have been more wild. All three of us actually shrieked. Did we just manifest her into the room?? It’s moments like that, building something alongside people you genuinely love doing life with, where you just sit in the kismet of it for a second and feel like you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.
But because of who Kim is, we were saying her name in a room she had no idea existed. And at the exact same time, because of who Kim is, there she was again, showing up in my comments, cheering, offering.
See how that works? That’s the hidden economy. That’s social currency moving in both directions at once.
And the story doesn’t stop there. Because of that same little email this week, the Hi <3 one, Kim and I actually got to brainstorming the idea of the panel for real, and she offered to put feelers out to some of the exact women we’d dreamed up on that earlier call. Because of who Kim is and how willing she is to get involved, we now have what could be a real power panel for the Austin retreat. The team is ecstatic (see slack message below).
And none of it happens if either of us is sitting on the sidelines. Kim posts, comments, says yes to being a guest speaker before there was anything obvious in it for her. I do the same version of that on my end, writing this thing every week, putting my name on it, hitting publish even when it feels exposing. We found each other because we’re both actually “out there”, publicly, willing to be seen. Getting over the fear of being visible, and realizing there’s real upside and opportunity waiting on the other side of it, is worth learning how to feel the fear and do it anyway.
What we can learn from her
There’s a lesson or two in here we can actually use, in a way that stays human instead of turning into some kind of strategy or tactic. The byproduct of living this way isn’t the point.. but it is real. Your name does get spoken in rooms you’re not in. Opportunities do show up that you never would’ve dreamed up yourself.
Give without doing the mental math on what comes back. That’s the whole engine and the second you’re tracking the return, it stops working.
If you think the compliment, say it. In the comments, in slack, in a text, to a stranger’s face. Get comfortable enough saying it out loud that it becomes second nature. Don’t just notice the good thing and think it. Say it even if it’s one sentence.
Carry a we’ll figure it out energy into everything. Life’s too short to pre-stress about what might go wrong. If you’ve got enough things going at once that you’re testing and trying, the few that flop barely register, because you’re busy with the ones that hit. Worst case, it didn’t work. Try it anyway.
Give credit loudly, even when it’d be easy to quietly keep it. Nobody notices when credit goes unspoken but everybody notices, and remembers, when it’s freely given.
Own it when something goes sideways. It’s not all rainbows and the people worth being around are the ones who say so plainly when they mess up.
Be honest about your actual experience. The working parent stuff. The startup stuff. The launch that didn’t go the way you pictured. People want to be around people who are honest about the climb, not just the summit photo.
And lastly, her own advice in her own words: “be kind on the climb”
