Category: MARKETING

Ep 62: Putting A Stake Through The Sacred Cows of Your Industry with Mike Dillard

RV: (00:00) Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with. This is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit call brand builders group.com/summit call. Hope to talk to you soon on with the show. RV: (01:03) Well, I’m excited to introduce you to somebody that I’ve known about for years, but it’s been some of those like at a distance, at a distance. And then finally we had a close friend that we both share a mutual friend connect us and be like, you two got to know each other. And I have to say as I’ve gotten to know more and more about Mike Dillard and has spent some time really learning about him online and I was, had a chance to be on his show. And I just really, really love this guy and I love what he’s about and I love in many ways the diversity of his knowledge, but also his central thesis thesis of being focused on helping entrepreneurs succeed, which is a story that he has lived several times, which you all know is of highest value and importance to me. RV: (01:48) Somebody teaching what they’ve actually done. And that is who we bring to you. So, as a personal brand though, so he’s had several successful companies and he started in network marketing. He’s done investing, he’s done online marketing all sorts of different membership and kind of training programs. He has a thing called ever grow, which I really, really love. We’ll probably talk about that. But in terms of a personal brand, you know, he’s had over 5 million downloads of his podcasts. His books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies, hundreds of thousands of you know, online followers. And anyways, he’s, he’s gonna [inaudible] tell us how he did all that in 20 minutes. Appreciate it. Yeah, man, I I was so excited. So I wanted to start with the network marketing thing because I started in network marketing. My mom was a network marketing. I was raised by a single mom who sold Mary Kay. And so, now. I consider that, you know, an important part of my journey. And then I got into network marketing. So was it, it was in, you were at Texas a and. M, what was it? What company was a MD: (03:00) One of a dozen. Okay. You did a bunch of them. Well, you know, you, I’m in, I’m in college. It’s 1996 to 2000. So it’s a web 1.0 days where there was no social media. It was crazy to see a video online back then. Yeah. I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur and really the only option at that time it was network marketing. If you want to start an entrepreneur and start a business and become an entrepreneur for, you know, two or 300 bucks, which is all I could afford as a college student. That was basically the only gig in town. And so that’s where I got my start. Unfortunately, I failed at it miserably for five years. I jumped from business to business to business trying to figure out, figure out what I was doing wrong never succeeded in tell a very smart mentor of mine. MD: (03:44) Finally kind of slap me across the head, if you will, and gave me a piece of advice that changed my life. And he said, Hey man, this hasn’t been working for you for 12 different companies over five years now and do you want to know why? And I said, absolutely. He said, because if you want to get [inaudible], Hey, you’d like a professional like myself. And he was making about 50 grand a month at the time, which for me it was just [inaudible] this massive lifelong goal [inaudible] you have to become a professional. And for me, I hadn’t done that. I just gone from opportunity to opportunity thinking that that’s what was going to allow me to achieve success and make money. And that was a life changing light bulb moment for me where I was like, okay, yeah, everybody who’s walking across the stage and getting a check has mastered a specific skill when it comes to this industry and they are a true professional with that they have value to offer. MD: (04:31) I was like, I don’t have any of that. All I have is an opportunity that 20 other distributors have in the same company. Okay. And so at that point I dove in, forgot about the business and just started honing my craft, which specifically became copywriting and essentially salesmanship in print. I was the worst salesman on the planet. So I needed to figure out how to sell something without actually talking to people. I was super shy at that point in my life. And so I spent about a year and a half reading every book I could on copywriting and ended up learning how to essentially apply attraction marketing to the network marketing industry. I ended up writing a book called magnetic sponsoring that transformed that world. I became a public hero in a public villain overnight. Half the industry loved me and half the industry hated me because I was challenging an old paradigm. Right? Nonetheless, I became one of the biggest personal brands in that industry. I put attraction marketing on the map. I introduced that world to internet marketing and within 18 months I went from waiting tables to making my first million dollars at the age of 27 built a list of, you know, hundreds of thousands of email subscribers that turned into a multiple eight figure company and then left that business about four years later. Wow. Are you well able to share the company or no, it’s called magnetic. Yeah. RV: (05:58) Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Today. So that wasn’t it. It was an education company that served the network marketing or the direct sales like industry. And I taught myself MD: (06:07) How to generate leads and how to sell my business through a sales page and a capture page and emails. I ended up building the largest download in my next company. So I went from zero to the number one residual income or in that business I wrote magnetic sponsoring as the training manual for my team. It kinda got circulated around other groups and they’re like, Hey, can we thr [inaudible]? And I was like, yeah, let me make a generic version of it. So I started selling copies of that online for $39 a piece. And within, you know, two years I was selling $6 million worth of essentially marketing courses to that industry. Mmm. And then had the, the distributor ship and the primary company. And after doing that for about four years, I’d really accomplished everything that I [inaudible] could ever have, possibly imagined in that industry and kind of lost my excitement for it and decided to move on to a new challenge. RV: (07:00) Huh. So that skill set you know, writing copy, yeah. As you described it, basically, you know, selling on paper. Is it still as relevant today as ever or less relevant or MD: (07:16) More? For sure. I mean, you know, if you think about it, everything we do is basically online today. And so we’re, we’re not communicating one-on-one unless it’s a rare occasion like this when it’s live. But 99.9% of our communication is what we’re saying on Instagram or YouTube or a blog or email list. And so copywriting a to me is the language of the internet. And if your business is on the internet and you don’t understand copywriting, then you really don’t know how to talk to anybody in your audience. So if your message is getting ignored, if nobody’s buying your product, if nobody is paying attention to your calls to action, it’s because you have not learned how to communicate effectively through a one to many type of format. And that’s essentially what the skill of copywriting is. RV: (08:00) Interesting. So if you [inaudible], is there something, was there like a big light bulb? Like a, I love what you talked about. If you wanted to be paid like a professional, you need to act like one. Was there a big moment, like you had like that in your copywriting career as well, where it was like a big light bulb that said, Oh my gosh, this is the, this is the key to copywriting that I have missed, know well, over the years of learning this and doing it, MD: (08:26) If I could sum it up into one sentence, the one thing that when I first went down the copyrighting rabbit hole, that was just a massive light bulb and turning point for me. A lot of people have probably heard of this, but it was a quote that says, nobody wants to buy a drill because they want a drill. They buy a drill because they want a hole. And what I had always done is whenever I would try to sell something, I would sell it on, Hey, here’s how cool it is. Here’s the price or the discount or the features RV: (08:56) Or the, you know, whatever it may be. But at the end of the day, nobody’s ever buying your product cause they want that product. They’re buying your product because they want the result that is going to come from that product. And unfortunately, unless you’ve had this kind of training or epiphany, that’s counterintuitive. And so if you want to sell a drill to me, you’re talking about how easy it’s going to make your life, how fast it’s going to drill a hole, how much time it’s going to save you, how it’s going to save you from injury and all of these other things instead of, you know, talking about the drill itself. So that to me was the big was the really big light bulb. Yeah. [inaudible] well I love that. So, so now fast forward to here a little bit into entrepreneurship. So you know, brain builders, we have these phases, you know, phase one, phase two, phase three, phase four and our phase four section we call eight figure entrepreneurs. RV: (09:49) So it’s really about, yeah, phase one is brand identification and figuring out what your brand is all about. Phase two is creating all the assets. Phase three is optimizing and starting to run paid traffic and looking at data, et cetera. And then phase four is really scaling that, that, that brand to a real business, which is one of the things that I feel like you’ve done really well, that a lot of [inaudible] have it. And, and I think you’ve also had some failures along the way. So. Mmm. When you think about scaling, what do you think is the, is the, the difference between the personal brands that scale and you’ve done this with different brands, right? And the ones that don’t, which to me, it’s also, it’s not so much that they fail, like a lot of personal brands to me don’t, it’s like they fail and go bankrupt. RV: (10:39) It’s like they just get lost in this sea of noise. They, they can’t ever make it their main thing. They never get totally clear. So what do you think is the difference there going against the grain? Both of my most successful businesses were built on initial ideas or concepts is that when, again, the socially accepted norm. And so with magnetic sponsoring, one of the first headlines that I wrote for Google ads when I was promoting that and headlines on the product was only suckers buy leads. Okay. And if you were in the network marketing industry, you have to ways you build your business, you go to your warm market and then if you burn through that you buy leads. And so for me to come out and say, only soccer’s buy leads, Mmm. Planting a really firm flag in that ground, in that industry, that’s going to be quite controversial. And so my thing was, you’re a sucker if you’re buying leads, when, when you can attract them to you, when you can reposition yourself as the expert and as a value provider instead of running after people, chasing them, twisting their arm, trying to convince them to join your business, RV: (11:53) When instead MD: (11:54) You can provide value first, position yourself as an expert and just have the world’s come to your doorstep. And the challenge with that is that in that industry, things had been done the F the F previous way for 50 years. Oh. Like, yeah, longer. I mean that, that the direct sales industry and the, and the whole thing relied upon, do follow the follow the plan, like follow the system, do not buck the system. So I came out and I said there was no such thing as duplication and I, and I said, you’re an idiot if you go after your warm market. Like you want to go after people who are buying opportunities, you want to go after people and sponsor people who have already built a successful network marketing business. That’s how you would treat this as a real company. You’re not going to go after. Yeah. You know you know, vegans and try to sell a mistake and convince them that steak’s healthy for them, which is what a network marketer would typically do, you know, for three hours until the person capitulated or left. MD: (12:50) And so all of those were sacred cows, if you will, in Seth Goden words. Yeah. That I put a stake through and that’s what put me on the map. Robert Kiyosaki did this as well with real estate. That’s what put him on the map. Okay. When it came to my second business the elevation group, I launched that after the crash of 2008 I was fascinated by investing. I just watched everybody get burned in that crash and I was like, okay, I don’t know what to do with my money. I’m certainly not going to go do that and I’m not going to listen to those people, but what do I do? And so I was like, let me go interview and learn from successful entrepreneurs who’ve made tens, hundreds of millions of dollars that have also turned that into real wealth and passive income and who got rich during the last economic crashes. MD: (13:37) I’m going to go learn from those people, listen to those people. So that was the core concept behind that business. The tagline was learn how to invest like the rich, and this is after the crash of Oh eight. So you have to imagine where people’s heads, where they’d just gotten burned. They don’t know who to trust anymore. And for me, I went out and I bought and studied every existing financial education product out there. The Motley fools, the Agoras, the Stansberry research is all of them. And I basically said, I’m going to do the exact opposite of what they’re doing. So they’re all focused on stocks and they’re all in a written newsletter and they’re all using these technical, technical terms. I’m not going to talk about stocks at all. It’s not going to be a written those later. It’s all going to be in video and it’s all going to be using language that your next door neighbor would understand. So, so before you go on, are you going against the grain just because you think that’s a great way to attract a lot of attention or are you going against the grain because you feel like there is some real secret truth to doing that, that you know, if everyone’s going one direction, then there, there has to be an opportunity over here, both both of those businesses were inspired by my own personal problems that I could find a solution RV: (14:52) To [inaudible]. And so I’m like, Hey, the stuff that’s out here is not working. At least for me, I need to figure out a way to make this work for me. And that in involves some new ideas and new approaches that were counter intuitive to what you know, currently existed at the same time. Yeah. You have to think of ways to break through the noise and the best way to break through the noise is to go against what is typically held as a commonly held belief or what’s always been talked about as a given and go against that. And again, Kiyosaki’s just such a great, a great way to do that. Yeah, his friend [inaudible] and my buddy Tom real ride who does his tax stuff [inaudible] his book is tax free wealth. It’s a pretty interesting concept. Tim Ferriss, same thing. Put him on the map before our work week. RV: (15:47) Yeah. That goes against the grain, right? So these are all examples of challenging the conventionally held wisdom and by doing so, people just plant themselves on the map. To me that’s the ultimate nuclear bomb, if you will, if you want to build your personal brand is if you can find that counter intuitive approach at the right time. It’s a guaranteed just rocket ship. Yeah. It’s interesting. I remember with my Ted talk, you know everyone had been talking about managing time, managing time, managing time and [inaudible] we said, Hey, there’s a way to multiply time, which is to spend time on things today that create more time tomorrow. Yeah, it did play well. I mean it has done, it’s done really well. I mean the talk went viral, the book w we call them [inaudible] procrastinate on purpose, which unfortunately we should have called it multiply your time. RV: (16:36) But what came out at the time about the same time as my book was essential ism and the one thing and those books have done much better than procrastinating on purpose cause they’re even like a degree, like [inaudible]. I feel like multiplying time was more accelerating the direction people were going in versus the one thing in essential as, I’m like Wenthe opposite direction. They went the opposite direction. It wasn’t like accelerating productivity at the highest level. It was like do the opposite. Yeah, yeah. We’ll figure out condo. Right? Yeah. So Marie condo though the, the life changing magic of, of tidying up, tidying up [inaudible] so is that your stuff? Yeah. Yeah. You know, stop buying stuff, which is American typical American cheeseburger. It’s the opposite of that. And, and, and, and just to I, I’m not necessarily, I’m not, I’m not a I, I’ve, I don’t not like Robert Kiyosaki, but I don’t know his stuff that well. RV: (17:36) You know, I’ve read rich dad, poor dad, but I think that’s it. I have read tax free wealth interesting enough. And I thought in that book was really, really interesting. You’re saying he redefined the real estate space, how his, yeah, his original came out and he was, he was the first person to say, your house is not an asset. It’s a liability. Ah, yes. For sure. Yeah. Okay. That just got him vilified on every economic news show you could imagine, but it’s what put him on the map and it’s true. So for him to come out and challenge that status quo is what built his career. Yeah. Yeah. So that specific kind of concept. Yeah. That’s cause it doesn’t put cash in your pocket. It takes cash out of your pocket. So all right. I’m following you. I’m following you. So I’m interested in some of the investing stuff given the state of the world, but both before we go down that, that path, cause I also see an interesting connection between investing in entrepreneurship. RV: (18:29) I wanted to talk to you about reach a little bit for a second because one of the things that I, when I S as a, as someone who doesn’t know you all that well look back at your career, I go ah, you were ahead of the curve on copywriting and on web based business and then you were ahead of the curve on video courses and you were like one of the first, you have huge video courses and membership sites and then you are one of the early podcasters like [inaudible] some way you have been able to kind of like always be out there in the front. [inaudible] [inaudible] RV: (19:06) One of the things that has happened to me which I can’t go into too much, but I’m in a situation where I’m having to rebuild all of my social media from scratch, which is what a lot of our clients are doing. And I am going, wow, it is really different and much harder today because like when I did, when I did the first go round. So what are some of the things that you’re kind of looking at or seeing about the, I’m in the same boat. I’m in the same boat and that’s a big priority for me. But I let my, well, one, I’m an introvert so I’ve never really enjoyed social media or made that a priority for me too. I’ve always relied 100% on paid advertising to build all of my companies. Interesting. And I like that because I can control it and I can scale it. RV: (19:54) And I don’t, you know, I’m not at the mercy of Facebook or Google’s algorithms and I’ve always looked at building up the social media. If you are, in some ways whoever spends the most gets the most traffic. So that’s a simple, a very simple algorithm, but at least I have like there’s, I know, yeah, I made facetious cause it’s, it’s like you totally control the algorithm by how much money you’re putting in the machine. Yes. And so I’ve always avoided it, but now, now I don’t think you can’t avoid it anymore. I think you have to be on there. So now the question is, okay, how do you strategically grow it as quickly as possible? And so for me, this year I’m focused on, you know, really putting out a consistent, I think consistency is very important. A consistent amount of content on a weekly basis. My goal is three, you know, let’s just say 10 minute training videos a week with the pod, the podcast being MD: (20:48) At least one of those doing the podcast and everything else in video moving forward. Just finished a YouTube studio in the house and the house across from me last night. Oh. And then it’s just systematic distribution, right? So how do we take that 10 minute video, splice it up for all of the different platforms, format it, but the footers, the captions, the headlines, everything else, and just really systematize that process and just turn it into a machine. And luckily there’s a ton of great resources and companies and agencies that’ll do that for you quite easily. So that’s taken care of. And then at that point, I think it’s just a matter of time when you combine that with paid advertising and you can use retargeting to put a conversion based advertisement or offer in front of the people who are consuming your consuming your organic content, will then your cost to acquire that customer comes down dramatically. MD: (21:41) 80, 90%, versus going super wide with a broad message to a very broad audience. And so that’s the approach that I’m taking moving forward this year. And in many ways it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s catching back up to, you know, what’s been working. I’ve, I’ve been kind of working on the hydroponic system and some other big ventures over the last three to four years. So I’ve really been out of the spotlight for the past couple of years and, and now my goal this year is to kind of reestablish myself in the, in this space, if you will. So RV: (22:14) [Inaudible] yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah. For those of you listening so that, you know, we, we have a thing called a content diamond, which is our process for taking that content repurposing basically across all the platforms from that one video. And I think but one of the things that I think you do also Mike, that is rare because we know a lot of the big influencers and social influencers and a lot of them have, they have, they caught the early wave of organic reach. Hmm. But they don’t do the paid stuff. And over time it’s like you get in the habit of going, yeah, I don’t want to learn to do paid if I can’t do for free. But to what you’re saying, it’s like the, the, the key to predictable revenue is [inaudible] the paid version. So you’re marrying the two with basically like retargeting. So you’re just going to build custom audiences with free content and then come back and retarget those people on. Are you going to, and are you, are you focused more on like Facebook, Instagram or more like Google, YouTube or a little bit of both? MD: (23:19) Both. Yeah. Previously we’ve been Facebook and Instagram only for like the last seven years, eight years. But now we’re going to move to Google and YouTube cause Facebook just got too expensive two years ago. Like our cost to acquire a customer to use ago like tripled. And so, you know, a $300, we used to sell a $1,500 course so it would cost us three to $400 to acquire a customer. And then all the way it’s shot up to a thousand. MD: (23:42) And so the, the retargeting of the organic audience has been the solution to that problem, right? But at your organic content and build rapport, build a relationship. And the way I look at it is it takes about an hour. You have to spend about an hour with someone in any capacity. That can be a podcast, a video, Instagram feed, whatever it may be for them to feel safe enough to buy, I spend about a thousand dollars with you. So we often see that on a webinar. If I have a 90 minute webinar, I know that I can sell a $1,500 product. If I have a two hour webinar, I know I can sell a $2,000 product. And so let’s just equate an hour of quality time and content with an $1,000 purchase. Mmm. And so if you’re doing that 10 minutes at a time through YouTube videos, by the time you, you’re ready to make that offer, they know you, they like you, they trust you, they’re ready to buy. And so the sales pitch doesn’t require an hour and a half long webinar anymore. It just requires a 10 to 1520 minute video. Here’s what it is, you know here’s what it’s going to do for you. Here’s how to get it. And so the, the selling becomes much easier, frankly, once you put that process in place. RV: (24:56) Yeah. And that’s that, that, that is awesome. I’ve not thought about it so clearly. I like that. But you know, kind of our standard thing is we’re going to, we’re going to have everyone set up for each product one video funnel, which is going to be basically three short videos and then a sales video, right? So you add that time up, that’s going to be somewhere around 80 60 to 80 minutes or one long video webinar funnel, 60 to 90 minutes. And it’s like, you know, $2,000 would be the high end, but typically it’s like around a thousand dollars. But it’s interesting to think about breaking that up into 10 minutes chunks on social for an impression, which you could buy for much cheaper and then drive him. So are you thinking that [inaudible] are you going to focus on building that audience on social first before you move them over or are you going to try to move them directly into a, you know, it’s your environment. So it’s all [inaudible] MD: (25:51) Both. So the way that we’re going to do it is the cheapest paid to traffic you can get today is let’s just say Facebook and Instagram is views and engagement. So I’m going to set my ad, you know, campaigns to convert for views and engagement and I just want my content consumed. So we just put a brand new video out this week that’s kind of seven lessons that I’ve learned after going through economic crises like this, right? And so it’s about a 25 minute long video. It’s just value. There’s no, there’s nothing for sale in it. And I want that video consumed by as many people as possible. So we’re going to pay to get people to watch that video on Facebook and Instagram. Anybody who watches a certain amount of that video, let’s just say you know, half of it, 30% of that, and we’ll go and retarget with another content video. And then anybody who watches that will great. Now we’re going to put a call action ad that’s going to RV: (26:44) Send them to a capture page and a sales pitch. And so the only people who will ever see our offers are the ones who have gone through at least one or two levels of engagement, which also helps protect your offer from being, you know, from burning out, which is one of the biggest challenges that I’ve experienced or lessons learned that I’ve experienced. Cause I’ve had offers that have gone, let’s just say global, but offers that or I’m everywhere all over the internet and you know, we’re doing eight figures a year in sales of one single product and I’m being recognized everywhere I go. The more successful your offer is, the faster you’re going to burn through that target audience and then your cost to acquire goes up and eventually it’s not going to be profitable anymore. And I would say if your offer offers super, super just, it’s just taken off like a rocket. RV: (27:38) It’s shelf life is about 24 months at the most. And so, unfortunately a lot of people in the education space are having to reinvent and find a new offer to replace that every two years. And a lot of times you can’t find you want or come up with one that’s going to be just as successful as that lightning in a bottle offer that you previously had and then you’re in real trouble. And so a way to get around that is to just show content at the top. If I’m releasing three videos a week, I’ve got three brand new ads and brand new pieces of content that are, I’ve never been seen before to show my audience and to continue to build it. And then the product that I do have, I’m only showing it to the people who are really engaged. It’s never going to burn it through the marketplace. RV: (28:22) And so it really becomes a, a much longer shelf life at that point, which is you know, critical to building a business. I love it. That’s, I mean we’re spending more of our budget every month on just that top part of the funnel. Just getting the content out there and less on a percentage on a percentage basis must much less actually showing the offer to the people cause it’s a more, a more qualified group. One thing to share with everybody. You, you may already know this Mike, but we spent a couple thousand dollars boosting a video, a couple of series of videos on Facebook to build this audience. And I can’t remember if it was auto placement or I think it’s called extended network where we, we we ran it, the video to the extended network. I don’t think it’s auto-placement I think there’s something else. RV: (29:14) But anywheres it’s somewhere in were you in, where did the ad set where you’re determining who you’re going to show it to and it was just like a checkbox. It was like, okay, let’s do that. And it, it screwed up the whole strategy because on the extended network of Facebook, they can’t actually track how long people watch and so they don’t allow you to retarget that audience based on other percentage video views like you’re talking about. And I was just like, I mean it was literally like, it was basically like we took $2,000 and threw it away because then at that point it was just vanity views. We didn’t actually build the audience, which is the whole point is warm up an audience, basically build an audience of people to show an ad to. And anyways, that was a painful lesson. Just, you know, forever isn’t it? RV: (30:02) Yup. It’s crazy how one thing like that can be, can cost you a couple grand. Well at least it was only two grand and not 20. Right. You know? Yes. It’s all I found it and didn’t say, Oh my God, nothing’s working anymore and pivoted some way. You know, and then you don’t really know. Yeah. Why? Because, well, and, and the way we found it was, cause we were, we were, we were showing ads that were supposed to be to that audience and the cost for the per acquisition to that audience was, was showing less. It was, it was costing more money to convert them dent to convert a cold person. And it was like, something doesn’t make sense here. Yep. So anyways in the spirit of opportunity and challenging times and stuff, I, I don’t want to let you go without stealing some free investment advice for you. RV: (30:50) Given the state of the world as, as we’re recording this, you know, Corona virus is, is out there. I know you know a lot about investing [inaudible] Mmm. I’m interested to hear what you kind of think about investing, but the part that I really wanted to highlight is why do you, what do you think investing has to do with entrepreneurship in general? Like why is investing a skill? Because investing, if you’re a big company, you have a finance department and they’re investing in, they’re doing that stuff. But if you’re a small company, it’s like, I’m busy running my business all day. Why do I need to also be learning about investing and what do I need to be learning about investing in? So that [inaudible] is something, again, you seem to have always Ben passionate about and had an eye on and an affinity for. Yeah, he, I mean the, the, the affinity for that was you know, it was making millions of dollars in my late twenties and I was buying cars and houses and toys with it and frankly flushing it down the toilet. RV: (31:47) And I realized by the time I had 30, I was like, okay, I need to figure this out. And so yeah you know, it was a, it was kind of hitting that new chapter in life that really inspired me to to go down that rabbit hole. But yeah. There’s a couple of valuable lessons that I’ve learned and that is that the, the concepts of making money and keeping money or completely the opposite. Hmm. Personality traits that are going to allow you as an entrepreneur to make a bunch of money, are they complete? Are they, are the same personality traits that will have you blow all of that money when you try to invest it? Because we typically have high tolerance for risk. Entrepreneurs are very comfortable with risk and so we’re like, Oh, okay, I’ll put all those chips in there and yeah, if it doesn’t work out, I’ll just go make more money. Yeah. MD: (32:38) That work after a while. You know, I’ve, I’ve gone through that phase and it’s not very fine. And so for me, investing when it comes to entrepreneurs is MD: (32:49) Really learning about money management and becoming aware of your own personal personality traits and your emotions and how you’re wired to handle money. You know, for me, I noticed whenever I had a ton of money in the bank, I would immediately go find something to do with it. I’d invent a new product, I’d start a new company, I would invest it in a new and new place, but I would always deploy it somewhere. Sometimes that worked out a lot of times that didn’t. And so for me it’s been more of a journey or more of a, an emotional lesson than, than a financial lesson. Mmm. Yeah. So I think, I think that’s one of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned. Profit first, Mike McCalley was, his book is fantastic when it comes to this. This is a problem Ryan Deiss has talked about. Mike talks about, I talk about, and so it’s a very common issue with people with our personality types as far as investing goes. Now RV: (33:47) It’s one of the absolute, so hold, hold, hold on, hold on. On that part. So before you transitioned into that one, I think that’s super fascinating, but that sounds like a great book that’s in there. Sorta like the emotional, like almost like the person, you know, how there’s like the five love languages and you have like disc and stuff. It’d be like what are the personality types of money, you know, would be something like I’m seeing a quadrant and something that could be super duper powerful. The emotion Ambler. Yeah. Like personnel assessment and quiz and you know, $100 million business right there if you need it, if you need any other ideas. I think that’s really a cool concept. But Mmm. The other thing that I was going to say here is I just was curious. Okay. So it’s interesting. I’m a Dave Ramsey, not like Dave Ramsey. I came up with Dame JMZ also follow grant Cardone and I, I see them on like two ends of the, on the of the spectrum, right? Like absolutely no debt, you know, paid off home mortgage. Right. And then grant Cardone, like mortgage is the worst. You know, owning a house is the dumbest thing you could ever do. Have all of your money deployed rent where you live? RV: (35:05) Do you follow in the middle or do you like MD: (35:08) To understand why each of them are saying what they’re saying? And grant is saying that because that’s what his truth is and what works for him. So he’s trying to be an integrity and tell people, Hey, this is what works. Same thing with Kiyosaki. He says the same stuff. And then you’ve got Dave who probably understands that nine out of 10 people did not have the financial intelligence or emotional intelligence EEQ RV: (35:38) Okay to make investments like that and they will just end up losing everything. So Dave is like, no, we’re going to keep people out of trouble and just give them security and go that path. And so I see the benefits of both and it really just depends on on the audience member and which one they’re attracted to and what their education level is to what you were saying about emotion. But Dave Ramsey even says that like, I know it would make more sense to pay off your highest interest credit card first, mathematically or logically. The problem is we’re not logical, we’re emotional, right? And so we don’t pay off the highest interest rate. We pay off the lowest balance first so that we get momentum and feel like we’re winning. Which is, you know, in align with what you’re saying. So okay, well that’s just interesting. RV: (36:26) So, yeah. So before, before I let you run off, I’ve kept you, kept you way too long here, but the right now, you know, Corona virus at the time of this recording is like everywhere on the news, you know, in the house and, and, and all that sort of stuff. And do you know, do you have kind of any general sort of thoughts towards investing? Is it, is it one of those things where it’s like, you know, what, what is, what do you, what do you think about that? Yeah. entrepreneurs specifically. Well, I mean, I mean, I would say this to anyone. You know, be greedy when people are fearful. Okay. You know, I mean that’s, that’s it. And so for me, I have like been, I’ve been a big investor in crypto since 2013 I bought Bitcoin when it was $70. RV: (37:15) Right? So that’s a really high risk category. You know, it’s very speculative, but I put a small amount of money in that and every time there’s a huge dip in crypto, I buy more. Right? When it dropped down to $3,000 last year after hitting 20 K, I was telling my audience, Hey, if you’re in a crypto, he might want to buy some right now. I’m buying some right now. And then it went up to 12 grand again. Right? And so whether you’re in the stock market or real estate or whatever, we’re going to see and any and every kind of asset on sale now. And I think in that sales going to get even better here in the coming months. So this is the time to buy, whether it’s again, your, your, your favorite flavor of investment. If it’s on sale, buy it when it’s on sale. RV: (38:04) This will go away, this will pass. At some point, things will go back to normal there throwing literally trillions of dollars into the economy right now just like they did after Oh eight. And all that’s going to do is in flight. The stock market. Yeah. And everything else you know, it, the, the dollars devalued. So that’s my biggest piece of advice is get greedy when people are scared and people are scared right now. It’s time to get greedy. Yeah. It’s an interesting, interesting crazy times. Hopefully you can tell the, the both, the width, the breadth of Mike Dillard’s expertise here and experience as an entrepreneur from everything from the, the nitty gritty of copywriting and digital marketing to the high level concepts of investing and managing a business. That’s why we, we had them on Mike, where do you want people to go if they want to follow you connect up with you and see what you’re doing. RV: (38:55) You know, the best thing that I’d recommend right now is just Mike, excuse me, Mike Dillard to help.com and we threw this site up literally this morning and it’s just a little survey where people can go specifically during this time and answer a few questions so I know where you’re at and what your problems are, what you need help with, and then we’ll have some specific resources based on exactly where you’re at, whether it’s sales are going down because of the virus deal or [inaudible] you know, general preparedness or security, whatever it may be. We’ve got some great resources for everybody. So that would be it. Yeah. And not to mention a great course on, on actual physical preparedness that you did with a Navy seal, which is [inaudible] apropos timing for that. So we’ll put a link to Mike Dillard, health.com. Y’all can check that out. Mike, thanks for encouragement, man. RV: (39:42) You’re encouraging literally millions of entrepreneurs as you have, you know, did done all of these experiments and adventures in and out of different types of business models. And it’s, it’s like I’ve had so many people that are just like longtime friends come to me like, Hey man, I heard you on Dillard’s podcast. That’s pretty cool. And what was impressive to me was like the reverence in which they spoke about you as if they had known you and they had followed you for a long time and that they trusted you. And you know, that’s not the kind of thing that you build with an ad overnight. That’s the kind of thing that you build with a reputation over years. So that’s great to hear. Appreciate it man. And we wish you all the best. Thank you brother. Thanks for having me.

Ep 61: Deeper Audience Engagement through Unscripted Keynotes with Connie Podesta | Recap Episode

RV: (00:00) Hey brand builder. Welcome to the special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Connie Podesta is a hoot. I said she’s a hoot. Aj said that I was a hoot. I’m not sure what that is all about, but I said, isn’t, isn’t Connie a hoot? And AJ said you’re a hoot…because she was making fun of me. Why don’t you tell them why you were making fun of me? AJV: (00:23) Because Rory starts out this entire interview with this wonderful build up of Connie and then she’s awesome indeed, but then says, well, you know, here’s how you know she’s really awesome as that I’m willing to refer her to my clients. But here’s why that’s a big deal. Because my clients have come to be accustomed to a certain level of performance that’s alluring to his magical performance back to his clients have become accustomed to his incredible delivery. And RV: (00:58) Now some of that you added some of that you added. I’m not saying, I’m not saying that I didn’t think that that was true, but I didn’t say that. I’m not necessarily saying it now either. Well, I am. I’m awesome because, and Connie is too. AJV: (01:12) Do you do, I didn’t think it was hilarious that as you’re introducing someone else, you’re like, well, you know, they’re awesome because I’m awesome. Right? RV: (01:20) I’m also extremely humble as is Connie. But here’s what I, here’s what I, here’s what I love about, there’s so many things I love about Kanye. I talk about it in the interview, but when I think of myself as a speaker and her, I couldn’t think of our style, like our being more different, AJV: (01:40) Basically everything she said denote story as completely answered. RV: (01:46) Yeah. Like the most boring speaker. I’m irrelevant. I’m outdated now. She does speak more than I do like, so she speaks a ton. It’s actually a really good interview. Yeah. And I think, you know, here’s the thing that she really inspired me in this interview particular is just this, this concept of planned spontaneity. I think I have, I have a hard time, you know, like my logical brain is just freaking out with all the stuff she’s talking about, about just don’t have a plan and like just, yeah, go off the cuff and interview everybody. And I’m like, what are you insane? But Mmm, really, I actually think it’s brilliant. What she’s actually doing is she has set up like a giant, choose your own adventure and she, she knows where all the paths are going to lead. But [inaudible] it appears to the audience. And it is, I mean it’s, it’s very engaging and spontaneous, but she’s not up there just winging it with no plan. It’s what comedians called planned spontaneity. It’s, it’s allowing for the appearance of spontaneity and it is spontaneous, but it’s, it’s sort of like there’s this plan that you have, AJV: (02:53) But also I think one of the things that you’ll learn if you go listen to the full episode is that she is not relying on some huge adventurous, a story that she had. Right. And you guys talk a lot about this and one of the things that I really loved in the beginning of this interview is that you both called attention to that. Both of you don’t necessarily have that incredible story in terms of the framework of how you teach, right? Didn’t climb Mount Everest, you didn’t lay right. RV: (03:20) Like neither of us are actually that exception, AJV: (03:24) Do these things. And so I think what I really love is that both of you are great examples of truly successful speakers without these truly unique stories. Now of course you have unique stories, but it’s not the basis of your entire book ability as a speaker. And I think that’s really inspiring for everyone out there, including myself, is that you don’t have to go climb the seven top peaks in the world to be a incredibly successful speaker with high fees and book calendars. And I loved that what Connie talked about in the very beginning and she said that her sales pitch, which I think this is also really [good], RV: (04:02) She also talks to all the people herself. Yeah. But that, Whoa, Whoa, sorry, sorry. She says maintain control of the mix so that if they ever talk, you take the mic back AJV: (04:15) Listening to her advice. And but I think it’s really good because she said, when I’m talking to meeting planners or whoever’s booking the speakers, I go, well, do you want your entire meeting to be about the speaker or to be about your audience? Boom. Because I don’t make it about me. I make it about you. And I make it about them. And it’s like, all right, let’s, you know, turn the switch. Right. I think that’s really amazing in terms of like, just a quick change, a perspective, how so many people think, well what’s my story? What’s my uniqueness? And she goes, cares about you. Nobody cares about your story. Right. It’s what about the audience? RV: (04:53) Yeah. And I would say her and I are very aligned on that point, which was kind of my second big takeaway was that even though it’s interesting cause it’s like we’re very different from most, not most speakers, from a lot of speakers and that we don’t have like this amazing life story. But then we’re, Oh, thank you sweetheart. But then we’re, we’re very different in our delivery style and our preparation method. But then we’re also very aligned philosophically on the unmaking, the audience, the hero. And she said, you know, the goal is not to make yourself look good. The goal is to make the audience look good and feel good and feel inspired. And I, I couldn’t echo that that more. And I think that that is inherently one of the biggest things that speakers struggle with. And one of the things that personal brands struggle with. RV: (05:40) I know, because this was also me. There’s you, there’s a level of ego that is involved. And when you start, it’s like it’s all about you and I, you gotta, you gotta sort of get past that. In fact, it applies this this last week I was, I was doing a thing for Lewis Howes for his inner members and we were doing like a copywriting training for them. And I [inaudible] I said this thing that I’d never really said and people really latched onto it, which is that copywriting is not about telling people what you do. It’s about telling people what you can do for them. And that’s the same shift as a speaker. It’s like, it’s not about you or, or what you’ve done, it’s about what you’ve learned and how that can help them. And [inaudible] especially if you don’t have some incredibly compelling personal story, you gotta make it all about the audience and it’s just, you gotta be there in service and [inaudible] AJV: (06:31) So we share that perspective. Yeah. RV: (06:33) Hold on. I’m not done yet. It’s still my turn. Okay. Okay. Okay. Now AJV: (06:37) Fast off is complete. Well I think the second thing that really hit me as that she talks about how she doesn’t rely on this story and she really wings it and it’s like, yeah, I mean kind of. She does that kind of, she doesn’t really, and I think what she really relies on, what she’d give confidence to everyone who is listening to this episode is that what she really is relying on is her expertise and her knowledge and that is what you got to own. It’s like the reason she feels comfortable we need to get [inaudible] is because she has an idea of exactly what they’re going to say. I guess she’s done this enough times. If she’s seen this, she’s seen this enough times to know there’s only one or two or three outcomes from this question, so I know exactly how it’s going to go. AJV: (07:16) So it’s that scripted non-scripted approach in terms of like if you’ve done something enough and you’ve done enough research and you have enough personal results and experiences, you know kind of where it’s going, which allows you to be up on stage feeling like you’re winging it, which in turn is really just relying on the years and years of your personal experience and your personal results, which is why that’s so important from the beginning. That’s what we talk about in the foundation of building your personal brand and our phase one finding your brand DNA is, you know, what do you have to hang your head on? What do you have research in? What do you have results in? Where is your experience? Where’s your expertise in your designated lane? And that’s what she’s saying. She goes, you know, she talks about how she doesn’t really have a plan and to some degrees because she doesn’t need one because she has all of this years, years and years of experience, firsthand experience to know exactly how this is going to play out. There’s no question she knows where it’s going to go. And that’s allows for this feeling of on the fly, even though it’s RV: (08:22) Pretty expected. You know, as you were talking, it was making me think about how when you see, you know, if you watch a live, one of the late night shows, you know, Jimmy Fallon or whatever, Jimmy, you know, whatever the late night show, Jimmy Fallon is the best one. And but there is the comedians that’ll come on there and they’re so funny. So funny, so funny. And you go, gosh, they’re so funny. They’re coming up with jokes on the spot and it’s like, no, they have been on stage so many times. They have all these little bits and pieces and they’re just as the, as the interviewer asks them a question, they pull on something that they’ve done before, they, they weave together this kind of beautiful, seemingly spontaneous thing. But it’s, it’s actually very well, well rehearsed. So anyways, the last one for me, the, the, the last kind of point, which I think was sort of the obvious point of what she was talking about was asking myself, how can I create more interaction with the audience? RV: (09:16) Yeah. It’s not, should I, it’s not, do I do interaction or not? Like for me, I’m a slides guy. I’m not going to be abandoning all my slides and signature stories. Like I’m just not going to do it. But, but I, I also, it was so compelling to say, okay, how could I create more interaction? And then even deeper than that, like I don’t think that her point was so much, Hey, you should do interaction. I think what she was saying is she’s like, that’s who she is and she allowed herself to be who she is and an actress and an a teacher and on the fly. And she is funny. And so she, she said, I’m willing to leave the slides behind so that I can be who I am. And so I think, you know, there’s that really important permission and principle and power to say be who you are and then you know, at the same time like I’m a slides guy, I’m a logic guy, I’m like efficient. RV: (10:11) I’m going, Hey how many points? That’s who I am and I’m also going, what could I learn? What could I take away from this to make it more fun? Even though I’ll probably never be the guy up there with no, no plan and no, no slides because that’s being who you are, right? Yeah. That’s who I am. But I think some people listening, like you might be listening going, gosh I didn’t even know you could do this and not have slides. And that’s so empowering, right? Cause slides are free in pain. They also, they also create technical challenges and you know, glitches and things that do happen. But all of us go on, what can we do that’s more fun and how do we also not rely on slides and the plan, but go, let’s rely like what you were saying on the depth of our expertise. Let’s sit in the comfort of what we really know, not just the mechanics of a manufactured and rehearsed presentation to where it’s the same rote thing over and over time. Yeah. AJV: (11:09) And that’s kind of similar to my third and final point. And I really love the example that she gave ran. She talks about how Hmm her, her desire and her need for having audience interaction really came from her years as a teacher and a counselor. And it just hit me in the moment of like, yeah, imagine just for a second that you were a high school teacher for behaviorally challenged inner city kids in Chicago. Just for a second, pretend that’s your audience. Imagine how a slide deck would go. RV: (11:44) Okay. AJV: (11:44) Imagine how a 60 minute lecture would go. And the point is it wouldn’t. And so she said, from that experience I realized the depth and that came from audience interaction because I was in front of an audience every single day for years and years of people who didn’t want to be there. And let’s just be honest, many of your audiences didn’t select to be there. They were told to be there. They were mandated to RV: (12:09) Depending, I mean if you’re in the corporate for sure. I mean if you’re more entrepreneur, it’s a little bit different, but yeah, AJV: (12:14) Right. At some point you’re going to have someone in your audience who was like, how long can I check Facebook before someone notices? All right, this is a little bit of reality and I think what’s interesting is she said, that’s where I’m going to start as F as if I didn’t have an engaged audience, as if I had an audience who wasn’t going to pay attention and how can I change that to enforce that they are paying attention and they are engaged and they do leave with something. And I just love that approach. And that doesn’t mean your whole thing has to be around interaction, but it’s more positioning yourself. It’s not around just your information, it’s how do you get your information and across the way that people will actually use it. And it’s, for me, it’s like I tell her, wear this all the time. I’m not an audio learner. I have to see it and do it in order to learn it. And I have, I would say borderline photographic memory. And it’s like, but if I don’t see it, I don’t do well. So I was actually one of those kids that I never really went to class and high school or college. Actually. RV: (13:16) Hold on, let’s have an honest confession here. How did you become the CEO of brand builders group? Tell us, tell us what makes you qualified. AJ Vaden, AJV: (13:27) That’s for sure. But the point is is I didn’t learn anything from the lectures. If it, if I heard it audio, it just is like, there’s like too many things going on in my brain. So instead of going to class, I knew that if I just read this and did this, like that’s how I learned. Like I realized that very early on. It’s like I went at a pace faster than my classes, right? And I learned that and then I got really bored and for sure wasn’t paying attention. And so I think it’s like, you’ve got to just say, it’s like, all right, there’s all these different learning types out there, right? They’re visual learners, there’s audio learners, there’s application learners, there’s tactical learners. What am I doing to appeal to all of them? Because if you are just a stand and deliver speaker, then you’re missing at least a third, if not a fourth of your audience. Just by the simple way you deliver it, regardless of how good your content is. And I think that’s what I really took away from Connie was how do you engage people? So they don’t just see slides, they actually learn the information enough to actually do something with it. RV: (14:26) Love that. That’s so good. So good. So another great interview. Definitely worth a listen. And w one of the best keynoters on stage really in the world from a mechanics point of view. So go listen to Connie Pedesta hear what she’s got to say. It’s, it’s exciting and, and it’s a hoot. Let’s just say that. So, wow, that’s a hoot. Have a hoot yourself and we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand podcast.

Ep 60: Deeper Audience Engagement through Unscripted Keynotes with Connie Podesta

RV: (00:00) Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with. This is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that@brandbuildersgroupdotcomslashsummitcallbrandbuildersgroup.com slash summit call to talk to you soon on with the show. You are honestly so lucky to be listening to this right now because you’re, you’re about to learn from one of the best keynote speakers in the world. RV: (01:12) And when I say that I really mean it. And here’s how you know, I mean it, Connie Podesta you know, she’s a hall of fame speaker. She’s written seven books. She’s been in the business for a long time, but she is one of the people that I actually refer to my speaking clients. So after someone has had me and you know, there’s a certain expectation level they have of what they’re going to experience it over time. It really becomes hard to find people well who you feel like, man, I really trust someone to come behind and do a great job for my clients. And that is Connie, she will make you laugh, your face off and then kick you in the pants. And you know, she’s spoken for all the, you know, the big companies, Microsoft, Harley Davidson, blue cross, blue shield, Cisco. She’s also something that I very much am not, she is a great MC and that’s something I tried to avoid at all costs. But she is just so anyways, so Connie thank you for making some time here and I’m just so excited to pick your brain a little bit about, you know, kind of the keynote speaking career. CP: (02:26) Yeah. Someone called me a legend a while back and I said, I think most legends are dead, but I’ll take it. I’ll take that. Cause I think I’ve been speaking longer than almost anybody still out in the circuit. So I do have tons of things and I always say that everything I’m going to tell you about speaking is totally true for me. Okay. Doesn’t mean it’s true for everybody else, but I will be very transparent and authentically honest about what over the past 30 years has worked for me to keep me in the game for 30 years. RV: (02:59) Yeah. And that’s what I want to hear. And I, and I hope you don’t mind me saying this. I mean, this is a compliment and not in a, not offensive in any way, but as a speaker, I view myself as pretty like normal, right? Like I didn’t win a Superbowl. I never climbed Mount Everest. I wasn’t a Navy seal. Like I’ve never been a CEO of a fortune. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it’s like, you know, I have stories of course, like my, you know, I have some parts of my life and things that I shared in that, but, but it’s, I’m not the guy that people go, Oh my gosh, she landed the airplane on the Hudson. I got to hear that story. And I feel like you’re kind of the same way. It’s, it’s really based on like thought leadership expertise, delivery on stage and not so much like your celebrity yet you’re, you’ve gotten to a place where you’re earning fee, you know, you’re in a in a higher, a very high fee range and have had those, a wonderful career. And so I think a lot of people listening, you know, I think that’s inspiring as much as it’s inspiring to hear those people as well. It’s kind of going, if you’re just sort of like a normal person, how do you be, how do you get to your level in this business without, you know, having one of those amazing stories? CP: (04:22) Well, first of all, I think that’s kind of one of the problems is the people for example, that come to me for just coaching. Not I don’t charge for coaching, but just comes to me for mentorship or coaching, you know, they’re always like, Oh, okay, I’m trying to figure out my story. And I go, well just stop. I’ve never had a story in my life. I’ve never done anything unbelievably outstanding, like you said, scaled a mountain or landed the plane. And, and the way I explained it to my clients, because I’m often up against a speaker who has this amazing [inaudible] RV: (04:53) Right in your fee range. CP: (04:56) Yes. And my fee range. And they’re trying to decide between the two. And the way I always explain it to both my mentorees and the people I’m talking to people now in your audience is, there’s two ways to look at this. One is you can have your story and, and it becomes mostly about you. You may kind of connect it to leadership or to sales, but you have done something so traumatic, so adversarial, so impressive that your goal is to tell that story. Hopefully that other people will be motivated. But I always tell my clients when I’m up against someone, well, what’s your end game? Do you want their story or do you want me and I will make it about your audience’s story. I have no story. So because I’m not focused on myself, it’s not about what I did great or horrible and I want them to learn. CP: (05:51) My entire focus is on the audience and my goal is to dig into their story and help them take that and add strategies and tools and all of this thing. And because I’m a psychology person, dig kinda deep inside their brain. So I really teach the speakers that come to me. Forget your story. Forget thinking. You have to have a story. Forget that you need a story. In fact, there’s it don’t even try because there’s people out there with stories far bigger Roy than you and I are ever, ever go. So for us to even try to do that, and instead just say, be honest, I don’t have a story. However, your audience has a story. So you can either get somebody with their own story or you can get someone that makes it about your audience. What would you like RV: (06:43) And would you, is kind of that like the positioning of that too is like, it’s not so much about me, it’s about what can I share that’s really useful for your audience and being direct direct to them. CP: (06:56) I just said yesterday too, where it was me and another type of speaker and I, and they said, well what would you say you’ve done? That’s really amazing. And I said, my goal is never been for an audience to think I’m amazing. My goal’s always been for them to leave that King, they’re amazing. And there’s two different, you know, that’s two different points of view. So do we make it about us or do we make it about the audience? And there’s no right or wrong. It’s great to have people up there that have a story. But I would like the people watching this to realize most of us don’t. But most of us can deliver the tools and strategies about sales or leadership or whatever it is that when they go, their brains are on fire. Like what am I going to do next? CP: (07:44) Where am I going to go? And I love it when my audiences, they leave and someone might say, what was the name of your speaker? And they go, I don’t remember. That’s okay. That’s fine with me because they’re leaving texting and if you ask them what they’re texting, like I’m texting my boss cause we have to have a meeting and I’m texting my wife cause it made me think of this discussion we had and I’m texting one of my other departments because I think I know how to close a deal. I don’t care if they remember my name. Okay. If they want to hire me, they’ll go get it off of Google. I want them brains to be so on fire with what they can do. What they can accomplish, what they can go back and change and behaviors and attitudes and mindsets that I’m irrelevant to them. I that’s fine if I’m irrelevant to them because watching them believe what their text and and calling people on the phone, that’s all the feedback I need. RV: (08:31) Like you’re irrelevant as a person. But it’s the information that has been super duper relevant to them, CP: (08:38) Not the information is so, and I do some things interactive that they will be talking about. I tell my clients, I said I’m going to do some things with them that will create an energy in your audience that will not stop. I mean it is going to change the next two or three days. How they approach every breakout, how they respond, how they react, whether they’re open and more engaged. So I don’t just see me as an opening keynote either. I see. And I tell my clients one of my goals and one of my responsibilities is to hand you back. And I’ve said this, people call me what they say an audience Turner. And what that means is not only am I delivering a presentation, but my endgame is to turn the minds and mindsets of the audience a bit to a place where I can hand my client back. CP: (09:32) And that’s what I say to them. I have the ability to hand you back an audience that’s not the same. And that’s why when people say, you know, we want you for a closing, I go, well what a waste. You know, mostly Chris wanted to be the closing cause they’re thinking of them. Most speakers are kind of thinking of them a lot. So if you’re thinking of yourself and marketing them, being a closing is great because everyone’s leaving with me on their mind. I don’t want to be at a closing, I don’t care about that. I want to be the one that starts it. And I want to be known for handing the client back an audience that will never be the same. So then every breakout, every session, every lunch, every networking opportunity has been altered for the better as a result of hearing me. And if you’re good at doing that, then they aren’t just talking about you. When they leave. They’re talking about you for three days and they’re talking about your material and they’re applying it and the event planners see them talking about it, applying it, using a calling, texting, raising their hand and breakout, asking questions. And by the end of three days, that’s the event planners fees, how valuable and viable all the things you offered were. Then it comes back to you. RV: (10:46) I love that. That’s a great, what a, what a great mindset to approach it. So I, I want to shift to you. You brought this up, the indirect Tivity because that’s another thing, you know, I think that you do so well. It’s like you don’t have the story, but you’re really, really dynamic on stage. And I kinda think of humor as a part of it. But another thing is the, is the interactivity. So can you talk to me about working the audience? Like how important is it to work with the audience? Cause it, it, it terrifies me. I personally have never done a lot of it, but it’s like, you know, you never know what’s going to happen. You kind of lose control of whether or not it’ll be funny or staying on task. But how important do you think it is to like interact with the audience? What do you do with the audience? How do you prepare for it? Like just talk a little bit about your strategy for like the actual interaction with the [inaudible]. CP: (11:48) In terms of how important I think next to being a professional person that does a good job, it is the absolute most important to, to see a speaker that’s not interacting with the audience. Absolutely drives me crazy. And I think it goes back to my background. You know, a lot of speakers started in corporate and training and HR and all that, but I didn’t, I w I taught high school and I taught behavior problem kids. And then I became a therapist because my students were so in trouble and well, to be honest, their parents were needed therapy a lot more than students. So taking this site ICology. And I’ve always been funny, thank goodness. I mean that just I was born with. And so when you look back on my training, you know, whether I had students in my class or I had clients in my therapy office, it could never be about me. CP: (12:42) The students don’t care about me. They don’t care about my life. They don’t care what I did. Amazing. And my clients don’t care if, if you came to me for marriage counseling, you don’t want to sit and hear my amazing signature story about my marriage and how we were down in the depths and went bankrupt. And now look at what all you want me all students want and all clients want in therapy. Is it to be 100% about them? But I also learned in teaching high school that I can’t lecture. I could not stand in front of the class for 45 minutes and write or use overheads or use slides and expect to keep the attention of a young person. So I learned early on that I hardly ever wrote anything or ever used back then overheads or slides. I just, I would talk and then I would go to a student and then I would bring them up in front of the class and then we would tell a story and then we would do a role play. CP: (13:37) And then we would add, I mean, I had to, in order to survive in a high school in South side of Chicago, I had to become full of change and full of variety. And I learned to act out different voices. And if I was teaching English or history, I would, I got them into acting things out. And so when I became a speaker and people started, you know, and I started speaking just to promote my private counseling practice, but I would do the same thing in the beginning days when you’re in the rotary club. I would bring guys up and I do this. And before you know it, everyone’s like, she’s amazing. And now, you know, if someone comes to me for coaching, I take away their slides and I take away their signature store and I take away their level or Mike and give him my hand till those are the three things I do. CP: (14:27) And I tell them, I’m not saying you can’t go back to your lava Leer slide show, you know, stand on stage and talk and don’t involve the audience. I want you to experience what it’s like to not do what all the other millions of speakers do. And it’s amazing worry because once they let go of the mind, the lava Lear, once they let go of all the slides, once they let go of just standing there and and vomiting information and you know, 67 steps, here’s what we do. Once they get into the audience and start bringing people up, it’s like now I say, okay, well now you can go back to your signal. Oh no, no. Oh my God, this is more fun than I’ve ever had in my whole life. And it’s one of the reasons why I don’t do slides because slides means that I’ve already decided months ago what I’m going to teach this audience. CP: (15:22) Okay. Or yesterday or two weeks, I never know in, you’re right. I love the fact that when I bring people on stage, I have no idea what they’re going to say. Most of my great material came from somebody on stage saying something so out of the blue that I never expected forcing me to have to think on my feet and improvise and come back. And then all of a sudden I’d leave and it’s like, that was amazing material. Oh my God, I can’t believe I’ve never done that. But I would never have thought of it had I not been pushed into being outside of my comfort zone and having to react in front of 2000 people. RV: (16:04) So how do you prepare for that? Like do you, and and like how much do you, but like do, you said you literally walk on stage with no plan of what I mean, surely you have a plan of some type. CP: (16:17) I do. I do a thing with personalities. I kind of know how I’m going to start. I kinda know how I’m going to end. Yes, I have a plan, but I’m not seeing what I didn’t like for me. And don’t get me wrong, all of you watching that use PowerPoint, bless your heart. There’s no good or right or wrong and speaking, it’s what works for you. So again, I’m just sharing what works for me. I used to have slides. RV: (16:41) Yeah. Cause I’m a, I’m a PowerPoint guy and I’m sitting here going, this is terrified. Like the idea of doing what you’re talking about to me is absolutely terrifying. I’m going to teach you how to do one role play. And you never ever teach me CP: (16:59) Slides. I had slides and I left them on the plane. This was like 20 years ago. Okay. When we had the slide deck, the carousel, that’s how old I am. And I get in front of 2000 people and here I am. I’m an actress, I’m a comedian, I know all this. But you know, slides were in and everyone had their slide deck and I announced the 2000 people. Oh by the way, I left my slides on the plane and they all just started cheering like yay. And I was like, wow, you know, I’ve never asked myself. I know I thought it was cool to have slides, but I never once asked my audience, what do you think about it? So now I’m getting the feedback and that was an amazing day. I had no slides, I didn’t have structure C PowerPoint to is like being in a cage because now I’m structured, I have to do this slide, next slide and this slide. CP: (17:55) And if you do go off track, God forbid now you have to click through five slides and say, Oh, I don’t have time for those with no slides and PowerPoint. You can be whoever you want. The audience can be whoever they are. And so I’m very in tune to the audience. So if I’m starting a path that I had outlined and planned in my mind and I can see the looks on their face and they’re not quite there yet, I just dig a little deeper. If I try something and I can tell by the looks on her face, they got it, it’s in there. I just skip it and I don’t do another story on it and I move on. So when you have no structure, you are forced to have to look at them and look at their eyes and see the looks on their face and read their interaction and read their feedback and you’re forced to go with the audience, let them direct you rather than you directing them. So it’s very much forces you to give up control. RV: (18:59) So totally. Yeah. And I see that so, so I see that on the macro level. And, and it’s like this fun thing and you’re reading the audience on a micro level. How do you interact with one person in a way that doesn’t become a waste of time for the other 2000 people? Like how do you, CP: (19:21) Because that for me is the structured part. I know exactly through trial and error because I had lots of things happen on stage that I was like, Ooh, I don’t need to ask that question that way. Because then, so now I know and it does come through practice. I know exactly how to word it and a couple of things. Number one, a lot of speakers to do role plays on stage. The audience is the one that looks foolish or silly or dumb or doesn’t, I don’t do that. I’m the one, they audience person is always the one in control. I set it up like that. Like Rory, you’re so and so you’re doing this. I am the employee. I came in late, I have no idea what I’m doing. Let’s take it from here. So that’s a really big key is to never make the audience look stupid or foolish. CP: (20:11) Always have it be me. I’m the one that came late. I ask questions very directly. Like if I were five minutes late and I didn’t even come to you and say anything and you came to my desk, what would you say? So you have to ask questions that are very narrowly focused. And I have people say things that I never expected and then I’ll turn to the audience and say, how many of you would have said that? None. Okay. Where did you get that from? And then it just takes off from there. And then we just, we explore that. But no, you’re right. I never know what anyone’s going to say. They absolutely love the fact that their peers are involved in something and engaged. I go into the audience, that’s why I use the handheld. I use a hand tote. I, when I see a speaker as a lavalier, I’m like, they’re not interacting at all because they can’t be having people talking into their chest. CP: (21:08) When I see a speaker with a lot with a handheld, I’m like, they’re going to do it because you never want to hand the microphone to a client. Never. You keep the microphone. So if I had brought you up on stage and I asked you a question, I would hold out my microphone and you answered, you start to answer in a way. I don’t want, I just take it back and go, Oh, no, no, no, no. I don’t buy that at all. So with a handheld, you keep control of what’s going on. But I would say they they are interacting about 80% of the time. RV: (21:39) So, so you know what questions you’re gonna ask a person, like you kind of know, okay, this is the point I want to talk. Let’s talk about how do we treat people who come to work late as a leadership principle. And so, you know, there’s some principle you want to draw out that’s related, CP: (21:57) But I do, I would bring you up on stage. I would say, Rory, you’re the boss. I’m the employee. I came in 35 minutes late. You have two choices and I always do that if you have kids. Okay? So we’ve learned as parents, right? You don’t say what you want for dinner, you say, or snack, you say, would you like an Apple with peanut butter or would you like we learned early on and that’s what I do with my audience when I’m asking for their feedback. They always have a couple of choices. RV: (22:27) Oh, are you going to finite? A finite list. A finite list of options. Yeah. CP: (22:32) So are you going to come up to me and talk about it or do you think you’re just going to ignore it? Because I’ve never been late before. And then you’ll answer one of those two. I know where to go no matter which of those two you answer. RV: (22:43) Yeah. So this is really a choose your own adventure game. This is really a choose your own adventure game. CP: (22:49) Yes. So I’m always asking questions where there’s a couple of answers. When they answer that, then I ask something else with a couple of answers. So I never know where there’s always a myriad of choices, but I’m in control and that’s what people, but you, if you’re going to interact well it has to appear that you’re not in control, but you are. RV: (23:14) Got it. Okay. So you have like almost like a decision tree. If you were going to be a nerd like me and map this out, it’s like a decision, right? CP: (23:21) Right, yes. RV: (23:23) Huh. But, and, and, and so, you know, and basically, you know, kind of like a Plinko board or something, you know, that all of those routes eventually lead back to the point that you want to make that’s related to your content. And then it’s just, it’s kind of like fun, CP: (23:38) Don’t, if they don’t lead, if they answer so weird or so strange. I just looked at the audience that go, do any of you even get this human being? And they’re like, no. And I, and I’ll say something silly like what? Birth order? And they’ll say a youngest and I go, what? Yeah, that’s what, RV: (23:54) Wow. CP: (23:57) Then mine, I’m also a therapist. I have all this psychology. So I also have the ability that if it’s not going bright to kind of bring it into psychology and why we do what we do. And the other thing it helps, Rory, is I am really funny and you know when you’re ready. RV: (24:13) Yeah. So, so I want CP: (24:16) You can get away with so much. RV: (24:18) I know. I know. And so I want to talk about that for a second. Cause that’s the other thing, right? Like people like me who are not naturally funny. The only way you are funny is when you have written jokes and you’ve got stories and slides that lead right into a, you know, a plan thing. CP: (24:34) Ever told a joke. RV: (24:36) How do you be funny in this like completely abstract like world, this is stressing me out. Speaker 4: (24:43) [Inaudible] CP: (24:43) Well that part is very structured. Like I do a part with personalities and I have this one group stand and I say, you know, let’s give him a hand. This is the absolutely psychologically the hardest working group right now in your company. Well, the people standing, I won’t even go into it, but no one in the audience is gonna think that. And so everyone’s kind of clapping and then I add according to them. RV: (25:15) Yeah. CP: (25:16) And then it’s, then it’s, then they’re all like, Oh yeah, okay, now. And I go, look, you all, you do work hard. But nobody knows it. You don’t tell anyone. You don’t share. If you don’t, you’re not great team players, you know? So if you’re going to work this hard, let’s get a little credit for. So those little one kind of liners like according to them, you know. But again that’s a funny line. According to them, everyone laughs. So it allows me to really get to the point that this group of people don’t share and they don’t open up and they’re sitting there nodding like you’re right, we don’t. But because I’m funny if that was somebody serious and they said, yeah this group thinks they work hard according to them. I mean they don’t do any, if you, if you were serious and no one was laughing, that could be very hurtful. RV: (26:12) [Inaudible] So that’s also kind of planned spontaneity though. Like just from experience and doing this and you kind of know like you have like a series, you have a series of little moments to pull from like this catalog in your head that you can draw on CP: (26:28) When the, when the slides and PowerPoint are gone. And the signature story of how you overcame amazing things is gone to me. And that’s why I do that with my speakers. At first I said, you can go back to it, but to, and this is just me, if you cannot engage an audience and get tons of word of mouth feedback without a signature story and without a PowerPoint presentation, then I think you haven’t truly come to grips with what your message really is. Because those two things, the signature story of what we did and the PowerPoint, which is all graphic and this and that, and those two things, I believe as a therapist is what keeps us from really being authentically who we are in front of an audience of people. If we strip away, that doesn’t mean you can’t come back to it, but I’d like to see my speakers, the old school standing with a handheld Mike, looking at a hundred or a hundred thousand people and having a conversation with them, not to them, with them watching their looks, watching their faces, walking into the audience, being accessible and, and again, for all of you watching, I’m not saying I hope, I hope to be honest, Rory, every other speaker uses slides. CP: (27:58) I hope every other speaker has a signature story. I hope every other speaker never wants to engage her. RV: (28:03) This is part of your uniqueness. CP: (28:07) Yes. I mean my number one selling book is how to stand out from the crowd. When my clients call me now, they start out with, first of all, they’re like, you called me back Connie. Yeah. I don’t have a gatekeeper. Don’t have an agent. Don’t have it. No one. RV: (28:22) Right. Can you talk to clients directly? CP: (28:25) You’re, you’re going to have my cell phone. Yeah. You and I are in a partnership. I’m not having somebody else out there but, but number two, you know, I, I, I want them to know that I want to model to the people in the audience how they want those people to be with their clients. How they want their salespeople to sell, how they want their leaders to lead and manage. So I have to model being accessible and being accountable and being in the present and being authentic. And so I’ve got to show them that it’s possible to strip away all of the stuff and just literally have a thousand people think that your just talking to them and when people call me they’re like are you the one that doesn’t have any slides or PowerPoint? I go, yeah, and they go, okay, you called me back. CP: (29:20) No slides. Our audience of sickest so I’m getting calls where that’s their first question. You are the one without any slides and when no one was using slides I use them because that’s how I could stand out. Now that everybody’s using slides I’ve stopped using because that’s now what makes me stand out and I do think one message, whether it’s slides or comedy or all of you watching have to be your own unique person, but I go to watch other speakers to learn what I should not copy or not do. I don’t go to watch them to learn what to do. And I think if we’re going to stand out now we have to look at what almost all speakers are doing, which means that’s what audiences are used to. And all I use is word of mouth. I’ve never made a cold call. I don’t ask for referrals. I don’t ask for testimonials. I don’t collect business cards. It’s totally word of mouth, which means that I’m left with that. What I do on stage is my only marketing. It’s my only business card. It’s my only cold call. Everything is that moment on stage. So it has to be different than anyone else or no one’s going to remember it. RV: (30:37) [Inaudible] Well that is, I mean that is, it’s very, it’s very incredible. And, and it’s, you know, this has been super interesting to me because I’m trying to go, you know, how do you, how could you duplicate it and, and what’s, you know, the science behind this play in spontaneity and still being able to like, you know, cause it’s planting [inaudible] native cause they’re, they’re still paying you to deliver a lesson and a message and you’ve gotta you’ve gotta make sure you, it’s not just going up there and Jim or John for an hour about nothing. CP: (31:07) It’s a lot of you know, one of the things I say to them and I say the speakers, I can you talk about this, you know, if your goal is to connect with the audience and create this relationship, one-on-one relationship, every time you use a slide, Roy, just think of this. They have to stop that connection with you and they have to turn and look and you have to stop your connection with them and to everyone’s now looking okay and no one can psychologically read and hear at the same time. It’s impossible for a brain to do so. They can’t hear what you’re saying. They’re just reading this slide and then when you want the slide to be done and come back, you have to reestablish that connection. It takes 1520 seconds to do that and so that’s the problem. RV: (31:50) Okay. See there’s one that’s one of your clients calling you right now, Connie, because they’re going to talk to you directly. Okay. CP: (31:57) You know they’re going to say, you said you were accessible and now you didn’t even ask. RV: (32:01) Yeah, CP: (32:02) But, but I do want us to end up with, I want ever, I don’t want you to get any emails like I think slides are great. I have a story. Here’s how I want to end. All I shared with you is what works for me and I want everyone watching. If slides work for you and you love it, use them. If a signature story works for you. Oh my God, lucky you because I don’t have one. So I just want everyone to listen to an alternative option. There are all sorts of ways to be successful in speaking. You and I have very different delivery styles and both of us are very successful and our audience was love, both of the things we do. RV: (32:42) But and you know, I, I think I do think that very much that it’s like I am very much a slide and a plan joke and story after, you know, like everything leads. But the reason for doing that is so that I know that so well that I can depart because what we both have in common, even though it’s like I do a lot of, and I do slides and I do stories well, we both have in common is an absolute focus on the audience, not on ourselves. And, and an absolute focus on creating a meaningful connection in the moment, not just powering through some like preplanned set of information. And I, and I think that you really do that brilliantly. And this has been really empowering for me because you and I’ve never talked about this is to go, I think I could do some things that would be be be more lively and engaging with the audience because knowing like, okay, if I set this up right, there can be some structure to it that still allows for a lot of fun, playfulness CP: (33:45) And, and I met her and you don’t need a mentor and my God, you’re super successful. But yes, if I had someone like you, I would not take away slides. Not that you’re, you’re doing great, you’re doing awesome. Word of mouth, you’re doing amazing. But if you came to me and said, Oh, I would like to just explore. RV: (34:04) Yeah, do something fresh, do something fun. CP: (34:07) And I’ve done it with a lot of speakers they don’t want, they love their slides, they love everything and that’s great. I always hate it when people start emailing me and defending why use it and I go, no one has the fence. I’m, I think every way is amazing. However, if there’s a little piece of you, Roy, that would just like to have a five minutes, just a little something different that you’ve never tried, then that’s where we would start. I would probably take one of your stories or one of the things that you do right now and you’ve always done it a certain way and show you how maybe going into the audience you could do that same content, that same material, but engage somebody in a way that would just be, you know, and just the fact that you might walk off the stage and talk to someone in the audience is a change of pace for you. And I think the more we can all change our pace, the more variety. We, one of the reasons why I use the handle is because I can talk really soft. I can do different voices. I mean the handheld gives you a lot of experiential advantage in terms of voices. RV: (35:17) The voice control. Yeah. The voice control component of a handheld is really, is really wonderful. CP: (35:22) Cause I do role-plays. They, they need to be heard and it’s not good. RV: (35:27) Yeah, for sure. But that holding you, holding you, holding the mic is, that’s a, that’s a super helpful tip is like you, you hold it out to them but still you still have it so that if you need to rein it back in then, CP: (35:42) Well, and I have lots of psychological sentences, things I do on stage when they’re going to end it. So I would say a sentence and not say the last line. And all I do is hold out my mic and the whole audience yells the word back. So the fact that I hold out my boss Mike, they know that’s there and they yell it out and they participate. So that’s participation too. Just having them be engaged. But I don’t do silly stuff. I mean they’re not dancing on stage. That’s one rule is if you’re going to participate with your audience, they have to look cool and professional. Cause I’m, I pull up a lot of leaders and these are their employees and they need to look really smart and really professional and really good. So we can’t ever use our interaction. Well sometimes I make fun of people, but that’s where the comedy, RV: (36:32) Well this is so helpful just to kind of get into the mind of, of how you’ve differentiated yourself and some of the things. And, and I, I really liked the way that you said that there’s a lot of things you’re talking about, which is an alternative view to maybe the things that you always hear about. And I think that’s super refreshing to be like, there’s multiple ways to make it in this business. CP: (36:55) I have so many speakers. No say, yeah, I don’t have a story so I can’t speak. Oh my God needed to do I or well, I just not comfortable with slide PowerPoint. Well that’s fine. I think speakers sometimes think that there’s a certain, RV: (37:10) It has to be a certain, yeah, CP: (37:12) No, here people, well, you have to like, I have never had a niche, every niche niche where there, I’ve never had one. I’ve never gone exclusive. You know, I don’t have an agent. I answer my own phone calls. I don’t Mark it. I mean, these are all things that the average person, you know, you have to stay on your lane. My lane is if they’re breathing and have my feet there, that’s my lane. Okay? RV: (37:34) Okay. CP: (37:35) I, I would never want to be in one industry, but that’s me. So I love taking what all the other people say speaker has to do. And this is my authoritarian rebellion authority issue person. I like listening to what other speakers say, you have to do this and then just do the opposite. I think that is so much fun. And it gets noticed. And thank God that there’s events time. There’s out there that are looking for the speaker that does it totally different. So for all of you listening that have that little rebellious streak, and you don’t want to just do it the way everyone tells you to, I just want you to know that’s okay. It’s fine. And there’s, there’s room for us in this crazy speaker world. RV: (38:23) Well, there it is. My friends. Connie, where do you want people to go? If they want to connect with you? We’ll put a link of course to Connie, pedesta.com and anything else you want CP: (38:31) Connie pedesta.com you’ll have mysel we’ll talk, we’ll become friends. The latte will speak. It’s no big deal. Just anything is fine. RV: (38:43) Well thank you for sharing your heart and I think given us permission to go an alternative route, giving us permission to ditch the things that are rigid, giving us permission to engage with people, focus on them, not ourselves. And just kind of the permission I think to have fun and, and also like as speakers to always be pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zone and not just telling everyone else to do that. So CP: (39:07) Hello. I also giving them permission that if rigid is comfortable and doing what they’ve always done feels right to them. That that’s okay too. Okay. RV: (39:19) Do your thing. [inaudible] CP: (39:21) Right. Do your thing. Do you be you? So RV: (39:24) I love it. All right. Thank you so much Connie. Always great to be with you and just awesome to get to get to a little bit of a look inside of your mind. So we appreciate it. And we’ll talk to you later. RV: (39:45) [Inaudible].

Ep 55: Blogging: The Gift that Keeps Giving with Elizabeth Rider | Recap Episode

RV: (00:06)
Hey, welcome to this special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Holy moly. What a powerful and technical interview with Elizabeth Rider. And there’s, there’s so many things that I loved about that interview. One of them is that perhaps you’ve never heard of Elizabeth Rider because you know, she doesn’t have a huge social media following but she dominates her niche and she has more web traffic by far. Then probably most of the major social influencers who are out there. And that is why this is such an important interview because this is something that we align with on, you know, for Elizabeth and Andy. I think my, my first big takeaway or just thing that I want to punctuate for you to make sure that you didn’t miss this [inaudible] where she said your blog is the home of your business. And that is what we are constantly preaching and brand builders group that the, your blog is the, the headquarters.

RV: (01:21)
It’s the central like home location of your personal brand, your relationship engine, which is what what we call the entire ecosystem. You know, for us, we use the term relationship engine, which refers to an automated ecosystem that is digital that works 24 hours a day, seven days a week, introducing your content, two new people, and constantly bringing people in to your business and into your funnels and generating revenue for you. But the blog is, it’s the anchor, it’s the, it’s the cornerstone of that whole thing and people just don’t talk about that. And that’s because of, I think exactly what Elizabeth said. Mmm. Which is that we’re, we’re so concerned with the vanity of, of, of metrics of how many followers that we have, like in recent years, it’s just been about like the perception versus the substance and the reality of how many people are coming to a website that, that we own.

RV: (02:30)
And I love that exaRVmple that she was sharing about a blog post that she wrote eight years ago is bringing in 100,000 visitors a month to her site. That’s crazy. Meanwhile, the same amount of time as writing one blog post that you put into writing a social media post, that social media post is going to disappear in 24 hours. Like if you’re lucky it’ll last 24 hours. It’s just to get pushed down the feed. No one’s going to go back and look at that, but it’s like what you post on social media over time, the value of it diminishes. But what you post on on the web, like as a on your website or specifically as a blog article, over time it gains traffic. It’s like a, it’s like a growing snowball. It’s, it’s almost like the time on social media is like spending money.

RV: (03:26)
The time on your blog is like investing money. The time on your social media is spending money because it disappears and it never really comes back. The time spent on a blog is investing money because it starts even, it starts small, but it grows and grows and grows and grows over time and one post years later can be bringing you more traffic than it ever did when you first posted. And that’s just something that you don’t hear about. And so I hope that you caught that and it made sense to you in if you’ve been fighting those of you that are members, if for some reason you’ve been resistant to this strategy we’re talking about with making the blog that everything revolves around the blog. Hopefully you’re onboard now. Mmm. Yeah. And hearing about how much money it can make and generate for you. Now, one thing that we were not in alignment on with Elizabeth, just to kind of comment on this, you know, she talked about not using the sidebar.

RV: (04:25)
Okay. W we just [inaudible] flat out would disagree with that. We are all about the sidebar. Mmm. Yes. A course on mobile. The sidebar doesn’t display. So it’s a, it’s a both. And for us, we want to see the sidebar on the desktop view because there’s still a large amount, almost 50% of traffic is still coming, you know, depending on what you’re looking at, you know, 40 to 50% of traffic is still coming from desktop. So it’s not like you want to not do that. But I also very much adamantly agree with her that when you’re on mobile, you need to have a different type of lead capture, a mechanism that scrolls with people because they’re not going to see the sidebar like they will as they are reading on desktop. So the other thing was there was, you know, she was talking about RSS feed and that she doesn’t use an automated RSS, which [inaudible] stands for real simple syndication and RSS is a little technical term, which means that when someone subscribes it, the, the system automatically emails them every time you post a new blog.

RV: (05:33)
Well Mmm, I would, I would agree with her to the standpoint where I can say, yeah, Hey, if you can do a manual broadcast every time you post a new blog, do that. Like that’s better cause it’s going to be fresh and customized and all that. Yeah. Most of you, you know, most of us are just struggling to barely keep up with all the moving parts of a digital marketing machine on a weekly basis anyway. So that’s why we, we are very big fans of the RSS, you know, automated email system because we’re trying to automate as much of this as we can so that, you know, you can be out doing all the things that you need to be doing, but you know, so anyways, that’s not really a disagreement. That’s more of like an in addition to if you can do custom broadcast, fine.

RV: (06:18)
Yeah, if you’re not able, if you don’t have the [inaudible] time to do that or you don’t have the staff, then just do an automated RSSV to start and you can always grow later. But I mean, the blog, the blog, the blog, just really, really huge. And some of the things that she was talking about related to SEO of naming your blog post, don’t, don’t, don’t name it something like clever, right? We talk about this a lot. Clear is greater than clever. Clear is greater than clever. Name it something that somebody would type into a search engine. That’s what you want to name it. Mmm. And when you get to phase three, our phase three event high traffic strategies, one of, one of the six sections in that phase three event is understanding like the Google algorithm and search algorithms and how those all things work.

RV: (07:07)
And those are called your H one tags, which is your, your title tags for an article. So those are really, really important that what you actually name your blog posts is really, really important. The second thing, which is related to what we were just talking about that she just really nailed I think is how some of this is as a business strategy issue. But a lot of it is a heart issue. Like a lot of this is an ego issue is, is that there’s an ego in social media of like, as I spend my time there and I have more followers, like that makes me maybe look better on the surface to some people. But unfortunately that’s why there’s so many people that are Twitter rich and dollar broke. And, and I say that like meaningfully and honestly and, and in a heartbroken way that there’s a lot of people who have a lot of social media followers and they really, really struggled to convert that to real dollars or significant or scalable dollars because they don’t control that relationship that the third party platform controls that relationship.

RV: (08:17)
And it doesn’t mean that third party platforms are bad. They’re, they’re good, they’re providing a service for free and we want to provide value back to them by producing content. But it just means you don’t, you don’t want to build your house on rented real estate. You know, people talk about all that time. You know, I think Michael Hyatt was the first person that I heard say that. And it’s just, yeah, that’s a great, yeah, a great analogy. But I also want [inaudible] I want to highlight for you something that I am now referring to as the 1% rule, the 1% role. So here’s what the 1% rule is, and this is this an ego, it’s just, it’s an ego thing. It helps you give get perspective, right? When you look at somebody’s social media profiles and you see how many people are following them, it’s easy to be intimidated, right?

RV: (09:03)
It’s to go, well man, they have a million followers. Holy moly. But in reality, just do 1% of that number because that is realistically, you know, a much more consistent look at how in gay, what is the engaged number? So 10% would be a hundred thousand 1% 10,000 yeah, right? Now let’s steal. Great. Like I want to have a million followers. There’s no reason I wouldn’t want to have a million followers. But again, it’s like if I could choose between having a million followers on social and 100,000 and email, I would take the 100,000 on email every single day of the week without a shadow of a doubt because those 100,000 I can reach whenever I want, as much as I want, as long as I want. I’m in control of that relationship. The million could disappear tomorrow, right? Like literally the algorithm changes, it disappears tomorrow. So just keep that in mind. It’s kind of like don’t compare your step number two to someone else to step number 27 and you know, just keep in mind that what appears on the surface, the people hit it hit hardest by the algorithms are the people with the biggest followings like yeah, for people starting out, we got crap, you know, I got a few thousand followers and now it’s like I’m lucky if a couple of hundred people see the post.

RV: (10:28)
But imagine how painful it is. If you have a million and you’ve got hundreds of thousands of people and you’ve done all this work to build this audience and then only only a few thousand of them see it, that’s painful. Painful man. We don’t want to see that happen to you. Like we want our community to be sure or build on social media. It doesn’t have to be one or the other, but it’s like make sure if it is one or the other that you’re, you’re bringing people over to the area that you control. And that should be your blog and your website in your properties in the, in the longterm. So that’s the 1% role. That’s the heart issue. And then the third thing that [inaudible] Elizabeth shared that I, well, it’s just so I think relevant and always good to hear and is scarcity versus abundance. Scarcity versus abundance.

RV: (11:20)
Yeah. More and more as time goes on, the people who I meet who are not only the wealthiest but the happiest, they are sharing what they know, they’re, they’re giving it away. They’re teaching people, they’re impacting lives. You know, [inaudible] [inaudible] discouraging to me how many times, cause this is what, you know, this is our business now. Brand builders group is what we’re doing all day. Every day is helping leaders and messengers grow their influence. And people say, I want to make an impact on the world. But then it’s like all they ever think about is like how much money they’re making. And that’s important too. We gotta be able to pay the bills and we want people to grow and make money. But it’s like they don’t, they’re afraid to teach people anything because they want to charge for everything. And, and so they never build a following because to get the real value you have to pay for it and nobody’s sure if it’s worth the value because they haven’t gotten any value yet.

RV: (12:17)
The abundance mentality is give it away first. Give it away first. Teach everything you know for free. Just teach it one bite at a time in all random order. Remember this quote, right? We say this all the time. People don’t pay for information. People pay for organization and application. People don’t pay for information. They pay for organization and application. You don’t have to be worried about giving away too much content for free. You don’t have to be worried about putting your best ideas out there. It’s not that you’re going to put all your best ideas out there and people aren’t going to buy from you. It’s that as you put their best ideas out there, you increase the chances that people are going to buy from you because they want to know what else and they want to see the full system and they want to see things in order.

RV: (13:06)
And most of all, they want help applying the ideas. Right? You can’t give away application because, I mean I guess you could, I guess you could give away. You’re doing work for people, but that’s, that’s not really what we’re talking about. We’re talking about giving away the ideas and that people are going to pay you for the assistance to help them get it implemented. People don’t pay for information. They pay for organization and application. So be of abundance. Share your best stuff, provide tons of value. And, and you know another way of thinking about this as the way that we try to process it is we want people to feel like they’ve gotten 10 times the value of what we’re charging for something before they ever give us any money, right? So if we’re going to come out and make a $3,000 offer, our goal is that by the time somebody sees a $3,000 offer, they feel like they have gotten ideas and strategies and insights from our free content that could help them make $30,000 and so by the time we asked for the sale, it’s almost like they feel like they owe us.

RV: (14:21)
It’s not even like they’re buying the thing that w it’s not even like they’re taking a risk on buying the thing that we’re promoting. It’s almost like they’re going, man, I’ve already gotten so much value from here. Like of course I’m going to buy like I’m going to keep buying and keep buying because you just keep over-delivering and over-delivering and that’s the brand you want to build. That’s the reputation you want to build and, and here’s the other thing that’s amazing. The more you give away for free, the more great ideas you develop. Like when you’re giving away stuff for free, you’re always advancing your thinking. You’re pushing yourself, you’re, you’re allowing for new space to explore new ideas at a deeper level. When you hoard the few ideas that you have and you feel like, Ooh, I want, I want to wait until someone pays me for it.

RV: (15:14)
It’s like you’re so busy hoarding these things and then [inaudible] manufacturer something on, on the, on the external, on the surface that people can digest for free and suddenly that’s, that’s meaningful. You, you never have this base or the energy to actually just develop more content. So the have the abundance mentality, give it away. Change lives. Like, yes, make money. We are all about making money to turn your reputation into revenue. That’s one of our slogans. But our, our, our thought process on that is like, we want to work with mission-driven messengers. We work with people who really want to make a difference in the world. So make a freaking difference in the world. Like go do that first, do something right now today that adds value to people’s lives. And, and I promise you somehow sooner or later it’s gonna come back to you in money and influence and all the above.

RV: (16:14)
I just, I just don’t, I can’t think of an example in my life or in anybody else’s life that I know where they, they provided so much value to the world that it didn’t flow back to them. And that’s just a mindset, a switch that you gotta make. So those are my three big takeaways from Elizabeth. I just, I’m so impressed with her. I love what her brand’s all about. I love the quality of the content that she puts out, the consistency, the clarity of her whole business model. And she’s just really, really awesome. So, you know, I encourage you to [inaudible] follow her and check out some of the stuff that she’s doing and stay tuned. As always, we’re working to help you mission-driven messengers turn your reputation into revenue and make a greater difference in the world. We’ll catch you next time.

Ep 54: Blogging: The Gift that Keeps Giving with Elizabeth Rider

RV: (00:01)
Holy moly friends. Ayou’re about to have your world rocked by. One of my newer friends who I absolutely adore and admire. Elizabeth Rider is her name and she is incredible. So she’s a nutritionist. She’s an author. She has a book, a great book that just came out called the health habit. She’s a, you know, a health coach and an online business mentor, but she is one of the like, Oh geez. Of blogging and building an audience. And if you go to your, if you go to her website, so she’s, she’s a seven figure. She’s turned it into a seven figure business, which we’re going to talk about. If you go to her website you’ll see, you know, we’ll put links to it, but elizabethrider.com. There’s over a hundred thousand people on her email list, which is very public. But what you wouldn’t know unless you were friends with her like me and we call her Liz and not Elizabeth cause we’re friends, is that this woman is getting 700,000 to a million page views a month of pure organic traffic from Google. From her blog. So to give you a frame of reference, like at my peak as a blogger, I was around a hundred thousand views in a month. So this is like 10 times beyond as an average of where I’ve ever been at at the best. So I, I was like, we gotta we gotta we gotta have her. So anyways, she’s the coolest. She’s here and Elizabeth, thanks for making time for us.

ER: (01:33)
Thanks Rory! Wow, that’s a lot. It’s a lot to live up to I feel like. But it’s all true. The page views the [inaudible] that’s what I want to talk to people about.

RV: (01:41)
Yeah. So, so I want to just hammer that directly, right? Like, because social media is like, it’s like the world of it’s like in golf, you know, they say like you drive for show, but you putt for dough and, and social media is like the drive. Like, Oh, you can drive the ball 350 yards. But it’s like the people who make the money know how to putt. And I just want, like, I just want your perspective on social media versus blogging because I don’t think people hear it. I don’t think that’s what you hear people talking about.

ER: (02:15)
Yeah, for sure. Like let me just say this. I mean I’ve got a lot of thoughts about that. I’m going to preemptive all the saying everything I’m about to say doesn’t mean that social media is bad or not good or useful cause I still use it too. So this is not to say that none of it’s useful, but I see an epidemic that needs to be corrected, especially with people coming into building brands right now where they want to spend all of their time. And I’m going to use Instagram is like the place, right? Because we’re in the zeitgeists. We’re Instagram is a place that people want to be. And again, it’s not bad. I want Instagram too. But when it comes to like this like longterm idea of people seeing your content and building a brand and getting, establishing yourself and using your time well, this is what I want to talk about.

ER: (02:59)
Instagram or Facebook or any of them, maybe 1% of your audience, you know, maybe if you’re really highly engaged, three to 5% of your audience sees all of your posts, right? And they see it within 24 hours and then it goes into your feed or onto your grid or whatever it is. And it’s, it does happen, but it’s very rare that someone scrolls back through maybe five posts, even think about a hundred posts, right? Like a deep, like, you know when somebody deep likes one of your photos and you’re like, Whoa, they were deep on my feedlike that. You know what I mean?

ER: (03:28)
And it’s like, well, you never want to happen when you’re like scrolling. Like maybe you find your app, your significant others acts or like you know, someone who you don’t want them to know that you’re looking at their stuff. You’re like, don’t like anything. Make sure that you don’t accidentally double tap something like my example all the time, but it’s rare, right? Right. What I see is people, you know, spending so much time crafting this content that maybe a hundred people see if even right, if you have a large brand, maybe 1,002 thousand people see it. If you’re just starting out, maybe a few people see it, but then it gets buried, right? And none of that is cataloged in the search engines. Now let’s talk, let’s talk about a blog where I have a post that I wrote in my sweat pants eight years ago that sends 80 to 100,000 people a month to my blog. Still from every month, every month.

ER: (04:26)
And in turn the, you know, a percentage of those people get on my email list. That’s the granola post on my healthy homemade granola post. I just wrote a post and I want to also make sure everybody knows it’s not just because I wrote it eight years ago, that one happens to be there. A post I wrote last year is a number one ranked Google search for easy to kill hard boiled eggs. So in that, I just wrote that last year. So I don’t want people to think, well, yeah, that was eight years ago, right? Like you can write a post now that, yeah, it’ll, it’ll become it. So what I want to, what I would, I really stress for the people who I coach and anybody who asks me about this, I’m like, look, your blog is the home of your business. It’s cataloged by Google and it lives there forever.

ER: (05:03)
And if you do it right, if you know how to do it, you will get traffic literally, perpetually, forever. That can continue to build and continue to grow and continue to put people on your email list to see your products and services you can continue to serve. Or that same amount of time could’ve been spent on an Instagram post that’s now buried 80 posts deep. No one’s ever gonna see again. So it’s kind of like, you know, w I think people, and I’m gonna, this might be a little bit of tough love, but you’ve really got to humble yourself to be like, I don’t need to be part of the popularity contest on Instagram. What I need to take my time and serve my blog so that I can continue to reach readers and PR potential clients and customers forever.

RV: (05:48)
I love that. You know, I’m thinking of a parallel here with money. You know, there’s a metaphor I heard a long time ago that you know, growing your wealth is growing in army and when you spend a dollar it’s like you kill off one of your soldiers. When you invest a dollar that is like a soldier multiplying, like it’s sort of, you know, kind of spawns when you, that’s almost how this is. It’s like when you spend all this time on a social media post, people see at once and then it’s gone forever. When you put that into a post that is, is cataloged on your blog, Google is driving traffic to it and the older, it’s almost like from a Google perspective, the older it is, the better in it. Like the, the, it can be really valuable.

ER: (06:30)
There’s something, and I want to make this clear to people. I’ll give everybody a tip here. It does, it establishes that Google, Google wants to continue to send people to things that they know people like which are being clicked on and people are spending time on the page. Google also likes old posts being updated because it knows that the site is fresh. So like the healthy homemade granola. Once a year I’ll go in there and maybe update the photo or like, you know, I’ve, I’ve updated a few of the sentences so you don’t have to do that, but Google does like that. I never changed the URL. Don’t ever change your URL. That’s really important but you can even add to it. You know, I’ve gone in there and been like, Hey, this is now one of the most popular granola recipes on the internet. You can, you can continue to update it. But yes, it likes the longevity when building the site. So the stores doing it now, the point of that is start doing it now. I haven’t got a year or two years or three years to start blogging

RV: (07:21)
And, and so I think it’d be fun to talk about Google here a little bit. Cause everyone hears about like hashtags and like follow and, and you know, hitting the search page or the for you page or whatever. But Google is like the ultimate search engine. And I think a lot of authors and content creators don’t really understand that much about you know, how does, how does Google work, so like, is there anything that you kind of do to, to, to sort of think in your mind okay. With every post, like is there any kind of checklist that you go through for that?

ER: (07:57)
That’s actually my new program called blog. Like it’s hot. I actually have an entire program, but I would love to share for free with all of your listeners. I’m like, it’s hot is my new course because that’s the problem is people are like, well how do I do that? Right? So I give everybody an exact checklist and you know, after, after a certain creative time, that becomes second nature. So I don’t even need to use a checklist, but I’ll, you know, give everybody a checklist. One thing you really want to do is name your posts. The title of your post needs to be what somebody would Google. So like one of the reasons that that you know like if we look at easy to feel hard boiled eggs people, I didn’t, I didn’t call the post the trick to peeling hard boiled eggs or

ER: (08:36)
Don’t make this mistake when you peel hard boiled eggs or something like, and Google might Google would find that. But the just easy to peel hard boiled eggs. It’s like boom, that’s the title of the post and that’s what somebody Google Google’s. Now Google did make an update to the algorithm at the end of 2009 to have more of like predictive called bird. We don’t need to get into like the analytics, the technical side of that. But what it just means is that there is predictive, the search, the search engine is smart enough to kind of predict what they think the person is trying to find. So there is some logic built into that. But you know, for the most part it’s really important to name your post what it actually is and what somebody would Google. Whereas like an email list, when you’re emailing, you know, for the subject line you might use like a headline, right? Or like a question or you’re trying to get people to open the email that’s different than like what you would title the post. Just make sure your title. Yeah. So your post title and the email subject line are different. But just make sure your post title is what somebody would Google. That’s super, super important.

RV: (09:37)
Yeah. It’s almost like, like an email subject line might be like curiosity or shock or whatever, but it’s like your post on your page needs to be like, almost like it could be very literal boring cause, but it’s what the person would type in and and so how do you know, like so do you, are you like in the back of Google ads all day, every day? Like, are you in Google analytics looking and being like, what should my posts are ranking and traffic or like what’s, how do you keep score?

ER: (10:09)
That’s really interesting. I don’t that much. So I teach things a little different because, so you can look at keywords and you can do that. I don’t use Google ads at this moment. I could in the future, I don’t use ads. There’s a, there’s a keyword tool in ad words that people can log into and search keywords. I always tell people like, look, and I think this is what makes me different. And like the blogging teacher’s sphere, if researching keywords worked and ever you just blogged off of researching keywords, everybody who ever did that would have millions of views and they don’t, right? So the way I teach blogging is like, one kind of goes back to what you guys teach about a personal brand. It’s got to like fit into your how you serve and what you teach. Right? So, and when you know your customer, when you are connected to your mission and your customer, I know what my customer’s Googling.

ER: (10:56)
How do easy to feel hard boiled eggs, right? Like how to make healthy, homemade granola. These are all things that I know that my customer would Google. And I think that blogging has to be enjoyable. This is all stuff I’m doing in my, like, this is stuff I eat and stuff I’m doing in my real life. I’m not blogging about things that I don’t use or eat. So, you know, the truth, the actual definition of blog is weblog and it was intended to be just a wet, a log on the web of your daily life. Right? That’s what a personal blog started out as. And now it’s, you know, we use them in many different ways, but for me it’s like I stay in my lane of, I know like my blog is about healthy recipes and practical tips for healthy living. That’s, that’s right.

ER: (11:36)
That’s right. I stay, I also have, you know, category for business for when I do that. You know, I always tell people have three to five categories of your, on your blog, not more, right? You don’t want to dilute yourself. You’re going to see five categories on my blog, something’s going to fall in there. And really for me, the way I decide what I’m going to post, I do have, you know, a map out a calendar, but if the week, if I want to change it that week, if I’m like, wow, I made this instead or you know, this recipe just came up. I change things on the fly too, but I actually keyword research can be, can be useful but it’s also when you have a personality brand and a personality based business, you’re blocking about what you’re doing right and about what you teach and what you’re good at.

RV: (12:18)
Sure. But, but so you’re not, you’re not like huge like into Google analytics or using, you know, crazy tools. Just every once in awhile you’ll get a report from like somebody who will send you a report or something.

ER: (12:29)
Yeah. I look at my Google analytics. I mean absolutely you need to have it installed. I look at it probably once a month. What I think is super valuable for me for with Google analytics is that I can see those really high traffic posts that are performing well. Google does want to see those updated or just that they’ve been touched at least once a year. Just cause it still says, Hey, I’m still here. Like some someone’s the gatekeeper of this. I might update an image, I might update something, but I also make sure like midway through the post I have an extra special banner or something that’s like, Hey, get on my email list. Like, Hey, if you’re loving this post, make sure, you know, cause you can include extra calls to action and those really high performing posts to make sure that that you’re maximizing the space. So, so it’s interesting, you know, it’s interesting to see and I go look at those posts and you know, I do the same thing on every post as far as like how I you know, write the title, pose the H two tags, the images, how I construct the post. But then I’m like, what are these, you know, I do have these like 10 or 15, like huge traffic posts. I’m like, okay, what’s happening on these? You know, what’s, what’s making,

RV: (13:34)
So you’re always watching those, you’re always like, let me pay attention. Is it like star players, right? It’s like, okay, this is like, you know,

ER: (13:41)
It’s also seasonal. You know, like in December, healthy homemade, hot chocolate almost surpasses healthy homemade granola, right? But in July, that’s not going to be the case. So you know, for a blog like mine, it’s a little seasonal. One thing that I would tell people to do, I know a lot of people listening to this are like, wow, I’ve just been spending so much time on Instagram. So I want to mention this real quick. Look at your top nine or your top posts from Instagram from the last year and fricking take a Saturday or Wednesday and Thursday night and turn that into nine blog posts. Like whatever your highest performing content was, turn those into blog posts, immediately. Get those onto a blog. That’s nine posts. People are always like, what should I post to my blog? I don’t have to post. I’m like, if you have good Facebook or Instagram post tournament blog posts.

RV: (14:23)
So I was going to ask you about that in terms of like repurposing your content. You know, like it sounds like you’re a classic, your process is more of like a classic blogger. Like you sit down and you write, you write an article, you’re not transcribing something or starting with something else. And then how much of that information do you post on social or does it, do you really treat them separate as like separate entities?

ER: (14:49)
You know what’s interesting, right? I don’t, it’s not that I treat them as separate entities. We do take we link to my posts and we rotate through them on the Facebook feed. On Instagram. It depends, I do a story or you know, a post if it fits into the grid. But I really, for me personally, I see social media as like an accoutrement to my, to my blog and it’s really work. People connect with me. So I do a lot of like face to camera stories and that kind of a thing where, and again, it’s more the reach. And one thing I’m proud of and I’ll say, I’ve never bought Instagram followers or any social media followers. I’ve never purchased followers. So all of my followers are, you know, legit real followers, which means also it hasn’t grown as fast as some people who have, you know, invested in different ways or maybe have purchased an audience. So, you know, I have 20,000 ish Instagram followers, which is amazing. It’s all, you know from just organically growing that. But when I know that I can have almost a million or more page views a month on my blog, that’s where my time and effort is going.

RV: (15:56)
So can we, do, I want to shift the conversation a little bit to the email list? Because you know, I mean like, obviously we’re, we’re big, we’re big fans of the blog, right? And we, we basically think of social media as just like traffic redirects. They’re just like tributaries that like point, point people back back to the blog. And there’s some other things that it does, social proof, et cetera, et cetera. But the, once they come to your site. All right, so you’ve got this title like you’ve gone through, you’ve done all the tagging and all the, all the steps of the, you know, what you’re going to do to make sure it index as well. What are the things that are actually building the email list and can you just talk about why that’s important? Like if, you know, there’s a million people coming back every month, like does it even really matter to build the email list? How do you do it? Where do you do it? How often? When like talk about that a little bit.

ER: (16:54)
It’s still absolutely important. You know, email is, this is the way I credit, it’s almost like to dating. Like if, if someone’s going to ask out on a date, social media is like meeting at a bar and maybe chatting with somebody and all your friends are there, right? Like you’re, you’re not really that invested in it. Like maybe he’s cute, she’s cute. You’re like having a little bit of a thing. Somebody coming to your website to me is like you’re meeting that person for coffee, right? Like it’s a little bit more intimate [inaudible] out of the noise. You’re like, okay, we’re gonna have some coffee. Being on someone’s email list is like inviting them into your living room. Right? Or maybe, and I will say like in a cheeky way, like almost your bedroom, cause a lot of people wake up in the morning and they get on their phones and they start scrolling.

ER: (17:35)
And guess what, you might be on there, they might be on your email list and you’re the first person that they see in the morning. Like that’s like a legitimately like real thing that happens. It’s like this deeper level of intimacy because there’s been an exchange you gave them, they gave you their email address. And generally what, you know, people call these different things like a big banana. Like everybody on the internet is monkeys and you need to like, you know, have a bunch of bananas that people can grab. I don’t love that analogy as much. You know, the free download on your website, right, like that you’re, you’re exchanging value, they’re giving you their email address and you were giving them something for free

RV: (18:08)
Lead magnet.

ER: (18:11)
Right now on my website we’ve got five, five healthy habits that you can implement today for immediate results or, you know, an eight page guide. And one thing, you know, which was actually something that I like, I had this dawned on me, I should have done this way sooner because my email list would probably be even bigger. That’s in the header of every single blog post on my website. My lead magnet is in the header of every single blog post on my website. So when somebody lands there, it’s, it’s at the top no matter what. It’s also underneath every single post. I keep my sidebar pretty clean of things just because on mobile and traffic’s going mostly mobile. I think 60 or 65% of my traffic is mobile. They don’t see the sidebar. Anyways. so don’t, you know the sidebar, it’s not a bad thing to use, but I, I have the sign up. There’s one above the post, one below the post, and then there’s a scroll pop up that once somebody gets, I think it’s 30 or 40% through the page, it pops up and it was like, Hey, do you want this free thing?

RV: (19:13)
[Inaudible] What are you using for the scroll pop-up? Do you know?

ER: (19:16)
Well, I, my WordPress, my side of WordPress it’s designed on show it, but the blog is WordPress and I think we’re using pop-up ally pro right now is the WordPress plugin for the pop up. That might change in the future, but I think that’s just the tool that we’re using and it’s worked well. And then I use active campaign for email. So whenever somebody subscribes anywhere on the website, they get funneled into active campaign.

RV: (19:38)
And is there a certain percentage, like if you go, is there a certain percentage that you aim for every month? If you go like, Hey, if you’re getting a ho, if you’re getting you know, call it a million, cause it’s easy numbers. If you’re getting a million page views or visitors, I guess if you’re getting a million did you, does are page visits, right? Those are page views, so, so that could be it could be the same person. Right. So and then also

ER: (20:02)
It’s usually a million page views. It depends on the month. Honestly, the series is probably 200,000 to three or 400,000 people could be more, could be less, but you know, just depends.

RV: (20:16)
It totally depends. But then it’s like, and then some fraction of those people, like a, a larger, I would, I would think at this point some large number of those are people who have been there before. But then there’s also going to be a pretty big chunk just because of the volume here that are new people. Is there a certain percentage or anything that you go like, I want to see my email list growing by this percentage every month? Or you watch that closely or not really?

ER: (20:41)
Yeah, I, it’s, I’m, I’m definitely into analytics. I watched that. But I also focus, I try to focus the majority of my on just serving the audience and blogging. Although I will say we’re aiming for a thousand or more signups from organic Google traffic a week. I’m onto the email list and I would like to continue to scale that. And you know, the next will be 1500 and then 2000. So, and that’s, you know, that’s about what we’re out. I will also say with my email list, we very actively dump dump. That’s a terrible word, right?

RV: (21:11)
Well fits your dating analogy. Yeah.

ER: (21:14)
We dumb people who are inactive and this is really, really important. So on the email list, because people want, here’s what happens, a lot of things happen. Someone signs up, they Ms. Key there email address. So it’s never going to, you know, it might balance or it might be going somewhere or somebody changes jobs. 30% of email addresses are abandoned every year. So just think,

RV: (21:35)
Wow, that’s crazy.

ER: (21:38)
So think about like a previous job or maybe somebody changes their last name or they, or they just are like, wow, I’m so over this email address. Or people have like a catchall email address for that. Their, their signups, you know, it’s not their primary email address. There’s, there’s a variety of reasons or they’re just not interested. So I can’t, I think ours is set, it’s, and I give them a good amount of time. It’s like three or four months. If they haven’t opened an email, it triggers an automated re-engagement campaign, trying to be like, Hey, here’s, here’s another free ebook. Like here’s another freebie first and then a few days later, here’s another one. So we give them a lot of opportunity to stay, but if nothing’s being opened, we dump them. They’re not on the active email list anymore because at that hurts your open rates and it skews all of your numbers. So we really actively dumb people.

RV: (22:27)
Interesting. Do you delete them completely from the system or do you just put them in a bucket of people you don’t send email to?

ER: (22:32)
I want to delete them because I just like energetically like to see the number as is, however keep them. And it depends on what system you’re using. It’s ridiculous. You also pay for them. Well, no, actually an active campaign and most of them, if they’re not on any lists, you’re not paying for them. So it doesn’t hurt to keep them. Gosh, if I was paying for them, I would probably delete them because I’m at such a, the more your email list grows, the more you pay and I’m not going to pay for people who aren’t opening emails. Right, right. So if you’re on a system that you are paying for it, I would suggest considering deleting them. However, in the system that I used, we were only charged with their analyst. So we just removed from all lists and then the data’s there. Historically in case like this is more of just a general best practice in customer service and technical stuff, you want to keep people there because if they resubscribe two years later and are asking for something, you can see, Oh wait, you subscribed two years ago? It just gives you a history, it’s probably not a big deal to delete them. Again, my, you know, active campaign consultant and specialist is like, no, we need to keep them. And so I’m like, fine, if that’s the best practice, we will.

RV: (23:36)
Who is also a client, a client of brand builders group a and we love her and we’re so grateful for her. She’s amazing. So how, so do you email

ER: (23:46)
Your list every time you post a blog? Yes. Yes you do. No, I don’t just copy and paste. So I tell people do not use RSS feeds. There’s, you should, no one’s going to open those. Right? People want emails that are written to them and that are personal. Just like you said, that’s such an old thing to do like an RSS feed where it was like, Oh, the blog posts triggers and it just goes to everybody. People know that, that they’re not gonna read that. So, and besides that, your email subject line needs to be different than the post title. Because if you tell people what the post title is, they’re probably not going to open the email cause they’ll just know, Oh, if I ever want to did it feel hard boiled eggs, I’ll come back and open that. You know what I mean? But I do send them a quick email with like maybe a little personal, a line or two, like about what I’ve been doing that week. And then I might copy the first few sentences and then there’s an image and then it’s read the posts because you’re always trying to get people back to the blog cause then they’ll go to more pages, they’re more likely to see your services and they’re engaging in your brand more. The goal of that email is to get them back onto the blog. Yeah.

RV: (24:52)
So then, yeah, so once they’re on there, you say you’re pushing, I mean, once your email list gets big enough, you’re pushing your own traffic to some extent. I mean at some whatever, 20% open Raiders, 3% click through rate or whatever your email rates are, you’re driving a lot of that traffic.

ER: (25:06)
That’s a good point. As your email list gets bigger, what happens is like I do the post and I will tell everyone I am consistent. I am definitely not perfect. And there’s a big difference between those things. So I’m to, that’s you what I want to happen every week, but this may or may not happen on this timeframe.

RV: (25:25)
We’re going to all be looking next week to make sure this happens. And then we’ll be sending you

ER: (25:30)
Exactly most of blog posts on Monday. Schedule the email to go out Tuesday morning. Sometimes I posted on Tuesday and the email goes out Wednesday morning. I like to send my, have my emails go in the morning. And I do really realistically, it would be great to do one post a week, but really blog posts, I’m probably averaging three a month right now, which is good. And again, that’s consistent. Google really likes consistency on blogs and it doesn’t have to be perfect. Again, don’t mistake perfection with consistency. So don’t get down on yourself if you’re like, Oh, it’s Tuesday and I didn’t do it, you know just make sure that you’re doing at least three to four posts a month. Heck, even if you just did two, you’d be doing better. Well, Google doesn’t want to see is that you have all these blog posts and then you don’t post for a year and then you tried it, you know, and you can rebuild that.

ER: (26:17)
So that’s okay if that happens. But just try to be at least getting something up, you know, three new posts. And if even if I don’t write a blog post, I’ll still email my list that week. And it might just be because I’ve been blogging for so long, let’s say I didn’t get a post up this week, the email would just be like you know, Hey, here’s, here’s five chocolate recipes to get ready to for Valentine’s day and I can just link to five recipe chocolate recipes from the blog. Right. So it can be a new linking to other things. Hold things. Yeah.

RV: (26:46)
How do you keep, how, how long have you been blogging?

ER: (26:51)
12 years.

RV: (26:52)
So how do you keep coming up with new art? Like articles after 12 years of doing three posts a month?

ER: (26:59)
Yeah.

RV: (27:00)
Like don’t you run out of stuff to say

ER: (27:02)
No. So here’s a few tips for people. I never run out of things to say. One, if you’re doing, if you’re blogging about something that you really genuinely are passionate about, and for me that’s healthy food, you will never run out of ideas. Like there’s just, you know, and that might be, you know, when I think about recipes, I would never run out of recipes. There’s always something new. But one, one thing that really helps is like if you go look out, if you click on natural beauty or something on my site in that category, I’ll do like the natural beauty series where some people would be like, here are the 10 best natural products. I’ll call that the natural beauty series. And I’ll do 10 blog posts. Like one’s castor oil, one’s menuca honey, like each one will get. So, so take something that normally would be a list and turn that into individual blog posts into a series. Like one of like, one thing that I teach people in my program is like a year of content. You can create a year of blog ideas in one hour if you just come up with like four or five like categories and the thing about like three things that you want to teach in each category and turn each of those things into a series or into multiple posts and you’ll just never run out of never run out of ideas.

RV: (28:12)
Interesting. Interesting. Interesting stuff. Okay. So the last little section I want to ask you about is just a lot of our clients struggle with this, which is, you know, you are a nutritionist and a health coach, but then you have a section of your blog that is about business. Yeah, it’s so, so to me it’s like, it’s one thing if you have like health food and then you know, maybe did like a series on healthy oils or something like that. But business seems kind of like a, it seems like a little bit of a distance. Maybe it’s not. But that’s what I want to ask you about is like you, you, you have kind of gone ahead with just like keeping it together on the blog. Like how have you reconciled in your own mind? Like I’m, you know, I’m, I’m known for healthy, like you broke through the wall with healthy recipes.

RV: (29:00)
Like she hands wallets, you use that term which all of our listeners know about. You broke through the wall with healthy recipes. You’re a, you are a classic example of one medium, a blog, one topic, healthy recipes, extremely consistent for years and years and years. One primary business model, which is information, a secondary business model of affiliates. Like you are such a great example even though you weren’t our client of somebody who actually did this stuff. Does the stuff that we teach and talk about and then, and then so, so talk about the business piece. Like how did, when did that come in? How did you, was it like, Oh, I’m on the other side of the wall, fine. Or Mmm. You know, like,

ER: (29:44)
Yeah. I mean, I didn’t even know what the wall was, but I think here’s, here’s what it is. The business piece of my business grew from me figuring out the business on the house side and people being like, how are you doing that? What are you doing? Will you teach us? Right.

RV: (29:58)
So they were asking you for it.

ER: (30:00)
Yes. People were asking, but I’m also just teaching what I’m doing and I think if you look at it like ultimately, yeah. W like if you needed to pick a thing, it’s healthy recipes that I broke through the wall, but that’s also just what I was doing on a daily basis. Right? I was blogging what was working for me. And when you look at these categories, they’re all things that are working for me in life. All right. I am big, like I said before, like on your blog, pick three to five categories, right? Business. I, I did kind of, I was like, should I just, I was, I debated having business as a category. I’ll tell you that because I see what you’re saying. Like it can be confusing. Like somebody lands here for granola, what’s this thing about business? But what they’re seeing is that I’m running a business, right? When somebody lands on my blog, I’m running a business. So I think, you know, that category in my mind is there for someone who’s like, wow, I want to run a business like this. How would I do that? And if someone’s not interested in that, they just want the healthy recipes and they can just get the healthy recipes.

RV: (30:55)
Oh, so that’s just one of your five categories. It’s just like this, this thing that’s kind of over here. And I think what’s interesting too is that your audience was asking for it. That is sorta telling, right? If you’re serving the audience and they’re asking for it. Yeah. So anyways, I just, I thought that was, I thought that was really interesting. And you do, I mean, you do a lot of business from your business portion of your site. I mean you’ve done, Oh yeah. I mean you’ve, you’re one of the top affiliates for Marie Forleo and several other business people like and that, and that’s, I think the part that’s so cool about it is like that’s who you are. Like you’re interested in business, you’re learning business, you’re constantly, you know, we, we actually met cause you were at Louis’s mass Lewis house mastermind and I was there and that’s how we met. And so it’s like clearly that’s just like a hobby and passion of yours and it’s kind of true to the roots of the web blog concept of like I’m blogging about my life. Yeah,

ER: (31:49)
Totally. It’s, yeah, that’s exactly it. Worry. It’s like I view my blog and like everything I do now is, you know, I figured out what works for me and then I put it on the blog and I’m not saying that, you know, everybody has to do this. I’m not, it’s not like this is the one way that will work for everyone. I don’t say that with food and nutrition. I don’t say that with business. I tell everybody you need to figure it out for yourself. What way works best for you. But I view everything I do now, especially, you know, via the medium of the blog of like I feel a responsibility right in the different areas of success that I’ve had with my own health, with the business that I’ve grown you know, with, with what I’ve learned to share that and to say, Hey, this is an option for people.

ER: (32:33)
You know, even working with brand builders group, I want people to know that I’ve gotten a ton of value from you and I’ve had so much value from our interactions because I want people to know that I got value from that. And I want people to work with you. You know, be schools the same way. Like you, somebody just emailed me yesterday, they’re like, Lizzie, if you have your own business program, why on earth would you be an affiliate for another business program? And I’m like, because it changed my life. It, it legitimately changed my life. And there are people on my email list who might be like a photographer or a a business struggle, just store, you know, I had a woman who came through who wanted to start her own toothpaste line. Like you know, all of these different things. I feel like I’m doing a disservice to the world, to the email list if I don’t share what taught me to do what I’m doing now, if that makes sense.

ER: (33:23)
You know, so and I don’t view it as competition or cannibalizing. I think any business program I teach works in synergy with anything else that I recommend. Right? We all need to learn from multiple teachers. So I don’t view it as like you should do one or the other. I’m like, look, go learn from a lot of people, see who you resonate with and, and learn from a lot of people. But you know, at this point it’s still why, you know, on my website under become a health coach, you’ll see the Institute for integrative nutrition because that’s how I became a health coach. So, you know, there’s this old model of wanting to keep our secrets for ourselves or you know, the secrets to success that people don’t care or, you know, cause we feel like, well, what if I share this and somebody becomes more successful than me in my view.

ER: (34:06)
I’ve done my job as a mentor and it’s just a citizen of the planet. If I can share something with somebody and they do better than me, that’s good. That’s what I want. I want people to build bigger blogs, bigger businesses. I want them to become a more famous health coach. You know, have a higher traffic recipe blog. Like that’s good. Right? That’s why we’re here. And it’s, it’s, it’s, so, I don’t even know what the word is. It feels, it’s, it’s awful to think, well, I’m going to do all of this. I’m not going to tell you what the hell. Like I don’t want to live that way.

RV: (34:35)
Wow. That’s such like classic scarcity versus abundance mindset. Absolutely love that about, you totally got goosies listening to that. I mean that just the, the mindset of just what has changed in my life and just wanting to help people. Liz, where should people go if they wanna connect with you? Obviously Elizabeth rider.com and the health habit, the book, and we’ll link all that. What else?

ER: (34:59)
Yeah, Elizabeth fighter.com get on my email list. I send people a lot of free books and the longer you’re there, the more free recipes and eBooks and just insider stuff that you get the books on Amazon. I’m on Instagram. I do lots of stories, but yeah. However, here’s what I tell people. However, they want to connect. We’ll connect. I don’t do Snapchat. I don’t do tech talk. You know, I, I have my few mediums and I would love for people to come over to the website.

RV: (35:24)
Awesome. well thank you so much. This was hugely valuable, a totally a powerful perspective that I don’t think people hear enough about and really appreciate you opening the door to like you know, just the, all the behind the scenes of your business. So thank you for supporting us and we’re cheering you on and we wish you the best.

ER: (35:43)
Thank you. Thank you. Bye everyone.

Ep 51: Mindset Shifts That Up Your Media Game with Susie Moore | Recap Episode

RV: (00:06)
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with. This is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit call brand builders group.com/summit call to talk to you soon on with the show.

RV: (01:02)
It is a happy day for you because you are going to meet one of the coolest people ever. Her name is Susie Moore. We met Susie at an event we were at with Michael Hyatt, who of course is a good friend of ours and Susie is one of these people that the more we’ve gotten to know about her, the more that we have fallen in love and ha and I know her and her husband Heath pretty well. We’ve gotten to meet him face to face a couple of times. And she is somebody who used to be a sales director in Silicon Valley and she left that to become a life coach and an advice column. This, but her real expert, one of her real expertise is understanding media. All right. So she helps people develop confidence and you know, does a lot of coaching around that.

RV: (01:47)
But tactically she knows a ton about the media. She’s been on the today show herself. She’d been on Oprah, she’s been in all the big outlets. She’s been in media over 300 times, I think if I saw that right, it’s 300 different outlets. There you go. And she’s just a master at it. So she’s the author. She’s an author, you know, her first book was called what, what if it does work out and she lives in Miami with a Heath and they’re just awesome. So I felt like you had to meet Susie to talk a little bit about media and PR. So Susie, welcome to the show, my friend. I just love much. Yeah. So I think of, you know, I remember when when we did our first book launch, you know, we hired a publicist and we did like, you know, a tour bus and we ran out of the country and like we did all this like formal media and it was in my mind, it was just like this one time event and, and yet you have, you help people like stay in the news all the time and and just kind of like get a understanding how did use media to drive their business.

RV: (03:02)
So I, I guess my first question is just sort of like, what do you think are the misconceptions that people have about PR in media in general? And specifically I’m talking about, you know, for our audience is mostly like either authors or speakers or executives who are trying to promote a cause or a book or a movement or some type.

SM: (03:24)
Yes. I mean I think the misconceptions, a couple of the real big ones, all that you have to have, you know, fancy [inaudible] the connections that you have to have some type of training or you know, foot in the door with somebody or something, but you need a publicist that this isn’t something that you can do yourself. I think the media can be a little bit intimidating. We don’t know where to, again, sometimes you think you have to be a real expert Xbox, you know, and certainly as authors, entrepreneurs, you already are experts in all fields, but sometimes I think it can be a bit intimidating. You think that you still need to kind of wait or you need somebody to help you do it and that it’s just not accessible. And really the opposite is true and it just does need content. Like you will be generous when you all pitching yourself. A couple of my editors need new 15 pieces like holiday on that website that, I mean they pay a lot of content, fresh content daily, so they also want to hear from you the talent. I mean there’s certainly a place to publicist because doing DIY media isn’t for everybody, especially at a business level, but I know having a lot of medicines as friends now that they will do hear from the talent, which is just regular people like you and meet with a regular stories

RV: (04:34)
And you’re saying when you’re saying hear from him, you’re saying it’s not a, it’s not a hit to your credibility to reach out yourself versus having someone on your behalf do it.

SM: (04:46)
It’s the opposite, right? It’s actually having a real, a real human, bright, real possible person about some of the human story and the reaching out directly wanting to connect directly and wanting to just kind of speak from the heart. I mean the best stories, the best media messages, all just these real stories, right? Human beings. Like what is that? We have to say what we’ve experienced, what it is that we’ve love to share hearing from this source is preferred in Mercedes.

RV: (05:11)
Yeah. I think that that is I think so that is a misconception for sure. Is like I gotta have a publicist just even to be credible now. And so I, I hear you saying, so it’s not that, where do you find these people? Cause, cause you go, okay, let’s say you are going to DIY and, and you know, some of our clients have pretty big operations and they, you know, they’re probably going to have someone, but a lot of our clients are newer and they’re just getting started and they need, they need a few media appearances to like build some of that credibility. But I don’t think they, I think you’re right. They, it seems daunting. It feels overwhelming. It’s like why would anybody reach out, listen to me and, and I don’t, I don’t even know where to start. So like where do you go find these people?

SM: (05:55)
I mean, it’s an interesting question, right? Because the, the daunting facts, it just puts people off in the beginning, right? It’s like I just went for the right, you know, I do need some help with it. Whereas people are just, they’re accessible everywhere. Like what do you think about, how do you find anybody’s info anyway, right. Twitter is still then as a right to stop home. If you can take any like large media outlet as often a contact with us page and even look at any magazine. Next. Last name, last name is listed, finding contact information. I mean, well I was speaking to an editor recently and I’m like, he’s like in a couple of my friends email address and she’s like, if they have five seconds in a Google account, like they could find it. Like edit does want to be available to, they will want to be found by people.

SM: (06:35)
Like again, just like even me and I even have a couple of edits and friends who are, who say, you know, if I get publishes emails I just delete them. Bet against you in some cases because if somebody found her information and they craft a pitch that’s, that’s relevant and suitable, then you’ve really gone up and an editor’s estimation immediately. They already can see it was a really promising source. So finding information, I mean you just, I use a couple of different email sites for specific, you know, if it’s Conde Nast or Haas for example, or NBC if you’re looking to pitch television. But I mean the intonation’s everywhere, it just takes you five minutes of home up to say, you know, I was a puzzle.

RV: (07:17)
So you’re basically, but the editor is who you’re going for. Is that who you’re looking for?

SM: (07:22)
Yes. The editors or producers? Yeah, it, depending on all the podcasts, Booker, if you will. And often it’s just reaching out to a host directly on Instagram. It can be as simple as it’s real again, right rule, just human beings. We love stories that really, you know, it’s what makes the world go around and people want to receive pitches, content. And if you, if you have something relevant for that audience and you’re being of service to them,

RV: (07:45)
I love it. Okay. So number one, don’t necessarily need a publicist. Number two, you can find the people they want to be found. Number three number three.

SM: (07:57)
So you’re just saying like race.

RV: (07:59)
Yeah. So then the, and then the third thing I think is that they need you probably more than you need them. So those are, those are big things. So now let’s talk about the pitch itself. All right. So you know, when you say pitch, that’s like an email or a DM or something, right? As typically that’s going to be how it happens. What do I need to know to like get their interest and make it worth their time, you know, reach out. Like how does their mind work and how, what do I need to know about how their mind works so that I can craft what I’m trying to say in a way that they go? Sure. Done. Let’s have, let’s have you [inaudible].

SM: (08:41)
Yes, it’s a great question. So a pitch essentially is you in an email and no more than three paragraphs saying why, you know, why. Well, you’re a perfect fit for this editor at this time. And then looking for just a couple of very things. So looking for relevance, right? So if you’re a travel website, no one wants to know about your newborn baby unless it’s about traveling with a newborn baby. Right? So it’s surprising how few people do the research on specifically what type of content editors want and what you have to do. Again, it’s five minutes like you’re going to travel and leisure.com going to Marie-Claire, going to SPI, going to whatever website it is and just seeing what type of content is being created. So you one of the relevant and then natural good thing. Well that audience what it is you have to say.

SM: (09:23)
And then also just being succinct. And how did you present your information? So a lot of mistakes. Icy, probably the most common mistake is a lot of rambling and a lot of lists. Why you like I’m this author, this many books and I’ve you know, been here and there, you know it’s great to include a couple of clips. Like your bio is like one sentence. Say why you right. So who has your hip has some white. So I’m worry and I do this for a living. And then you say your picture is simply what your idea is and then a couple of sentences about what you’ll say in your articles. So this is for guest post specifically or even for a segment, what it is exactly that you’re going to say about that topic. And then just having to, you know, assess, I mean ideally even those in peg it to something happening in the media. So if I mean thinking about anything that’s in the news.

RV: (10:10)
Okay. So, so hold on on that part. Cause that’s, that’s I want to come back. I want to come back and hit that. But, but so you’re saying too much rambling. So it’s just like an unclear like what the heck are you, what, what is the idea that you’re trying to present and too much of like the me monster, like here’s my 15 page bio.

SM: (10:32)
Yeah.

RV: (10:33)
And what all they really care about is what is the value you’re going to provide to their audience? Like what are you actually going to say? What is the segment and how is that useful to their audience?

SM: (10:43)
Yes. What am I, a friend says, you know, who cares? So what, why you right. And it’s as simple as that that you guys said walk, why you, and it’s like, yeah, so it puts simply who you want. We don’t need to know much. Right. And some people just really go into detail that isn’t necessary. What is it that you want? Just chef evaluates your Rita’s OPO is, and then how he finished it. Like what’s your idea? You know, he was a little bit of context and for context for this conversation where he’s, some editors get a hundred pitches in a day. So it’s just simply a time thing, you know, scrolling, scrolling. You don’t really want someone to scroll like you want me to just, Oh that, Oh, the meat there. And that’s it. I mean JetLine did a timely pitch. Ikea, keep it really simple. I think some people, again, Oh the complicate all of this, I swear, where we like life and business can be easier. The other ones who make it harder. We are the ones who created these like new roadblocks and this illusion of, you know, something has to be really challenging. It’s not, again, editors are just humans just like us. They want to get good ideas. You’re being generous when you’re sharing them and they just want to hit them struggling or simple way like we all

RV: (11:45)
Right. Yeah. And I think that was a big shift for me, which is, it’s just, you know, so much of fear is always like self-centered. Like, you know, am I good enough? Are they going to want me? And so you spew all this stuff about you and it’s like they don’t care about you. Not in a mean way. It’s what they care about is their audience. And it’s like if you can show that you, you know what their audience needs and you know what they put out to their audience and you can just sort of share, Hey, here’s something I could do for your audience. Then they’re going to be like, okay, great. I’ll take a look like this. This could be legit.

SM: (12:20)
Yes, absolutely. And if you want a couple of protips or brownie points.

RV: (12:24)
Yeah, yeah, brownie points.

SM: (12:28)
Because we want, I mean, we all want to get a yes, right? Rejection is very natural. I know certainly the pop machine process, but you know, a couple of things that you can do that kind of really go a long way. Again, because editors and producers are human, just like us, if you know to do a bit of often editing, she was staff writers and they do interviews or they write their own pieces. So if you can say, you know, I love the piece that you wrote on maybe music or you know, tumeric lattes, like with Android, either pieces based on where they are, wherever you can change to share the right. That was as a human, we all want to be acknowledged, right? If somebody liked how welcoming they connected with it, just, you know, Hey, I loved your piece on one sentence.

RV: (13:06)
Huh. Butter, butter them up. And if you have a British accent, it helps. It helps because if you’re, if you have a, if you have an accent, they like that too. If you’re talking to them on the phone. That’s so true. I mean that, it boggles my mind when people will reach out to me for my podcast and they’re like, you know, we can come talk about customer service or, or something crazy. And it’s like I’m, I’m dealing with authors and speakers. It’s like clearly you haven’t even, you haven’t, you haven’t listened to the opening 30 seconds of one episode ever. Like, it’s very obvious who our audience is. If you literally take like a second to know now I have other, you know, I’ve done other podcasts in the past and stuff for, it’s like, okay, yeah, this would be a fit for that, but not for this. And I, I think that does go a long way. It’s not even, it’s not even buttering up. It’s just showing them like you care enough to take a second to figure out what they’re about.

SM: (14:06)
Yes, exactly. And you know, I always say, I think I already said it, but if that’s repeating like a couple of minutes, if I’m lucky they call it [inaudible]. Let me just not being received as like, well I mean what, what like 30 minutes of research should be done in order to send like 10, 15 pitches. I mean it doesn’t, didn’t take much for me. Right. But the this thing does go a long way is research. And then the second piece, the second thing you can do for brownie points and you know, you’ll be fumbled likely to get a yes is to to, you know, pick a pitch to anything. Just really timely. Anything already kind of trending on this site. So maybe you have a different point of view. Maybe you don’t have an extension of information. If you start a piece on the right public speakers do this.

SM: (14:47)
Wow. Is there something missing? Do you disagree with that? Like, so it just shows that you’re kind of engaged, being annual aware of what’s hot. And then also, I mean, we’re all just, you know, SEO, you know, addicts here and we want, if something’s happening in the news, do you want to have an opinion? And so if you even have, I mean all of my content is evergreen, but I’ll pitch it to some things in the news whenever I can, which is actually again, pretty simple to do. I mean, one success story we had was when there’s a woman who, and I’m prepared as breath work, so like calming breathing, she doesn’t break you and other things, but she was like, my pages aren’t being accepted and then we’ll have fast pitch was accepted because instead of, you know, how to breathe through a lapse, you know, simple technique. It was how Megan Malko should breathe on the way to the chapel is Mary and Harry, like how should she eat everything? And it was all of the day of, or the day of the wedding were they also, so you can just see how it’s the same content, but can kind of pick it to something that just makes it really timely and relevant.

RV: (15:47)
Yeah, I mean it’s, it’s just like, and that’s, that is also the work, you know, like the work that people don’t want to do is they don’t want to research, they don’t want to understand anything about the medium and then the work is going, how do I apply my expertise to something happening in the news? It’s the same five tips you’ve taught your entire career. It’s just connecting it to something that’s going on in the news that makes it worthy of dropping it into their, their news cycle. I didn’t, I think that’s, that’s so powerful and it’s, it’s so, so important and it’s, it’s, you’re just dressing up. It’s like lipstick on a pig kind of thing too. You readdress, you’re just, it’s a, it’s just a new wrapper. It’s the same candy bar. It’s a new rapper basically.

SM: (16:35)
I think they’re very exciting map, but it’s exactly the same. Me add a couple of veggies into a one sentence intro that’s different and a couple of kind of like bridging sentences in a piece to connect it to the timely relevant thing. The way that I’ve kind of explained it is just say, okay, I’m in a long, long trip and you’re driving like a junkie. Right. And you know, it’s like we get used to it and you’re like, I’ll just keep grabbing my jacket. If you just pulled up an Apple and like took a little break and just go on a plane, which involves just doing something different, you’re then just arrive at your destination very, very quickly. But most people just stay there and he called you a janky pitches and they confuse as to why they’re not getting any way quickly. So it takes a bit of a change, but it’s so worth it. I mean, it’s, it’s true. It’s pretty amazing how it can just transform your success.

RV: (17:18)
Yeah. So okay. The, the last little part I want to talk to you about is the money. Okay. So like how does this, because this takes a lot of time. I mean even if it’s a few minutes, but if you’re doing, you know, several things a week and then you’re going back and forth, even if you get accepted, it’s like, Hey, you need to edit it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There’s, there’s a lot of, there can be a lot of time here. Does this convert to money? Like, or how do you make it convert to money? Like cause I’ve had, you know, I’ve been on TV shows where we’ll see a it’ll sell a thousand books like that. I’ve been on other TV shows where there’s like, no, no, nothing has it, you know, it doesn’t apparently move the needle at all. So are there, are there certain outlets that you like more than others? Are there certain, you know, ways to do this, to actually make it move your business forward?

SM: (18:07)
Yeah, it’s a great question. Not only he is created equal, I mean absolutely not. And surprising what gets results over what you might see in buses actually, what, you know, what will drive immediate feature to actually make put money in the bank. And this is why I love guest posting specifically as a tool because it’s the most frictionless way for a Rita or to then purchase, right to have, if you had to base a piece of content. But simply that and I can share a free writing and write guest posts too. But if you have a piece of content where you get your advice regime tips, for example, you share a personal story, you then have what’s called a shut tale at the ultimate battle multiple, which is a two sentence bio. Again, really simple with a link or someone can have LUN.

SM: (18:52)
So for example, just say, you know, you’re, I know the sleep X-Box and you give advice on maybe business travel, you know, sleeping. If you have a child, be a newborn, wherever we go, peace, you know, it’ll be placed wherever it’s suitable. And then if someone’s like [inaudible], so who helps new moms get eight hours up to three months after your baby reaches the three month Mark and then you download this. How am I see my quick free training? It’s amazing when you, when you can see the, how many eyeballs will receive that piece say right? Or parents don’t come. Then the people who read it will then click through and to them, Oh definitely sacral you all parenting magazine, your trust factor is pretty like massively established, which really shows your sales cycle and then you already go directly to a landing page or even to a purchase stage.

SM: (19:40)
So that is, I mean it really the magic of of course, and then you get all the other crap, right? So media of course is a huge credibility market. That’s why I’m doing it as when I was side hustling as a life coach because I wanted to get people to discover me, to find me and I wanted to get through the credit, the immediate red, but only started realizing how you can just monetize these eyeballs. But I just didn’t. Giving them a flavor view with multiple and then an opportunity to work more deeply with you, which you just make completely visible and available and it just, they don’t care what happens. They just want them to like the piece and to share it and to comment. But that’s specifically why I like to guest posting. And then

RV: (20:18)
You’re saying because the, the, the, the idea is like if you watch a TV segment, you might be in your kitchen or whatever, but if you’re reading, yeah, like you’ve got to remember their name or a URL or something. But if I’m, if I’m reading a blog or an article and then it just says, you know, learn more about Rory or learn more about Suzy, you just click right there and they’re off and they’re into your, you know, relationship engine as we call it.

SM: (20:46)
That’s right. And another golden point here is you can, instead of even making it about me, you can say where we helps new moms. Oh this helps. And then you say about who is it you saw? And that often just be like, is that me? And then it’s pretty awesome how like how many just views, clicks and new subscribers purchases. I mean, depending on how your back is set up, it certainly leaves money in the bank. It still goes for me, the old pieces like that just out there in the ether and speculation. So that’s direct money in the bank, right? You see an immediate payoff once a piece goes live. But then there are also indirect, right? You can get speaking opportunities. I’ve got with my book deals from articles, you know, being discovered that way you can get brand deals. I mean there’s just, there’s so many, once you put yourself out there, I’m confidently more visible. It’s like you could almost say, I’m here. Right? Come, come and get me. Kind of take that step and then you’ll, I mean out there and then people, it’s how they discover you.

RV: (21:43)
Love it, love it, love it. This is, it’s, these are so many big mind shifts of just how all of this works. It’s where did, where should be, where should people go? Okay. All right, so give me Susie. I want, I want your, what did you call it? A short tail

SM: (22:03)
Shuts tail because it looks like,

RV: (22:04)
Oh, it’s a shirt tail. That’s, that’s, that’s an inappropriate American interpret interpretation. It’s a shirt tail or like a byline or you know, it’s like a micro bio or whatever. It’s just so, so anyways, so where should are our fans and followers who are wanting to get, you know, more media, where should they go to to learn more about you?

SM: (22:30)
I have a free training where I kind of break this down and she has specific hacks for writing a really great guest posts specifically to get rockstar on.com.

RV: (22:38)
Yeah, get rockstar PR. Yeah, that’s what I want. I want rock star PR. I don’t, I don’t want no like cover tunes in the back of a dive bar. PR arena, rock star PR.

SM: (22:57)
I just pulled overnight rockstar because it’s, I mean, one thing that I love about media to worry is unlike, you know, building this takes time, right? Building brands take time, but you can have a quick ring. I mean it’s something that you can turn around but even a week old. So I think we can allow our lives to be a little easier and allow some wins. Like, you know, have some of the fun with this and other people getting all the media like the slice.

RV: (23:22)
I love that. I love that concept of allow some wins in that. Maybe that’ll be your next book. I think that’s such a cool thing. I’m just like, life doesn’t have to be so hard. Like let, let things come to you. Keep it simple, be clear. And and I love that and I think that’s it’s so you’re so encouraging and you guys are so delightful and wonderful and also think you’ve really helped us feel empowered that this is, this is doable. They need you more than you need them. And so let’s just allow some wins.

SM: (23:56)
Yeah. And if I could just ask one more thing, cause I think that it’s kind of important because we all have our moments, right? Where we think, gosh, am I ready? Is this going to be, will they accept? Let me, I have no qualifications for work. I have a high school education. And so to be, have these kinds of expert stages, which you can you claim cause power can ever be gave. And she had to go and get it. New claim claimants yours. I, I’ve done this with like zero kind of formal qualifications. So wherever you’re at, you’re already have you have is enough.

RV: (24:25)
I love it. I love it. All right, Susie Moore, ladies and gentlemen, get rockstar pr.com. Thanks for your tips, Susie. We wish you well. Wish you the best, and we’ll talk again soon.

SM: (24:35)
Thank you so much Rory.

Ep 50: Mindset Shifts That Up Your Media Game with Susie Moore

RV: (00:06)
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with. This is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit call brand builders group.com/summit call to talk to you soon on with the show.

RV: (01:02)
It is a happy day for you because you are going to meet one of the coolest people ever. Her name is Susie Moore. We met Susie at an event we were at with Michael Hyatt, who of course is a good friend of ours and Susie is one of these people that the more we’ve gotten to know about her, the more that we have fallen in love and ha and I know her and her husband Heath pretty well. We’ve gotten to meet him face to face a couple of times. And she is somebody who used to be a sales director in Silicon Valley and she left that to become a life coach and an advice column. This, but her real expert, one of her real expertise is understanding media. All right. So she helps people develop confidence and you know, does a lot of coaching around that.

RV: (01:47)
But tactically she knows a ton about the media. She’s been on the today show herself. She’d been on Oprah, she’s been in all the big outlets. She’s been in media over 300 times, I think if I saw that right, it’s 300 different outlets. There you go. And she’s just a master at it. So she’s the author. She’s an author, you know, her first book was called what, what if it does work out and she lives in Miami with a Heath and they’re just awesome. So I felt like you had to meet Susie to talk a little bit about media and PR. So Susie, welcome to the show, my friend. I just love much. Yeah. So I think of, you know, I remember when when we did our first book launch, you know, we hired a publicist and we did like, you know, a tour bus and we ran out of the country and like we did all this like formal media and it was in my mind, it was just like this one time event and, and yet you have, you help people like stay in the news all the time and and just kind of like get a understanding how did use media to drive their business.

RV: (03:02)
So I, I guess my first question is just sort of like, what do you think are the misconceptions that people have about PR in media in general? And specifically I’m talking about, you know, for our audience is mostly like either authors or speakers or executives who are trying to promote a cause or a book or a movement or some type.

SM: (03:24)
Yes. I mean I think the misconceptions, a couple of the real big ones, all that you have to have, you know, fancy [inaudible] the connections that you have to have some type of training or you know, foot in the door with somebody or something, but you need a publicist that this isn’t something that you can do yourself. I think the media can be a little bit intimidating. We don’t know where to, again, sometimes you think you have to be a real expert Xbox, you know, and certainly as authors, entrepreneurs, you already are experts in all fields, but sometimes I think it can be a bit intimidating. You think that you still need to kind of wait or you need somebody to help you do it and that it’s just not accessible. And really the opposite is true and it just does need content. Like you will be generous when you all pitching yourself. A couple of my editors need new 15 pieces like holiday on that website that, I mean they pay a lot of content, fresh content daily, so they also want to hear from you the talent. I mean there’s certainly a place to publicist because doing DIY media isn’t for everybody, especially at a business level, but I know having a lot of medicines as friends now that they will do hear from the talent, which is just regular people like you and meet with a regular stories

RV: (04:34)
And you’re saying when you’re saying hear from him, you’re saying it’s not a, it’s not a hit to your credibility to reach out yourself versus having someone on your behalf do it.

SM: (04:46)
It’s the opposite, right? It’s actually having a real, a real human, bright, real possible person about some of the human story and the reaching out directly wanting to connect directly and wanting to just kind of speak from the heart. I mean the best stories, the best media messages, all just these real stories, right? Human beings. Like what is that? We have to say what we’ve experienced, what it is that we’ve love to share hearing from this source is preferred in Mercedes.

RV: (05:11)
Yeah. I think that that is I think so that is a misconception for sure. Is like I gotta have a publicist just even to be credible now. And so I, I hear you saying, so it’s not that, where do you find these people? Cause, cause you go, okay, let’s say you are going to DIY and, and you know, some of our clients have pretty big operations and they, you know, they’re probably going to have someone, but a lot of our clients are newer and they’re just getting started and they need, they need a few media appearances to like build some of that credibility. But I don’t think they, I think you’re right. They, it seems daunting. It feels overwhelming. It’s like why would anybody reach out, listen to me and, and I don’t, I don’t even know where to start. So like where do you go find these people?

SM: (05:55)
I mean, it’s an interesting question, right? Because the, the daunting facts, it just puts people off in the beginning, right? It’s like I just went for the right, you know, I do need some help with it. Whereas people are just, they’re accessible everywhere. Like what do you think about, how do you find anybody’s info anyway, right. Twitter is still then as a right to stop home. If you can take any like large media outlet as often a contact with us page and even look at any magazine. Next. Last name, last name is listed, finding contact information. I mean, well I was speaking to an editor recently and I’m like, he’s like in a couple of my friends email address and she’s like, if they have five seconds in a Google account, like they could find it. Like edit does want to be available to, they will want to be found by people.

SM: (06:35)
Like again, just like even me and I even have a couple of edits and friends who are, who say, you know, if I get publishes emails I just delete them. Bet against you in some cases because if somebody found her information and they craft a pitch that’s, that’s relevant and suitable, then you’ve really gone up and an editor’s estimation immediately. They already can see it was a really promising source. So finding information, I mean you just, I use a couple of different email sites for specific, you know, if it’s Conde Nast or Haas for example, or NBC if you’re looking to pitch television. But I mean the intonation’s everywhere, it just takes you five minutes of home up to say, you know, I was a puzzle.

RV: (07:17)
So you’re basically, but the editor is who you’re going for. Is that who you’re looking for?

SM: (07:22)
Yes. The editors or producers? Yeah, it, depending on all the podcasts, Booker, if you will. And often it’s just reaching out to a host directly on Instagram. It can be as simple as it’s real again, right rule, just human beings. We love stories that really, you know, it’s what makes the world go around and people want to receive pitches, content. And if you, if you have something relevant for that audience and you’re being of service to them,

RV: (07:45)
I love it. Okay. So number one, don’t necessarily need a publicist. Number two, you can find the people they want to be found. Number three number three.

SM: (07:57)
So you’re just saying like race.

RV: (07:59)
Yeah. So then the, and then the third thing I think is that they need you probably more than you need them. So those are, those are big things. So now let’s talk about the pitch itself. All right. So you know, when you say pitch, that’s like an email or a DM or something, right? As typically that’s going to be how it happens. What do I need to know to like get their interest and make it worth their time, you know, reach out. Like how does their mind work and how, what do I need to know about how their mind works so that I can craft what I’m trying to say in a way that they go? Sure. Done. Let’s have, let’s have you [inaudible].

SM: (08:41)
Yes, it’s a great question. So a pitch essentially is you in an email and no more than three paragraphs saying why, you know, why. Well, you’re a perfect fit for this editor at this time. And then looking for just a couple of very things. So looking for relevance, right? So if you’re a travel website, no one wants to know about your newborn baby unless it’s about traveling with a newborn baby. Right? So it’s surprising how few people do the research on specifically what type of content editors want and what you have to do. Again, it’s five minutes like you’re going to travel and leisure.com going to Marie-Claire, going to SPI, going to whatever website it is and just seeing what type of content is being created. So you one of the relevant and then natural good thing. Well that audience what it is you have to say.

SM: (09:23)
And then also just being succinct. And how did you present your information? So a lot of mistakes. Icy, probably the most common mistake is a lot of rambling and a lot of lists. Why you like I’m this author, this many books and I’ve you know, been here and there, you know it’s great to include a couple of clips. Like your bio is like one sentence. Say why you right. So who has your hip has some white. So I’m worry and I do this for a living. And then you say your picture is simply what your idea is and then a couple of sentences about what you’ll say in your articles. So this is for guest post specifically or even for a segment, what it is exactly that you’re going to say about that topic. And then just having to, you know, assess, I mean ideally even those in peg it to something happening in the media. So if I mean thinking about anything that’s in the news.

RV: (10:10)
Okay. So, so hold on on that part. Cause that’s, that’s I want to come back. I want to come back and hit that. But, but so you’re saying too much rambling. So it’s just like an unclear like what the heck are you, what, what is the idea that you’re trying to present and too much of like the me monster, like here’s my 15 page bio.

SM: (10:32)
Yeah.

RV: (10:33)
And what all they really care about is what is the value you’re going to provide to their audience? Like what are you actually going to say? What is the segment and how is that useful to their audience?

SM: (10:43)
Yes. What am I, a friend says, you know, who cares? So what, why you right. And it’s as simple as that that you guys said walk, why you, and it’s like, yeah, so it puts simply who you want. We don’t need to know much. Right. And some people just really go into detail that isn’t necessary. What is it that you want? Just chef evaluates your Rita’s OPO is, and then how he finished it. Like what’s your idea? You know, he was a little bit of context and for context for this conversation where he’s, some editors get a hundred pitches in a day. So it’s just simply a time thing, you know, scrolling, scrolling. You don’t really want someone to scroll like you want me to just, Oh that, Oh, the meat there. And that’s it. I mean JetLine did a timely pitch. Ikea, keep it really simple. I think some people, again, Oh the complicate all of this, I swear, where we like life and business can be easier. The other ones who make it harder. We are the ones who created these like new roadblocks and this illusion of, you know, something has to be really challenging. It’s not, again, editors are just humans just like us. They want to get good ideas. You’re being generous when you’re sharing them and they just want to hit them struggling or simple way like we all

RV: (11:45)
Right. Yeah. And I think that was a big shift for me, which is, it’s just, you know, so much of fear is always like self-centered. Like, you know, am I good enough? Are they going to want me? And so you spew all this stuff about you and it’s like they don’t care about you. Not in a mean way. It’s what they care about is their audience. And it’s like if you can show that you, you know what their audience needs and you know what they put out to their audience and you can just sort of share, Hey, here’s something I could do for your audience. Then they’re going to be like, okay, great. I’ll take a look like this. This could be legit.

SM: (12:20)
Yes, absolutely. And if you want a couple of protips or brownie points.

RV: (12:24)
Yeah, yeah, brownie points.

SM: (12:28)
Because we want, I mean, we all want to get a yes, right? Rejection is very natural. I know certainly the pop machine process, but you know, a couple of things that you can do that kind of really go a long way. Again, because editors and producers are human, just like us, if you know to do a bit of often editing, she was staff writers and they do interviews or they write their own pieces. So if you can say, you know, I love the piece that you wrote on maybe music or you know, tumeric lattes, like with Android, either pieces based on where they are, wherever you can change to share the right. That was as a human, we all want to be acknowledged, right? If somebody liked how welcoming they connected with it, just, you know, Hey, I loved your piece on one sentence.

RV: (13:06)
Huh. Butter, butter them up. And if you have a British accent, it helps. It helps because if you’re, if you have a, if you have an accent, they like that too. If you’re talking to them on the phone. That’s so true. I mean that, it boggles my mind when people will reach out to me for my podcast and they’re like, you know, we can come talk about customer service or, or something crazy. And it’s like I’m, I’m dealing with authors and speakers. It’s like clearly you haven’t even, you haven’t, you haven’t listened to the opening 30 seconds of one episode ever. Like, it’s very obvious who our audience is. If you literally take like a second to know now I have other, you know, I’ve done other podcasts in the past and stuff for, it’s like, okay, yeah, this would be a fit for that, but not for this. And I, I think that does go a long way. It’s not even, it’s not even buttering up. It’s just showing them like you care enough to take a second to figure out what they’re about.

SM: (14:06)
Yes, exactly. And you know, I always say, I think I already said it, but if that’s repeating like a couple of minutes, if I’m lucky they call it [inaudible]. Let me just not being received as like, well I mean what, what like 30 minutes of research should be done in order to send like 10, 15 pitches. I mean it doesn’t, didn’t take much for me. Right. But the this thing does go a long way is research. And then the second piece, the second thing you can do for brownie points and you know, you’ll be fumbled likely to get a yes is to to, you know, pick a pitch to anything. Just really timely. Anything already kind of trending on this site. So maybe you have a different point of view. Maybe you don’t have an extension of information. If you start a piece on the right public speakers do this.

SM: (14:47)
Wow. Is there something missing? Do you disagree with that? Like, so it just shows that you’re kind of engaged, being annual aware of what’s hot. And then also, I mean, we’re all just, you know, SEO, you know, addicts here and we want, if something’s happening in the news, do you want to have an opinion? And so if you even have, I mean all of my content is evergreen, but I’ll pitch it to some things in the news whenever I can, which is actually again, pretty simple to do. I mean, one success story we had was when there’s a woman who, and I’m prepared as breath work, so like calming breathing, she doesn’t break you and other things, but she was like, my pages aren’t being accepted and then we’ll have fast pitch was accepted because instead of, you know, how to breathe through a lapse, you know, simple technique. It was how Megan Malko should breathe on the way to the chapel is Mary and Harry, like how should she eat everything? And it was all of the day of, or the day of the wedding were they also, so you can just see how it’s the same content, but can kind of pick it to something that just makes it really timely and relevant.

RV: (15:47)
Yeah, I mean it’s, it’s just like, and that’s, that is also the work, you know, like the work that people don’t want to do is they don’t want to research, they don’t want to understand anything about the medium and then the work is going, how do I apply my expertise to something happening in the news? It’s the same five tips you’ve taught your entire career. It’s just connecting it to something that’s going on in the news that makes it worthy of dropping it into their, their news cycle. I didn’t, I think that’s, that’s so powerful and it’s, it’s so, so important and it’s, it’s, you’re just dressing up. It’s like lipstick on a pig kind of thing too. You readdress, you’re just, it’s a, it’s just a new wrapper. It’s the same candy bar. It’s a new rapper basically.

SM: (16:35)
I think they’re very exciting map, but it’s exactly the same. Me add a couple of veggies into a one sentence intro that’s different and a couple of kind of like bridging sentences in a piece to connect it to the timely relevant thing. The way that I’ve kind of explained it is just say, okay, I’m in a long, long trip and you’re driving like a junkie. Right. And you know, it’s like we get used to it and you’re like, I’ll just keep grabbing my jacket. If you just pulled up an Apple and like took a little break and just go on a plane, which involves just doing something different, you’re then just arrive at your destination very, very quickly. But most people just stay there and he called you a janky pitches and they confuse as to why they’re not getting any way quickly. So it takes a bit of a change, but it’s so worth it. I mean, it’s, it’s true. It’s pretty amazing how it can just transform your success.

RV: (17:18)
Yeah. So okay. The, the last little part I want to talk to you about is the money. Okay. So like how does this, because this takes a lot of time. I mean even if it’s a few minutes, but if you’re doing, you know, several things a week and then you’re going back and forth, even if you get accepted, it’s like, Hey, you need to edit it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There’s, there’s a lot of, there can be a lot of time here. Does this convert to money? Like, or how do you make it convert to money? Like cause I’ve had, you know, I’ve been on TV shows where we’ll see a it’ll sell a thousand books like that. I’ve been on other TV shows where there’s like, no, no, nothing has it, you know, it doesn’t apparently move the needle at all. So are there, are there certain outlets that you like more than others? Are there certain, you know, ways to do this, to actually make it move your business forward?

SM: (18:07)
Yeah, it’s a great question. Not only he is created equal, I mean absolutely not. And surprising what gets results over what you might see in buses actually, what, you know, what will drive immediate feature to actually make put money in the bank. And this is why I love guest posting specifically as a tool because it’s the most frictionless way for a Rita or to then purchase, right to have, if you had to base a piece of content. But simply that and I can share a free writing and write guest posts too. But if you have a piece of content where you get your advice regime tips, for example, you share a personal story, you then have what’s called a shut tale at the ultimate battle multiple, which is a two sentence bio. Again, really simple with a link or someone can have LUN.

SM: (18:52)
So for example, just say, you know, you’re, I know the sleep X-Box and you give advice on maybe business travel, you know, sleeping. If you have a child, be a newborn, wherever we go, peace, you know, it’ll be placed wherever it’s suitable. And then if someone’s like [inaudible], so who helps new moms get eight hours up to three months after your baby reaches the three month Mark and then you download this. How am I see my quick free training? It’s amazing when you, when you can see the, how many eyeballs will receive that piece say right? Or parents don’t come. Then the people who read it will then click through and to them, Oh definitely sacral you all parenting magazine, your trust factor is pretty like massively established, which really shows your sales cycle and then you already go directly to a landing page or even to a purchase stage.

SM: (19:40)
So that is, I mean it really the magic of of course, and then you get all the other crap, right? So media of course is a huge credibility market. That’s why I’m doing it as when I was side hustling as a life coach because I wanted to get people to discover me, to find me and I wanted to get through the credit, the immediate red, but only started realizing how you can just monetize these eyeballs. But I just didn’t. Giving them a flavor view with multiple and then an opportunity to work more deeply with you, which you just make completely visible and available and it just, they don’t care what happens. They just want them to like the piece and to share it and to comment. But that’s specifically why I like to guest posting. And then

RV: (20:18)
You’re saying because the, the, the, the idea is like if you watch a TV segment, you might be in your kitchen or whatever, but if you’re reading, yeah, like you’ve got to remember their name or a URL or something. But if I’m, if I’m reading a blog or an article and then it just says, you know, learn more about Rory or learn more about Suzy, you just click right there and they’re off and they’re into your, you know, relationship engine as we call it.

SM: (20:46)
That’s right. And another golden point here is you can, instead of even making it about me, you can say where we helps new moms. Oh this helps. And then you say about who is it you saw? And that often just be like, is that me? And then it’s pretty awesome how like how many just views, clicks and new subscribers purchases. I mean, depending on how your back is set up, it certainly leaves money in the bank. It still goes for me, the old pieces like that just out there in the ether and speculation. So that’s direct money in the bank, right? You see an immediate payoff once a piece goes live. But then there are also indirect, right? You can get speaking opportunities. I’ve got with my book deals from articles, you know, being discovered that way you can get brand deals. I mean there’s just, there’s so many, once you put yourself out there, I’m confidently more visible. It’s like you could almost say, I’m here. Right? Come, come and get me. Kind of take that step and then you’ll, I mean out there and then people, it’s how they discover you.

RV: (21:43)
Love it, love it, love it. This is, it’s, these are so many big mind shifts of just how all of this works. It’s where did, where should be, where should people go? Okay. All right, so give me Susie. I want, I want your, what did you call it? A short tail

SM: (22:03)
Shuts tail because it looks like,

RV: (22:04)
Oh, it’s a shirt tail. That’s, that’s, that’s an inappropriate American interpret interpretation. It’s a shirt tail or like a byline or you know, it’s like a micro bio or whatever. It’s just so, so anyways, so where should are our fans and followers who are wanting to get, you know, more media, where should they go to to learn more about you?

SM: (22:30)
I have a free training where I kind of break this down and she has specific hacks for writing a really great guest posts specifically to get rockstar on.com.

RV: (22:38)
Yeah, get rockstar PR. Yeah, that’s what I want. I want rock star PR. I don’t, I don’t want no like cover tunes in the back of a dive bar. PR arena, rock star PR.

SM: (22:57)
I just pulled overnight rockstar because it’s, I mean, one thing that I love about media to worry is unlike, you know, building this takes time, right? Building brands take time, but you can have a quick ring. I mean it’s something that you can turn around but even a week old. So I think we can allow our lives to be a little easier and allow some wins. Like, you know, have some of the fun with this and other people getting all the media like the slice.

RV: (23:22)
I love that. I love that concept of allow some wins in that. Maybe that’ll be your next book. I think that’s such a cool thing. I’m just like, life doesn’t have to be so hard. Like let, let things come to you. Keep it simple, be clear. And and I love that and I think that’s it’s so you’re so encouraging and you guys are so delightful and wonderful and also think you’ve really helped us feel empowered that this is, this is doable. They need you more than you need them. And so let’s just allow some wins.

SM: (23:56)
Yeah. And if I could just ask one more thing, cause I think that it’s kind of important because we all have our moments, right? Where we think, gosh, am I ready? Is this going to be, will they accept? Let me, I have no qualifications for work. I have a high school education. And so to be, have these kinds of expert stages, which you can you claim cause power can ever be gave. And she had to go and get it. New claim claimants yours. I, I’ve done this with like zero kind of formal qualifications. So wherever you’re at, you’re already have you have is enough.

RV: (24:25)
I love it. I love it. All right, Susie Moore, ladies and gentlemen, get rockstar pr.com. Thanks for your tips, Susie. We wish you well. Wish you the best, and we’ll talk again soon.

SM: (24:35)
Thank you so much Rory.

Ep 47: Expert Tips for Marketing, PR, and Personal Branding with Julie Solomon | Recap Episode

RV: (00:00)
Hey, welcome to this recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Today we are breaking down the interview with our good friend Julie Solomon. This is the three and three AJ and Rory bringing you our three highlights and Babe, I’m going to let you lead us. Your leadoff batter today.

AJ: (00:16)
Yeah, well I think the first thing is what an amazing gift it is to be able to see a friend as well as a client actually live in their gift and Julie’s interview is such, her living into her gift, she is just a wealth of knowledge when it comes to getting brand deals and just being proactive and knowing what to do. And I’m telling you what, if you haven’t listened to this interview and part of your income plan, your revenue plan is getting brand deals, listen to it. I get that as anywhere in the possibility of that something I’d like to be generating revenue from. Not just getting free stuff but making money. You have to listen to it. But I think all of that is to say one of the things that was really surprising to me in this interview and I didn’t expect for her to really talk about was the importance of confidence and how for a long time she didn’t have it because no one, Julie today, you wouldn’t think that she ever struggled, struggled with confidence.

AJ: (01:18)
And I love the context of what she talked about this. And I think this is really relevant for anyone who is out there trying to build a personal brand. Because at some point I know that you have asked yourself, should I really do this? Can I really do this? What are people gonna think? Or what if I tell people, and this just doesn’t go anywhere, or am I going to look too self-promotional? Or what if, what if? What if and I know that for many of you listening, that is the exact thing that is holding you back. It’s not your ability or capability. It’s nothing to do with that is your own mice mindset of can I, should I, what will people think if I do? And she really breaks that down and talked about how, you know, she was watching everyone else and there was this little voice inside that kept getting bigger and louder and bigger and louder.

AJ: (02:11)
And for years she ignored it and pushed it down. And then she talked about the, how she had a, a group of people who really loved where she was doing what she was doing for them and maybe didn’t want to see her explode out of that position and break out into her own. And I think confidence is so much of our own, our own mindset and our own belief, but then it’s also compounded by the people that we surround ourselves with. And so she spent like 10 minutes talking about this concept of confidence in a really unique way. And I just think that’s a, it’s a really unique thing to talk about when it comes to building your personal brand because you’re going to have to have, not a little confidence but a lot of confidence because there’s gonna be some naysayers and there’s gonna be some people who don’t want to see you succeed and who don’t agree with your message and you better have some confidence to back it all up.

RV: (03:03)
Yeah. Well, I, I thought that was powerful also. And like you said, it’s interesting to see our friend do that, who we know is this like, you know, amazing, confident person you know, proactively or practically one of my favorite tips was just if you’re pitching yourself for TV, do it on video and what a simple tip. But she, you know, really helped with that mindset of, of, of putting you in the frame of mind that a Booker or you know, like a producer is in and how they’re trying to think about shows and things that they’re putting together. And I also thought, you know, so, so that concept of just show people what you’re able to do. This was specifically for TV getting booked on television shows. That made a lot of sense. Like why wouldn’t you pitch in the format or the medium that you’re pitching for?

RV: (03:54)
I think you could also play that too if you were trying to pitch yourself for a podcast for like a major podcast production or a radio show, you should pitch in the medium that you’re, you know, you’re going for. So I thought that was super relevant. Relatedly. And this is something that we’ve found to be true for us as well, that it makes sense to start local before going national. You know, get those local television appearances cause they really need the content, particularly at the local level there. They’re trying to fill their calendar with meaningful stuff and you also don’t have to travel, which is really nice and you can do a lot of local gigs and almost become like a regular in your, on your local TV market and, and really build up the kind of real that you would need before you then go out and pitch to national.

AJ: (04:42)
Yeah. I think part of that is related to confidence in what Julie talked about is these people who are booking you, they need to have confidence that you are going to be good in this visual medium that you’re going to be showcased in, in this case that you’re referring to is TV. But it’s like they need to see that you’re not going to be stumbling, bumbling around and that you’re comfortable in front of TV. And she said even doing podcasts like this where it’s a visual medium and you’re having a conversation and you know, even if it is just like this or in the context of Rory interviewing Julie, she that that works. But people need to know and they need to have a confidence before they book you. And put you on there that they know what they’re going to expect.

RV: (05:21)
And I think so the second tip for me and for you was the same was around micro-influencers and I thought this, this was a healthy mindset shift.

AJ: (05:29)
Yeah. So I think that there was two big things that for me that were kind of like, huh, Oh yes. I’m talking about, and this is not the second or third time throughout the summit that I’ve heard people talk about the value of the micro influencer. And she talked about how there’s a huge misconception out there that you have to have hundreds of thousands of followers to get brand deals. And she goes, that’s just not,

RV: (05:51)
I mean I thought that I thought that

AJ: (05:53)
I was getting more money for brand deals and I had what, seven, 8,000 followers then my friends who had hundreds of thousands of followers and who were only getting free gifts versus actual paid money. And it all came down into positioning and messaging and audience awareness and how to pitch yourself and how to book yourself at this concept that there is a huge value in engagement more than followers. And she said for the micro influencer engagement has to be high. She goes, doesn’t it? It doesn’t matter about your follower counts. Sometimes it’s just how loyal and how engaged all the four are the followers that you have.

RV: (06:33)
Yeah. You know, I was thinking about this the other day that you know, you know, social media is so, it’s so like public or it’s like superficial. It’s what you see. The parallel for me is in golf they say you drive, you drive for show, but you putt for dough. Well your social media count is like a drive. It’s all for show. But I was thinking about somebody who has a 300,000 let’s say it says 300,000 followers. If they get a 1% you know like engagement rate, let’s say on 300,000 you’re talking about was the 10% would be 30,000 is that right? 10% would be 30,000 so 1% would be 3000 so would you rather be someone who had 5,000 people on your email list or 300,000 followers. And I think most people would say, Oh, I want $300,000 and I probably would too.

RV: (07:27)
Cause I think I could turn that into more email lists. But the reality of the actual reach there is about the same that maybe 10,000 people on email is, is worth having several hundred thousand followers on social because of the algorithms and what small percentage. And you know, what she was saying is your engagement rate when you’re a micro influencer is it’s easier to keep it high because you don’t have to have so many people engage with something as you have more and more followers. It’s like the content has to be so good that not just a small subset, but like a huge chunk of the audience has to really like it and engage. And so that’s just, again, to the perception of all of this is understanding, you know, I think the perception is really, really important. There’s value to perception, but also being able to appropriately to, to value the, the, like the monetary aspects of that and what’s that worth. And brands are intelligent, right? Like they know that and they know that somebody that, that gets, you know, a 10% engagement rate on a few thousand people is worth a lot and they know exactly who they’re seeing and they know exactly what type of people are seeing those. And you know, a lot of times too, you don’t have to pay as much for a micro-influencer as you do for a macro, you know, or a major influencer. So,

AJ: (08:48)
Or, it depends on how you pitch yourself according to Julie.

RV: (08:51)
Yeah. Well, I mean positioning, but positioning is always a part of it, but I think you, you have to go out and do the work and that, that’s probably to me, the third thing here is just her mindset.

AJ: (09:07)
Don’t sit back and wait. Yeah. She talked a lot about how all these people get all these followers and then they go, where’s my brand deal?

RV: (09:16)
Yeah. Where’s my money?

AJ: (09:17)
There’s like, I’ve done all this work. My job is to put out the content. My job has to get the followers. Why am I not getting this attention? Why am I getting these deals? Why am I not getting this? And the short answer is well, cause you’re not actually going out and asking for it. You’re actually, you’re not actually doing the work to go out and attract it and actually put your, literally put your content in front of them in a very direct way. And she talked about how on Facebook and Instagram, like DMS matter, she goes, DM these brands like actually get the conversation started there and then she talked about how on Twitter it’s more for media. She goes, if you’re really trying to get into media then be researching those media outlets on Twitter. But if you’re really trying to get in touch with brands, Facebook and Instagram as the way to go. And DMS is a really simple, easy way to start. No excuses, which I know is your big last thing is this concept around no excuses, but it’s not waiting around for people to come to you. It’s not this concept of build it. And they will come, no, build it. And then go invite them to come, go knock on the door and say, come tell them what you have inside, not build it. And they will come. That is not a real,

RV: (10:29)
It’s not a real business model. Yeah, you gotta be proactive. And that’s, I think that’s another misconception again, that I had, I just kind of think, Oh well, I’m sure all these people with millions of followers, like people just come to them and to have Julie go, no, you are proactive. You’re, you’re promoting your marketing, you’re your engaging, you’re networking, you’re reaching out to people and go, yeah, that’s the real, that’s the real work of getting a brand deal. And most people aren’t willing to do that work. And it’s like, it’s a classic example again of the real truth from behind the scenes being exposed from somebody who’s, who’s out there doing that. And I just, I love that about her. And I love her special snowflake syndrome. I just think that’s the coolest, I just think it is because, because we all think we’re special snowflakes, right?

RV: (11:19)
Like we all listened to it go, yeah, that doesn’t apply to me. Or yeah, I don’t need that, or I’m, I’m too smart for that, or I, I don’t need that really do that. It’s such a niche. Tiny audience on my end won’t work for my industry. Or the other thing is is is we kind of go, Oh well you don’t understand how hard I have it. You don’t understand like what I’m overcoming. You don’t understand that I have to deal with compliance or you don’t understand like in health care you can’t, you know, no one will just do this cause it’s healthcare. Or like there’s all this stupid stuff that we tell ourselves and it’s not that there aren’t certain kind of things that need to be navigated around, right? Like compliance for financial and the financial industry is a real thing. But it’s not the excuse to not do it at all.

RV: (12:07)
And what we do is we jump to, we take things that are our challenges and we turn them into excuses and we just go, Oh, because this is a challenge. Someone laid this down. I’m going to use that as my excuse to get out of it. And ultimately to be successful in anything like getting brand deals or building a personal brand or doing any, anything significant, you have to just move past the special snowflake syndrome and go, yeah, there’s nothing special about me. And there’s nothing special about the people who’ve been successful other than they didn’t buy into special snowflake syndrome and they worked, they did the research, they believed in themselves, they built a confidence, they made a presentation and they made it. They made it happen. And you know that, that that’s the secret. Like that’s the key. Like brand builders can teach you all the formulas and the frameworks and the structure and the order and the sequence and the logic. And you know, we have all these things get that can really help shortcut a path, but you still have to walk the path. And,

AJ: (13:08)
And I think just to like make it really clear, a special snowflake syndrome is actually give the definition that Julie gave.

RV: (13:16)
Giving yourself an excuse as to why your circumstances won’t allow you to achieve something you really want.

AJ: (13:22)
And I think we all battle that in some area of our life. It doesn’t matter if it’s building your personal brand or your finances or your fitness or your marriage, or friendships or family relationships, whatever. We all battle that in some arena. And what she is saying, well, that’s the thing that’s holding you back. And I love what you just said too. It’s don’t let the challenges you have become the excuses you make. Just because it’s a challenge doesn’t mean there’s not a way. Just don’t want to become an excuse.

RV: (13:53)
So listen to that. Julie was preaching it and she was doing fantastic job. So go listen to the words from her mouth. And thank you for staying. Stay in a part of what we’re doing. We’ll get to next time.

Ep 46: Expert Tips for Marketing, PR, and Personal Branding with Julie Solomon

RV: (00:01)
So Julie Solomon is my new next door neighbor, best friend or neighbor bestie, they just moved to Nashville recently and we got the chance to work together like six or seven months ago and got to know each other a little bit. And I just adore this woman and I adore her story and her heart, what you’re gonna hear all about. And she’s already never home in Nashville, so I don’t actually get to see her that much. Even then. Now she is here, but you know, the official, let me give you like the official so she’s a seven figure entrepreneur and she hosts a podcast called the Influencer Podcast, which is an incredible podcast. So she’s been an expert in marketing and PR and personal branding. You know, her whole career. She’s been featured in Forbes, Huffington Post people magazine, but her podcasts, literally has gotten millions of downloads. She has listeners in like 170 countries. And so over the years she’s worked on campaigns for people like Dave Ramsey or Lenny Kravitz. But in the last couple of years she’s gotten to interview, you know, Amy Porterfield, Marie Forleo, Rachel Hollis, people like that. And she’s just awesome. And I, I knew when we put this together, you had to, you had to get to meet her if you didn’t already know her. So, Julie, welcome, welcome to the show.

JS: (01:21)
Yes. And thank you so much for having me. You know I love any more soul of time that I get with you. So it’s amazing to be here.

RV: (01:29)
So tell us like your, tell us a little bit about your story, right? Like it seems like one of the reasons I wanted to talk with you is cause it seems like you sort of started behind the scenes promoting everybody else and then you stepped forward and became the personality. Is that an accurate

JS: (01:49)
Yeah, yeah, that’s for sure. And I think that partly due to confidence and partly due to just knowledge and experience and then how, you know, how, how I saw that I could really show up and serve people I’m a two part in and why and why I was kind of behind the scenes and then went in front of the scenes. So I started well growing up I’ve always had a knack for connection and you know, loving to talk to people. I’m a very curious person. My mom was a medical sales rep growing up that, you know, so that, that knack for marketing and sales and just kind of doing that. I, I saw it, you know, around me. I came from a line of realtors, you know, so just that knack for really kind of being that being that people person being someone who wants to serve people kind of in that, in your face capacity. It was always around me growing up and majored in marketing and communications. Started my career in New York City as a publicist. So that was kind of, I remembered at one point in college, I was watching some kind of like red carpet, like Golden Globes or something. And I kept seeing these women in like black dresses with like little walkie talkie things behind the celebrities, like walking them around. And I was like, what is that? And I kind of looked into it and it was a publicist and I was like, I want to do

RV: (03:13)
Laura bodyguard. It couldn’t use the potty card, but you went to publicist route, route.

JS: (03:20)
And so I, you know, and I think at the time it was, it was a little bit of, I knew that I could probably do that very well. I, you know, I’m, from what I just said, I love people. I was always really good in terms of integrations. Really organized type A, did well in school, could stay on top of my stuff. And I think at the time I probably didn’t realize it, but I might’ve really wanted to tap into more of my visionary stuff, but I wasn’t confident enough to do that yet. So it was a lot easier just to kind of like sit back and in play that integrative role, which ended up serving me very, very well. And so women,

RV: (03:57)
Let me talk to you about, I want to stop you on that part because, cause I want to get into some of the tactics, particularly in publicity because the, that’s like I think something you’re really good at and always have been. But before that, tell me about the confidence issue because more and more as I have learned and gotten to meet entertainers and celebrities, you’re married to one a and an actor, a very successful actor. And it’s, it’s like the confidence really matters on camera and really believing it. And then also the confidence to just like start your own thing and go after it. So what, what was the point where you made the pivot from going, you know, I, I don’t have the confidence to, I’m ready to take the leap. So, so what was kind of going on in your head that was the limiting belief that was holding you back? That you kind of like something happened, he flipped the switch and you, you went for it. Do you remember much about that?

JS: (04:54)
Yeah, I just, somewhere along the way of growing up, I cultivated this belief system in me that as a woman, in order to be accepted, I needed to s to stay small and quiet and just cute and just kind of like stick to my little like box kind of thing. You know, it’s dream but not too big speak, but not too loud, you know, you don’t really want to be a big deal. And so I kind of allowed that to hold me back and you know, I would, I’ll, I’ll be a publicist for the people, but I’m going to stay right here. And so I would always kind of like dabble in this idea of wanting to all these kinds of creative endeavors, if you will. Always wanted to write a book, but I didn’t have the confidence to do it. So I became a book publicist, you know, I always wanted to have these creative endeavors that didn’t have the confidence to do it.

RV: (05:48)
It goes to the people, but you were never the person.

JS: (05:52)
Exactly. So it was kind of like in some way I was like feeding off of their energy, kind of felt like I was a part of the cool kids club, so to speak, but didn’t really have the confidence and the self and the I think the, not that necessarily the self awareness, but I think it’s, it was just purely the confidence to really step into that and say, I don’t have to believe that story anymore.

RV: (06:17)
Wow. And I, I mean, I know for sure you know, I still to this date have these moments where I really struggle with, I know for sure somebody is watching right now or they’re listening and they’re going, holy crap. Like that’s me. Like, I, I’ve wanted to pursue this dream. I know I have a mission I, you know, I feel called by God or I feel like this is why I’m here. But they don’t have the con like they’re up against that block and they’re, they’re probably watching or listening because they want to do it. And, and this helps them feel close to it, but making that leap. So what do you remember what happened that like, cause that’s a big time limiting belief. Oh does he know that you were carrying that? Like oh women are supposed to sort of play small. Were you, you were aware of that and then how did you break free of it?

JS: (07:05)
I mean I think that if I, to get really honest with myself, I do believe that there was something in here that was telling me like, cause I also at the same time I had this small voice inside me that was longing for more, that wanted to pursue more, that was curious about gangs. And it just kind of kept getting louder and louder and louder. But I also knew that by staying small and not really taking action on those things that I wanted to take action on, you know, I wasn’t being authentic. I wasn’t really living authentically. And so, you know, it’s kind of that idea of my beliefs became my thoughts like which became my feelings, which became my actions, which became my results. And so that’s just kind of what I allowed myself to stay in. And then it wasn’t until I mean it was a while.

JS: (07:50)
It was probably about almost seven or eight years into me doing PR. I had at that point had met Jonathan, had moved to Los Angeles and that, what was the other thing too? I think that at that time I was also surrounded by people, at least what I kind of look back on now, that they might have been a little afraid to kind of lose me in their life. And so they didn’t really want me to grow either. And, and I kind of allowed that to be like a really easy excuse for me not to grow as well. But once I met my husband to is so about just supporting my dreams and letting me go and, you know, having that path and holding space for that it was a multitude of things. I think it was I moved,

RV: (08:37)
He’s a good piece of arm candy too. It’s, it gives you confidence and they, when they land a good piece of arm candy,

JS: (08:43)
Yes. He’s not, he’s not too shabby to look to look at. And I, I got that zest in New York, you know, I was around so many different types of people and different types of industry and cultures and so I got this zest for it but didn’t really have the confidence to like drive it home myself. And once I moved to La and met John and we had gotten married and we were pregnant with our child that’s when it really started happening. I had been doing the PR thing for about seven or eight years at that point and I was just kind of getting to this really stagnant place. Like I was hitting that ceiling. I wasn’t inspired. I had, mind you my PR work, I got to do a lot of really awesome things. I got to work with a lot of incredible authors and thought leaders and we’re part of really amazing projects.

JS: (09:29)
So you know, my work there, I don’t want to kind of just shy it away because I did learn so much. I learned a lot about business, a lot about marketing, a lot about, you know, being an entrepreneur. But I would even see some of these people, even the, the old CEO of my publishing house was Michael Hyatt and he even left the company to then go off and do what he does now, which is this massive entrepreneurial company and machine. And so even watching people like him, I was like, man, like people do this and it works out. Like people really do follow that, you know, and really listen to that. So if they can, like, why can’t I? It’s kind of that idea of if you spot it, you got it. So so I started kind of again and it was slow because I had this limiting belief, took some time to kind of retrain.

JS: (10:17)
So I started kind of dipping my toes into blogging, which was kind of my side hustle at the time. And I started out as a lifestyle mommy blogger. I was writing content, I started to acquire brand deals. I started to really use my, my expertise and my technique of pitching to pitch myself for media, pitch myself for, you know, paid collaborations with companies and really use my expertise as a publicist to kind of help me along the way. But again, I found myself kind of hitting that ceiling of like, you know, lifestyle and fashion. Blogging really isn’t my passion either. I love to write, but fashion is not really a passion for me. Like I’m not as passionate about it as some of the other people that I see or talking about this or that or whatever. So I kind of got back to the roots of like, what my why was like, why do I want to do this?

JS: (11:09)
What, what problem do I really solve for people and how does that align with my why? And that’s when I kind of went back to the, to the, to the connection piece and the communication piece and the marketing and PR piece and tried to figure out ways to kind of merge those things together. And so I thought, well, maybe, maybe I’ll start blogging about marketing and PR and branding. And maybe help these bloggers and youtubers and content creators that are now my people years that I’ve met through this blogging space. And that’s what I started doing.

RV: (11:42)
One of the things that jumps out to me about that too is, is just like the people you were around had something to do with with it. And that is so true. It’s like you’re either around a group of people are holding you back or you’re around a group of people that are pushing you forward. And when we started brand builders group, you know, we were very clear on like, all right, we’re gonna, we’re gonna support people and help them, you know, get clear on their positioning and figure out what problem they solve and who their audiences and their primary business model. But the thing that’s come out of it, which we never really saw is the community of all the people that come to the events. And it’s just like this rabbit, like quick friendships that are developing. And it’s like, it has nothing to do with anything we’re doing other than just putting the people together.

RV: (12:31)
So I, I think that networking thing is, is powerful. So I want to talk about the publicity thing cause I don’t think people understand it and I don’t think I even, Eh, do a great job of it. But what is your mindset like you mentioned pitching and a that like when you think about publicity, like getting PR. So if somebody’s watching and they’re like, okay, well I want to watch the ban but I’ve never been on good morning America and I’ve never been featured in Huffington post and I’ve never been whatever. How do I do that? What is your like mindset and process just in terms of ground, how do you get PR who gets selected to be interviewed? You know, like what’s that all look like?

JS: (13:15)
Yeah, I mean I think the first step, and I think this goes with, with whenever you’re trying to cultivate any type of audience for what you do, you’ve got to know who you’re talking to. So that’s the first step. Because you want to make sure that you’re pitching the appropriate outlets for what you want to talk about. So a lot of it is research on the front end. Like if you, if you want an article in Forbes magazine or forbes.com or Huffpost, you first have to figure out what, what am I bringing to the table, what is the content that I’m going to be sharing and who does that content for? And then once you get clear on that step, the next step is, okay, now who is the editor or the freelancer or the writer who serves this content in this audience. And a lot of times you can find that through Google. You can find it through Twitter, you can find it through going to Huffington post or going to forbes.com and going through the articles and see who was the contributor for that piece. And you can reach out to them directly and say, Hey, I have this idea. This is who it’s for

RV: (14:15)
Through Twitter or Instagram or like

JS: (14:17)
Through linkedin. Yeah, I mean in this day and age, when I first started PR in 2007 there was no Twitter there. Facebook was kind of really early in its, in its beginning there was no Instagram. We literally had media databases. There was one called Cision that costs an arm and a leg that people had subscribed to for a year to get it. And then you might have gotten lucky if you, if you googled back then, but now in 2019 I mean honestly if someone comes to me and says like they can’t find a contact, I usually kind of think I have to call them, call them out on that excuse because we have more information available to us now than we ever have of, you know, it’s like sign up for the $20 a month on linkedin. Right. Like get the email, you know, it’s not that challenging of, of a, of a thing at this point to find a contact or to find someone who may know someone a little bit of work.

RV: (15:09)
Are you shy? You’re not in, you’re not shy about approaching. It was like if you’ve done, if you’ve done the research and you know that this media outlet produces this kind of media and this is the writer or the interviewer that covers segments just like this, and, and, and I can talk and provide value to that audience, then you just basically like straight up send him a linkedin message or a tweet or a DM and you tell them, I know you write on this. I know you serve this audience. That’s who I’m an expert in and here’s the content, you know, I’d love to like, is it that simple?

JS: (15:43)
It is that simple. And a lot of times you can actually take, if you’re someone who has a blog, for example, you can take a piece of content you’ve already written and repurpose it and send it to them. Say, yes, you know, I sent this out. We got a lot of feedback about my audience. It really served them in this way. These were the, you know, this is what we hit on. This is how it helped them. This was the call to action. Okay. And I think that it would fit your audience. This is why I already have it written. If you want to read it, let me know your thoughts. I’m happy to tweak it for you. Let me know. You know, if you need anything else or if I need to help you pull together something else to make it happen or responsive to this.

JS: (16:16)
Oh yeah, they’re responsive. I mean even the other day I there’s a company called create cultivate that have conferences all over the country that target my ideal audience, that target my ideal woman and I’ve been wanting to be a part of their conference for a while, kind of put it on the back burner, saw something that came up the other day and it reminded me and I literally found an email, sent it to them and said, you know, hey, I’m going to be in La for a couple of weeks. I would love to have coffee. And I also know that you have some conferences coming up. This is what I’ve been doing this year. These are the topics that I’ve been speaking on. I would love to come wrote me back the next day and said, we would love to have you at our San Francisco conference

RV: (16:53)
And this is just like send an email, lay it out and just,

JS: (16:58)
Yep. And you may, again, there is a little research on the front end. I don’t want it to sound like it’s just, you know, I mean, and I’m also going off of the basis that you are someone who actually has valuable content to share. Right? Well going off of the basis of that

RV: (17:11)
You have something worthwhile bring them. Yeah.

JS: (17:15)
Right, exactly. But it’s a lot of the times, again, it’s that fear of like, well what if no one gets back to me? What if I email the wrong person? What if I hear crickets on the other end? And that may happen and you know, you have to kind of go into it with, with, you know, for every 10 pitches you send out, you may get five that actually respond to you and then three out of the five that you actually land and hey, that’s three more that you would not have if you would have never reached out to begin with. And you can craft, I mean,

RV: (17:44)
We have a good ratio that’s not like, that’s not like you’re making a thousand calls and you’re going to sell one person. I mean

JS: (17:51)
Exactly. And it’s actually easier now more than ever because when I was doing meaty, yeah. You know, back then that that was before, you know, dotcoms had really blown up and there were more traditional editors that were on, you know, there were employees of the company, they were on staff there. They’re looking for contributors, they need the content. They don’t have a team and a staff of writers anymore. So they love it when you come and you hand them everything on a silver platter, you have it curated and you’ve done your homework. Like take a little time to read what these writers that you’re pitching to are editors that you’re pitching to have you actually written, give a little time and a little feedback to them so they know that you’re being serious about what you’re offering.

RV: (18:33)
Yeah. So I love this. Now I know I want to talk to you a little bit about like national TV cause that’s the thing like, oh my gosh, you know, like people think media and they go, good morning America, the today show. Yeah. Like, you know, is it, when is it realistic to do that? Like should you wait, should you just go for it? And you know, I know that you’ve, you know, you’ve, you’ve worked with people who are on those, you know, have been on those outlets and what does it really take to sort of catch the attention at that? Like huge, you know, major national scale,

JS: (19:09)
Right? Well there’s a couple of ways that you can go. But specifically for TV, there’s kind of a little niche here. Like there can be instances, again, depending on the climate, you know, of our culture. So if, let’s say if your, if your topic is politics and you’re coming out with something fall of 2020 during an election, you may have a better opportunity of getting a national television spot, depending on what that topic may be. So the seasonal approaches can change certain things with television, hot topics, folks can change certain things with television. But you know, traditionally speaking, if you’re someone that wants to hit a national television spot, nine times out of 10 a national television booker or producer is gonna want to see something from you that is on camera, right? Whether that’s, you know, a local television spot, you’ve done what they’re, that’s youtube interviews that you’ve been on, any kind of local media, they’re gonna want to see how you are and in your dynamic on camera if they’re going to potentially put you on camera.

JS: (20:11)
So the first thing that I would always tell clients of mine in the past is that sometimes you do have to start small to kind of build up your reel and build up your deck, go to your local television station and you know, pitch them, start small and kind of build it up. Reach out to dotcoms that have digital television shows or digital and interviews there, things like that. Anything, even something like this, you know, where they can just, they can see you on camera, they can see how you’re dynamics, they can see how, how you flow your dictation, all that kind of stuff that will go into effect. So that is the first key. Those are the kind of the two folds there. You could go off the bat and national media and see what happens depending on the topic and what not. Or what I always say is build up the deck and build up the real, and then you can have a real that you just send out and then they can see for themselves.

RV: (20:57)
Yeah, I think that’s, that’s the big thing that I learned. You know, I’ve, I’ve had a few major national appearances, not a ton, but I is remembering that TV is a visual medium and whatever you’re doing, the more you can make it visual and just if, even if that’s just you as an interviewer, ultimately to attract eyeballs, you have to do something that’s interesting visually. The other thing I remember is it goes by insanely fast, like a five minute segment feels in real life. Like 10 seconds. I mean, yes. So, so I think that’s great. All right, so I’m a little bit kind of, oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah.

JS: (21:36)
Is that, and no one ever really thinks of this. If you’re pitching yourself for TV, you can always do a pitch on video. So they see lar, we’ve actually had some pitches come through on video for us for the podcast, which was great because we got to hear the person auditorily. We got to really kind of hear their passion and how they were and how they really sounded. So video pitches can work really well as well.

RV: (22:03)
What a simple, yeah, what a simple thing. A, I love that. I love that. Okay. So I, I want to, I want to get to, you know, kind of also on the line of pitching his brand deals. Yeah. you know, this is a thing we have a saying around Bram Ram builders group where we say, you know, there’s a lot of people out there unfortunately who are Twitter rich and dollar broke. They have lots of followers and they don’t, but they’re not converting it to money. And it’s amazing. You know, we’d meet these people with a million followers and like they have no income coming in and you know, we teach all these different business models and you know, as you, as you know, you’ve been through our training and we try to help people figure out one. But when it comes to brand deals, like I go Julie, like Julie is she, she’s the master and I know you have your course pitch at perfect, which is killer course for people on this space.

RV: (22:56)
But can you dislike, talk to us a little bit about what is, what is a brand deal? What’s the likelihood of getting one, you know, how much do they actually pay? I mean I know if you’re tiger woods or you’re Michael Jordan, but like if you’re, if you’re a person, how many followers do you need to have to get one? And then what’s the process of actually of actually getting one? Cause I think like national TV, we all SORTA sink. We sit around waiting going, what do I have to do to make somebody find me? And I’ve really appreciated your outlook, which is like, no, that’s not how it works. Like you Kinda, you gotta go get it. So can you talk about it?

JS: (23:34)
Yeah. And actually I love that you bring this up cause this is the entire reason why we created pitch it perfect was that when I was starting out, I didn’t have, you know, compared to a lot of my friends who had tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, I had way less than 10,000 followers and I would pitch a brand and I would make, you know, three times more on a brand deal than they would. They would actually be accepting gifted product. And I would be over here making five, $10,000 for the brand deal. And so I would have these women predominantly that would come up to me and say flat out, you know, they would say, no offense Julie, but how is it that I have a hundred thousand followers and you have 7,000 followers and you’re waking, you’re making way more money than me.

JS: (24:14)
And I’m like, well, I know how to pitch myself. And so that’s when I said, I really need to create something that can support these people that are interested in doing this and having it be a really good source of a, of a revenue stream for their business. So we created pitch perfect under, under that pretense. And since then we’ve had thousands of students go through it. But with, with that in mind, well, one of the biggest issues that we see from people that come into our program, one of the biggest things that they say is, I thought that I had to have a certain amount of followers in order to get a brand deal. But now I know that that’s not true because I’ve gone through your program or I thought that brands were just gonna come to me when I was ready to work with them, you know?

JS: (24:57)
But now I know that that’s not possible. And that’s the thing that really kind of letting people know that there’s no brand ferry that just falls from the sky and is going to give you a brand deal. Just like with anything like you, you’ve, you’ve got to go out. If it’s something that you really want to make a model in your business and kind of part of your revenue stream, you’ve got to get your ducks in order and kind of go there. So there’s kind of certain tiers. First off, I will say that there’s really no set number to start building that relationship with a brand brand. Love what is called, you know, micro influencers, which is anyone that has 10,000 or less followers. We’ve had students that have had as little as 300 followers that have gotten brand deals. So what we really talk about is you want to get in there from the beginning to really start the relationship.

JS: (25:42)
It’s kind of like a marriage of sorts. You wouldn’t go to someone and marry them most likely the first night that you meet them, you want to warm the relationship up. You want to go on a few dates and really kind of get to know the person and see how you can support one another. Same thing goes when you’re working with these brands. So it’s really about coming and approaching, asking them certain questions, you know, how you know, what is it that you’re looking for? What is your bottom line? What are the new products and services that you have coming out? Who are you trying to target? What is your current budget in your marketing plan? Do you even have an influencer budget? Do you even pay influencers or do you only do gifting? Really asking these kinds of questions on the front end.

JS: (26:21)
It’s gonna kind of help you save a lot of time in organized. So there’s no quite follower number. But I will say that mostly, you know, you get those 300 to 500 follow a 300 to 500 influencers that have that number of following that get brand deals. But I would say mostly I see any anywhere from 2,500 followers and up, it’s really about the engagement rate. So brands like to look for an engagement rate of at least 4% or higher. Now obviously, typically the smaller your follower number is, the higher your engagement rate’s going to be because you’re not going to have as many followers there that need to engage with you. So that’s why they really do love micro influencers that you may only have 2,500 followers, but if you’ve got a 25% engagement rate in 25% of those 2,500 people are seeing it, you could actually outweigh someone that may have 10,000 followers, but only 0.03% of their followers are seeing their content. So it’s really about, we really like to focus more on the engagement rate and getting your engagement rate strong, as strong as it can be. Then the following number per se. So you’ve got your micro influencers, then you have your macro influencers.

RV: (27:33)
Who are you talking to? Like if you’re going to go, I want to deal with Nike, like who are you trying to get ahold of? Is it the senior vice president of marketing or is there like a person that may be,

JS: (27:46)
Yes. So it, it depends a lot like a company like Nike for example, they are going to have this farmed out. You know, their in house team is not going to be dealing with pitches from influencers all day long. They’re going to be sending it to an influencer marketing company, a PR company, you know, there’s kind of a bunch of different umbrellas of how that can unfold. So the first thing, again, you have to go back to the research. Linkedin is a really good place to start researching some of the, you know, who’s the PR Rep and just asking them, hi. You know, I’m so and so. This is my website. This is what I do. You know, I’m really wanting to build a relationship with Nike who is the best contact, you know, that works with the influencers for you guys. Simple as that. I mean, it’s really just getting out there asking the questions,

RV: (28:30)
But just find somebody and ask them who’s the right.

JS: (28:34)
Exactly. Deeming brands on Instagram works very, very well. Facebooking brands, sending dms on Facebook to brands works really, really well. And linkedin and Twitter is really good for media. For brands, I would say Linkedin, Facebook, and Instagram are going to be your best bets.

RV: (28:50)
Oh, interesting. So Twitter, you say that again. Twitter is good for media. Yes.

JS: (28:54)
From media. Yep. And then Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin is better for brands and then the companies that represent the brands, the PR companies and that sort of thing. But a lot of times with Nike, you know, if Nike has a $10 million marketing budget, they’re not going to go. I mean, no, mostly they’re probably not going to go to micro influencers and they’re not even going to go to macro influencers. They’re going to go for the celebrity endorsement deals. We’re going to say we’re going to get so and so.

RV: (29:21)
What’s the realistic, what is the realistic version? Right? So let’s say somebody is watching and they’ve got 7,500 followers or maybe 25,000 followers, you know, and there you, you know, but they’ve never done a brand deal. What size company would they look and, and then like how much does a reasonable amount to expect? You know, it’s like, you know, celebrities get millions of dollars, but what does just, you know, kind of a person get,

JS: (29:52)
Yeah. So again, it also depends on like how full Tom are you going into it. So for example, I’ve got a girlfriend of mine that has 250 ish thousand followers. Influencer marketing is her full time Gig and she makes anywhere between 30 to 50 grand a month off of brand deals.

RV: (30:07)
Okay. Say that again. So she has 250,000 followers. Yep.

JS: (30:12)
And she makes about 30 to 50 grand a month off brand deal. Okay.

RV: (30:17)
Gotcha. So, so posting content on social is her full time. That’s her full time job. That was her job. And, and what do they kind of like? So what does that, that’s probably several brands and then would be, what do they normally ask for? Like what do you have to do for them?

JS: (30:33)
Yeah, so it depends on the assets. It depends on kind of what they’re typically it is. It’s a, it’s an Instagram, it’s a static Instagram post, so on your feed it is brands really love Instagram stories because of the swipe up feature and they can, they can see how many clicks are going and it’s a lot easier to kind of equate into, into follow for them to really see what their ROI is. So they really like Instagram stories and like Instagram is their main focus. Facebook not Twitter, not so much. They may ask for some Pinterest stuff depending on who the brand is and what their focus is. And it also depends on, you know, what is the brand’s goal? And this is one of the questions that I always tell my students to ask when they’re reaching out to brands. Are the brands focused on conversion or are they focused on awareness? Because that’s also going to factor in on how much they pay you on who they choose to work with on why they’re choosing to work with them. So that’s another big thing. If they’re looking to convert dollars, there may be some influencers out there that for whatever reason they don’t convert really well, but they have a huge platform for awareness. So it really kind of just depends on where, what is, what is the goal of the brand and then they can align with the influencer that way.

RV: (31:46)
So the other thing is while we’re on this topic, this is awesome. This is so enlightening I guess is a world that I know nothing about. Like it’s very eye opening to me how this is how this works. And it’s also very simple and sort of straight forward. It’s like, oh, you know, you just go do it. But what about influencers paying other influencers? Does that, are you seeing, like, do you hear of that happening much? That’s a, a growing thing.

JS: (32:14)
Yeah, it, it used to not mean, I mean when I first started into this industry of blogging in influencer marketing, which was 2013 ish, it that wasn’t happening as much, but now that influencers are essentially becoming their own brand, they’re creating their own products and services and getting it out there. You definitely see that happen more and more. And in the, in the online course creation industry, you would see it a lot with you know, launches that that affiliate launches that people would do or they would come on board and kind of do a co launch and support one another that way. But I’m seeing it now more with influencers. You’ll have an influencer who has a products coming out and now see it out to other influencers to support that. Or even the brand may put some marketing dollars behind that influencer to then use to kind of see it out that way. The other thing that the brands are doing are also white listing Facebook ads. So they will ask for an opportunity, what does that mean? So they will basically take the posts that you do for them and then they will sponsor it. So they will pay the money to sponsor it as an ad and then that will run for a certain amount of time time. So obviously if the brand is doing that, then they’re going to be saturating you even more, which means more money in your pocket.

RV: (33:28)
Hi. So that, so you do a, like you create a post on Facebook, like a video of like a product review or something like, Hey, I love this microphone. It’s amazing microphone

JS: (33:39)
And that’s sponsored. So you’re getting money in your pocket to create that piece of content for the brand and then the brands going into your Facebook ads and they are putting money in and promoting that post. Exactly.

RV: (33:53)
Yeah. Interesting. So you don’t make any money off of that, but they’re paying you to create it and then they’re exposing you to a bunch of people.

JS: (33:58)
Right. And what I say is to take it one step farther to say, yeah, you can boost my posts, but if you’re going to be doing that, we need to have terms. And limitations because you’re essentially oversaturating me to my followers and I need to be compensated for that.

RV: (34:13)
Yeah. So you’ve kind of worked that, worked at an a, this is so, so interesting. I mean, I think the thing of all of this, this is just, yeah, it comes back to that original piece about the confidence and just the siting. Like, you know, I’m going to do this. So I have one little, one last little thing I want to ask you about before we do that, where do you want people to go to connect with you and follow you? You’ll, we’ll put a link to your website and pitch it perfect in in the, you know, recap, show notes of this, but is there where, where’s the best place to find you?

JS: (34:48)
Yeah. So if you want to learn more about that, that specific skillset of pitching [inaudible] been talking about today, you can go to pigite perfect.net and then if you want free resources on an array of things including pitching, branding, marketing, I of course have the influence or podcast and you can find [email protected] or iTunes, stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. And then my website is just Julie solomon.net and there is where you can learn more about me. I have a lot of free resources on there as well. And then of course it links to the various other things that we’ve talked about today too.

RV: (35:23)
Love it, love it, love it, love it. So we’ll link, we’ll link all that up as well. So the last thing I want to, to have you talk about is when, when, when you came here, you came to Vaden villa, you, you were, we did a two day strategy session with you and John was there and loved it, loved meeting you guys. And I think we became friends out of that. But the, there was something that you said that has stuck with me ever since was you, you have this thing, I just, I love this so much called special snowflake syndrome. And again, I think the thing that just sticks with me from, from you is just that decision to just go and just freaking do it. Can you, can you just land the plane by talking to us about what a special snowflake syndrome. How do you know if you have it, what, what, what is the problem with special snowflake syndrome? And then just like what do you do about it?

JS: (36:23)
Yeah, I know being diagnosed with sss can be detrimental to your, to your overall success. And again, it comes back to that confidence piece. So really to me, special snowflake syndrome is just an excuse. It is a way in which we use certain circumstances to keep ourselves small, to limit ourselves and to make up excuses as to why we can’t achieve something. So an example would be, you know, I, you know, I don’t, I should, I shouldn’t have to worry about sales and marketing, but I’m the influencer. I should just be able to cope. Did to create my pretty content and to post it on Instagram and to do my Instagram stories. I shouldn’t have to learn about business. I shouldn’t have to learn about strategy yesterday. I have to learn about this finance syndrome or this finance stuff. And it’s like, well no, you’re in special snowflake syndrome.

JS: (37:13)
They’re, you know, you think that you’re just this special snowflake who doesn’t have to worry about certain things or it doesn’t have to figure out certain things. And also that idea of when we kind of get into a little bit of that idea of I’m, I’m powerless or I’m helpless to something, right? Like, I just can’t grow no matter what I do. Or I just don’t have enough time to figure that out. Or there’s no way I’ll ever have enough money to invest in myself. I just can’t do that. I’m not like everyone else. It’s like, no, you’re in special snowflake syndrome. You know, the, we all have the same amount of time of day. We all choose to use it, how we choose to use it. It’s really goes back to that accountability piece that you really have to start being responsible and accountability for the, for your own beliefs and for the decisions and choices that you make. Because really at the end of the day, the only thing that you do have power over is yourself and your thoughts and the truth voices and the beliefs that you choose to have. You are actually kind of powerless to everything else outside of that, but it’s that idea that, you know, I’m so different. I’m so unique. Woe is me. No one can understand me. No one can, can understand what it’s like to walk in my shoes. Therefore nothing will ever work for me. That’s the special snowflake syndrome.

RV: (38:31)
I love this so much. Suck it up. Yeah. Is Great. Great. Great. Well Julie, thanks for sharing your story. Thanks for your inspiration. Also, you know, your strategic clarity and your tactical clarity but just kind of your, your mission and I know you’re, you’re inspired to help people get their message out. So it’s been, it’s been wonderful having you, as always, we’ll continue to promote you and thanks for, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me.

Ep 45: The Prepared, Consistent, and Persistent Host with Alberto Sardinas | Recap Episode

RV: (00:07)
Hola! Buenos dias! [INAUDIBLE] We are going to talk about, (laughing) we’re breaking down… Welcome to the recap edition of our good friend and client Alberto Sardinias. And we thought, it was AJ’s idea to start in Spanish and that was basically all of the Spanish we know

AJV: (00:35)
Spanish or murdering the Spanish language.

RV: (00:39)
It was definitely sharing every bit of Spanish we know in 30 seconds.

AJV: (00:43)
It was total Spanglish.

(00:43)
Actually little known fact, AJ was a Spanish minor in college and she studied abroad in Mexico. And I know a little Spanish here and there, so.

AJV: (00:56)
He looks like he should know more.

RV: (00:57)
I look like I should know more. Yeah, I don’t but. Fantastic. You know, I, I’ve, I’ve never personally, I was, you know, I don’t know, I was a little bit embarrassed to say this or not, but I was like, wow, I’ve never interviewed someone who was such a celebrity from such like, from a different language, like a non English speaking celebrity. And I think Alberto was really like my first interview, that they’re qualified at that. And I thought that was interesting.

AJV: (01:25)
Yeah. I told Rory even even as I was listening to the interview, I said my favorite thing about Alberto is I think part of it is the culture of the passion and enthusiasm and the charisma that he communicates with. And I think part of that is just cultural, which you know, boring a white people over here that have. But I just loved, I loved the enthusiasm and it’s easy to see why he has a cult-like following. Because he is very endearing and charismatic and passionate and just even the way he communicates and his, his facial expressions and his body language and his vocal quadrants. It is very engaging. It’s really awesome. Endearing.

RV: (02:09)
Yeah, that’s a really good, a good word for it. And I guess that’s a big, that’s a big takeaway from you for in terms of being a great host is just to be all of those.

AJV: (02:16)
Well, yeah, it’s like we listen to a lot of these and we do a lot of interviews and sometimes the content is amazing, but the person is so monotonous in their delivery of such amazing content and not just in our interviews, but you know, we’ve been in this industry for a long time and I have seen a handful of speakers and it’s amazing how it’s like you can read someone’s book and just be enthralled in the content and be like, Oh my gosh, these are revolutionary ideas. And then you travel and spend all this money to go see this person lie to see what kind of new and unique insights are they going to give us. And then you’re like, Oh my gosh, is this the same person who wrote the book? This is a, this is not good, this is not good. And so much of it has to do with the delivery.

AJV: (03:06)
It’s not just the content that matters. It’s a can you draw someone in? Can you keep my attention? And I will say, I am unfortunately a multitasker. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s really hard to keep my attention. And a lot of it has to do with just the personality per se. And it doesn’t have to be your own given personality, but it’s the way you expose your personality, right? We all have a personality and you don’t all need to be, you know, all over the place, right? Spirit fingers. That’s not what we’re saying. But there is some uniqueness around like what is it that makes you uniquely you and are you putting that across

RV: (03:50)
In terms of like energy that you’re, that’s coming up. Yeah. And I related to that, one of the things that he said, which I don’t, I don’t think you can hear enough, is you have to be willing to promote your message. So his enthusiasm for his message, you hear as he is talking about it. But the other thing that you probably need to hear today is that you can’t ever grow weary in promotion and you have to constantly be out there promoting loud and far and wide if you’re going to compete. And I struggle with this. Like I always feel like I’m pandering. I feel cheesy. Like I hate doing the thing. You know, people see this all the time on Instagram. Like, like, you know, to you know, leave me a comment or something like that. Like I just really struggle with doing that for some reason. But it’s not about you, it’s about your message and it’s about the people you’re helping and you need to promote. You need to be willing to do that. And Alberto has, has done a great job of that, particularly in his Spanish market and now it’s, it’s, it’s fascinating to see similar to us, he’s like going through this reinvention and in the, in the English speaking market. So it’s fun to see that.

AJV: (05:03)
Yeah. I think too, as you guys should go and listen to the interview, they, something that’s unique but also not unique about every single one of these interviews that we’ve had is the amount of patience and consistency and longevity and which these people have been doing and honing their skills in which it looks like. Oh my gosh, how did you get all it? Well it’s cause it’s been doing it a long time and for Alba Bartow though, he’s been doing it since he was 17 he was going out and trying to get time and the local radio stations when he was going from high school to college and did it all through college and then actually majored in this and then went and got his master’s in this and broadcasting and it’s like this didn’t happen overnight and these aren’t like sometimes I think it’s really easy to look online and be like, Oh wow, I wonder what their secret is. I wonder what their key is. I, you know, I wonder what this, you know, how can I do that quick as possible? No, the real secret is there is no secret. It is a lot of hard work, but a really long time.

RV: (06:10)
Yeah, and I, I I, you know, I, I heard Dave Ramsey talk about one time he was speaking at a conference, it wasn’t one of his events and he was talking about the radio business specifically. It’s an interesting parallel because in English speaking radio, there are basically three people at, at the top. It’s rush Limbaugh, it’s Glenn Beck and it’s Dave Ramsey. And it has been that for years and years and years. And he was talking about how if you just stick around, you’re going to beat like 80% of the people, right? So when you think about your personal brand and you go, Oh my gosh, there’s so much noise, there’s so much competition. Like how am I ever going to stand out? Well, beating 80% of those people is just sticking around. And I don’t even think it’s sticking around that long. It’s like making it two or three years, you’re going to outlast so many of those people.

RV: (07:04)
And then he said, if you actually work hard and, and, and you work smart, then the other 17% of those people you’ll, you’ll beat just by investing in yourself and getting some coaching and doing some strategy and being intelligent and working hard. Like when you’re doing it, not getting distracted and then, you know, so that puts you ahead of 97% of people. And then he said it’s that last 3% that is the dog fight. Like being in the top of the top of the top is where, you know, it really takes creativity and magic and hustle and relationships and everything else. But 97% of this game is basically just sticking it out. And I, you’re right. Almost every guest that we have talks about that, which in some ways is like, gosh, it’d be interesting to hear something different. Right. But it’s, it’s, it’s because it’s the truth and it’s what you need to hear and that’s what we need to hear every single day because you’re battling the burnout of, you know, building your brand. It’s just reality.

AJV: (08:15)
Yeah. I think one of my favorite things that our Alberto talks about was at the very, very end. And I’m not going to say I didn’t enjoy all of the lovely plugs he gave to brand builders. [inaudible] So great. Not solicited, but we will take them. Thank you very much. But I think what I really love is he said like, where are you getting shortcuts? I said, that doesn’t mean that you’re not going to have to work hard and it’s not going to take a long time. It’s just where are you getting a shortcut, right? Who are you learning from? Who are you learning from? Like where can you go to figure out this one little tweak here and this little tweak there that will help expedite the process. Not that it’s going to eliminate the process, but it may give you a little bit of bump ahead of the competition or bump ahead of the time curve, whatever it may be. But where are you getting your shortcuts? So who are you learning from? And I love that. That was really good.

RV: (09:14)
Yeah. And because when you get into that top of the top right, like when you talk about the, you know, the one percenters of the industry or the space, it does come down to experience and wisdom and you know, a few tricks of the trade, you learn them more along the way. I think about speaking, cause you know, I spent my whole life and it’s like there’s certain little things that we just know because we’ve been in it our entire career where it’s like there’s no way you could know it. It’s just, it takes 20 years of just doing it. But you can, you can teach somebody in five minutes. But otherwise you would never, never stumble across it. And, and that was another thing that he said, this was my third big takeaway was just about being prepared. And when you look at being a great host, he said that that directly a couple of times, like a lot of is about being prepared.

RV: (10:04)
Even spontaneity. What it is is all perception. It’s not, it doesn’t, it’s not really spontaneous. It’s, it’s about great preparation. But not only just as a host but in his career, right where he was telling his story about how you just have to work day in and day out and I think people confuse patience a lot. I don’t think patience is sitting by and waiting. I think patience is working your tail off and being okay with the result, not being there and keeping, you know, continuing to work, continuing to grow, continuing to strive. The patience doesn’t mean you’re sitting around waiting. It means that you’re working your tail off in the absence of the results. Showing up with the perspective, knowing that if I do this long enough, one day I will get my shot. One day I will get my break. One day I will meet a person who can crack open my career and, and that is the, the balance of patience and action. In fact, we talk about that in the procrastinate on purpose book about this balance between patients and action. It’s because you on the surface they seem like different things, but really they’re not. It’s really about action. You’re just working, working, working the patience is being patient for the results, being patient for the big break to come and, and that’s just what it takes. You gotta have both,

AJV: (11:27)
Not everyone has patients Rory.

RV: (11:31)
From my, my wife.

AJV: (11:34)
But I do believe in the concept of work while you wait. Yeah. Right. I believe in the concept very strongly of work while you wait, that’s just a part of it. My third one, my last one, and it’s kind of similar to what you said, but this was towards the tail end of the interview. And we asked him, well, how do you handle people who come the air and their stories really are unfolding the way they need to be or their message is a little bit confusing and how do you guide those people in the right direction? And I loved what he said. He goes, you never put someone on the air when you don’t know what they’re going to say.

AJV: (12:08)
He said it’s really nice that from the outside it looks like this is a very seamless process. And people call in and then they just come on the air. He goes, that is not what happens. And I said, it shouldn’t be what you do if you don’t know what they’re going to say. If you don’t know who you’re interviewing, don’t put them on the air. That goes, I think to a podcast or a radio host or in so many things in life. It’s like if you don’t know what they’re going to say, shame on you. I mean, do you haven’t done your due diligence? You haven’t done your research or you haven’t got to know your guests well enough to anticipate the unique curve balls that may look a spontaneous but really aren’t so much at all because you knew they were coming. He said, if you don’t know what they’re going to say, you don’t put them on the air.

AJV: (12:56)
That’s your job as the host. I was like, you’ve got to know how the story is going to unfold. And I liken it a lot to being an investigative journalist, right? It’s like you’ve got to do all of your due diligence beforehand before you go live on the air because if you get surprised on the air, then you have not done your job. So you got to know what’s happening beforehand before it actually comes onto the air. We’ve been actually watching the morning show. It’s unbelievable, such so good and it’s just such a unique and needed message right now. But I think you learn a lot from just like the little bits of, you know, things you’re learning on the show, even in the midst of the larger message at hand, all those little things about the amount of work and preparation that has to go in place for one single interview. I thought that was very similar to what he was saying is like, yeah, you just don’t put people on the air when you don’t know what they’re going to say. That’s your job.

RV: (13:56)
Yeah, and that’s your job as a host is looking out for your audience, looking out for their best interest. It’s one of the things that I love about hosts. It’s, it’s a great skill and it’s, it’s a great mindset to say, Hey, I’m going to be a fiduciary or a steward for my audience. That’s what we hope that we are doing for you. We’re honored that you’re listening. Stay tuned. And that’s all we have for this episode of the influential personal brand.

RV: (14:23)
Adios!