Speaker 1: (00:00) Welcome to the influential personal brand podcast. This is the place where you’ll learn cutting edge personal brand strategies from today’s most recognizable influencers. We’re going to teach you how to build a rock solid reputation and then how to turn that reputation into revenue. [inaudible]. I’m your lead host, Rory Vaden builder’s group, hall of fame speaker and New York times bestselling author of take the stairs. Speaker 3: (00:36) Hi, it’s Rory Vaden, and thanks for listening to the influential personal brand podcast. Did you know that the ideas we share on the show are things we actually specialize in helping you implement? If you want to raise your public profile and turn your reputation into revenue, please visit free. Call that brain builders group.com to sign up for a free brand strategy call with one of our personal brand strategist. Again, that’s free. Call dot brand builders group.com to sign up for your free call. Talk to you RV: (01:21) Oh my gosh, you are so lucky to be listening to this podcast today. Let me tell you why you’re about to meet one of the coolest couples ever, Suzanne in Stevie Hendrix. These guys have become friends of ours, their clients, a brand builders group. I consider them mentors like I’m learning so much from watching what they do. They have built a following of millions and millions of people on social media. Their podcast has over 9 million downloads. They get 15 million monthly impressions. They have hundreds of thousands of YouTube subscribers. Design has over a million Instagram followers. Stevie’s got hundreds of thousands of followers. They’re the coolest people ever. Suzanne is just fashionable and Stevie is so funny and I’m a little bit jealous of how young they are and you’re like the cool kids that I always wanted to be friends with that I wasn’t cool enough to be friends with and anyways, thanks for being here guys. Speaker 4: (02:19) That’s like the best intro I think we’ve ever received. Thank you. We take that soundbite from this show and just put it on our website. We’re going to transcribe that on our content diamond, their content diamond, your words. That was, that was amazing. We’re so stoked to be here. Obviously we had you on our show as well and I mean those two shows were packed full of great information. So we’re happy to be here. We consider you a friend and a mentor and a leader for us in an answer prayer. So thanks for having us party. So Speaker 2: (02:54) I mean this seriously, like I am one of those people that I’d like, I feel like I don’t really get social media still. Like obviously we use it for business and stuff, but like I’ve just not been naturally good at it and I’m not super like social anyways. And you guys have built this monster following. How did that happen? Like how did it start? Which platform? How did it grow? How long did it take? Right. Like some people right now are just starting out and they’re going like, okay, like millions of people seems like so far away. Yeah. And just kind of give us a little bit of the journey piece. Speaker 5: (03:26) Yeah. You know, this journey started for me back in 2010 2011 when I was in college and at the time Instagram had been around. And what’s really interesting about Instagram was that, you know, we were studying radio, television, film, and I remember in our news department, one of the producer girls there, her sister or her cousin was dating at that time, the cofounder of Instagram. His name was Mike Krieger. And I remember because we were doing, we had a little commercial talk show that we did that she produced. She was like, I’m going to get him on as a guest. And I hosted this show and I just at the time probably had a thousand followers on Instagram at that time. I mean that was kind of like, I was like, okay, great. But he came onto our show at that time and I’m in just in college and I got to interview him about this platform that really hadn’t taken off. Speaker 5: (04:20) This is when those filters, all you had that was really available to you, where like the Calvin filter and all of those little filters and that was it with the borders and people were just sharing pictures of their dog, their food. It wasn’t really seen as a space where brands were tapping into marketing agencies were looking at, and I just got to ask him some questions. And I think from that interview there was something in me that was really intrigued by social media and I decided to just kind of keep an on with like Instagram. I didn’t know exactly what my brand was per se, but I was just so fascinated by this new way of connecting with people through social media. And I just saw a little bit of that. And so I had a blog at the time, it was a very small blog, but it was my website and I started just practicing some of my copy on there, talking about the trends in beauty and the things that I was passionate about. Speaker 5: (05:16) And then when you fast forward to, you know, after I graduated college and you to Stevie, we decided to move to LA. And that’s where I really realized the potential and the power of social media because I met a lot of local bloggers in LA, which I did not really have that in Dallas and in LA man. I realized these girls are actually making these little side jobs and hustled and it was like a side hustle business and then I got really fascinated by it all and thought if I can start figuring out ways to monetize my blog, this really could become my own virtual business. I just didn’t know the model. I didn’t know how to do it, but I just saw the resources in front of me, which were social media did have an Instagram page that was growing pretty quickly at that time because there wasn’t the algorithm and all of that you see today on Instagram and so I think a lot of it was the timing, you know, being on that platform at the right time, having my blog to actually push some credibility out to like check out my trends, things like that. Speaker 5: (06:18) People started latching on to it and the rest is history. We started our YouTube channel shortly after that and YouTube was really great because I love creating or Instagram. Yeah, it started after my blog and after Instagram. And so I just fell in love with YouTube because we both knew how to edit video. We both knew how to shoot video and the framing when we learned that in college, that’s what we were studying. So I thought, let me take a lot of that knowledge and put it into what I’m trying to create online instead of waiting around for like the NBC to come and hire me to work for them and their company and their platform. And so I just saw that there was this potential, but I just knew I couldn’t do it alone. So Stevie is where, you know, that was kind of the turning point was when like Stevie came on board and we both realized, Hey, if we take this seriously, this could really be our full time job Speaker 4: (07:12) to give you the credit. Because I didn’t take it seriously at first. I remember I was working, I was doing a marketing job where I was kind of traveling the West part of the United States and I was trying to do the acting thing in Los Angeles. And I remember she called me one day and this is in 2014 and she said, Hey, you know, at this point I think you had maybe 150 maybe 200,000 followers on Instagram. And you said, Hey, some of the girls that you know, I’ve met in the blogging space. She said, you know, they’re starting to make real money. And I was like, what are you talking about? She’s like, they are making money, you know, from linking outfits from posting brands X, Y, Z. She said, and they’re making a lot of money. I said, Speaker 5: (07:49) yeah, I remember that. She said, Speaker 4: (07:51) girls are making tens of thousand a month. I said, no, they’re not. She said, yeah, they are. Speaker 5: (07:56) I even told him, I said, there’s one girl making $50,000 a month off of her. At the time it was like, Whoa. I mean, that’s a lot of money. Speaker 4: (08:06) Pool of bloggers who were linking and linking a ton, right? So if you think about how many girls were just going clicking on their links, it makes a lot of sense. But you know, she convinced me, basically you should come back, help me run this social media business full time and let’s see what we can do with this thing. And I have to give her credit because of her foresight, because now the landscape has changed. I mean tech talk is here and people are ready. They are, they have been waiting for that new platform to arise before the algorithm gets super complex and it’s hard to get your face out in front of millions of people. You know, Instagram was a place where people didn’t expect it to have that much power. I think there were a select few and they’ve capitalized early, but even forces on, you know, she had the foresight to realize she needed to continue building her brand and growing these numbers even when we didn’t see any monetary value in it yet. And you know, when I came on and started managing her and helping her with her social media, you know, little jobs began to trickle in, you know, like $300 from target, $500 from so-and-so. And then it started to grow from there. And that’s how it all started. And then we obviously you started Speaker 5: (09:13) and then I will never forget Rory, when Stevie and I, we created our own little tiered package that we would go and target little mom and pop shops on Etsy because at the time these small brands wanted social media exposure and a lot of the times just some high res images of their products. And so we created this little business model, you know, where it was like, Hey, we can offer you the platinum package, the silver package, the gold package, which you’re going to get all of these assets if you do that. And I remember the most expensive one, we were charging like $500 and we thought, Oh my God, no one’s gonna like buy that. And we were thinking, Oh my God, that is so expensive. Like let’s just hope and pray. And all these brands just kept coming back. We’ll do the $500 we’ll do the $500. So we were constantly readjusting our rates and learning as we grew and as we sharpened up our skills. So that’s where it all started. Yeah. And it’s just evolved and changed so much. Speaker 2: (10:10) So right there. And I love that. You know, that’s so similar. Like people ask me about my speaking fee these days, right. And like, you know, it’s tens of thousands of dollars. It’s, it’s up there. But like my first gig was 50 bucks, my second was 500 and it was like, you just get so good at what you’re doing and it starts small. And what I love is, you know, like people always talk about charge what you’re worth. And I always tell them, don’t charge what you’re worth. Charge what you can get and like charge something that’s such a no brainer for people to buy from you. And then as the demand increases, then you can raise just like let the price raise itself. And I didn’t realize that part of your story. That is so, so cool. We had people literally Speaker 4: (10:51) that would, you know, email us because when I came on board, you know, it was like size had four hands basically. And another, another mind on her working on her business. So, you know, I was now the gateway between her and the brands. I was emailing the brands back. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was like, I’m going to manage her. And I said, how much should I charge? You know? And literally I had to figure this thing out from scratch. You know, I started emailing brands back and like you said, trying not to be greedy or pushy and you know what I mean, but also standing firm and what we felt like our value was based off of the demand. Right? So it’s like so-and-so gave us a thousand dollars to do the same thing. You know, and you’re asking for just as much or more. Speaker 4: (11:28) So you know, that’s fair. And I would have brands that would email me six months later and be like, want to work with SAS again at the same rate? And I go, she has 150,000 more followers now than she did then. And it’s different because, you know, I remember talking to a friend who was a mentor at the time and has a really great mind for business and managing clients and he said, you’re not charging for your time. You’re charging for your audience. He said, and so it doesn’t matter how much it takes you. You said how many more followers do you have now? And you need to based on that information, the engagement, et cetera. Speaker 2: (12:00) Yeah, so I love that. I mean that’s like the super bowl commercial, right? It’s 30 seconds, but you paid 5 million bucks because you’re in front of such a huge number. I love that. So how do you get a lot of followers, right? Like I know that’s just such an obscure question, but like you guys have done it consistently. You got 9 million podcast downloads, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook now tick talk, which I want to talk about here in a little bit, but like you’re doing it so consistently across all these platforms. Why do you think that is? Like there’s millions of people they could be following. Why are they following you? No offense. Speaker 4: (12:41) We both have our own angle to answer that question. And I actually want to talk about this earlier, so I’m glad you brought it up. So right now, and I know we want to talk about tech talk, I’m just gonna bring the tech talk is here, right? Tech talk is happening right now and it has been happening for awhile now. I remember somebody told me about it a year and a half ago on a trip in Europe we were at, she was like, you know she’s a foreign girl. She’s like, you should try the cheek talk. It’s very good. Not a lot of Americans doing it, but they’re paying lots of people on the platform. You need to try. And I was like, thank you. What’s your accent? I can’t remember where it was from. But anyways, I remember at the time thinking, what is this tick tock jibberish she’s talking about, I wish I had listened and you who are listening now listen to this, jump on this platform now. Speaker 4: (13:22) And I want to say that because to gain followers, and I told this, this is on the tech talk platform is very young. I think there’s a lot of 18 year olds on there who are, you know, even from our age being just 30 they think so differently than we do. Her little brother’s 19 they just think they react differently to humor and things like that. But I said to Sam, I said, we need to get on this platform. And I said, and we need to follow the trends. And we didn’t really do this on Instagram. I think Instagram was a lot of vulnerability, blood, sweat and tears, effort, effort, effort. I said with tech talk, I said, this platform is so young, it’s so fun. It’s so trendy. And so it kind of goes against the idea of like staying true 100% to your brand. Speaker 4: (14:10) And I told, as I said, I said, I think what we need to do is both, I said, we need to follow the trends, but we also need to present like our brand and our mission statements people, right? So it’s like we’ll have a video where people would do a ton of dances on tech talk, we’ll do dances or we’ll do you know, members, women, you know, common things that one person is going to see and be like, I relate with that 10 people are going see to be like, I relate with that a hundred people. Everyone relates with that. So do common things. I would say if you want to start growing things that people can commonly relate to, don’t be a hipster. Don’t be somebody who’s like, I have my own way of thinking because people, me too hear common languages common, you know what I mean? Speaker 4: (14:52) Things they can understand. Because if you are too, too niche or, or the way in which you present things is too outside the box and not easy to digest. I don’t think you’re going to gain a lot of followers. You might gain it a niche of strong followers, but in some ways you have to water down, right? Like even if it’s comedy is your thing. Make your comedy digestible for everyone in middle America because then you will start to gain followers. But like you say, Rory, you know the she hands wall, it’s like you’re going to gain gain, gain followers. Once you get them to love you in a sense on social media, then you present your mission, what you’re really about. And I think you do it along the way. I think people will pick up, Hey, he’s a pretty nice person. Like he’s talked about this or that or I know they do a lot of humor, but there’s something sweet and down to earth about them. Right? Once you get them to love you, you gain a bunch of followers. You present them like Speaker 5: (15:45) and was like, this is what you need now. Like I’m going to deliver you something that you need that you didn’t realize that you needed. You know? And that’s where social media can be a really powerful tool. I’m just gonna piggyback off of everything you’re saying cause I completely agree. I think part of it is timing, but the other part of consistently growing with your audience is the consistency of what you’re putting out there. And a lot of people have that instant rise, right? With social media. And Instagram and we see them grow really fast at the beginning and then it goes down like this because they’re not able to keep their audience and that’s what’s tough too is sometimes when you grow so quickly you will reach a point where you’re just like, okay, I’m plateauing. It’s like I need to keep this audience and that’s really when it becomes a priority to center everything that you do really around what your audience does need and catering to their needs. Speaker 5: (16:40) Because for us, we say that everything that we do, we do it because we love connecting with people and that all the things that we put out, we try to put it out with purpose. Even a silly video that we do, we put it out in hopes that yeah, we hope that it brightened up your day a little more. We hope that it made you laugh. We hope that this video was a sweet escape from maybe your harsh reality you’re in and all of that to say we constantly think about something we learned in college, which is the idea of like what’s in it for them. Everything we put out, we have to think about that. It’s not about us. Even though we’re on the social media stage, you, if you can always point back to your audience and make them feel a part of the community, you’re going to continue to grow. And it may not be as fast once you reach a really increased pace, but then it’s about keeping that audience that you have built. And I think that’s the age that we’re living in right now in social media. It’s not about how quickly can I hit a million followers. It’s about how can I engage the community that I already have and keep that community. And then over time you will see growth. Speaker 4: (17:44) And I just want to add one final point, like to that connectivity that you talked about, you know, really with your audience, you know, it’s so important, but also, Oh gosh, I just lost it. Wow. I just lost it. I had a really good, Speaker 2: (17:57) that’s all right. It’ll come back. It will come. It’ll come back to me. Yeah. That’s an interesting concept there about like, you know, get the followers first, you know, kind of have a broader net to get them Pharrell and then you know, kind of work into telling them more about what you do. That’s just a really high level strategy is, is super interesting. So I want to talk about video for a second specifically because I mean at this point hopefully everybody knows like video is pretty much the thing that matters. It’s like where the whole internet is going. Everything is video, video, video, video. And we did an interview with Michael Stelsner, the founder of social media examiner and he just totally hammered on all the data and trends pointing so aggressively and heavily towards video. And y’all edit your own videos still, right? Speaker 4: (18:49) Yeah. Yes. Okay. That actually kind of goes back. That reminds me, what I was going to say is that connectivity is so important connecting with people. But I think also people really recognize service like when you’re doing a service or when you are serving or when you were putting effort in. So one part of that is connecting. It’s the effort that you put into connect with people, right? But a lot of the times like you’ll see people that bust through because they just put the effort in the work into putting up their videos. There’s guys who have millions of followers on Instagram and tick tock who are not funny at all. They’re not funny at all. But guess what? They edit three videos a day and they make it very simple and very common and they’re getting comments and they’re getting shared and they are pumping out content and they are serving and people see their effort. Speaker 4: (19:42) And like I said, it’s digestible, it’s simple. It relates to the every person, every man, every woman, and they’re getting tons of followers. Whereas the person who’s putting in mediocre effort, mediocre service and a little bit of connectivity, they’re not going as far. And so you really, I think when it comes to editing your videos to breeze in it, we still edit our own videos is because there’s an understanding that we have of our content that no one else you can quite get except for us. And we can train somebody to get it close. But there is something when you edit your own video, the timing, the understanding of the content and how it should splice together, that is so important. It’s almost like a comedic actor. You can have a great, if you’ve ever been on set or if you’ve ever been, you know in the movie business you can do a really funny scene, but the editor is the one who decides which cut he’s going to take and how he’s going to cut it and the timing of that. And that has so much to do with how funny that scene is. Right? And so that’s why we edit our own videos because we know like we’re going to maximize our connectivity by editing our own videos. Yeah. So, and I want to hear about that. Like what does the video editing process like? What do you think is the key to a good video? You know, like what are just some of the more fundamental things I guess that Speaker 4: (20:57) people need to know. Like you know when you’re putting together your plan, you need to make sure these five things are in place. Speaker 5: (21:05) Yeah, I think the first thing we can do this together. I think the first thing is know the platform that you’re posting it on. You know, this is similar to even your content diamond. You know that a YouTube video is going to be different than a quick one minute video you’re creating for the Instagram audience, which attention spans even shorter than the YouTube audience. We already know that the internet in general is going to be a very distracted community because even on YouTube, that person watching you, they may have five tabs open already on their computer. So you have to even think about how am I going to grasp their attention on this platform? And then on the other platforms you have to run that same question through your mind. Tic talk is even quicker than Instagram for that generation who just graphs that information super quickly and they want it sliced and diced a certain way. But you can take one video and you can do all of those different effects but for catered for that specific platform? Speaker 4: (22:07) No, I agree 100% I think it totally depends because you know obviously you have one minute videos on Instagram and TechTalk and then you have TV and then you also have you know YouTube which can go as long as you want it to go. But even on YouTube, I mean specifically YouTube is a platform that I really feel like is for somebody who is, they feel a little bit old for social media maybe, but they still want to tap into it. YouTube I feel like is still a great place to tap into the social media market and a place I think you still can grow. Like I said, tech talk as well. Obviously it’s a very young platform but YouTube I think because it’s the number two search engine behind Google. So when people are searching for things, they’re searching for expertise. How to YouTube is so popular and also too YouTube still rewards people who post consistently. Speaker 4: (22:56) So if you are posting consistently, you know, two videos a week is kind of the recommended. If you want to grow, you need to be posting two videos a week. You can still grow on YouTube. So I think you know, when you’re editing for YouTube, what I would recommend is three to eight minutes, maybe 10 at the max. There’s a creator named David doebrick and he does a ton of videos blogs and he is huge, but his videos are all very, very short. And I think what he’s done is just hack the algorithm as far as I’m going to put up videos that are short, people are going to watch the full thing. I’m going to be rewarded on YouTube behind the scenes because it’s going to show that my watch time is a hundred percent right. And then they’re just going to roll onto my next video. So you could be creating a three part video, you know where it’s two minute, two minute, two minute, and they’re just rolling one video to the next. And YouTube is seeing, Oh my gosh, they put up three videos and they have a hundred percent watch time on all of them. Speaker 5: (23:50) Yeah. We just actually went on, we went on my YouTube analytics, which that wasn’t around like you know, several years ago when I started, but YouTube has built this back end page for creators to really see how their videos are performing on various levels from at what point do people click out of your video, a specific video they left at this marker and I look at that and like, yeah, I started going off on a tangent there. I mean they really do help you refine and kind of figure out what that perfect video is for your audience on the platform. But something that I saw recently was the people that are coming to my YouTube channel, the number one place that they’re coming from is Google. They are actually finding my content and discovering me from Google now Instagram and miscellaneous is what they call it, which is usually social media. Speaker 5: (24:39) That was like number six or seven and I push a lot of my content on Instagram and drive it to YouTube a lot thinking that that’s where I’m getting a lot of that attraction. But the truth is, is when you upload a video on YouTube from your title to the description, you treat that as if it’s a blog post, because those key words are going to be transferred and related onto the Google platform for SEO. And so when you create a content, a video like for me how to do makeup for beginners, there’s actually a site that I use. I go on trends.google.com I can specifically search what people are looking for on YouTube. I type in the keyword makeup and I can now see across the world people are Googling makeup for beginners. So all of a sudden I just got a really great video idea. Speaker 5: (25:28) I’ve been doing this for the past year, working closely with the trends as well as the content I want to create, but I package it in a very SEO friendly way and I have seen incredible results and it’s no wonder why number one is coming from this outside world and they’re now discovering who says on is and now they’re following my Instagram and they’re following our podcast, but they came from Google, which is an unknown platform for us that we don’t always tap into, but this new audience is now coming from YouTube. So YouTube, like Stevie said, is definitely powerful. Speaker 4: (26:03) Well also too, don’t be afraid, and this is a big thing that we’re still trying to learn how to get over. Don’t be afraid to repackage content because just like she said, beginner makeup on YouTube, it has been at the top of the trend search. It just sits there. It stays there, but it stays there. All of your videos have performed super well and you’re like, should I do another beginner’s makeup? The answer is yes, because guess what? You’re getting a ton of views on it. Speaker 5: (26:31) People want to learn on YouTube, they want how to, yes, Speaker 4: (26:34) easy makeup, beginner’s makeup, simple glam, like just continue to do some of that content that does super well, that evergreen stuff. Just repackage it, retool it a little bit and represent it in a different way. And don’t be scared to do that. Be thinking I have to come up with something super unique every time when if it’s working for you and the algorithm is rewarding you for it. I would say keep going with it. Speaker 2: (26:58) Yeah, and I think that’s an interesting thing about Google and search engine optimization in general is it’s like what usually performs well is the really simple concept. The really simple question. It’s like what you were saying earlier, Stevie about it’s the thing that everybody is searching for and it’s like, it’s not rocket science stuff. It’s like the common everyday person. So I want to talk about hashtags for a second because I never have really understood hashtags. And then I accidentally said this to somebody a couple of days ago and I was like, actually I think maybe that’s it, but I don’t know cause I don’t, I don’t actually follow them closely enough. As I said, hashtags are to social media. What key words are to search engine optimization. Do you agree with that? Do you not agree with that? And then just like how in the heck do we use hashtags? Like without Ben an hours and hours? Like figuring them out? Speaker 5: (27:56) Yeah, that’s a great question. I think, yeah, like you said, hashtags are the key words I think on every platform. You know YouTube, they call it something different like alternate tags. But YouTube has a tic talk has it, Instagram has it and it’s a great way to get your content exposed to a particular audience. It’s more niche. So you have to be kind of specific and selective with your hashtags. I’ve learned that more is not more, in fact, you should just do less is more. But just be very specific with it. And also when you’re looking at the hashtags, see how that hashtag in itself is performing. So if I know that there’s a better hashtag I could be using, Speaker 2: (28:36) how do you know how it’s performing? Speaker 5: (28:38) So like for example on tick-tock, if me and Stevie did a video cooking and I’m beginning to type in the hashtag and I type in hashtag healthy when you click healthy it’s going to pop up immediately. It’s going to have a drop down box of all of the hashtags right now that are trending with the word healthy in it. And so some of them don’t make sense. Like let’s say it was like healthy body or let’s say it was like, and our specific thing was a recipe and it said like healthy dog, like that wouldn’t make sense but it’s healthy recipes is getting 250 million people under that hashtag. Then I’m like for sure let’s go with that one. So tick talk that’s, Speaker 2: (29:16) so this is just the search tool, like whatever the basic search tool is natively in the platform, type in whatever you kind of think and then just pay attention. It’s like typing into Google search bar, how it makes suggested like search terms based on volume, Speaker 4: (29:33) right? What I’ve heard with tech talk so far is that tech talk is a little bit different than Instagram to where if you hashtag your hashtags will directly Speaker 2: (29:42) put you into a pool, a select pool of say like 150 people, right? So you post a video, you have 10 followers on tech talk, right? You post a video. Well, I have 52 followers on [inaudible] and they’re Hendricks is our one of my tick-tock followers. So yeah, no, I, dude, Hey, when I said to you, I didn’t mean to you, I was talking to you, not you Speaker 4: (30:08) followers on tick-tock, right? And you have a hilarious video with your daughter. You’re not going to hashtag basketball, you’re going to hashtag daddy daughter another one that’s popular or maybe even a trending hashtag. There’s trending hashtags on tech talk that you can see. But basically maybe you could say cute girl or something or cute baby and you put that out there, right? And people that are interested in cute babies on tick tock, 150 of them are going to see it. And then if those 150 it performs well out of them, it’s going to send that to a larger pool. And if it performs there, it’ll send that to a larger pool. Speaker 5: (30:41) And it all depends on what that person was already interested in. So tick tock has, you know its own and Instagram had their own algorithms, like if my homepage is going to look different than yours on Instagram because maybe on mine I’ve just been engaging with tons of recipe accounts. So Instagram automatically is going to try to appeal those specific accounts to me and take talk is doing the same thing. So if you’re engaging in liking funny videos right now, they’re going to bring you more and put you in those specific pools. And then if you’re the creator, they see how well you do in that pool. And if you do well you go to a bigger pool and a bigger pool and a bigger pool. So the hashtags are actually very important. I wouldn’t overlook them. I would definitely utilize them for each platform. Speaker 4: (31:25) I want to go make a point, worry about kind of what we talked about on our podcast earlier with you about procrastination. I think a lot of people, they neglect social media. Just, it’s almost kind of like they procrastinate on social media. We all know that we could be using social media, whether you get a thousand followers or you get 10 million followers. I just told my parents, you know, they started their Instagram, I don’t know, six months ago and it’s been performing really, really well. They’re getting good engagement now and I told them years ago to start it Speaker 5: (31:53) and they have a flooring store. It’s a foreign store. Yeah, right, right Speaker 4: (31:56) there in round rock, Texas and they have a flooring store and they were like, we don’t need that. That’s, Oh yeah. And I said, you need to start one. I said, it’s important. Even if it doesn’t bring you new business, it can basically for you where people can go on your Instagram and go, wow, they have really good taste. Actually we want to work with them. And maybe they found you another way. I said, but it is such an important tool. So whether you have 500 or 5 million, it doesn’t matter. I think it’s so important to start, you know, the biggest advice we can give to people who are sitting here like, Oh my gosh, how am I going to do all this and all these hashtags and all of this kind of stuff. Get content up. Don’t worry about how funny. I mean you would be surprised how many low, I would say more quality videos go viral than high quality videos. Speaker 4: (32:42) I mean, have you ever noticed how many terrible quality videos from webcams and stuff like that go viral? I mean it’s, it’s amazing. So I just want to encourage anyone out there who’s like, okay, I need to get on this social media thing. It’s almost like what you talked about with procrastination. That’s fear, right? That fear is actually the thing that keeps us from starting. And that’s the same for so many of us. And I’m, I’m even talking to myself because years ago when the algorithm for Instagram was favorable, when I had maybe a couple thousand followers, aye, you started posting a couple videos that Sal’s encouraged me to do. She was like, you need to post more funny videos. I posted these videos and one of them has like 500 comments. If I got 500 comments now and I have about 128,000 followers back then, I probably didn’t even have 10,000 if I get 500 comments down, I’m like, Oh my gosh, that was my best video ever. Speaker 4: (33:35) You see what I’m saying? And so the point I’m trying to make is that if I could go back to earlier, you are, the less good you have to be is kind of like what it feels like a hundred percent because the platform is so fresh. It’s so new. People are excited. They’re ready to just discover and be a part of it and they’re excited about that. Whereas now, you know with Instagram it’s like when Instagram started it was like beautiful coffee photos, photos of where I am. You know, full little photos and now it’s like what is that? Speaker 5: (34:05) Right? I think nowadays people are also really hard on themselves. Everybody thinks they need to figure out like their personal brand and aesthetic before they start in sign up on a social media platform. But the goal should be not that you have to know exactly what content you’re posting and how you’re going to do it, but the goal should be, I’m on social media and the purpose is because I need to connect with people. I need to grow an audience because I ultimately want to cater to that audience with this genius product that I want to develop or whatever. The goal is to get people connected to you, to get them in front of you and however you have to do that in the beginning, I guarantee you no matter what, that’s going to change and evolve as your audience grows and changes and evolves. Speaker 5: (34:51) So even if you think you have it all figured out and you start out and you’re like, I’m just going to do this Monday, Tuesday, Wednesdays, I’m putting out this content that no matter what, I’ll tell you right now, social media, every day it grows and it changes and you got to kind of jump with the next wave. Not to let that scare you, but for that to encourage you that you don’t need to have all the answers, whether you’re an expert or not at social media, you just need to be on it and you need to be present and your goal should be, I just need an audience to connect with because then I can actually sell to them. Ultimately, whatever it is you’re trying to package and sell. So that’s the thing with social media that’s different than a lot of other traditional things where yeah, you could do a speaking engagement, you could go do something, a keynote somewhere, and now you’re on a stage, hundreds of people listening to you. Speaker 5: (35:39) But that’s a different audience. The social media world, their attention spans, they’re already doing a bunch of things. You just need to get them to do this. Like you need to get them to stop and just notice you however that needs to be. Let it be authentic to who you are. Don’t try to do comedy if that’s really not your thing, but just get their attention and once you get that attention going, man, then you can start getting more strategic as time goes on and really cater and package to them. You know, whatever you’re trying to sell. Speaker 2: (36:09) I love it. There’s so much here. I think it’s just awesome to kind of get behind the scenes of the way that y’all, you just even how you think about it and approach. It is so cool and insightful. I do have one more question for you before that. Where do you want people to go if they want to connect with the is, see how you do your thing and learn about your family. Of course, you know, says like Stevie, your videos are hilarious as you’ve got all sorts of lifestyle, makeup and fashion and you know stuff. Where would you point them? Speaker 5: (36:42) Well, we’re currently working on our joint website, which we’re really excited about. sun.com you know, we’re working on that, creating that Hendrix home online, but in the meantime you can obviously go to our Instagram pages. Like if you go to my Instagram at Suzanne, you’re going to see in my bio pretty much our whole life spilled out. In a nutshell, you’re going to see our podcast, you’re going to see a link to my YouTube channel. You’re going to see a link to his page on Instagram as well as our family page. So Instagram is probably a good place to start. And then we’ll let you kind of branch out depending on whatever you guys like to go listen to our podcast or go on my YouTube channel for tips and all of that. But Speaker 2: (37:18) I always call it tell people, I say, go to Suzanne’s Instagram, you’ll see everything there. Even me, I’ll be tagged in many ways. Speaker 5: (37:24) Yes. And then our, our newest platform that we just dipped into, which we’ve been talking a lot about is tick-tock. So if you want to check that out, that’s our joint page. We’re just doing one page and it’s been really fun. So that’s our family account at the Hendrix’s and you can check that out. But brace yourself cause this guy here does some hilarious, crazy videos. Speaker 2: (37:43) The best thing the has brought is a time to do. Speaker 5: (37:47) It’s in us. Yeah. Speaker 2: (37:49) So my last little question for you is just where do you see all this going? What are the trends you’re paying attention to? I mean obviously we’ve talked a lot about Tech-Talk that’s like our chance to get in right now while it’s still relatively early. But in general, are there any other like major trends you would highlight and you know, do you think social media is always going to be here? Do you think Facebook’s going to disappear one day? Do you think like it’s only going to be videos and images will disappear or like anything at all? Like just in your head space, like you guys are in this all the time. What are you thinking about and paying attention to related to the future of social media? Personally, I feel like just just as humans, I mean even in, you know, go back through the history, we’ve Speaker 4: (38:35) gone through so many ups and downs and so many different trends and styles and lifestyle types that I think that all things have a place and just in different time, you know, whereas images now are less sacred than they used to be. In my opinion. Images used to be so much more sacred, you know, powerful pictures. You know, you go on Instagram now and the beautiful thing about Instagram is that it empowered everyone to become their own photographer and to do their best and to put it out there for the world to see, which at the same time kind of devalued. You know what I mean? Truly beautiful pictures. Even though there are those that stand, I think in the upper echelon, you know, that’s really hard to reach. At the same time, we’ve been numb to that, you know? But I believe that at some point the beauty of photography and the appreciation for true great photography will come back. Speaker 4: (39:24) But I don’t know when. My thought right now though with TechTalk, you know, is that you’re connecting with a super young audience who is super fun and they want to laugh. You know what I mean? They want those quick, gratifying giggles, you know what I mean? And so what we’re doing is we’re jumping on the platform and we are riding that way. And you even said to me the other day, baby, you said, you know, this just makes me feel really young. And I think what people love about social media and like tech talk right now, is that everyone around the world has the same feeling about it without even talking to each other. There’s this buzz, there’s this fun, there’s this hype of like there’s a new platform. Everyone’s jumping on. We’re figuring it out. There’s this buzz around it right now, but I believe that social media in some way will always continue because of the connectivity to that brings the world. Speaker 5: (40:15) Yeah. We’ve seen that during this time right now with the Corona and the crisis, you know, social media is the one place that’s bringing people together. In a sense it has become home for a lot of people who weren’t even active on social media prior to this crisis. But people are looking for connection and now is the time to really rise and to use your voice and your platforms in any way that you can. And like with anything in life, you don’t know what the future holds. You only know who holds the future. And I just believe that social media is a space where I feel like God has allowed us to not only share our life and the beautiful photos that we take of our daughter and our of our content, but it’s also been a stage for us where we can actually share our voice. Speaker 5: (41:05) And I don’t think social media is going to ever just disappear. It’s going to continue to grow and evolve, but so are we as humans. And I think we’re going to be able to handle that change when it comes. So I’m excited for the future of social media, but I’m also excited for our future to not only be on rented real estate, Rory as you’ve trained us and to actually build the Stevens is on home that we are right now virtually and to actually bring our online into this virtual home and we’re doing it alongside brand builders group, which has been awesome and we just can’t wait to see what that future holds. Speaker 4: (41:42) One quick point babe, that I do want to say is that we have seen this on Instagram, right? It’s the only thing you can really compare to tech talk the audience and what they want will mature. So right now it’s super young, super funny, super goofy, right? Instagram is not what it was before. So what people want and what they’re looking for will mature. Just like the age, the average age of a tech talker, right? Say if it’s like 19 years old, five years from now, their desires at 25 year old is looking for is different than a 19 year old what they’re looking for. So if you’re somebody who’s like, I’m too old for this. If you gather 15,000 followers and you have a thousand followers that are super loyal to you in five years from now, they’re going to be 25 30 years old, what are they going to be looking for that you can provide them at that time? And so that’s why it’s important. Speaker 2: (42:36) I love that. Well you guys, you are so awesome. As I say, it’s like I feel honored to work with you and to be your friends and to be a part of what you guys are doing. I think God has a huge plan for your life and already making such an impact. And I love how you’re using these tools to bring the good life, which is the name of the podcast and you know, to people and, and really use it for encouragement and stuff. And so anyways, we just want to encourage you and thank you and we wish you all the best. Speaker 5: (43:05) Thanks Rory. Tell AIG we said hi. Speaker 2: (43:09) That’s all we’ve got for this episode of the influential personal brand podcast. But here’s some great news, one of the most valuable things you can do to help us. And other new potential listeners to find. Our show is for you to both rate this show and leave a review. So as a special bonus for you, if you leave us a comment in iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen, take a screenshot of your review and email it to [email protected]. We will give you free lifetime access to 25 of our most popular interviews on video in your own private members only area. Speaker 4: (43:49) So go right now, rate us, review us, and then send a screenshot of it into [email protected] and we will get you set up with free lifetime access to our most popular video interviews all in one place. Also, please just share, share, share this podcast with anyone who you think might enjoy it. And until next time, remember that building a business isn’t nearly as valuable as building a reputation