Ep 357: You Don’t Need A Visual Identity To Build Your Personal Brand | Nadine Hanafi Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
Hey, AJ Vaden here. Just making a quick pop in here to talk about something that has been on the top of my mind for hmm, 15 years. I’m not exaggerating. It’s literally been on my mind for 15 years. And it’s on the lines of this concept of building your personal brand, which, you know, to me is just an extension of your reputation. But I feel like there’s a lot of misconception out there about what is a personal brand and people associate personal branding with influencers and social media followers and you know, all the things that you would think about with having an online presence and a podcast and a website and a blog and all the things. And those things are good. Don’t get me wrong. We talk a lot about those things at Brand Builders Group and here I am making a content video for social media and or podcast and a blog.
AJV (00:59):
So don’t get, don’t hear what I’m not saying here. Those things are good and valuable and important, but those are not a personal brand. They’re just not. A personal brand is the formalization of what you wanna be known for and who you want to be known by. It’s the formalization and digitization of your reputation in a way that helps you get out there and become the go-to expert in your space, both online and offline. But again, personal branding, it’s just an extension of your reputation. It’s the intentional desire of becoming known for what you want to be known for. That is a personal brand. But what comes along with that is once those things are formalized as well, how do I get this message? How do I display my content, what I have to say, who I wanna be out into the world? And that’s where it gets a little muddied, right?
AJV (01:58):
Because then we, we get confused that somehow personal branding is all about social media and it’s not. Or we think that branding is all about visual identity and websites and colors and fonts and it’s not. We think that it only has to do with content creation. It doesn’t, those are all pieces and parts of the puzzle here. But there is a, a piece of this puzzle that I wanna specifically talk about today which is the visual identity part, because that is where people get hung up and they get consumed. And it’s what most often stops you in your tracks because you’re so concerned with what it looks like. You forget that you’re actually doing this to help somebody. You get so consumed with how many likes or followers or subscribers that you get that you forget that people who did see it and who did have an it that or who did you did impact.
AJV (02:49):
You forget that those people are real live human beings on the other side of your screen. Or you get so obsessed with doing so many speaking engagements or book deals or whatever that you forget, like you are making an impact with one person and that is worth it, that’s worth it. But back to this concept of visual identity, there are so many EMA emotions that are tied up in, well, what is my brand gonna look like? That that is what the whole concept of personal branding becomes about. And so I was sitting down with a friend, Nadine, who owns this awesome company called We Are Visual and has another company called Digital Brand Kit. And we were having this conversation because on the journey of building my personal brand over the last 10, 2, 15 years I have never really sat down and spent the time if this tells you anything of really creating my own color palette or a visual identity or font, because I believe that’s just a tiny piece of it.
AJV (03:53):
And at some point you actually need to do those things that, that’s important for you to have this visual representation of who you are and how you want to be a scene in the world. And it’s been a long time coming. And so I’ve been going through this journey and it’s been a really hard process for me. It’s been a really hard thing of going, man, I just don’t know if that’s it. So I was having this conversation with my friend Nadine, and she gave me some key tips that I thought I would pass along to you. So step one here’s what she said. And she is a designer. Do not hire a designer as your first step.
AJV (04:31):
That was so helpful because that’s what you think you need. Oh, I just need to go find someone who can figure out and do this for me. Don’t do that. In fact, as a designer, you know, she’s giving me this. If I don’t hire designers your first step, but instead spend time with your audience, spend time with your content and getting in tune with who do you wanna impact? How do you wanna impact them, and how do they need to be impacted, right? How do they actually want to hear from you? And what is it that they need from you? What is it that they want from you? And how can you really make a difference in the people that you feel like you’re called to make a difference for? So don’t hire a designer. Spend time with your audience. Step number one. So helpful.
AJV (05:14):
Step number two follow truths, not trends. And this was so, so powerful. I’m gonna say that again. Follow truths, not trends. And what she said is, your visual identity is what’s true about you, not what’s trending online or in the market, right?
AJV (05:57):
Don’t know, did they go away? I dunno,
AJV (06:48):
Taking pictures of colors and restaurants and sending ’em to a designer. Don’t do that. Because you waste time and you’re never going to actually get a visual identity that represents you. So follow truths, not trends. Number three, she said, here’s actually something to and think about when you think about what you actually need when you’re building out your personal brand. And you have to think about what is an actual set of brand guidelines. Because if you work with most designers, a set of brand guidelines is gonna include a logo, a color palette, fonts, maybe some iconography, some typography. But that’s about it. And she goes, if you really think about it, this is what you need. Buckle up. You’re gonna need colors, fonts, logos, you will need iconography. You will need topography, but you are also going to need brand imagery, right?
AJV (07:41):
So those are different types of imagery, not just icons and just visuals. But you’re gonna need like full like photography imagery, right? Think about all the things that people put quotes on and you’re standing behind and all the things. You’re gonna need imagery, you’re gonna need banners for the different social media platforms. Well, they all have different dimensions, so you’re gonna need a different size banner for Facebook versus Instagram versus LinkedIn versus YouTube. You’re gonna need different banners. You, cuz they all have different dimensions. You’re gonna need PowerPoint files. Don’t think about, don’t forget about that. At some point you likely will do a presentation, whether it’s a webinar or a keynote. But what about p d s? Are you gonna have e-books? Are you gonna have any sort of lead magnets or downloads? What about handouts? Will you able to do workshops or will you do something that you hand out in a virtual presentation or a live presentation?
AJV (08:35):
What about your speaker press kit? Will you do any speaking cuz you’re gonna need something where you have formatted for that. What about a webinar kit or a course, right? Are you gonna need imagery for both the, the, you know, like the cover pages of the courses the different files that have you have in the courses the different thumbnails you’re gonna gonna need thumbnails, you’re gonna need ad images if you ever do pay traffic. What about a media kit? Do you have a podcast? Do you need a podcast thumb? Now? Do you need a media kit? Like don’t go to overwhelmed now, right? But if then if you’re getting into video, do you need video bumpers? Do you need video covers? And the list just went on and on and on and I was like, oh my gosh, that is what you have to think about.
AJV (09:17):
And that is where people get stuck. I, instead of pursuing something that has the ability to change your life and to change someone else’s life, we get lost behind all of these things. And so when I was having this conversation with they dean, I mentioned that she owns these awesome two companies. We are visual, which helps you do things custom. But she said this was the whole reason this this conversation she was having with me is the entire reason that she created the company Digital Brand Kit because she has created all of those assets and templates with dozens and dozens of dozens of preset color palettes and imagery and typography and fonts. So that for people like me, they don’t get stuck in this kind of thing. Instead of focusing on my audience and my content and doing what I feel like God put me on earth to do.
AJV (10:11):
I don’t get stuck behind some color wheel, right? And so I just wanna encourage you the same thing. I’ve gotten almost 15 years in my personal brand without having a formal website or brand guidelines or anything like that. And guess what? It’s working out okay. And at the same time, there’s comes up time like for me right now where I wanna do it and it feels right and it feels like the time to do it. But you don’t have to spend 20,000, 50,000, a hundred thousand dollars on this. You don’t have to spend 10,000. In fact, you can spend a thousand or 2000 get to, to get the things that you need. And when you think about where you’re gonna invest your time and your money and your resources, people get overly attached to the visual part of it because we think that’s all that matters.
AJV (10:57):
And I’m just here, I’m living proof to tell you that it’s not I haven’t had one in 15 years. And at the same time, there comes a time where something is important but it’s way more important to figure out the truth behind what’s really important and how you wanna present yourself than spending, you know, tens of thousands of dollars getting something that’s just trendy and cool. And so I don’t know who this is for today, but I know that it was for me. And so I hope it resonates with someone else out there. And shameless plug my friend nabe, if you’re interested in this sort of thing go to brand builders group.com/db k and check out digital brand kits for your own starter brand. And again, it’s like visual identity is important, but it ain’t the whole thing. So just keep on keeping on and keep doing you. We’ll see you next time.
Ep 356: Create Your Visual Identity in 30 Days or Less with Nadine Hanafi
AJV (00:02):
Hi everybody, this is AJ Vaden here, and welcome to another episode on the Influential Personal Brand. I am here today with a one and the only Nadine and, and Nadine is a very close personal friend. She lives here in Nashville, so lucky that she moved here to Nashville from Morocco where she was born. Although she’s got dual citizenship now, she can call herself a true nashvillian. So I’m so lucky and fortunate that I get to share the same city with my dear friends but also a client of Nadine’s. And we met through mutual friends three or four years ago, and it’s like one of those phone calls when you meet someone and you’re like, I love you like this. Like I love you and I love you. That’s how I met Nadine for a friend bit. It’s like the very first time that we spoke, I was like, you’re amazing.
AJV (00:56):
And you guys are about to experience just how amazing she is with her very unique craft. And before I get her our little formal introduction, I just want to tell you why you need to stick around and listen to this particular episode. Because when you think about design and how you want your brand to look how you want it to feel how you want other people to experience it, I am here to tell you, you are most likely wrong. And we’ll tell you people that I recently made. Cause what most of us do is we look around and we go, I like this and I like this, and this is my favorite color and this is my favorite font here, put it together and make it look great. And then it comes back and you’re like, well, this doesn’t feel like me.
AJV (01:46):
And it’s because you have it all wrong. And if your brand doesn’t feel like you, it’s most likely because it’s not. And it’s because we’re making decisions on the exterior things around us, not based on really how we want or how our brand is meant to be. And so if you’re struggling with like, what is my brand and how do I want it to look like in terms of the visuals, this is an episode that you must listen to. The second thing that I think is really important is most people assume that having an expensive looking brand is expensive. And that’s not true. And that I think outside of Nadine’s incredible creative talents is making it affordable, is her next best specialty. And so we’re gonna talk a lot about that. So if you wanna look like a million dollar brand, you don’t have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to do it, specifically not in the beginning.
AJV (02:48):
And she’s gonna teach you and talk about how you can do that on what I would say balling on a low budget, right? So
AJV (03:37):
It’s going to blow your mind. But over the last 10 years, she has helped hundreds a clients from Suite execs, the Fortune 100 companies like Disney and Verizon to bestselling authors like our good friend Lori, harder from the Earner Happy podcast Sarah, she’s worked with Sarah Knight, she’s helped build beautiful slide decks for so many different Ted Talk presenters. I could go on and on and on
NH (04:20):
Well, thank you and thank you for having me. Thank you for that wonderful introduction. I have one correction to make that I was not born in Morocco, I was born in Minnesota of all places on a very cold winter day
AJV (04:57):
Before we do that, I think it’s worth giving people just a quick story about how you got into design, because it is not the traditional path. No, it’s not like you went to art school and like you came at this in a very different way, which I think is a part of your uniqueness. And what makes you so different is that this wasn’t something that you really came at for, like, this is what I’m gonna go to school for and this is what I’m gonna do in my life. It came by opposite. So why don’t you just give us a high level view of like, how did this ever even become a theme for you?
NH (05:30):
So I like to say that I am a designer who did not go to design school and does not know how to use any of the design tools.
NH (06:17):
And so I accidentally fell into design because my first and last corporate job,
NH (07:10):
I was like, mm-hmm the heck no, I closed it. I was like, I am not watching this. I am not getting through this training. And so I still needed to get some sort of formal training and design for this company. And so I just went through and found other courses inside lynn.com that taught me basics of design. And that was much more interesting to me. I could actually watch hours and hours of videos of, you know, how to do design. And what I figured out is I could take all of those design principles that I was learning and actually apply them using PowerPoint since it was the one and only design tool that I knew how to use at the time. And I basically hacked PowerPoint to make it do what I wanted it to do for me. And I started creating brochures for this company, obviously besides the slide deck that I was creating, which got better and better cause I got better at design, but also brochures, sales materials, one pagers.
NH (08:02):
I even created graphics for the website. Everything I created in PowerPoint. And in this process, one, I realized PowerPoint is an incredibly powerful tool. It can do not all the things that Photoshop can, but a lot of it and all, everything that you actually really need if you’re not a professional designer, creating these, you know, crazy designs. And the second thing I realized is I have probably a monetizable skill here,
AJV (08:56):
Of that. These were PowerPoint design, like we use PowerPoint designs that you created for every single one of our brochures, landing pages, you know, websites. It’s like you would never have an idea that these originated and PowerPoint, in fact, you should be like PowerPoint spokeswoman. This is,
NH (09:13):
I’m working on it. I am. So if anyone knows somebody who works at Microsoft
AJV (09:19):
Put in the universe,
NH (09:21):
I’m a spokeperson. Yes, absolutely. But
AJV (09:24):
I think it’s really amazing because what you have figured out is how to do something. And what I love about it, why I think it’s so cool is that with programs like InDesign or Photoshop for the end user, consumer like myself, it’s like I don’t know how to edit it or move something or update something. And so I’m trapped by whoever was the designer or finding someone else. And it’s like the best thing about you, the way that you’ve designed all these templates and all of these tools for our company at Brain Builders Group is that it’s like I actually do know how to use PowerPoint most people, so I can go in and make the copy edits without having to have the expense or the burden of finding someone else to go and like reformat this. And I think that’s a really important skill set, and you don’t have to be good at design to make very quick updates to something that is already very well designed. So with that said, I wanna kinda like take it up a level and just talk about some of the things that you’ve learned, you know, really over the last 15 years or so of what makes good design and what, what should people really be looking for and what should they really be asking themselves as they go on this visual process for their own personal brands. And I know without a doubt you’re gonna share the horrible mistakes that I have recently made.
AJV (10:45):
I’ll
NH (10:45):
Be fine,
AJV (10:47):
Totally fine. I gave you, I gave you permission to do this, but I do think it’s good. As people are kind of going, right, I’m at this place where it’s time to create some sort of visual component on either a website or a landing page, or I need something, where do I start?
NH (11:04):
Well don’t start by hiring a designer
NH (12:05):
What kind of people do you want to attract? What is the vibe that you wanna create as a brand? And who are these people that are gonna be attracted to that vibration? And so once you have done that homework first, that’s when you can really get into visual identity. So, and there’s really a science and an art to branding, visual branding, visual identity. And so the, the, the art piece is like making things beautiful and all of that. But the science piece is picking out brand elements, design elements based on certain truths, right? So we talked about this before. I am a proponent of don’t build
AJV (13:19):
Emotion to me,
NH (13:21):
Right?
AJV (13:23):
Of what not to do. Yes.
NH (13:25):
Go. Yes. So I developed something called the Blind test and as part of a, a bigger program that I’m developing called The Color Workshop, which will actually be a workshop that I’m gonna be launching soon. And it’ll be a workshop that will take you through a step by step process to help you identify one, your signature color, the color that really embodies your essence as a brand, but also your entire color palette really. And how to, you know, make everything kind of look good together. Part of this color workshop is something I call the blind test. And the blind test is I basically give you all of these cards that have words on them, right? And they’re color cards. So behind the words are colors, but you don’t see the colors cuz the cards are black and white. And so you have to, there are 12 cards and you have to go through a process of elimination in taking out the, the words that you don’t connect with, right?
NH (14:19):
And technically at the end of this process, the last cars that you end with, we then unveil them, right? We take out the cover and then you can see what colors they are. And the reason I built it this way is because we all have preconceptions about colors, right? We might have, maybe we’re following someone on Instagram who uses yellow as their signature color and we hate that person. So we’re never gonna use yellow. And maybe yellow is actually your color
AJV (15:08):
NH (15:09):
Before. And I don’t know where those colors came from, but you probably saw them on someone else’s branding or in beautiful spaces that you had visited. But they felt right in those spaces, they felt right for that person maybe. And, and so you thought that they might be right for you. And the funny thing is, when we did the blind test the first thing I ask you is gimme your first five hard nos
AJV (15:33):
And you eliminated, it’s not exaggerating y’all. No, it’s not exaggerating.
NH (15:38):
You eliminated literally your first three hard nos. The cars that you eliminated were the three primary colors of your actual,
AJV (15:46):
For myself did not follow any sort of process or logic or process.
NH (15:53):
But the funny thing is, is you were not connecting with those colors. You had pick them out, you thought they would work and then for weeks you were, you know, thinking about it and asking people and people were reflecting this back to you. These are not your colors. You knew it in your core. These are not your colors. You just couldn’t figure out why. And then when you did this test right away, it was just so clear you realized why those colors did not feel right. It’s because they were not right for you. They did not represent your energy and we figured out what your energy is. And it was not any of those colors
AJV (16:24):
NH (17:13):
My colors.
AJV (17:14):
I love this idea of like hot pink cluttering, I think some orange might be good, maybe this like sea shell pink. That’s pretty, I like that. And I was like, put this all together, make it look awesome. And that’s what Nadine did. And then she sent it back to me and I was like, well
NH (17:31):
That doesn’t feel right.
AJV (17:33):
Yeah, it’s a real right. And it’s like, and it’s like one of those things where it’s like, you know it, but you’re like, hmm, yeah, what happened here? And, and I think it’s so many of us do that cuz we see someone else’s brand and we go, I want mine to look like this. And what you mean is I want it to look beautiful like this. Not I need these colors. But until you go through this very personal process of going, who are you and who are you trying to reach? Who are you trying to attract? And it’s not just who you are, it’s what is going to attract the audience that you want to build. And when we did this process, I’m, I literally was like definitely not that one and that was great
AJV (18:23):
And it was pink. And I was like, definitely not that. And it was orange. I was like, there you go. That’s why I don’t connect. But here’s the thing, if, if Nate Dan would’ve showed me the colors that were truly coming out from the words, I would’ve never let her convince me of it that way. Cuz I’ve been like, Uhuh red, red is not my signature color. And let me tell you my internal reasoning of why is because I have red hair and I think bright red conflicts where my hair, so I’d never red. I was like, what a silly, ridiculous reason of going. Well I just, I don’t really have red in my wardrobe, so I don’t really think I can be a brand color. But that was like my very illogical process because emotions were tied into it versus going, no, these are the words that I say, define me.
AJV (19:08):
These are the words I wanna be known for. And then when you reveal the color, you’re kind of like, okay, and I need to like settle in with this a little bit. And I think the most amazing thing that happened for me, just as an example for all of you is I had an adverse reaction at first cuz I’m like, don’t really love red. And yet I look at the words and it’s like, bold. And it’s like, well, that’s pretty fricking bold. And it was like, I’m passionate. Well that’s pretty passionate. And it’s like all these things. And I’m like, why am I resisting this? And then it was the craziest thing. So for me, I’ll just give you this example. It was red purple, black gold, yeah. Are my colors. Did I miss one? I think those really, those were. And I walked out into my garage later that afternoon and Nadine, I haven’t even told you this story.
AJV (20:06):
And in my garage, I took a picture on my iPhone like 10 years ago of the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen in my life. And it was so breathtaking. I blew it up on this huge canvas and it’s in my garage and I walk out and I was getting in my car and it just caught my eye. And I looked up and I see this canvas there, and it is the most brilliant sunset of golds and dark shades of black and deep purple and reds and magentas. And for the first time ever I saw that and I was like, that is how I wanna be seen. I wanna be seen like that. And that’s how you should feel. That’s how you know it’s yours. And so I’m just curious, Nadine, if you could give us some examples of, could you just read off some of the words and colors that are represented that there’s 12, we don’t have time to do 12, but to kind give people an idea of what this is process is like. So if you’re not going through this process with someone that you’re working with, you should stop and go, why the heck not? Because if you’re just picking colors like I did at, at some point, you’re gonna go, man, that was fine for a season, but that’s just not really me. And you don’t have to do that. You can actually get it right the first time.
NH (21:27):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you want me to share some of what the keywords are for maybe your, your colors?
AJV (21:34):
Sure. You can do mine. I think this is just really helpful, but don’t tell us the color until after you read the words and just, I think this was a really powerful process that anyone can do if you just, like, even if you don’t, which we’re gonna give you access to do some of this really cool stuff that Nadine has created. But it’s like, just go Google these colors and go like, what words are associated with these? You can even do that.
NH (21:56):
Yeah. This is public information. So I’ll, I’ll share the words for my signature color, which you don’t know, so I’ll tell you what it is. But my words are creative, abundant, sociable, positive, passionate, joyful. Those are my words. And my signature color is orange. And I connect with orange on a very
NH (23:02):
And that was purple, right? And so we talked about how we can marry purple with red to create these really deep fiery shades of purple that have all of those aspects of red but but still anchored in that purple color and all of that purple means. So let’s see. And another one, black is a color that is used a lot and not everybody that likes black ends up picking black as one of their cards. You did. But black is sophisticated, substantial, efficient, elegant, intelligent, confident, authoritative. So these are examples of the words. So these are the words that you need to connect with or either eliminate or choose as part of this exercise. And you know, and that’s why we do this by process of elimination, because you will find that you connect with a lot of words across a lot of different cards. But the the goal here is to connect with the cluster of word of words where you’re like, okay, I have a, you know, I identify myself with most of these words in this group of words, and that’s what leads you to, to your color. So do you want me to share?
AJV (24:10):
No, I think that’s, I think that’s good. I think, you know, for anyone who is listening, like nad has created so many different tools and quizzes and amazing things to help you do this. So if you go to brand builders group.com/db, digital brand kit db k, so brand builders group.com/db k you can go and check out and she’s got this amazing color quiz that will tell you what season you fall in, gives you all these cool different color palettes. But I think this is a really defining part of, like, this is a part that most people skip as they don’t really do this introspective work. And instead they go right into, well, I just need a website. So can you talk a little bit about like, the purpose of doing brand guidelines before you go into designing Yes. Fires, brochures, landing pages, and just kind of like talk about if you’re ready to go this route and it’s time, what is the process that someone should follow?
NH (25:08):
Yes. So I would say this, A lot of people when I ask someone, do you have your branding? They’ll say, yeah, I have my logo, I have my colors, I have my fonts, and I’m working on my, my website. So yeah, I have my branding. I’m like, yeah, where’s the rest of it? Did you not have your branding? You have the beginning, you have a style guide. That’s what you have
NH (26:02):
Usually because the website was made by a professional and the presentations were made by you trying to mimic what the professional did.
NH (26:52):
You’re constantly in a oh, I need this shoot. Let, let me go hire somebody to do this. Oh, I need that. Oh man, I need to, okay, can you also create this for me? And so you’re constantly on this hamster wheel of asset creation on demand as the demand arises instead of proactively creating everything. And so digital brand is really the solution to that. Like I already surveyed and figured out, you know, surveyed people and, and, and did my homework and figured out all of the assets that a personal brand might need across all your platforms at every touchpoint from, you know, like a podcast if you have one all the way to your social media, to your webinars, to your, you know to your invoices, et cetera, et cetera. And so in order to have that cohesive brand across everything you need to infuse your, your style guide into everything. But you also need to know what all of those assets are, right? So yeah, that is, does that answer your question,
AJV (27:50):
Some of the examples of like what are the assets that most people don’t even think about? Cause you said is like, I think a lot of people at some point are probably, okay, I know I need colors and I need fonts, and I need a logo. And that’s what they think is their brand guidelines. That’s what they think is their branding, but they’re missing so much more. So you can kind of just give us like a checklist of like, what are all the things that you don’t even know that you’re gonna need that you wanna make sure is cohesively done on the front end so that it’s not piecemealed together and it’s, you know, I think the benefit for me is like, if you do all of this work on the front end, it’s so much easier and cheaper and faster to do things later.
NH (28:31):
Absolutely. If you are able to execute on your ideas, like on the go quickly because you have materials that you need to execute on that idea, instead of like, oh, now I have to go create this template or buy this template and then I can create it, that saves you a lot of time. But to answer your question, some of the things that, you know, a lot of people won’t think of, it’s like, all right, so let’s say you go buy a social media, you know, Canva template pack that’ll give you, you know, like all of the little squares. But then are your, like all of those highlights at the top of your of your Instagram account, are those gonna be, you know, look the same
NH (29:19):
Are they branded the same? So just having cohesiveness within your social media is is something to look out for. But also I mean if I’m gonna enumerate things from the db k package, we have a course kit, for example. So if you’re gonna build a digital course, you are going to need slides, right? That you’re going to actually put your content into that, you’re going to then record on your, on your video lessons. You’re going to need the PPS that you’re gonna provide to people as downloads, as free downloads with your course. You are going to need a course roadmap template so that you can paint a picture to your students of like, here’s everything that you’re going to learn in each part of this course and give that to them as a pdf. You are going to need, once you get all of your course materials put together, you’re gonna need to upload all that into a course portal like Kajabi or Thinkific.
NH (30:10):
You’re gonna need to brand that, that’s gonna need a you know, banner image and thumbnails and all of those things. I created all of those things for you already, and that’s all in the course package. So the day that you decide that you wanna build a course, you don’t even know everything you need, you’re gonna open up your course kit and you’ll know exactly what you need to build your course and you’ll have it. And as a bonus, I give you a course outline builder that you can use to actually build the outline of your course and a, you know, in a smart way that’ll make it easy for you to record the course. So it’s weave in in some of the strategy other things that people won’t think about, like your videos, for example. Like you wanna start a YouTube channel, you are gonna need video thumbnails and you cannot afford to be creating video thumbnails
NH (30:53):
Like, especially if you’re gonna have them professionally done. Cuz if you wanna create a lot of videos and every time you need to spend, you know, three hours on camera just putting together one video thumbnail, you’re not gonna get very far. Right
AJV (31:48):
Guesswork. Well, I would, I would, I would second as a customer, as our whole company, as a customer, and then I am personally a customer. It’s like what I would say that I think is really amazing about Digital Brain Kit and what you’ve created is it is all of the design, but it’s also the strategy. And that’s been with like partnerships with a variety of different tools and resources and education that you’ve gone out and done. But I think one of the things that’s really cool for the community at Brand Builders Group is like we were able to work with you of going, here’s what everyone’s gonna need in a speaker kit or in a media kit or, and so it’s like all of those things are pre-built in there. So, and I think that’s a really unique opportunity of going, it’s like you’re gonna need color fonts and logos, yes, but you’re also gonna need imagery.
AJV (32:32):
You’re gonna need the right size dimensioned banners, you’re gonna need thumbnails, you’re gonna need the bumper slides, you’re gonna need the highlights, right? You’re gonna need a press kit at some point. You’re gonna need a media kit for podcasts or just general media. You’re gonna need a PowerPoint slides for something at some point in your life, right? Yeah. So it’s like to have all of this done and kind of prepackaged together is, it’s not just beautiful design. It’s well architected in a way that helps conversion, but it’s also the strategy of going, oh my gosh, if you just think about all those things of how much it would cost and time and money to do them separately over the course of time by finding betting new vendors all the time is outrageous. And so you’ve been able to do that in this well consolidated package. And then I know that we mentioned this earlier, it’s like a part of this is having great design that reflects you and that will attract your audience. The second thing is that it’s done in an affordable way. And so I know one of your things is, is that you, you know, you, you say you need a a beginner brand, right? What do you starter brand? A starter brand Starter brand,
NH (33:43):
Yes. Like a starter home.
AJV (33:44):
Yeah. It’s like, and I think this is a really cool concept of you don’t need to go hire a $30,000 designer to go out and build a very high end professional brand. And what you need is you need something that can get you going. So you can, can you kinda tell us about what that is and what that looks like?
NH (34:04):
Yeah. You don’t need to go hire somebody expensive to create this beautiful professional brand for you if you are just starting out Now, if you’re, you know, 5, 7, 10 years into business and you’re, you’re like, I know who I am, I know who I’m serving, I’m very clear, I’ve got the money. Yes, by all means, splurge away and get yourself the best designer ever. But if you are just starting out, first of all, it’s not a good investment because your brand at this stage of your business is very fluid. You are gonna iterate, you are still figuring out who you are in your market and also who you’re serving and who you’re attracting. And you’re not really gonna get answers to those questions of who are you and who are you serving until you actually get into motion and build momentum and start showing up and start doing things, and then let the market respond to you, and then let yourself kind of figure things out.
NH (34:56):
So as you’re figuring things out, things might change. Who you are might change who you serve. You’re like, you know what, these people are not who I wanna serve. You’ve got a lot of complainers, a lot of freeloaders, like I’m attracting all sorts of wrong people.
NH (35:57):
Like you could get a lot of miles out of, out of a starter brand, maybe five years, maybe seven years with that starter brand. Or maybe you’ll realize six months down the road, yeah, I picked this visual identity, it’s not serving me well. I need to pivot. Well, you’ve only lost $2,000 at this point which is not $30,000. And you also, most importantly, did not lose months and months of, of time of like going back and forth with designers to figure, you know, to build things. All of that frustration and time you now saved yourself because you got all your assets in one instant download. You didn’t go create them and, you know, invest your time and money into creating them. So, so really it’s you know, I like to say it’s like a starter home. Like you can not as a first time home buyer go out and buy your dream home.
NH (36:42):
Like that’s not the smart move. Like, you need to go buy a starter home first,
NH (37:25):
And you know, a lot of people get really personal with it. And so it’s like, well at the end of the day, this brand is not about you. It’s about your business and what you’re building and who you’re going to attract. And the goal here is to get things done, is to make things happen. So stop getting hung up on the colors and on the fonts and oh, maybe this other font looks like this one really, it’s very close, but it’s not exactly, it’s a little bit more round on the edges and it’s like you’re wasting time. You are procrastinating. Just take something and go with it and go make things happen. And then, you know, maybe two years down the road when you have a seven figure business, you can afford to then go to a designer and argue about which font is rounder and better for you
AJV (38:11):
Time
NH (38:11):
To do that.
AJV (38:12):
That’s the best advice that any designer could give someone, is the point of this is not to get caught up in the details. Because I think that’s often what designers do. And I think that’s also why I love what you do so much. Cuz it’s not about the granularity of well, this hangs this way and it’s, it’s like, no, the point of this is to get things done is to get things in motion. It is, is to start knowing that things are gonna evolve and change over time as you evolve and change as your audience evolves and change. But I, I know so many people, so many people that the only reason they haven’t launched is because of something like this holding them back. And it’s like, this is the best advice is like, hey, this is the point is not to make it perfect. The point is to get something done so you can get things in motion.
NH (39:01):
Yeah. And I, I’d wanna share one other thing that’s very important to me to share with the people is if you are going to for any reason, hire somebody to help you with your design you need to know how to choose who you’re going to hire. Oh,
AJV (39:20):
Okay. So if we can just go from, I’m just gonna start with the point is not to make things perfect, it’s to get things done and then you’ll pick up with something else I really wanna share. Okay. So the the whole point is not to get things perfect, it’s to get things done so you can get things in motion. That’s what’s important.
NH (39:39):
Yes. And the other thing I wanna share that’s really important to me is for people who want to go out there and hire somebody to help them with this, and that’s perfectly fine if, if you choose to do so. I would just say you wanna be mindful of, of who you are hiring and how you manage the process because there are, there’s, you can make one of two decisions when you’re gonna hire somebody. You can either hire a an affordable junior designer who is going to get things done on the cheap and quickly, or you can hire a designer who’s also a creative director. The difference between the two obviously is monetary first. The creative director is gonna be more expensive than the junior designer. But the reason why is because the junior designer isn’t is somebody who executes on your vision, your creative direction, and your very specific guidelines.
NH (40:32):
And a junior designer is typically not somebody who is first in marketing, digital marketing, the online business, personal branding or any of that. They know how to make beautiful designs and they will apply exactly what you tell them. But you need to inform everything that you give them. You need to, to educate them a little bit and also give them very specific instructions and very specific feedback because that is the only way that you’re gonna get good actual good design from them. So if you are working with somebody and you are getting frustrated because they’re sending you things that you’re like, well, no, this is not what I asked for. No, this is not what I meant. No, you’re not getting this and you’re in a position, you’re, and you’re finding yourself having to write a lot of mean emails
AJV (41:19):
Nobody wants to do. Nobody wants to. Yeah. Which
NH (41:21):
Nobody likes to write those mean emails. But if you’re finding yourself on the cusp of sending an email that says, no idiot, that’s not what I asked for
NH (42:15):
But still, you have to find a creative director who is also versed in marketing and digital marketing and personal branding and is used to working with high profile brands so that they can actually, you know, steer you in the right direction with certain things and know how to create certain strategic branding assets and communication assets, et cetera. And so, again, that is the other thing that I wanted to create initially when I created the first iteration of Digital Brand Kit, I really just went to make beautiful designs for people. But as I did and I started got into motion, right? And got this into the hands of people, the feedback that I got was, well, I need strategy, I need, I need help actually executing on this. And so that is where I went out and got, you know, took classes and learned more about this. I was like, I’m certified in digital psychology and and I’m certified in all of the things that you know, so that I know how to infuse all of that into these designs so that you don’t need to make those decisions, right? Or figure those things out on your own again, so that you can go and get things done. So I just wanted to caution people about working with other designers and what that looks like and where your frustrations might be coming from.
AJV (43:31):
I think that’s good. So if you get terrible designs, it’s your fault. It’s your fault
NH (43:36):
Basically.
AJV (43:38):
I think that, I think there is a lot of truth in that because when you don’t go through the initial brand guidelines process in general of really defining like, what are my signature colors and what are these things, it’s like how in the world is someone else supposed to get into the inner workings of your mind? Who is your core target audience? What are you offering without a ton of time? And the more time it takes, the more costs. And so it’s like the more work you can do on the front end of being like, I want, I’m very clear on this. And if you’re not ready to invest that amount of time and money, the starter brand that, like, that’s who this was built for. But it’s like as you elevate out of that and you go, now I want something a little bit more, you know, elevated, that’s the word. It’s like you’re still, it takes it’s time and it’s introspective and I think that’s the part that people wanna skip through and they go, I just want something that’s awesome, awesome. Put it up there. And it’s like, well it’s not gonna be awesome unless we go through this process. I think that’s so wise. And I know we just have a couple more minutes yet and I just wanna do a couple of like rapid fire questions for you, for everyone out there who’s going, okay.
NH (44:48):
Hmm.
AJV (44:49):
What, what should I be doing? Like what are some, like the big things I should be looking for? So I’m just gonna do some like rapid fire questions outside of doing like a colorblind test, like what would you say, what should people be doing to have an idea of what their visual identity should look like?
NH (45:08):
Hmm. I’ll tell you what they should not be doing. Don’t go build a Pinterest board
AJV (45:14):
NH (45:17):
Don’t go build a Pinterest board if you’re gonna do one thing. It would be take a piece of paper and write down who your ideal client avatar is. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (46:09):
I love that. I think that’s, I think that’s really wise up going. Your visual identity is not for you.
NH (46:15):
No it’s not.
NH (46:18):
Beautiful picture is that you pinned on pinches doesn’t mean that’s your visual branding. I know you feel
AJV (47:24):
Oh, I think that’s so good. And I, I love that. You know, it’s like, as you were talking, it just made me think it’s like you’re not building a website so you can go look at it. You’re not posting social media so you can go read your own posts, right? You’re doing this so that it reaches someone that you care about serving. And so it’s, it’s gotta be reflective of who you are so that you can attract the people that you are trying to curate as your audience. And that’s, that’s so good. Cause I think the emotions of people, the reason this is so hard for people is because they want it to be so perfect for them and they forget that this is not for you, this is for your audience. That I love that. That’s so good. Okay. Other quick things just like high level, how often do you think people should be posting like visual things online?
AJV (48:15):
You know, cuz I think, you know, I see so many people where it’s like they’ve gone to just like black and we black and white text, or some people just use photography now, or some people have like curated like design posts for social media. And I’m just curious, it’s like one, how often do you think somebody should be posting something that’s like attached to their brand? Like design-wise? Mm-Hmm.
NH (48:44):
Can, are we talking specifically about Instagram? Sure.
AJV (48:47):
Example about Instagram? I think that’s probably the most visual of all the platform. Yeah,
NH (48:51):
I would say just enough that if somebody is scrolling through your, your feed and looking at your images, they’re getting enough pops of your brand color throughout that they’re recognizing that there’s some sort of cohesive you know brand elements that are coming up, you know, over and over again. So I would say as much as you can, but not to where it’s, you know, overkill. So, but just pops of your brand color throughout would be, you know, just so it’s like cohesive with your brand. That would be my
AJV (49:23):
Just enough where it’s like you can get the feel from it. And I think that’s like all these different trends where it’s like so many people are just the, just doing photos of themselves. And so that was the second question is should you infuse your brand colors into your photography?
NH (49:39):
Yes. That’s a great question. Guess what, the only Adobe tool that as a non-designer I know how to use is light room and light room. If you buy certain presets or if you can use pre-made presets that you find in Lightroom, Lightroom will let you put a filter on your images and you can mass do this on many images and just put these filters. So why this is useful is, let’s say that your visual identity has a lot of cool tones in it, cool cooler colors, right? Maybe some blues and some lavenders, things like that. You’re not gonna wanna have your photos be very warm, have warm tones because it’ll clash with the, the, the cooler tones of your branding. So if you wanna have something cohesive in your in your feed, you’re gonna want your imagery to have those cool tones. And that’s something that you can do in Lightroom using these they’re called presets. So if you just literally Google Lightroom presets you’ll find tons of vendors that have beautiful presets that you can just put these filters on all of your images and vice versa. If you have warm colors, go with warmer filters and that will give you that nice cohesive look.
AJV (50:51):
Is Lightroom also the tool that you use where you can like do the cutouts or remove the background?
NH (50:57):
No, that would be, well technically that’s Photoshop, but I don’t use Photoshop cuz I don’t know how to use Photoshop. I use a tool called remove.bg, so the website is removed bg and it’s so awesome. It’s like, I don’t know how much I paid less than $10 a month. And you literally drag and drop an image into this thing and it’ll remove the background for you. And it’s genius. So that’s, that’s another awesome tool that I would recommend.
AJV (51:22):
I think that’s super cool. Specifically if you’re in this like starter brand mode where it’s like you’re gonna be doing a lot of this DIY and just going, how do you do this? Can’t figure it out. Yeah. It’s just knowing some of these really cool tools. So that one’s called Remove bg.
NH (51:38):
Remove bg.
AJV (51:39):
Yeah. So super cool. So any other cool design tools like that that it’s like for you out there, who is the, you know, DIY of going, man, how do I make this awesome, but I don’t, I don’t got a lot of skills, so help me out. Any other tips or tools that you think would helpful?
NH (52:00):
You’re putting me on the spot. I’m thinking I have, like, I have an entire bookmark folder
NH (52:50):
AJV (53:39):
So I love that y’all like, this is so helpful. And it’s, you know, just, it does, again, it doesn’t matter if you are just getting started or you’re super established. We always need something refreshed with our visual identity at some point, right? You’re gonna need a new asset, you’re gonna need a refresh of social media, you know, square images. You’re gonna need new headers, you’re gonna book designs, Prescott designs, new speeches. It’s like the list goes on and on and on. And at some point you’re gonna need to keep things fresh, right? You can’t have the same thing that you used five years ago, and nothing has changed ever since. It’s gotta be refreshed. And so there’s so many different tools that Nadine has created to make that process easier for you. And the easiest thing of all is to make sure that you start with a solid set of brand guidelines that really reflect you. So one of the things that I would just really encourage is at the very least, go to this website and take this color. Yeah. And it’s like, this is an amazing tool to get you pointed in the right direction of this is what you say about yourself without looking at colors, which is a really important thing. So again, brand builders group.com/db. And go take this. Nadine, if people wanna follow you personally, where do you want ’em to go?
NH (55:00):
Well, I would say check me out on Instagram. I’m not very active on it, but
AJV (55:23):
Ah, so generous. If you guys have got questions, you know, dmr most of the questions are taken care of for you with digital blankets, be honest. But this is so many good tips, so many good tools. We’ll link all of those design tools in the show notes for you guys. And we’ll also link brain builders group.com Forge slash dk. Go check it out. Take the color quiz get started. Keep building, keep doing what you’re doing. Nadine, thank you so much for being here. And everyone, we’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand. See you later.
Ep 341: Building Your Side Hustle with Nick Loper | Recap Episode
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody, and welcome to my recap episode of my conversation with Nick Loper from The Side Hustle Nation. And y’all, we covered a lot of grounds
AJV (00:54):
Number one how to use your podcast as an income stream if it’s not from advertising a revenue or sponsorship. So I thought this was really great and not something that we haven’t heard or even talked about before. But really just such a great reminder to everyone that a podcast serves so many great causes for your business. One it’s a great way to build your content. It’s a, it’s a great way to create that consistent relationship. It’s a great way for you to build trust with your audience. There’s so many great added benefits of doing that where it’s not just a static post on one of the social media platforms. It gives you an extended opportunity. It’s like your own little masterclass with experts, right? And that’s where this particular benefit came into play on my conversation with Nick is don’t forget that hosting a podcast has a really great strategic networking side to it.
AJV (01:57):
And I’ll just give you this a quick example. I could call any of you today and say, Hey, I’d love to talk to you about building your personal brand. You wanna grab coffee? Most of you, 85% of you are not gonna have available time on your calendar to come listen to a potential sales pitch over coffee. With me. That would be my assumption, right? That is a sales call, that is a sales pitch, that is a sales invitation. At the very least, it is a mild version of something that might lead to a sales conversation. But what if I called and said, Hey, I think you’ve got amazing expertise to share with an audience that could really benefit hearing from you. Would you be willing to come on to my podcast as a guest? Most of you would at least consider that
AJV (02:58):
Interview, you get to know me. I get to know you. We learn about each other’s businesses. It’s the beginning of really a potentially beautiful relationship. And I can’t tell you how often at the end of podcast interviews, how often guests will say, Hey, I’d really love to learn more about brand Builder’s Group one day. Or even if I’m on their show, they’re like, Man, I really do wanna learn more about what it is that you do. It is an amazing way to build fast friendships, fast relationships and a very mutually beneficial way. And I mean, mutually in a three-pronged way, beneficial for you, beneficial for them, and beneficial to all of the listeners who get to participate. And an awesome conversation that has lots of value. So there are lots of different ways that you can truly monetize your podcast in addition to advertising and sponsorship revenue.
AJV (03:48):
So don’t forget there are so many different opportunities to monetize your podcasts, both in the, both in the short term and in the long term. So that was the kind of the first big takeaway as what are those additional benefits that you don’t always see on the front end when it comes to building and growing your podcast. Second one is this concept of tacking on yourself to an existing product or service that you really love, that you find value in, or perhaps you even have expertise in, right? So great example, right? And so this is not necessarily only tied to SAS products, software as a service but it could be, you know, actual service providers. It could be all different types of things. But I’ll just give you a couple of examples. I, I don’t do this, this is not my side hustle, but it’s a good example of something that could be a side hustle, right?
AJV (04:44):
It’s like I use QuickBooks for our accounting at Brand Builders Group. I have gotten pretty savvy in QuickBooks and have learned a lot of really efficient shortcuts on how to make QuickBooks really easy to use for the non-financial person, right? So I could be teaching those types of things in a course or teaching it to companies, or I could be, you know, doing content videos on that. I’m not, and I’m not going to, but QuickBooks is something I use. I find it a very valuable tool, happily would be willing to promote it to people, right? And would love to get referral fees. I feel the same way about Gusto. Gusto is our HR and a payroll service provider. I think they do a great job 99% of the time. Really happy, very pleased. They have easy refer links right there.
AJV (05:37):
It’s like, I would be happy to refer that and if opinion anyone was like, Hey man, do, would you ever come in and just teach us how to get it set up really quick? I could do that. Same thing. Here’s another great example of something I’m just like really into right now is in Inspirado, the travel booking site game changer in terms of the elevated Airbnb or V V R B O experience, except for they will also take care of all of the concierge services, your flights, your hotels the ground transportation experience is dining. It’s like, oh my gosh, like, yes, please. I click on one little thing that says refer afin to have a friend. I have an affiliate link. It’s like, I’m gonna be promoting that thing like crazy. Anyone who talks about travel, I’m like, I got something for you.
AJV (06:21):
So there are part of it where it’s like, yes, I just love these products. I use these products and I wanna promote them. And then there’s another added co component that Nick talked about where it’s like, there’s a part of it where that’s just being an affiliate partner and you’re just tacking yourself onto existing products and services that you really love, that you use, that, you know, provide value and you’re helping other people make better decisions faster, right? There are tons of financial service tools out there. There’s FreshBooks, there’s QuickBooks, there’s, you know, other stuff. I don’t know, there’s a lot of them. Zero. But I use QuickBooks, so I’m gonna promote it. It’s like I know how to use it. I know how to help you. I know how to guide you. I’ve learned the efficiency of using QuickBooks. Same thing within Spra or Gusto or Thinkific or all the other software platforms that we use.
AJV (07:10):
So there’s a part of me going, Hey, I know how to use this. I can, I can vouch for it, I use it, I pay for it, I’m gonna promote it, and there’s a whole nother level of going. And then I could also teach you how to use it, how to get better at it, how to improve, how to become more efficient, how to set it up faster. If I wanted to add that on as a service, which is what we talked about as software with a service, right? So I think there’s a really interesting way of like, how many of us use tools that we actually really love and how many of those actually provide referral links, affiliate links, because they know that you, the user, the customer, assuming you’re a, a happy one, are the best people to promote that out into the world and they’re willing to pay you to do that.
AJV (07:57):
And then like, and on top of that, I could actually help you implement it quicker and faster, cuz I’ve done it. Two simple easy things to think about if you were trying to create new income streams so that you can get to doing that full-time thing that you love. So I felt that was really interesting. Software with a service was the concept. The next one is, I love what he said is, you know, it’s been said kind of out there that, you know, the first step in any really successful online marketing is like that path to a thousand true fans. And a true fan is basically classified defined as anyone who would be willing to spend roughly a hundred dollars with you a year, right? That’s a true fan. And there is that concept of like, how do you get that initial base of a thousand people, a thousand fans who’d be willing to spend some sort of substantial amount of money with you, even if it’s a one time investment.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Versus, well, how do you take that 1000 fans and go, that’s great and that’s cool, but how do I take that and create 10 true customers who would be willing maybe to spend a thousand dollars a month with me, not just a hundred dollars a year with me? So it’s the difference between how clear on you, how clear are you on your audience, right? So maybe you’ve got that a thousand true fans and they’d be willing to spend a hundred bucks. But what, what do you need to do to figure out who are those 10 customers, those 10 clients who you could expand with, who love you, who love what you do, who love what you provide? And it’s like they would spend a hundred dollars, 500, a thousand, 5,000, 10,000. Who are those people and what are you doing to land and expand and not just create fans, but create really loyal customer relationships with a few people that you can go deep and wide with.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
So yes, it’s great to have a large covering surface fan fandom, but then also how do you go deep and wide with a fewer people who would be willing to spend more with you, to get more of you, right? So simple in theory, not always easy in practice, but a great thing for us always to be paying attention to. I know the temptation often is how do I get more, right? How do I get more fans get more customers? How do I get more followers, get more likes, get more engagement? It’s more, more, more and more. And sometimes more isn’t always better, right? What if you had less people that had deeper relationships were able to go further within, they wanted more of you, they spent more money with you, you had more concentrated focus in a more narrow lane.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
More is not always better. Contrary to American beliefs, sometimes more is not always better. So how can you find that very niche audience that would spend more money with you because you know exactly the service that you provide, the benefit you provide, and you know exactly who needs it, and that’s who you go out and find, and that’s where you spend your time right? Now, last but not least I thought this was just a really interesting, this is a bonus. I already shared my three tips and I promised to kind of like keep these like roughly around 10 minutes, and I know I’m right up on it. But I thought this was really interesting and I asked him at the very end of our interview, if you wanna go check it out, listen to the whole thing, which I always recommend. But if you are just starting out, you’re trying to figure out what is this business that I wanna start? Or what is this side hustle that I wanna start because I do wanna start my own business one day. I do wanna be an entrepreneur which is not for the faint of heart, but what, how do you figure that out? And he said, you know, you could do this thing where
Speaker 4 (11:52):
It’s like, like you, you know, figure out what are my skills, what are my passions and what would people be willing to pay from me, right? Or he said there, there’s another really easy thing to do. And he calls it a suck list,
Speaker 4 (12:41):
So I’m always like walking up and down. They like, Oh, has their feet under there? Someone’s under there. I can’t never tell who’s in what. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, I don’t wanna walk back. And by the time I’m down the bottom, the first one came out and someone already took the stall. It’s a thing. It’s a thing. And I was in Sydney, Australia here recently. Now this was fascinating. In the airport, I looked up and there are green lights and red lights above every single stall. So as soon as you walk into the bathroom, you immediately know what is green, which is what’s available and what’s red, which means it’s not available. And I can, like, I have never been in such an efficient bathroom in my whole life. No lines, no standing around. People were in out being bang, boom. It was awesome, right?
Speaker 4 (13:21):
I’ve had this problem for decades, but never had I thought, and we should put lights above the stalls, but perhaps just for a minute, it would be worthwhile taking around a notepad in a list and going, What could be better? And what is my idea to make it better? And create your own little suck list of what sucks and what ideas do you have to make it better? And that does not mean you have to go create something. Perhaps there is already something out there that was specifically designed for this, right? If I can figure out who the manufacturer is of this, I’m gonna give it to every restaurant, every airport. I’m like, how, how come the world does not know about this? Have they not been to this airport with these bathrooms? Everyone needs to have these, right? It’s like I’m an advocate, I’m a fan, right?
Speaker 4 (14:08):
So perhaps it already exists, and this goes back to one of our previous points. What already exists that you can just tack yourself onto to build some of that, you know, what I call fan money, right? Also known as affiliates referral fees, or even add yourself on as a service. So perhaps the takeaway from here is create your stuff list or your opportunity list and start making a list of what is that next business or my first business or that side hustle that I can start. Like is, I know that this is a problem and I know there’s a way to make it better. And here’s what it’s so there is my recap from my conversation with Nicker. Go check it out on the influential personal brand and we’ll catch you next time. See you later.
Ep 340: Building Your Side Hustle with Nick Loper
AJV (00:02):
Hi everybody, This is AJ Vaden here, and welcome to another episode on the Influential of Personal Brand. I’ve got a new friend here today, and we’re gonna be talking about how to build and grow your side hustle. And before I formally introduce Nick Looper to the show, I want to tell you guys in advance why you need to stick away,
AJV (01:03):
And so we’re gonna talk about some different ideas with SAS products and how do you hit yourself to some of those so you’re not always trading time for money. And last but not least, we’re also gonna just talk about maybe if you’re one of those people who doesn’t have a side hustle, you don’t have differentiated income streams, but maybe you want some, what are some of the coolest, quickest, fastest things that you can be doing to build your side hustle right now? So without further ado, let me introduce you to Mr. Nick Loper
NL (01:57):
Thanks for having me honored to be here. Yeah,
AJV (02:00):
No, we’re so excited and I’m really super excited to talk to you today because I actually, as I told you before we started, I’ve spent quite a bit of time doing some online stalking of trying to get some really good criteria and some good topics to share with our audience. And so I just wanna help them get to know you. And how did you get into teaching people how to build their side hustle? And what is the side hustle that you’ve been up to?
NL (02:29):
Yeah, this whole project started from this desire to build a more personally branded project, and it’s been, you know, probably the best decision that I’ve ever made. You know, starting with, you know, $50 mic corner of a living room, let’s see if anybody will tune into this stuff. And it’s been, you know, completely life changing from that little experiment back in 2013. Prior to that, the main side hustle for me was this comparison shopping site for footwear. That was the main business. That was the thing that let me quit my corporate job and start and I kind of un naively thought like, Look, I could just be the dude who sells shoes on the internet. Like that would be my thing. It had like a lot of businesses, a finite lifespan and was really grateful to have started several other side hustles on the side for that, including the blog and podcast, including lots of projects that didn’t work out. One of the other ones that did okay was a virtual assistant directory and review site started in 2011, a couple years before Side Hustle Nation and sold that one in 2020. But those are some of the projects that I’ve been working on and really grateful to be involved in the online space for quite a while and playing this personal brand game that we’re all we’re all working towards.
AJV (03:46):
Oh man, I love that. And so just briefly, what, what were you doing with this shoe comparison site? How on God’s green Earth did you come up with that idea and what made you wanna do it?
NL (04:01):
Oh, so this dates me a little bit. So, comparison shopping is not what it once was, but if your listeners are old enough to remember in the early days of the internet, you know, you would start your product searched on Google and instead of on Amazon and you would, you know, figure out where you could find the best price on whatever it was that you were looking for. And so there would be big sites like Price Grabber and NexTag and shopping.com in those days. And my idea was like, well, what if we really niched down and said, we’re just gonna do this for shoes? Cause I’d interned at a, you know, online footwear retailer in Seattle, like in college that started as, you know, a family owned single location, brick and mortar shoe store, that in the early days of the internet they had this cra you know, what, what would, what would happen if we put some of our inventory up online? Is anybody gonna buy this stuff? And by the time I came on board as their, you know, you know, low paid marketing intern, like of course the online side had blown up way more than their single location brick and mortar shop. And so that was my first exposure to affiliate marketing and pay click advertising and SEO and e-commerce, all this stuff that was really important. So taking what I learned there and then applying it to my own affiliate operation after the fact.
AJV (05:11):
Oh man,
NL (05:50):
Yeah, a couple different ways to go about it. I mean, SAS is, is like the holy grail of business models, right? You know, create something once it’s all digital, it’s just ones and zeros out there on the internet and sell it over and over again, or get people paying you recurring for it. That’s like, that’s, you know, that’s it. You made it right. But super complicated, especially if it’s your first business to deal with the development and the validation and everything that goes into that and the support. So a couple different alternatives. One is white labeling that software or reselling that software. We had an episode on this in the spring that has actually done really well cause it was kind of eye opening, you know, over the course of 500 episodes. So it was one that we really hadn’t talked about before, but the, in this case, the guy was looking at some like reputation management software, how to help small businesses get more reviews for Yelp, for Google, for Facebook.
NL (06:45):
And, you know, he would go out and sell those to small businesses under his own brand. And, you know, he had to, you know, he’d buy like, you know, the wholesale rate you know, number of seats for this software. You go and resell it at a marked up price and add this layer of management and customer support in between. I was like, Oh, that’s really interesting. Like, he wasn’t the coder, he wasn’t the creator of this thing, but he just took what somebody else had and went out and sold it. And the other you know, software with a service method that we call it is kind of piggybacking on the popularity of a popular software tool and establishing yourself, establishing yourself as a go-to expert on that software. And we’ve seen people do this with QuickBooks, with Asana, with you know, certain WordPress plug-ins.
NL (07:34):
Even even like Squarespace, like some big, sometimes like big softwares. Maybe it’s like Tailwind for, you know, Pinterest. Maybe it’s there’s tons of different ones. Canva. One of my favorites was Paul Miners who was on the show years ago. And what he would do he did this specifically for Asana, and then he did it for pipe drive, and I wanna say Zapier as well. Like, he’s kind of like, Hey, look, I know all this stuff. But he started creating these YouTube videos where he’d, you know, introduce himself, Hey, I’m Paul, I’m an Asana consultant, and today we’re gonna cover how to do blank, blank, blank in Asana, right? Mm-Hmm.
AJV (08:39):
Yeah. You know, actually I really love that. Subtle but really important shift in what you said. It’s software as a service or software with a service. And I think that’s a really unique component. And I can think of legitimately like 10 of some of our most valued vendors. That’s truly what they are. It’s like we have lots of software products that we use at Brand Builders group, but it’s typically it’s working with someone who specializes in that, so we don’t have to learn it in house. And that could be done with any product that you really love yourself, become an expert at it, and then it’s like you can be reselling the, you know, the product and then offering in that layer of consultancy expertise, customer service, et cetera.
NL (09:26):
Yeah, totally.
AJV (09:27):
Yeah, No, it’s it’s interesting. I think we we are keep resellers ourselves and so we use the CRM keep and we resell it and it’s like, we get asked all the time, Well, hey, can you just set this up for us? Right? Yeah. It’s like, no, we don’t do that
NL (09:59):
I love that. And that was I mean, you bring up Keep, you know, and we had people, you know, we’ll set up your funnel for you and keep slash Infusionsoft, or we’ll do it in active campaign or, you know, and after you do it, a handful of these you can kind of, you know, rinse and repeat the same basic templates too. Totally. So your hourly rate really starts to explode after that.
AJV (10:18):
Absolutely. It’s like, and that’s the thing, it’s like all of these software is, you really can create these templates. It’s like, if it’s this type of industry, here are the things you’re gonna wanna have. If you’re this type of business, these are the things you’re gonna have. And once you do it enough times, it’s like, you know what people need, and it is rinse and repeat and just a little bit of tailoring. That’s really fascinating. And I think there’s something kind of tied to that as well. And we talked a little bit about this before we started is how much affiliate marketing, marketing can also be a part of a pretty significant side hustle. And I’m curious to get your take on affiliate marketing and is it tied to e-commerce products, services? Like what do you see out there in terms of people making real money with affiliate marketing?
NL (11:05):
Yeah, so this has been my main source of income for, you know, probably 15 years, probably longer than 15 years. And it’s a, you know, it’s performance based marketing customer or rather, companies say, Hey, look, we could use some help selling our product or service. Here’s what we’re willing to pay. Here’s what we think a new customer is worth to us. And then they enlist affiliate affiliates like me to go out and help find those customers. It’s really a matter of creating content for that target customer and helping them make decisions. So one of the popular affiliate models that we’ve seen working lately, we call it the modern comparison shopping site, whereas like in my day, it was like very data you know, product catalog driven, you know, you know, very simple, not a lot of you know, insight or, you know, because there was hundreds of thousands of products, it was not a lot of like analysis and like, well, if you’re you, you have a narrow foot, you ought really, it’s like, there was none of that.
NL (12:02):
It was just like pulling in data and spitting back out prices. With the modern comparison shopping site, we seen some people doing really well with you know, very long tail search terms, like this product versus this product, this direct to consumer brand versus this direct to consumer brand. And creating the super in depth, you know, pros and cons, helping people make their decisions and guiding them towards like, Okay, based on your situation, this is the one that we think is best for you. The site that comes to mind is called fin versus fin.com, and they started reviewing FinTech products, and then they started reviewing like men’s health and wellness products. And then, you know, they’ve gotten even broader since then, but following that same basic template and what they’ve done that was kind of cool was like, you know, re almost like skating where the puck is going to say, Well, this company just received, you know, X million dollars in venture funding mm-hmm.
AJV (13:18):
Interesting. So what makes you someone that companies want to partner with? Like generally speaking, you know, it’s like, what would you say makes a really good affiliate partner where you actually do make money?
NL (13:32):
Well, it’s trust in relationship with your audience, and then it’s the ability to convert. It’s the ability to, you know, find the traffic that’s qualified and then pass that along. For me, it was kind of a long time in realizing that the podcast audience that I had through the Side Hustle Show and the blog traffic were not necessarily the same. And I always had assumed like, Hey, you know, blog of Pocket, you know, follow, follow me because I’m so interesting as it relates to the web traffic, it was so much more transactional. It was, you know, Googling something, I need to find an answer to this specific question, you know, answer that, and they’re kind of off and, you know, Sure. Try and capture them as an email subscriber. Try and get them to, you know, subscribe to the site, try and get them to download an episode or two.
NL (14:20):
But largely is like, Okay, how can I solve this person’s problem here and now? And it was leading into that, that started to really ramp up some of the affiliate revenue. Like I’ll give you the example. Like the, the typical podcast listener for me is very entrepreneurial. They’re in it for the long haul. They’re kind of like, you know, really to like build something that’s their own. They’re not the type of person who’s probably that attracted to signing up for DoorDash or delivering for Instacart or something, but for the blog reader or the website visitor who’s googling ways to make extra money, like, Oh, that may be a viable option for them. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (14:55):
NL (15:47):
Yeah. If the audience is small and they are paying attention to you as the influencer, you as the personal brand, you might pick, you know, the five or 10 tools that you really love that you feel comfortable recommending and almost designing product launches around them. Like, you know, even maybe it’s a three or four email sequence, or three or four social post sequence, really hying this up and talking about why they need this in their life. And one, you know, strategy may be like, Let, let’s play the substitution game. You’re probably currently using tool X, Y, or Z. Or maybe you’re just, you know, maybe you’re doing it yourself in Excel. Here’s why this solution is better, faster, cheaper. Right? And so you kind of position it in different ways. Here’s the frequently asked questions format, here’s the testimonials format you know, email blast that goes out.
NL (16:41):
And I think you can find a very low risk way to get started. You’re not spending months creating your own product or program, and you’re just, now the, the downside is you’re, you’re getting a percentage of revenue instead of the whole piece. So different trade offs, you have less control over what happens to those customers after you’re kind of sending them off into somebody else’s world, somebody else’s ecosystem, but definitely an attractive way to make, make some commissions, make some money without having to create your own product. And you can kind of hit the ground running pretty quickly with that.
AJV (17:12):
Yeah. So what I hear you saying is like, regardless if it was your business or you’re promoting someone else’s products and services, you gotta have your marketing game plan, You gotta have a launch plan, right? You gotta have a strategy of knowing how are you gonna promote this and what different tools are you gonna use to get this to the point of conversion for whoever is following you,
NL (17:30):
Right?
AJV (17:31):
Yeah. it’s, it’s so interesting because I think there’s this big promise of a lot of people going, Yes, I’m gonna make all my money, or just, you know, doing affiliate marketing and influencer marketing, but it’s like you said, that’s been your primary source of income for the last 15 years. So you’ve clearly figured something out that maybe the ordinary person trying to do this has not. What do you think you do that’s different than someone else that’s been so successful?
NL (18:01):
Well, there’s a lot to learn on the traffic side, especially the SEO side. It can be really, I mean, you can go as deep into the weeds a as you want. Both the shoe business and the virtual assistant business really captured kind of you know, bottom of the funnel traffic, like mm-hmm.
NL (18:45):
It would be, you know, this company versus this company or this virtual assistant company review. So they had already done a little bit of homework. They’re trying to figure out like, ah, are they legit? Can you, you know, can you point people in the right direction that way? But targeting in a lot of cases, some, you know, lower, lower in the funnel type of intent there mm-hmm.
AJV (19:33):
Yeah. No, I love that. And that’s actually a really great transition. Cause one of the topics I had on my list here are ideas on how to monetize a small podcast. Cuz I’m pretty sure at this point everyone and the brother and their sister has a podcast or wants to start I podcast. And it’s one of those things where so many people start it and not a lot of people continue with it because it’s a lot more work than you initially think to keep it going much less actually turn it into something that makes you money. So tips, ideas for how to monetize a small but mighty podcast.
NL (20:13):
Small but mighty. That’s the key. It doesn’t take a ton of listeners if they’re the right listeners. Right. And I’m still bullish on the future of podcasting just because I don’t know what the latest stats are. Like half the population doesn’t even listen to podcasts yet. It’s like, you mean you haven’t discovered the, the magic of OnDemand audio and whatever you wanna learn about, like, this is, this is so cool. So yes, lots of room still to grow in in the podcasting space. More competitive than ever, but also more money flowing into the space too. So monetizing a small podcast your best bets are not sponsorships, right? Where that’s very much a game of amplitude and frequency. How many people can you reach and how often you can reach them. And if you have a huge daily show, then yeah, it makes sense.
NL (20:57):
For a lot of people it’s going to be creating a, you know, private membership community to, you know, check that recurring revenue box. People want more, they want more of you in their life, but you, you know, you can’t realistically do one on one all the time. Like, here’s the private community. It could be the you know, higher ticket digital product. It could be the higher ticket you know, done for you consulting service. It could even be, you know, using the podcast as content-based networking to call up your ideal customer and just get ’em on the phone. Cuz we’ve had a couple friends of mine be like, Well what’s the first half an hour of any sales conversation anyway? It’s a lot like a podcast, you know, it’s like, well why don’t you just hit the record button and all of a sudden instead of a sales pitch you’re leading with now, hey, why don’t you come on my show? And as long as there’s value on both ends there, it’s only natural for that guest to turn around and be like, Oh wait. You know, What is it that you do again? Oh, you know, we could really use some help setting up our sales funnel or whatever it is that you do.
AJV (22:01):
Yeah, I think out of, you know, it’s like if I were to go back and look at all the different reasons that we’ve, we’ve had two different podcasts now, but all the different reasons that we initially said, why do we want a podcast? One of them truly was this truly natural relationship building and networking that occurs by just finding interesting people that you wanna get to know that you wanna learn about and inviting them on the show. Whereas I could have maybe reached out to a dozen of these people and maybe one of them would’ve taken a sales call or a coffee or a lunch, but at least 50% of them would accept a spot being interviewed on our podcast. And it’s, it is, it’s a strategic networking move. It’s a great way to just start that slow relationship build that may or may not, but may lead into a sale one day.
AJV (22:56):
But it’s that opening of, Hey, do you wanna grab coffee? Not really. You wanna be a guest on my show? Yeah, that sounds interesting. Tell me more about your show. But that, that alone is a really uniquely strategic angle, depending on right, what’s the, you know, what’s the benefit of them for coming on the show and everything. But I love that particular one. And then you, you mentioned the membership site and so any insights that you would share on what you think makes us successful membership site where you could convert a listener into a paying member? What do they want?
NL (23:35):
Yeah, so typically the membership site is content plus community and it’s often come for the content stay for the community. And so we’ve seen and depending on your niche, maybe you lean more heavily on one or the other. Like is this educational content that they’re after or is it community? So a couple guests recently, one was called On the Hard Days, it was a parenting podcast for neuro divergent kids or parents of neuro divergent kids. And that was the feedback that she got from her audience was like, I, I gotta know, other moms have to be in the same spot that I’m in. I just need some friends. I just need people to listen and vent to and get support and feedback. And the other one that was on the show recently was Jill from Sober Powered, which is a podcast about the science of addiction and, and trying to get and stay sober. And it was the same thing from her audience. It wasn’t like she was providing the educational content free through the podcast, but what her listeners wanted was more Jill, they wanted more her time, they wanted more community, and that’s what she ended up putting together with that and actually bring it on some guest experts once a month. And so that was kind of how she had hers structured.
AJV (24:50):
Yeah, I think just, it’s a great reminder to everyone who’s listening. It’s like, if you truly figure out who your audience is and then you serve them in a way that they need, they do want more of you, it’s like, you know, you, you become, like you said, it’s like you’re this trusted voice in their ear week after week. But to build any relationship, it takes consistency, it takes providing real value and it also make you gotta provide the real value to the right person. So it’s knowing who your audience is, which is where we started talking about this, even with seo, it’s like doesn’t really help unless you know exactly who you’re targeting. Same with paid media, but then also giving them what they want in an authentic way that only you can do it, right? That’s kind of the, the true equation of building a successful personal brand.
AJV (25:37):
It’s, you know, serving the right audience and doing it in a way that only you can do. So alright, so I’m tentatively watching the clock knowing that we only have about 10 minutes left. So I’m curious, one of the things that I just kinda had, you know, down here are two things that you said on our pre-call that I thought would be interesting and you said, you know, everyone always talks about a journey to a thousand clients or a thousand fans, but what about just making 10 true clients? And so I’d love to hear you just kind of like deep dive on, you know, it’s, it’s interesting cuz people often look at quantity as somehow this is the end all be all of what I’m trying to get to. And you made that comment of maybe it’s not a thousand fans or it’s just 10 really great true clients. So where’d that spare from? And I’d just love for you to share some insight on that.
NL (26:29):
You bet. So the Thousand True Fans is this essay from Kevin Kelly that is like now taken as internet business gospel that says, Hey look, you got a thousand true fans and true fans. He defines as somebody who supports your work to the tune of a hundred dollars a year. They, these are the people who like, you know, buy everything you put out, they, they come to your concerts, they spread the word about you, right? And, and that’s awesome to have that level of community and that level of support, but you know, only a, probably only a small percentage of the people following you are going to, you know, really check that true fan box. And so it’s like you gotta have, you gotta shoot for some pretty big numbers to get there. So what the guys from the Tropical NBA Podcast argue is like, well, what if you flip it? What if you say what if you aim for 10 true 10 true clients starting out, you get 10 true clients that each pay you a thousand bucks a month. Like you’re kind of in a similar revenue area as that thousand true fans and maybe more realistic to get to because now you can have one on one conversations. You can look people in the eye and say, Sign here. This is the service I’m gonna provide for you. And it’s just maybe more realistic for people starting out.
AJV (27:40):
Yeah, it’s so interesting that this came up. So literally over the weekend, my husband and I who are business partners were doing our annual business planning for 2023, which is unbelievable that it’s almost here. And one of our dear close friends, a former pastor of ours at our church had, you know, left ministry and is starting his own marriage counseling business with his wife, which has been their true passion for a really long time. And he had launched this course business selling these, you know, guide to a, you know, great marriage, whatever it was called, but for $39. And he was like, Nah, I just, I just gotta figure out how to sell it. Thousands of these. And we were like, Yeah, why, why do you need to sell thousands of these at $39 and how much work is that gonna take? Versus what if you just had 10 people paying you 500 bucks a month? And he was like, That’s a great question. But it is, you know, it’s, it is that, it’s that same thing that people always say, it’s like, I wanted, I want this product that just makes money while I sleep. And it’s like, Yeah, but you gotta sell a lot of product for that to stay consistently.
NL (28:53):
It really is. And you can think of it as a a value ladder or kind of like a different menu of service offerings. Like you can go buy, you know, Tony Robbins book for 10 bucks mm-hmm.
AJV (29:33):
Absolutely. I think for everyone it’s I think there’s this overarching temptation to listen to everyone of going, Yeah, make money while you sleep, build a course and make a million dollars. And I was like, I dunno how many people who are making courses make a million dollars consistently. But that’s a great option, right? And what we call a collapsible offer it’s a piece of the puzzle that for that consistency. Yeah, you don’t have to sell a lot of those in order to make it work long term. Alright, so my last question for you is for those of, for those of us out there who are listening to this show who go, All right, all right, what, this is what I need to do to start, you know, adding some income streams. I wanna do some side hustle stuff. I wanna expand on how the, all the different ways I’m making money, what would you say are the best three ideas for someone who’s just getting started on a side hustle?
NL (30:29):
Oh my goodness. Oh, I think you gotta start with pains and problems, right? Like the typical advice, you know, to find the, the perfect side hustle ideas to look at these like concentric circles, like well put your skills in this, in this circle and put your you know, hobbies and interests in this circle and then put like, you know, things you’ve been paid to do in this circle. And like the magical sweet spot in the middle is like, well that’s your unique side hustle idea. And the problem is for a lot of people it’s like, well my skills are over here and my hobbies and interests are way over here and like what I’ve been paid to do, like doesn’t overlap any of that stuff. And that’s super frustrating. And so what you have to do instead is kind of put on your pessimist hat for a little bit, which I normally like to stay more optimistic, but bear with me on this one.
NL (31:13):
So you open up just a blank notes app on your phone. I call it my what sucks list. And for, you know, a day a week, you know, a couple weeks, it is your job to write down everything that sucks, everything that you find annoying in your life, everything that you wish there was an easier way, everything that your spouse or partner is complaining to you about that your coworkers or neighbors are just kind of griping about. Because on the other side of those pains and problems and annoyances, like there might be a business idea solution. And it’s usually gonna take one of three forms, product, service, or content. And like, we’ll give the example of like a dirty house, a common common problem for me cuz I look around this room so there are, I could go out and buy cleaning products to address this pain and problem. I could go hire a cleaning service to address this pain or problem. Or I can go binge watch, you know, all the decluttering shows on Netflix or YouTube like how to organize and you know, make my space clean and stay that way. And so entrepreneurs are tackling that same problem from three different ways. And so that’s how I kind of recommend people go about that initial idea searching phase. Does that make sense?
AJV (32:23):
Absolutely. Actually, I really love that cuz I think most of us naturally go, I wish this was better. You know, at the, as soon as you started talking, it made me think about this. I was recently traveling overseas and I don’t know, I can’t speak for the men cuz I can only speak for the lady’s bathroom, but it’s always so annoying to go, I have to like, walk underneath all the, all the stalls and look underneath like who has feet where other legs never can tell what’s open, especially these long airport bathrooms. But while I was traveling overseas, this was in Sydney, Australia, I walked in and above every single stall was a red light or a green light.
NL (33:01):
Okay?
AJV (33:01):
And so as soon as you walked in, you just saw anything that was green was open, anything that was red was locked. And I was like, this is brilliant, this is so smart. It’s like created so much efficiency and it’s like, I can’t tell you for how many years, it’s like kind of just like looking underneath the stars, like totally creeping on people to go, well what’s, I don’t know, But same type of thing. It’s like, what a brilliant idea of going, duh, just put a red light in a green light over these stalls. So all the women coming in here can quickly and efficiently come in and out. But it’s like to the point that would’ve very much come from what do you wish was better? What sucks? Yeah, what are people always complaining about? What do you complain about? I think that’s awesome. I think that’s not pessimistic, that’s improvement oriented.
NL (33:49):
That’s a, that’s a more positive way
AJV (34:41):
No, I love that. I think just really getting clear on what you said, it’s like what are your skills, what are your passions? What have you been paid to do? But then also it’s like, what needs improving that you could actually help with what, at the very least it’s maybe you found a tool or a resource that’s really awesome, right? Kinda getting behind that and going, I need to just tell every single person I know about this and maybe tag some services on top of it. Right? those are so helpful. Anything else that you would say for someone who’s just getting started?
NL (35:08):
Well, on those live, I know you have a lot of podcast podcasters tuning in. There’s this one cool tool, I’ll see if I can take it up that I just found somebody, a listeners sent it to me. It was called likeon phonic.com/graph and it creates you punch in the name of your podcast and it creates this like 3D matrix thing of all the related shows on similar topics that you talk about. And it’s really cool because these are like guest podcast targets, basically like, hey look, if my audience is into this, you know, my, maybe I could find some new listeners over here, or maybe these hosts would be open to some sort of joint webinar, you know, collaboration, partnership thing as like, I thought that was a really cool recent, recent tool new find for me.
AJV (35:57):
Yes. And I will go and find the link and I will put that in the show notes for every, for everybody. But again, it’s like, find the tools that you love and figure out do they have an affiliate program and promote the pants off of them, right?
NL (36:10):
I dunno.
AJV (36:12):
NL (36:35):
Oh, I love it. So I’m like, I’m a sucker for these like, online businesses, right? Cuz there’s leverage and it’s like even the first few years you’re working for so far below minimum wage, it’s probably not even funny, but like over time it takes the same effort to produce a podcast that 10 people listen to or 10,000 people listen to or a hundred thousand people listen to. Same thing with, you know, written content, email content, YouTube content. So I love, like, I love all that stuff and that is ton of, that’s really fun. Like this combination of content production and analysis of what’s working, what’s not. Like I love that stuff. If I were to start a new business tomorrow, honestly I think it would be like a pressure washing business. I think it’s just so satisfying to go out there, do the work. I think it has the, you know, it would go like mini viral in the neighborhood. You stick your flag out there, you know, the neighbors walk by, they see you working hey, you wanna come by, gimme a quote. Like, I’m right across the street. What do you think you wanna come by and do my house next? I think that would be a ton of fun. I think that may be my retirement side hustle.
AJV (37:31):
Oh my gosh, I love this. We always talk about this like what are, what is the random chore that you secretly really like?
NL (37:55):
You bet, of course, would love to have you tune into the Side Hustle Show. We cover new and creative business ideas every Thursday. Look for the you know, green cover art with my mug on it and Spotify Apple Podcast, wherever your favorite podcast app is. Side hustle nation.com/ideas. If you are in that idea seeking stage, this is just a long list of part-time business ideas, ways to make extra money, no opt-in required over there, just you know, hopefully get the creative juices flowing.
AJV (38:23):
Awesome. And I will put both of those links in our show notes. But again, check out his podcast, The Side Hustle Show podcast and your favorite listening tool. And then if you are in the ideation phase or maybe you just want more side hustles, you can go to side hustle nation.com/ideas. And you can stay in touch with Nick on both of those places. Nick, thank you so much. Everyone, thanks for listening in and we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 339: 4 Keys to Creating Persuasive Promotional Videos with Eric Solomon | Recap Episode
Speaker 1 (00:03):
So another powerful interview, educational, informative, entertaining at least for me, listening to Eric Solomon talk about how to create great videos. And, you know, the, the first, I guess, highlight, or the first recap I wanna share with you, it, it wasn’t so much something specifically from Eric. I learned a, I learned a bunch, you know, from Eric. And I’ll talk about a couple of those, those key things in just a second. But I honestly want to share with you and just let you know this, because I feel like maybe you need to hear this, which is that for me personally, I have spent a large part of my career frustrated that I have to do all this stuff, like, frustrated that I have to deal with marketing and sales because it’s like I started my personal brand because I wanted to impact lives, right? Like, I wanted to help people.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I wanted to dedicate my time. I wanted to dedicate my life to researching and finding answers and solving problems that made my life better. And then also transitioning or passing those, those lessons and those principles along to other people. I never wanted to learn about marketing. I didn’t wanna have to learn how to write copy. I didn’t wanna have to learn about video editing. I don’t wanna have to learn about websites. I don’t wanna have to learn about social media. I don’t wanna have to learn about podcasting equipment. I didn’t wanna have to learn about funnels and marketing automation, right? Like, all of these things that end up absorbing such an exorbitant amount of our time and our energy and our resources, for me, is frustrating and has been frustrating because those are not the things that I wanted to do. Like, those are not the reasons why I started building a personal brand in the first place.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
And yet, those are things I have to do, and I spend a lot of time doing, and we spend a lot of money on hiring people and getting stuff done and having to learn lessons like this one. And if, if that is frustrating to you or has ever been frustrating to you, I can relate with you on that, right? Marketing is frustrating. It’s, it’s like, to me, it, it’s, it’s been a necessary, almost like a necessary evil as in order to get the chance to do what I really wanna do, which is impact lives and help people and make a difference, and solve real problems and do meaningful work, and be an actual expert and, and study my craft. And so, for much of my life, I’ve been frustrated or much of my career, I’ve been frustrated that I’ve sort of held back from doing what I really wanna do at a bigger level because I’m not so great at marketing.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
And because I never had a passion for marketing, and that’s always been frustrating to me. Until really just a couple years ago, I had a huge epiphany. And, and this is an epiphany I want, I’m gonna share with you because I think, think there’s a chance that this might matter to you if you are dealing with some of that frustration and you’re going, look, I I, I, I’m a, I want to make art, right? Like, I wanna do my thing. I wanna work on my craft. I I wanna create art. And the epiphany that I had a few years ago was when I realized that marketing is art. Marketing is art. Marketing is part of your artistry. Marketing is part of your craft. Marketing is is part of how you earn the right for your work to be heard and to be seen, and to make an impact.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
It’s not just enough to create the work. I have to do the work of telling people about the work, which is marketing. And that is something that has, has taken me a long time to get to. But the moment you have that realization that you go, oh, marketing is art, marketing is part of my artistry, marketing is part of my craft. Marketing is as necessary a part of the art as creating the art itself. That my job, my responsibility, my privilege, my obligation my opportunity as the artist in creating the art is also to do the work of marketing it and telling people and about it and sharing it with people. Marketing is art. And so these are necessary conversations to have. These are necessary things to learn. These are necessary skill sets to develop or to at least be able to become competent at hiring other people to do for you.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
And I know it’s hard, and I know it’s, you know, probably not the primary thing. And so much of what we’re, so much of what we teach people and help people with at Brand Builders Group is templates and toolkits and, and systems and strategies and techniques and frameworks and, and charts and systems to help automate and streamline as much of the marketing elements so that you can really focus your energy in, in the area of your passion, which is whatever your artistry is and whatever your craft is. So, I don’t want you to be discouraged. I want you to be encouraged. And I, I, I hope for you to have that same realization that I had because it made a big difference for me. It made a big difference because instead of fighting all of these things and being annoyed that have to do them, and being resistant to the, to, to social media and being resistant to copywriting and graphic design and websites and marketing automation and paid traffic acquisition and making sales calls and building, you know, pres getts and having to hire people and vendors and like all of the necessary elements that are, are part of the work, instead of being resistant to that, I have been able to finally turn the corner and embrace that.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
And I think that that’s been a huge part of the success of Brand Builders Group is because I’ve said, oh, these, this is where we can create so many tools and so many processes and systems and checklists and templates to help our clients with, with these parts. You know, this part of the work and, and this is work. And the other thing, the other thing that I would say, so, so one of, you know, mentality wise and getting your mindset around creating great video, which is really what that interview is about. I’m just sort of rounding it out here to some of these other necessary things you have to do as part of being a mission driven messenger and getting your message out is the other way to. So, so one way to look at it is that marketing is art, and, and all of these things are necessary part of your art.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
You know, part of the art is telling people that the art exists, and that’s, that’s a noble and important part of the artistry, otherwise no one ever gets to experience. And so that art never actually fulfills its purpose. The other part of it that I would say, which is also something that I’ve had to coach myself on and, and slap myself in the face every once in a while and go like, yeah, there’s parts of this you don’t wanna do. Of course there are, there’s parts of any business that you don’t wanna do. There’s parts of anything it takes to be successful. I e my first book, take The Stairs, right? The whole premise of that book is realizing that successful people are willing to do the things they, they, they know they need to do, and they know they should do, even when they don’t feel like doing them, because they realize that they’re a necessary part of achieving the goals that they have in life.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
People who are successful take the stairs. They do the things that other people aren’t willing to do. They do the things that they don’t like to do because they know they must be done in order to, and as part of a necessary stepping stone to the things that we want to do, and to achieving the things, the goals that we have for our life, and, and to, for the, for the purpose of living our purpose, we must do things we don’t wanna do. So I, I wanted to give you that context. That was sort of my first highlight, my first takeaway, my first aha, which wasn’t necessarily so much from something Eric said, but just kind of having this almost out of body experience have relearning principles that I’ve had to learn in the past and go like, yeah, normally I wouldn’t care about these things because they’re, they’re, they’re like ancillary to what my main focus is,
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Which is changing lives. But over time, I’ve really developed a, a love and a passion for this kind of stuff. And if you didn’t listen to that interview with Eric, I mean, you gotta go listen to it. I mean, hearing him talk about how, you know, his art is editing video, I mean video production, not editing video, but like producing a video a finished video product. And it’s amazing and it, it is transformative. We’ve also interviewed our one of the things we did for our members is we interviewed our creative director. She’s gonna be on the podcast as well talking about visual identity and graphic design, which are all things that, you know, to me was like, ah, I don’t wanna learn this. This isn’t really my thing. And it’s like, no, this is a part of it. And it’s, it’s a beautiful part of it, and it’s a necessary part.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
So marketing is art, and you also, there’s gonna be things that you just have to do that you don’t feel like doing. So that’s the first thing. The second thing on the topic specifically of what makes great video, and I, for me, the most powerful moment, or the most powerful concept in, in the entire interview with Eric was when he said, focus on feelings, not on facts. Focus on feelings, not on facts. When you’re producing a video, when you’re creating a video piece for whatever it is, whether it’s Instagram or you know, this, that, or whatever, focus on feelings and not on facts. In other words, the, the, the purpose of the video isn’t to convey information. The purpose of the video is to convey a motion to, to convey a feeling, to, to convey this transference of this energy, of what it’s like to do business with you, to hire you or your team or your company.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
That’s what video does in such a powerful way. And I would say that’s also true about great copywriting, right? So those of you that are, are members of ours, you know, that we teach a very specific framework that again, was life changing for us once we figured this out. It’s called the 15 piece of Copywriting. And it is how to come up with the exact words that you need to put on a page in order to get someone to pull out their credit card and buy something from you. Well, the whole concept of the 15 piece is just a structure to help move the audience emotionally, to move the reader emotionally. That’s also what makes great photography. If you go back and you listen to the interview that we did with Nick Ankin, who’s celebrity photographer of like Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber and the Pope and all these people, right?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
And also the interview that we did with Lewis Howes where we were talking about photography, and it’s, it’s great photography captures a feeling. It’s a state, it’s an emotion, it’s an energy. That’s what great copywriting does. That’s what great graphic design does. That’s what great video editing does. And so it was interesting, you know, for me,I’m tying back and some of those episodes are pretty old. Like Lewis was one of the very first people we interviewed on this podcast. So it’s been a couple years. UI’ve been on his show six or seven times,in the last couple years, but he’s only been on this show once. And,and then Nick Onken, who’s also Lewis’s photographer and also has become mine and AJ’s,you know, primary photographer for major photo shoots is,you know, that was old older too, but it’s the same.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
You’ll hear the same thing when our creative director comes on. And she’s talking about how we do visual identity, or Nick talking about photography, Nick or Lewis talking about photography is you know, us teaching the 15 P’s, us teaching the presentation, the one of our, one of our official courses for our members is called World Class Presentation Craft. And we teach all of these mastery level stage mechanics for how to develop characters and use your voice and, and write stories and create content and, and lay out visuals and create pillar points. All of these techniques use humor, the psychology of laughter, which are all focused on one thing, moving the audience emotionally, move the audience emotionally. They need to have an emotional reaction. They need to have an emotional response. And that’s what Eric was saying about what makes great video, right?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
And I, I have to think of another great example of this. You know, somebody who does video really well is Eric Thomas. So Eric Thomas, et the hip hop preacher, who is another one of our brand builders group clients. And we just, we just ran his book launch for him. And we just hit the New York Times bestseller list a few weeks ago, which was fantastic. But AJ and I had been fans of Eric’s for years before he ever became a client. And he, you know, has over 5 million followers and he’s got, you know, hundreds of millions of video views because when you watch Eric on video, it moves you emotionally, right? It’s, it’s, it’s not even so much what he’s saying as how he’s saying it. You have this like, this, this physiological response, right? That’s what makes a great speaker. Ed Millet is also that way, another one of our clients, right?
Speaker 2 (14:14):
And Ed, when Ed’s on stage, he, he, as a speaker, he creates this, you’re listening. You have a physiological response. Your heart rate changes based on the way he’s using his voice. And those are things that we teach, how you’re using your voice, how you’re using humor, how you’re telling stories, the structure of things, all these different things. And that’s what a great video should do. And, and I think the part of why I’m harping on this is to go look, if you don’t know anything else about video, all you have to know is that when somebody watches it, does it move them emotionally? And does it create
Speaker 1 (14:51):
The energy in the viewer that you want that viewer to experience? And is that the energy? Does the video portray the energy of your brand? Does your video portray the energy of you as the messenger? And, and again, I just can’t help but talk about this concept and apply it also to, does your copywriting do that? Does your, does your photography do that? Does your your graphic design do that? Does your speech do that? Like, these are all aspects of marketing and personal branding, which have to just map back and, and tie directly to creating a specific energy or motion for your, for your viewer and for your audience. And that’s just so powerful. My third takeaway, and this is something that I truly have learned from Eric that I’d never heard before, that has really been a game changer for our business, is leveraging the power of the interview for leverage, the power of the interview format for video.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Now, not just for like podcast interviews, you know, we all see people do interviews for that, but he was saying like, rather than trying to write a script for a marketing video for your company, interview your clients, or hire somebody like Eric to to interview them for you and, and interview them on video and ask questions in a way that’s gonna solicit or elicit the responses from them about what it’s like to do business with you. And when you get your actual customers just talking, then you’re able to take that and, and that becomes, becomes the gold. Now, a lot of times, you, you know, so that’s one thing is, is interviewing your customers. But the other thing is interview yourself or have somebody interview you. So, like, rather than trying to write the perfect script of, what am I gonna say on this promotional?
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Let’s say it’s a promotional video. What you would do is you just have somebody interview you in a way that you can just sort of like unload on them, like emotionally, just like sort of unload or pop off on like this rant about why you do what you do and who you do it for, and why did you start this brand or this company, and what does it mean to you and why is it important? And, and who, who is it for? And just creating that, that, that eruption of emotion and sort of puking that out on camera, and then being able to go back and post production and edit that, that will take a lot of pressure off you. And, and Eric does it brilliantly. The very first project he ever did for us was he created a testimonial video, which is still on our [email protected]. It’s so good. And AJ and I aren’t even in the video, like no one, there’s a couple of our strategists that are in the video, but it’s mostly our customers
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Talking about what it is like to do business with us. And that’s still on the homepage of brand builders group.com. Or if you go to free brand call.com/podcast, it’ll take you right to it. And you can see the video of our customers talking about what it’s been like to, to work with us and do business with us. And so interviewing is super powerful, but we also, it’s also a great way for you to create content. Okay? So I’ve been talking about in the context of like promotional videos, like you know, a great example is with the speaker demo video. And, and Eric talks about these he said too, but I’m gonna say the three types of video that every personal brand needs is you need a personal brand or like a bio video, which is a short bio about you, which, which by the way if you go to my Instagram handle, which is at Rory Vaden I have pinned to the top of my Instagram my new personal brand little bio video that Eric produced for me.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
And you can just go look at it. I’ve got it pinned to the top. So it will always be up there no matter when you listen to this. And it’s a 62nd bio video. And even in that bio video you’ll see there’s, there’s customer testimonials from Lewis Howes and Eric Thomas and Ed Mylett in even that little 62nd video. I’ve got three little miniature testimonials, and the whole video is really testimonials from our clients and our friends introducing me on their shows. It’s, you know, Eric put that together, he did a great job. So you can go look at that as an example of, of what a 62nd personal brand video looks like, which is also like a customer testimonial. And so anyways, you need three types of videos. You need a personal brand or like a bio video. You need customer testimonial videos like, or case study videos as he called them.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
And then you need a speaker demo video. I’ve got two brand new speaker demos that Eric has worked on for me, but we’re not releasing them live yet, I don’t think until we release. We’re updating rory vaden.com and so that’ll be all part of it. So when, when that happens, I’ll make an announcement and you can go check out the new rory vaden.com. But the, so the interview format for promotional video is super powerful, but the interview format for a speaker demo video is especially a, a powerful tip because when you’re editing a speaker demo video, you have footage of you speaking on all these different stages and all these events, but it, they, you’re, they often don’t perfectly fit a through line of exactly the story you want to tell when you’re trying to sell yourself as a speaker. Cuz they’re, those are videos of you doing what you actually do.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Those are not videos of you selling what you actually do. And so the way to fit, the way to fill in the, the blanks there and the backbone of their whole demo video can be an interview with you. And so somebody can interview you on camera and they can interview you. And, and the first time we did it with Eric, he did it over zoom, like straight up just high quality, you know, as high quality zoom would, would put out, interviewed us. And that become the baseline, like for sort of like, when I say the through line, it’s, it’s the thread through the whole video and then you’re interspersing customer testimonial clips and, you know, media clips and you on stage and all the things that go into, into into a full demo video. But you become the through line in an interview direct to camera format.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Or typically you’re not talking right at the camera, you’re typically like looking off the, the lens just a little bit. And that’s super powerful. But the other place that we’re seeing interview formats show up now for our clients is when you need to create content videos. So for example, some of our clients struggle to build their first like webinar and they don’t know, you know, they’ll, they’ll be like, ah, you know, they struggle to get the slides together, or they don’t know the right format, or they’re worried about what they’re gonna say, or they just get nervous talking directly to the camera. And so one of the things we can do and we can do for them is we can interview them and basically the interview becomes the webinar. And so rather than a, rather than a recording of like a talking head over some slides, it becomes an actual conversation.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
And so we’ve done it, we’ve helped do clients do that for webinars. A lot of people will write books that way. They’ll have somebody interview them, record the whole interview. It could take, you know, a few days even record the whole interview, get it transcribed, and then send it to an editor and have them turn that into a book. We’ve done, we’ve done that way. We have done it for book launch bonuses. In fact, I mentioned Eric Thomas a couple times here. This is what we did for Eric Thomas did this, I did this for Matthew West also. So one of our clients is Matthew West. He’s a one of my favorite Christian musicians of all times a 25 Grammy nominees and, or sorry, five Grammy, five time Grammy nominated artist and 25 number one singles, Matthew West. And anyways, when we did his book launch, I interviewed Matthew about his book and that interview became the bonus content for people who pre-ordered his book.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
And also at the end of that interview, we, we, we sold the upgrade the bulk packages. That’s all stuff we teach in bestseller launch plan, which is one of our phase three curriculums on, on how to do these, these book launches. By the way, we just had our 11th client, our 11th client this last week, hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, the 11th time. We’ve had one of our clients hit the New York Times or Wall Street Journal or USA Today bestseller list just in the last couple years. Like our book launching stuff is, is on lockdown, but one of the things we do is we create these bonuses to get people to pre-order in one of the bonuses is this, this reverse interview or this masterclass where it’s like, you don’t have to, you don’t have to even think about or plan for the content.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
You just get someone to interview you and that becomes the bonus. And then we do this like, you know, kind of sales pitch at the end to get people to upgrade and buy and bulk. But anyways, the interview format and then one of our implementation partners for social media is now doing this for our clients. When our clients struggle to create content every week, like, you know, we teach this content diamond process, which I’ve taught here before you, if you go to rory vaden blog dot com and you search for content diamond, you know, I, I’ve taught the whole thing and that’s a, that’s, we’ve made that available for free. It’s an amazing training on how we do social media. But, and it starts with a, like a source seven minute video of you talking to camera. Well, some of our clients struggle with that.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
And so one of our implementation partners is so brilliant, starts started interviewing clients and just giving them like three or five questions every week to answer. And the interview format becomes the source content for the entire content diamond. And it fills their whole social media calendar for the week. And they don’t, they don’t have to like, prepare what they’re gonna say. They just answer these questions and then they cut, they, they edit together the interview as the source content. I mean, it’s really, really great. So you maybe haven’t thought about the power of the interview format in all of these different ways. And that was, you know, really eye opening when I first, I first met Eric. And, and now he’s taken us through his process several times. So there you have it. Some of my big highlights and takeaways, hopefully those are inspiring and powerful for you too. And just remembering that you know, marketing is art. Part of your artistry is letting people know that your art exists. And what is art other than a piece of work that moves people emotionally. So when you’re creating art, create something, create somebody of work that moves people emotionally, that’s what makes an artist.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Thanks for being here. Make sure you come back share this episode with somebody you know who needs to learn about video editing and marketing as artistry. Would love it if you leave a review and rate us on iTunes and just, you know, share this, share this with somebody you think it would be useful for. Have a great week everyone. We’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand podcast.
Ep 338: 4 Keys to Creating Persuasive Promotional Videos with Eric Solomon
RV (00:02):
So I know from experience that it is extremely difficult to find quality people to work with, to help you get stuff done in a brand builders group, we are a strategy firm. We think of ourselves as architects. We think of ourselves as the air traffic controllers. We tell people what to do in the order they should do it, and in the way it should be done. But when it comes to actually getting the work done, we often have to partner with other firms. And so today I’m excited to introduce you to my personal video editor. His name is Eric, and we’re going to get inside his head about how video storytelling is really done. We’re gonna talk about four effective rules to do it. What are some of the mistakes that people make? And I want you to let to, to make this specific for you to know that the videos that we’re gonna talk about producing today are promotional videos.
RV (00:55):
We’re not talking about social media reels. And you know, it could apply to that. It’ll apply to your YouTube videos that you post every week or whatever, or your podcast. But we’re really talking about is like the commercial, the video commercial of you that you use to sell yourself and your services. And, you know, there’s a couple different types of videos for that. So it’s really like the high end video that you need to, to sell yourself. And so let me tell you a little bit about Eric. So he’s an award-winning video producer. He is an editor. He’s a storyteller. He’s a strategist. He does the whole thing from the concept and the storyboarding and the mapping, you know, e even site location, bringing another videographers, et cetera. And all the way down through like the actual editing and, and the final production.
RV (01:44):
And we love Eric because he’s so genuine. He has such an authentic approach that has the, the professional polish of true high level film production, but also the heart of, you know, we talk about mission driven messengers. And so he has that balance. And, and he he, he actually produced a film, made a film called Autism Every Day, was a project that he worked on where he weaved the stories of eight diverse families into a single narrative that showed the world what it was like for families raising an autistic child. This film went on to be screened at the Sundance Film Festival and led his client to appearances on Oprah, Good Morning America and The View. Eric has also produced trailers for TV commercials and Halloween Hollywood films like Last of the Mohicans a Few Good Men and the American President. But his biggest accomplishment in life was editing Brand Builders Group homepage videos Rory Vaden, speaker demo videos. And anyways, without further ado, Eric Buddy, welcome to the show. Thank
ES (02:59):
You, Rory. I thank you for that great introduction. I couldn’t have written it better myself,
RV (03:04):
ES (04:11):
At a high level, it’s really all about being authentic. I, I think a lot of videos don’t succeed today because people try to script them. They try to figure out exactly what they wanna say ahead of time. And I think, you know, audiences tune out to ads. They, they don’t want to hear narrators. They don’t want to hear an ad for something. They want to hear something that’s real. And when you can really authentically connect with your audience, that’s when you get their attention, and that’s when you can deliver the message. That is the whole reason to make the video in the first place.
RV (04:51):
Mm-Hmm.
ES (05:17):
Well, this is a kind of a good lead into my four golden rules for making an impactful video.
RV (05:23):
Let’s do it. Let’s get in.
ES (05:25):
First one is really all about the script, and my feeling is do not write a script.
RV (05:31):
Wow.
ES (05:32):
I believe the best videos are created by conducting interviews in an unscripted manner. The videos that I’ve made for you, Rory, I’ve, I’ve interviewed you and you’re a very polished interviewer. You have a lot of experience with that. But I wanted to ask you questions, and I wanted you to just speak to me like it’s the first time you’re talking to me. The video that’s on Ran Builders homepage that I did for you. I interviewed strategist, I interviewed clients. Nobody knew the questions I was gonna ask. It was all unscripted. And really, the reason I think to take an unscripted approach is that I don’t think a writer can write something better than what the people who are most familiar with the subject would just naturally say.
RV (06:28):
Wow.
ES (06:30):
And, you know, unless you’re Aaron Sorkin, my feeling is turn the information that you want to deliver in that video into a question and ask that, have somebody ask you that question, and then you respond with the answer. And you ask people, who are your clients that question. You ask a series of people, the same group, the same questions, and then you use their answers and you weave them together to tell the story that you want to tell, to give the information that you want to give. But you use the best moments from each of those interviews and you can create something that is far more powerful and far more engaging than anything that you could write. Or that probably you could hire a writer, a writer to write.
RV (07:21):
Yeah, I mean, I, I I will say this, like, this is one of the, I mean, we’ve worked with so many video editors over the years and have gone through so many processes and we’ve done it ourself and like, you know, lots of different ways. And the interview is like, part of when I think of you, it’s like you brought the interview and just really blew open the doors for us of going, this can be easy, this can be fast, and it can be amazing because if you just interview and, and, and, and part of what I found, so even with like my speaker demo video, we did this, and now we have, we have two, we have two speaker demo videos for me. We’ve got like a couple that we’re working on. We’re, we’re finalizing ’em both. You’ll, you’ll be able to see those by the way, rory vaden.com here, like, you know, probably within a few weeks af after the time of this interview comes out.
RV (08:13):
So you can go look at those, the [email protected] are up. Or if you go to free brand call.com/podcast, you’ll see our, our sort of like a flagship company storytelling video that Eric did. But the interview serves as such a, an incredible through line for the whole video. And it, it gives you the natural, like, cuts on audience shots and like different people saying it a different way. And, and just, I mean, what you said it, I don’t think a writer can write something better than what your people will actually say. I mean, that is so true. You do such a good job of capturing that.
ES (08:52):
Thank you. Thank you. And I think something you just said is really key. Also it does make it easy for my clients because they don’t have to go on meeting after meeting and what are we gonna put in the video and how are we gonna do this? And what are we gonna show here? I, my goal is to make it as easy as possible for my clients and sit down with them, do the interview, have them give me their assets. If they’re a speaker, they give me their samples of the keynotes they’ve delivered. If they if they make presentations, whatever assets they have, whatever photographs they have, they just hand that over to me. They introduce me to their clients who I also interview, and then they’re done. The next thing they know, they are seeing what I think could be a finished cut, but of course it’s not finished until they’re happy.
RV (09:46):
Yeah. Well, and, and that, that really is, I mean, that’s part of why what’s been amazing is like, you know, we’re so busy. Everyone is so busy. And it’s like, if you don’t edit videos for a living, you just, you don’t realize how much time it takes and how much involvement and how much storytelling and what are the right questions to ask, and the sequencing and the timing, and then the visual effects and the music and the, and the transitions and like all of these little things. And then you get into it and you go, this is so big and scary and painful. It takes forever to get a video edited versus basically, I remember when AJ found you, it was just like, we just basically dumped everything on you. And you were like, you set up a time. I didn’t even know, it was like, I have this interview with Eric, We did an interview, and then it was like, I’m done.
RV (10:35):
I was like, Wait, how are we gonna put together this video? And then, and then it was just like, No, that’s, that was my only role in it. And then you sent it back. You know, I give you some creative direction or whatever, but then you send it back. And then from there it’s more like, Okay, move these pieces around a little bit, but so painless, like so, so fast. So you know, just a, just a, an elegant way of of of, of doing it. And, and you mentioned the speaking video, so I wanna talk about that for a second because even if people listening aren’t professional speakers, I mean, you, you know, your brand builders member also, so you know, that we, we believe the fastest way to get clients is not social media, is it’s, it is not, you know, funnels and ads.
RV (11:20):
It’s referrals from people, you know, and it’s from doing presentations and you go speak for free. You don’t need to get paid because if you speak for free, you’ll get paid in business that comes from it. And a lot of times when you do a, a presentation on stage, even a keynote on stage, the way you deliver a keynote is much different from the way that you would present a sales video or a promotional video. And so, a lot of times, even though I’ve spoke on big, beautiful stages, I don’t have exactly the right clips that I need to pull together a cohesive, persuasive you know, promotional video. And yet when you interview me, you, you’re, you’re pulling, it’s easy to get that footage in an interview. It’s hard to get it from just, here’s all the presentations or here’s all the content that I’ve ever done. But in an, in an interview, it’s like, it gives me a chance to say everything that I need to say. And that’s, and that’s also part of what you do so masterfully, is you draw it out of people.
ES (12:25):
Yeah. And, you know, and it’s in you. It’s in all of the people listening people, people talk about what they do all the time. They, they know the answers to the questions. They don’t have to prepare, you know, brand builders, clients personal brands who are successful. They’re passionate about what they do, and, and all they really need is somebody to ask them questions. And the information just pours out of them. And, and that’s, that’s really the key to to creating great video. It, it’s a good, this is a good segue into the second one.
RV (13:00):
Yeah, I was gonna say, tell me, All right, tell me this. So tell me the second one, cuz I know we got four, so I don’t wanna be left hanging. So what’s, what’s the number two?
ES (13:06):
Definitely the second one is you need to create videos that are a dialogue, not a monologue. And that sounds counterintuitive because videos are a one way form of communication. You right. Use them, you create them, you edit them, and then they’re done and they’re up there. But when you think about it as an audience, when you’re watching a video, you’re always listening and thinking, Well, how does that apply to me? And huh, that point makes me think of this question and well, what else do I need to know? So there’s always a dialogue going on, but as the person creating a video, you’re either conscious of that and, and aware of that as you’re editing the video or you’re not. The best videos, in my opinion, are always taking into account what is the audience thinking. When I just said what I said, What do they need to know next?
ES (14:04):
Do I need to answer a question or do I need to keep giving them the information that they don’t even know? They don’t even know, they don’t know. You know, it’s you always have to be constantly giving them that next piece of information that they, that they’re wondering or that’s gonna keep them engaged. And when you stop doing that, that’s when the engagement level drops. You know, we videos all start out at that high, a hundred percent, and they drop fast. But when you grab people quickly and you keep them engaged and you keep telling them what they need to know, or you tell them you’re giving them your message in a very engaging and dynamic way, then you keep them engaged, you keep them with you, and you’re able to deliver that, that full message. Mm-Hmm.
RV (14:59):
Yeah.
ES (15:00):
Delivering a monologue, They’re, they’re gone.
RV (15:03):
Yeah. I mean, it’s just, if it’s, you know, that it’s like, Hey, this is a commercial. Or if it’s just all about you, right? Like, Hey, here’s how amazing I am. And there’s no consideration. It’s like they don’t really care about you. They care about what you can do for them, right? And so they only need to know enough about you to know you’re credible. What they really care about is what can you do for me for these types of videos specifically, the purpose is not education, it’s sales. Like, we’re not just trying to just educate, we’re trying to persuade and move to action,
ES (15:39):
Right? But it’s not sales in the traditional sense of, of selling. I’d like to think that the videos I create are, are story driven from the the audience’s point of view. It’s not a story about Rory Vaden, it’s not a story about brand builders. It’s a story about the people who have been served by Rory, served by brand builders. And when you’re always, you always have that perspective in mind as you’re editing and as you’re creating, and as you’re gathering the material, the content to create the video, then you’re going to deliver your message in a, in a way that people respond to, because they’re not gonna feel like you’re selling them. You’re, they’re gonna feel like you’re sharing a story with them. You’re not trying to persuade them of anything. You’re, you’re telling them, Hey, this is, this is a problem that people have and this is how I’ve helped them solve that problem.
RV (16:34):
Yeah. And I’ll I’ll say for those of you listening that are members, of course, you know, one of our flagship frameworks and things that we teach is called the 15 Ps of copywriting. And that is how do you, what words, how do you come up with the words you need to put on the page to get people to like, pull out their credit card and buy something or to sign up for a free call? And there’s a sequence which the, that se there’s a sequence of the 15 P’s. They happen in a specific order to specific reason. The reason that is, is because of psychology, human psychology of what questions do people have about new things, and in what order do they have them and what do they need to know of which storytelling is just another, is a short, ver a condensed way of saying that is going.
RV (17:25):
Stories are extremely effective sales tools because they connect, they’re deeply rooted to human psychology and the sequence of how we learn new things and explore new things and remember new things. And so if you’re a, if you’re a, if you are a, if you’re a a, a messenger, if you, one of the BBG messengers, the 15 P’s to me, always serves as a initial arc guideline for the conversation. But then, you know, when you get into visual storytelling, there is a lot, there is a lot of room for creative expression, and it depends on what assets you have and, you know, what do people say in the interviews? And since it’s kind of a spontaneous collection of different things, you have to, you allow for some flexibility to massage those assets together. But like, if you look at the videos that Eric has created, we’ve gone back and forth several times on the 15 P’s and saying like, Oh, hey, I wanna move this over here.
RV (18:22):
But it’s, it’s gotta bend and flex a little bit just to, for the, you know, the creative artistry. And you know, I think the thing that I would say for everybody, which is good, is if you don’t know the 15 P’s, or if you are a brand builder and you know ’em, but you don’t study ’em every night like I do
ES (19:03):
The 15 P’s are a great segue into the third point. Okay.
RV (19:07):
15 p
ES (19:09):
The third rule that I use is that you focus on feelings, not facts.
RV (19:17):
Mm.
ES (19:19):
And a lot of people, when they create videos, they think about that information that they want to get across. You know, I’ve got these five points that I want to get across, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna, you know, whatever I do, I’m gonna make sure I say these five points. But your audience is not gonna remember the five things that you feel so strongly that you’ve gotta get across. What they’re gonna remember is how they felt watching you, that they feel like you really cared about what you’re talking about, that you’re passionate about this subject, that you’re knowledgeable, that you’re somebody that I could feel comfortable working with. You know, the Maya Angelou quote is repeated often, and and I’m gonna do it again here. People will forget what you say and they’ll forget what you do, but they’ll never forget how they, how you made them feel.
ES (20:08):
And it’s very much true in video. You know, you think about the videos you’ve seen that you liked, you probably don’t remember details or facts of those videos, but you remember, I felt like this is somebody that could help me. I felt like this is somebody that cares about me, cares about the problem that I have. So it’s it’s not that the facts aren’t important, it’s that you have to present the facts in a way that’s memorable. And the way you become memorable is you use the feelings because feelings are memorable. So any any pieces of information you can turn into stories, if there’s an emotional element to what you do, to the way you serve people, and the way you help people try to use that. You know, you, you tell a great story, Roy during your keynotes about delegation. You know, a lot of people feel like they can’t delegate what they do. And I don’t wanna repeat the story because it’s, it’s a great story. But you know, you’re, you’re telling the story and the audience doesn’t know why you’re telling the story, but when you get to the end, you will never forget that anything can be delegated
RV (21:25):
ES (21:27):
It’s just, it’s very powerful. And it’s funny. It’s, it’s a great story. And thank you. It, so, it’s, it’s feelings, not facts,
RV (21:35):
Feelings. It is. And, and, and you know, what’s this is something that I’m guilty of, and I think this is a good place where you’ve had balance for me is, is to not go so analytical and so logical. And so information like, again, particularly in a promotional video, like a lot of my content videos that I would put on Instagram or on YouTube, the purpose is conveying information. I’m del I’m delivering education. I’m demonstrating my expertise. I’m trying to be useful to people, but in a promotional video, and it’s, you know, selling is a transference of emotion. It is a way of making them feel. And it’s, it’s sort of ironic because you go, video lends itself to the rare opportunity to effectively generate an emotion without you having to be there in person to do it. And that, I think is, is, is so powerful of going it, it, it’s almost like when you’re looking at your video, don’t ask yourself, Did I cover it? Did I say everything that I wanted to say in the video? It’s ask yourself, how does this video make the viewer feel? Like, what emotion are they experiencing? And, and what emotion am I trying to create? Not, not what information am I trying to relay.
ES (23:06):
You and I went back and forth with the 15 Ps, you know, when I, when we first started working together, you told me I did it intuitively and I didn’t know what the 15 Ps were, and then you mm-hmm.
RV (24:01):
ES (25:06):
The bad And cleanup number four is the, I call it the nonverbal rule. And it’s really that we all focus so much on the words that we use when we communicate. And we’re taught that as children, you know, user words when you communicate, a lot of brand builders clients are writers. They’re very focused on the words. And you know, Vanessa Van Edwards really crystallized this for me. She was a guest couple months ago, and she just wrote a book called Cues, which anybody who hasn’t read it, I highly recommend it.
RV (25:41):
Yeah, We love Vanessa. She’s been on twice, actually. We’ve had her on twice. She’s very good. Yep.
ES (25:45):
Brilliant. But what she talks about is that nonverbal communication really conveys more to an audience than the words that we choose. Mm. And I’m sure you, you talk about this when you’re, when you’re teaching speakers and keynote presentation craft it’s your body language. It’s your voice, it’s your inflection, It’s the energy, the emotion, it’s the, the setting. You know what’s going on around you. It’s your wardrobe, what you’re wearing. It’s all those things convey more. Then you realize, you know, if, if the, if the energy and the tone and the, the confidence in what you say is there, then it supports the message. But if you’re kind of just talking and really not into what you’re saying, then the audience is not gonna be there with you. This is a, something that the audience that I, that I think, you know, people listening can do to help them with that nonverbal communication.
ES (26:52):
I think a lot of people, you know, we communicate this way on Zoom now, you know, face to face meetings are just not happening at the rate that they used to. And people, when they set up their home video for Zoom, they, there are some things they could do to make sure that they look better, that they sound better. And a lot of people are still not doing that as well as they could. I know a lot of people are listening to this, They’re not watching the video, so I’m gonna be a little extra descriptive here. But one thing that people can do is make sure that their camera is at eye level when they’re speaking. A lot of people have laptops on the table and they’re pointing up. You would never sit down and and talk to a person that’s two feet below you Right. Looking down on them. And should be the same thing with the camera. It should be at eye level lighting. Don’t put a window behind you. I mean, you’ve got a window behind you, Rory, but that’s not really a window behind you,
RV (27:54):
ES (28:01):
Exactly. Exactly. And ring lights are very inexpensive and they’re available on Amazon. It’s, it’s a, it’s a good investment to have. Make sure you have good lighting on you. Sound is another key element. I wanna do a little, a little live example here. Right now, I’m speaking to you on my, on my new microphone. Yeah. Which I bought for this podcast because I wanted to sound good
RV (28:27):
ES (28:31):
Exactly. But do you hear a difference now?
RV (28:34):
Wow.
ES (28:35):
This is the microphone that is built into my computer. So it really makes a difference when you have an external microphone. It doesn’t have to be expensive. It doesn’t have to be it doesn’t have to be a big deal. But if you’re using the microphone built into your computer, the chances are, you might sound more like this uhhuh.
RV (29:00):
It’s just sort of wimpy and like echoy and light. I mean, it just, it doesn’t sound like you have charisma and power and confidence,
ES (29:07):
Right? Not, and, and that, yes, it’s verbal, but it’s, it’s subtle. And now I’m back on my, my new Yeti microphone. Mm-Hmm.
RV (29:20):
Yes, it does. I mean, what a, what a massive, a massive difference. So camera height should be, eye level lights should be in front of us on our face, not behind us. Just getting a mic. Any, any others that you would add? Quick pointers there.
ES (29:39):
Just remember your body language. You know it. If you are somebody who likes to talk with your hands, use your hands. If you are if you are just, just remember your energy. Think of yourself as actually being with that person, in person and, and speak to them as you would with the, with the confidence and, and dressing as you would. You know, we all dress down a little bit when we’re at home, but if you are in a, in a meeting on Zoom, you wanna look good. It matters. It makes an impression. Yeah. So it’s, it’s these kinds of nonverbal elements that I think make a big difference more than people realize when, when delivering their message. It really, it either it helps reinforce the message you wanna say, or it detracts from the message you wanna say. The words alone are not enough.
RV (30:41):
Yep. Yep. I love it. So those are awesome. Those are so powerful. The again, just a reminder, y’all, if, if, if you’re on the hunt, like if you’re on the, on the look right now, for someone that can help you create some of these promotional videos, email us [email protected] in the subject line, just put Eric’s videos, and then we will connect you you know, directly to Eric, and you can, you can talk with him and understand more of his process. As we start to wrap up here a little bit, Eric, there’s, there’s two there. I was gonna say, there’s, there’s, there’s two types of videos that every personal brand should have. And then I know you have some type of a surprise, which I have no idea what that is, but should we, should we do the surprise first? Or should we talk about the two types of videos every personal brand should have?
ES (31:34):
Well, the surprise is part of the first video.
RV (31:37):
Oh, okay. All right. So tell us
ES (31:39):
The, the first video that every personal brand should have is, it sounds obvious, but a personal brand video.
RV (31:48):
Ah,
ES (31:48):
What is a personal brand video? If you do a Google search on personal brand videos, you will get videos where people talk about themselves. Cause they think a personal brand video is about them. But if you’re a brand builder’s client, you know this, your personal brand is not about you
RV (32:06):
Preach Brother
ES (32:07):
RV (32:55):
What
ES (32:57):
Surprise.
RV (32:58):
Check this out. Okay, so it’s, it’s, it’s 95 seconds. Can we play it
ES (33:03):
Please.
RV (33:04):
Or are you nervous? Are you, are you nervous that it’s good or you feel confident?
ES (33:07):
I feel confident.
RV (33:08):
I feel, I feel confident too. Okay. So let me do this some
ES (33:12):
Share screen and
RV (33:13):
Yeah, I can, I can share. And those of you, if you’re watching this on YouTube, you’ll actually, you’ll be watching a video of me playing the video, which hopefully will work here. So let me I need to optimize this for a video clip. All right. So we’ll share,
ES (33:28):
We’ll, your editors can edit it in so you don’t have this, this part of it that’s, you could just cut to it.
RV (33:34):
Cut to it. Okay. So here here we, here we go, announcing the Rory Vain personal brand video.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
My name is Rory Vaden. I am the co-founder of Brand Builders Group. I’m the New York Times bestselling author, and I spend my days trying to help people and businesses get better. So this is, and I have always been a nerd. I have always been drawn to the provable In many ways, I’m sort of surprised that I grew up to become what some might call a motivational speaker, because what I’m really interested in is concrete evidence and provable techniques and strategies that actually can be deployed to create a result. The next level of results always requires the next level of thinking. I feel like I’m at my best when I am in front of an audience, or even if it’s an audience of one, because I’m operating in my uniqueness.
RV (34:31):
It’s not
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Enough for people to know what you do. They must know why you do it. I believe that we are capable of literally creating the world around us that we want. And I believe that every single person has that intuitive calling for the way their life is supposed to be, and they don’t realize that they have the ability to do it. And I would say that I feel like I am here to deliver a message that inspires people to be their best. And that inspires people to exploit the things that they are good at in the service of other people.
RV (35:17):
Oh man, that’s so cool. That’s
ES (35:19):
The world premier of Rory’s personal brand video
RV (35:22):
ES (35:32):
It’s, it’s who you are, it’s what you do. It’s why you do it, and it’s the unique way you do it. So in 90 seconds, if somebody doesn’t know anything about you and they come to your website and they are gonna give you a little bit of time, but not, not too much time, they’re probably gonna hit that video. And in 90 seconds, what I hope is accomplished is they will get a feeling for who you are and that you’re somebody that they can, that they like, that they wanna learn more about. You know, everybody is busy, everybody’s distracted. But if you can manage to get people to your website and you gotta deliver a message quickly to them that’s gonna engage them and want them, get them to want to learn more.
RV (36:19):
Yeah. That is the goal. So, so cool, man. I love that. So, and I mean, 90 seconds is a doable thing for anybody. Even if you don’t have a lot of video footage or a lot of photography, you could do it in an interview. One interview gives you way more than you would need to pull all this together with just a few assets, right?
ES (36:37):
It’s, it’s a quick interview, It’s 15 minutes. And if all they have is some photographs, I’ve, I’ve done it with photographs, I do it with graphics, if you have a lot of B-roll of you. So I was able to integrate that. Whatever people have can be integrated into this, but the main thing is the, the delivery of the message. You’re the, the, the passion you have and the, the, the confidence you have in delivering and talking about yourself and what you do. I mean, that’s, it’s unscripted it, that’s just who you are and what you do. And it comes across.
RV (37:13):
That is really, really cool, brother. Thank you so much for that. I mean, that is awesome, y’all. If you want one of, if you want one of those, if y’all one of those who better email us input brand builders group.com, put Eric’s videos in the subject line, we’ll connect you. Cuz you know, I mean, I, I get, I mean, I don’t, I don’t wanna speak for you, but like, you know, you people should invest a lot of money into these things, but a a 92nd video certainly has gotta be a lot cheaper than producing a one hour, you know, 90 minute feature length film. So what a great, what a great place to start if you’re, if you’re just beginning and you go, Well, I haven’t been on national TV and I’ve never spoken in front of a thousand people and I don’t have a best selling book and I don’t, you know, it’s just like, just the heart. We call this the poll P 14 in the 15 piece is the pole, the emotional like pull of just a heartfelt invitation of why you’re here and why you, you do what you do. You can create that. So simple. I it’s such, such a great idea. I I just, I love it and I love, I love mine, Eric. It, it’s really cool, man. Thank you.
ES (38:19):
You’re welcome. You’re welcome. I’m glad. The second kind of video that I think every personal brand should have is what people think of when they think of a testimonial video. And I know with the trends and personal branding study that you guys did
RV (38:38):
Yeah, preach it.
ES (38:40):
RV (38:50):
You, if you haven’t heard this, cuz maybe if you’re just new to the podcast, like if, if you go to brandville just group.com and you click on free trainings, you can download our influential personal brand summit, which is, or excuse me, our trends in personal branding, national research study, which is what Eric is talking about. And we asked Americans, it was a US study, you know, what is the most, the most influential factors in, in the average American consumer making a purchasing decision? And we said, Oh, someone’s a New York Times bestselling author. They have a huge social media following. They have, you know, graduate degrees, they have, you know, all these other things. And the number one thing by far was they have testimonials of other real life people. And so I love that you’re, you’re talking about this,
ES (39:39):
But I think they can do so much more with testimonials than they even realize. Think about it. It’s testimonial is a story. It’s not just saying, I love working with you. You know, you’re great at what you do. That’s, that’s kind of level one of testimonials. But you can take it a step further. When I do testimonial videos for my clients, I interview their clients, my clients’ clients, and I ask them, What problem were you having? Why did you end up choosing Rory to work with? What was it like to work with Rory and what results have you seen working with Rory? And those four questions tell a story, you know, I had a problem, I looked for a solution, getting the solution was great, and the results from it have been great. So I take each testimonial and make a little mini case study video out of it, 90 seconds to two minutes.
ES (40:40):
Then my recommendation to my clients is not to put that, you can put that on your website, but I think it’s better to use that later in the funnel. I think when you’ve got somebody who’s interested in your service but is on the fence, what I like to do is suggest my clients have a library of these videos, you know, have 10 or 12 of all different kinds of clients you worked with, then you’ve got somebody who’s interested but not sure. You say, Let me send you a a little case study of somebody who works in the same industry of you and you could see how, what they felt like working with me. And then you’re not selling, you’re, you’ve got clients sharing a story. They’re not selling either. They’re sharing a story and it’s, it’s incredibly powerful, but there’s more
RV (41:30):
ES (41:31):
But wait, there’s more. When you’ve got a group of these testimonials, each is different, but also they’re all the same. They all had a problem. They all discovered you, they all worked with you, they all saw results. And when you can combine the best moments from each of those interviews and have three or four people talk about the problem, they had three or four people talk about why they used you, and you weave those answers together, you end up with actually what is the brand Builders group homepage video. You’ve got clients telling their stories, you’ve got strategists talking what it’s like working with the clients and you end up with something incredibly persuasive that doesn’t feel like a sales video.
RV (42:21):
Yeah, I mean, and, and it is awesome. I mean, it’s literally on our homepage, brand builders group.com. It’s also the, I think the number one asset that we drive people to online is free brand call.com/podcast. And we use it on all those pages too. Like, because it was just, it’s, it’s amazing. We’re not even in the video. Like me and AJ aren’t even in the video, which is beautiful. It’s like, it’s all the clients and our team members doing exactly what you said. But it’s basically a highlight video of the highlight videos, a bunch of customer testimonials, it really, really com compelling and awesome, and not salesy, just awesome, but it sell, it sells like you wouldn’t believe
ES (43:01):
RV (43:10):
Amen. So
ES (43:11):
It it’s the story, Roy, before, I’m not sure if we’re we’re done, but before we’re done, there’s one other thing I’d like to say. And it’s something that, you know, as a brand builder client, I, I heard very early on that we are best positioned to serve the people we once were. And that was something that never resonated with me early on. I, I just, I didn’t get it. And I think, you know, the reason is kind of obvious. I I hadn’t yet become the person I needed to become in order to help the person I was. And for anybody out there who feels like they have a calling and a message to, to, to give people, but they’re not sure that they’re ready to do it, don’t lose faith. Don’t lose hope. It, it, you, you can get there. I did it with brand builders. You know, brand builders is not the only people who can help you. But but stay with what you believe in and, and you, if you have a message to deliver, you know, there are people that need to hear it.
RV (44:23):
Yeah. Yeah. I love it. And we’re not the only people that can help you. We’re just the best. And we have customer testimonial videos to prove it and personal brand videos and, and awesome videos. No, I’m, I’m, I’m just kidding. Kind of, sort of I do actually believe that, but Eric, thank you so much. Like, this is just so helpful, just great tips, helpful for any of us trying to understand this world of video, which, like, for me, I’m just never been a creative per se. And so it’s like I’m passionate about what I teach, but like, when it comes to the visual aesthetic and like all this stuff, it’s just not a skill. I have to like open a video editor and like whip this together. And so having somebody like you sure helps me a lot because I’ll, I’ll say for a lot of my career, I was embarrassed about the videos that I was putting out that would tell people about who, who we were and what we did.
RV (45:17):
And it’s really awesome to, to, to be proud of saying, Hey, you know, when we’re talking to someone, hey, just watch this video and then tell me what you, you know, like knowing they’re gonna be blown away because of the emotion and not because it’s a sales pitch, but because they’re actually gonna feel our real heart. And because the video is going to convey the actual feeling and the emotion of what we’re about. And when that happens, they may not buy, but, but it, they will, I they’re gonna know for sure. They’re either gonna go, You are our, you are my people, or you are not my people, because they feel the energy and, and it makes the decision quick.
ES (45:59):
Attract or repel.
RV (46:00):
Yep.
ES (46:01):
And and I, you know, I wanna just say thank you. You know, I, I’m I I’ve love, I love working with you and a j and I’m very honored that you guys trust me to help you create your, your demo videos and your brand builders videos. It’s it’s a lot of fun. You’ve got great people to work with and, and I’m really honored to that that you feel comfortable working with me.
RV (46:26):
Yeah, well, we do, we, we love working with you and that’s why we wanted to introduce you to everybody. So again, if you need this, shoot us an email, info brand builders group.com, subject line Eric’s videos. We’ll connect you to Eric. If not, hopefully you’ll take some of Eric’s advice and tips, share them with your video editors or if it’s you just as you’re putting together and, and thinking through this. So Eric, we wish you all the best my friend. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and we’ll talk soon.
ES (46:54):
Thanks Rory. Talk to you soon.
Ep 321: 4 Ways To Increase Your Content Engagement with Nora Sudduth | Recap Episode
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
AJV (00:54):
Hey, all welcome to our pod recap. This recap is with my conversation with Nora Sudduth from hello audio. Oh my gosh. I’m nerding out over here. Like I literally have like my little workbook why I still have paper. I don’t know. But this was the most surprisingly unexpected, powerful, insightful content rich interview I’ve had in a really long time. I’m like blown away and it’s in fact, as soon as I hit stop on our left interview, I literally was like I’m in your website right now. I’m signing up for this demo. I’m like, how do I register right now to do this? Y’all this is amazing. I’m so excited about this. I am so excited that I randomly said yes to this pitch. It’s this was divine introduction introductions, so, okay. I could go on and on about that, if you haven’t listened to the full interview, you must, this is incredible.
AJV (01:49):
Just the content itself of how do you create more engagement and consumption with your content specifically around audio, but not, not only around audio. So, alright, I’m gonna tell you my big takeaways, there’s more than three today, so I’m just gonna give them all to you, but I’ll make it short and succinct. I have my timer on I’m paying attention to what I promise. Okay. First thing we started with this was amazing. You do not have to have huge online audiences to build amazing businesses. So great reminder, you hear this from us all the time at brand builders group. If you listen to this podcast, but start with your current reach, right? You don’t need to go do paid traffic. You, you can, but you don’t have to, you don’t have to go worry about building, you know, hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of followers online to get business.
AJV (02:39):
You can, but you don’t have to, you already have an audience, right? They’re the people at the T-ball game or the people you sit next to at that concert, they’re the people at church or your kids’ schools. They’re the people in line at the grocery, like there are people all around you like, so go and look around and who are the people that are, are already in your audience that you already have access to that are already in your reach and do they even know what you do? And do they know people who need what you do or do they need what you do? Oh my goodness, how easy it is to forget that we have an audience right in front of us, when all we pay attention to is the social media PLA platform. Y’all turn it off for just a minute and get your eyes off the screen and look around.
AJV (03:22):
Like, don’t forget the real life human beings right in front of you and who they have access to. Right? It’s like all the audience you need is probably all around you. Most of us don’t need thousands of clients or even hundreds of clients. Many of us just need dozens of clients. Do you don’t need to go online to find those people to write in your local community. So don’t forget the power of the offline reach. I love that. Second thing, this was so powerful is like, don’t forget that your path happens one step at a time. You may not be doing what you’re doing right now in five years or in one year, but take that next step. And it’s okay to know. It’s like, this is my next step. I know it’s not my last step. Take steps in between. I’ve had so many conversations about this here lately is that you know, for me, this is what makes me think of is, you know, writing a book, creating the, your life’s content, your life’s message.
AJV (04:18):
Isn’t the first thing you do. It’s the last thing you do. And on my recent interview with a Mori tepo who wrote the book, bring yourself, we talked about how I was like, she was writing her book for 10 years before she wrote her book. And what I mean before that is she was creating her content. She was settling in on what she really believed she was teaching it. She was speaking on it. She was coaching on it. She was mentoring on it way before she ever wrote the book. So it’s like, you’re writing the book right now. You’re writing that keynote right now. Like you’re, you’re doing all the things right now. And your first step is not have to be your last step. Your path is step by step. Oh, that was just so inspirational to me. I loved that. Now get down to some of the technical things.
AJV (05:02):
We had a great conversation around why content does not get consumed. So why is it that we people who are interested in learning and information, which is who you are, if you, you know, buy books, buy courses attend seminars, you know, conferences, all the things listen to a podcast like this. It’s like, we, we want information. We wanna be inspired. We wanna be entertained. We wanna learn. Right. But why is it that some of us start and never finish? Or why do we spend money and have our actual actually start it? And I thought this was really good. She said, there are four keys to improving your consumption. Y’all buckle up. So, so good. Number one, make it enjoyable.
AJV (05:59):
And it’s not to say that learning is boring, boring, but what people really remember is how you made ’em feel. They remember the stories that you tell they remember the, the pieces that were outrageous or entertaining, or they believe the, the authentic nature in which you are just real and who you are much more than often. They remember the pieces of information. And I thought that was a really great in a great thing. And I loved what she said. She goes, more information does not equate to more value it doesn’t, which leads me to the second point time, make this consumable and short amount of time. Right. I love, she said time is my primary currency. And what we all have to figure out is what is the currency of our audience? Are they buying this to make more money?
AJV (06:57):
Have less stress increase their level of fulfillment? Are they doing it to have more time? Like, what is the currency in which your audience is, is trading in? Mine is time. So she was speaking my language. It’s like, I’m always like, how do I have more time? How do I do less? Right. less is more thing. And I love what she said. It’s like more stuff. Does that mean more value? And as she was talking, I was just thinking about myself as a consumer, whether or not you relate to this or not of how often do I look at something and I go a thousand dollars. Okay. But what’s included. And it’s like, you know, it’s like 42 training videos and access to group calls and, and it goes on and on and on. And I’m like, I don’t want any of that.
AJV (07:41):
I just, I need, I need, like, I need one thing. How, how do you get me? One thing that I can do in like an afternoon and then call it quits. I would pay more money for that, of going. I don’t have to do all of that. Right. In a two hour session, I’m gonna get everything I need. I’m like, that is worth it to me, give me that. Right. It’s a part of why I love conferences and events because I know I’m gonna go and it’s gonna, I’m gonna start and I’m gonna end. And I’m gonna have everything I need at the end of that day or two days, how do we create value based on the currency in which your audience is trading loved it. And I love that reminders, like more information does not mean more value, right? Often people want it to consume it and the least amount of time possible.
AJV (08:21):
So trying to add more stuff on actually makes it less valuable and more overwhelming. Ugh. So good. Number two, or number three, increase the likelihood of results speak the language of your audience. What do they want from this? What are they gonna get from this? Right? Are they, do they want to double their income in the next 12 months? Right? Do they want to 10 X their reach? Like, what is it that they’re going to get from this? Tell them exactly the results they’re going to receive. So increase the likelihood of results and go at the end of this. This is what you’re going to get. That increases consumption. It helps ’em make it to the end, cuz they know at the end, this is what I’m gonna be able to do. This is what I’m gonna be able to achieve or eliminate.
AJV (09:05):
So tell them right. Increase the likelihood, say, well the results are different for everyone. It’s like, well, that might be true, but what are the common denominators for everyone at the same time? So increase the likelihood of results. And then this was like where we spent the most time. And I think this is really important. It’s increase the ease of use, make it easy to use, make it easy to consume. If you’re making courses make sure that if you make ’em video, you also give an audio version, right? If you have a six hour course that requires someone to be in front of their computer, especially post pandemic. That can be a bit exhausting. It can be a bit much when they’re in front of their computer all day long, but it’s like, but could they go and do this out on a walk, right.
AJV (09:49):
Or, you know, on a hike or with the dog or in a park or in the car. So it’s making it easy to use. And I, I love that. It’s like, is it when you walk in, is it six hours or is it 15 minutes? Right? It’s like, I can get something done every day for 15 minutes. But if it’s a hour or two hours or six hours, I don’t know. I don’t know if I can do that. Make the workbooks easy to download, easy to write in, make it easy. Y’all make it easy. Y’all I cannot tell you how much I found value in this. And I’m kind of picky. I really am. This was so good. I totally am signing up for this free demo. I am going to hello, audio.fm. I am signing up for this free demo. I am getting the free trial.
AJV (10:36):
I’m gonna make our whole marketing team watch this so beware. This is very likely going to be integrated into our world very soon. Love the concepts, love the conversation. Go check out the full interview. And then just remember I thought this was the, the highlight, but just remember it’s like we pay to shortcut our path to success. And that was one of the last things that Nora said is that we pay to shortcut our path to success. So make sure that you’re helping people do that. If you’re creating content, you’re trying to help them, you know, not make this many same mistakes that you did. You’re helping them expedite their journey. You’re giving them a shortcut to success and people will pay for it, but make it easy. Right? Tell ’em what it’s worth. Right? Know what currency they’re trading in and make it enjoyable. Make it fun. Y’all so, so good. I could go on and on go listen to the full interview, go check it out and we’ll see you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 320: 4 Ways To Increase Your Content Engagement with Nora Sudduth
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
AJV (00:54):
Hey everyone. And welcome to another episode on the influential personal brand. I’m super excited today because I get to interview a newer friend. And as you guys know, if you guys listen to the podcast, you know, that we do not accept pitches very often. In fact, we have only accepted three pitches in the history of the influential personal brand and Nora happens to be one of those individuals. So I’m gonna introduce you to Nora and today is really special for three reasons. One, I’m getting to know Nora kind of at the same time that you are. So all of the questions I’m gonna be asking are super out of my own curiosity of going. Tell me more, tell me more. I wanna learn Nora about this. But two Nora is the creator and co-founder of this really amazing product called hello audio.
AJV (01:43):
And it’s all about consumption rates and engagement with audio, which if you’re listening to this, you are already in the mix, right? So this is really, really important. And really what we’re gonna answer is why are you not getting the consumption and engagement rates that you want and you need with audio. And then thirdly Nora self admitted that she doesn’t get to talk much about her personal brand. And so this is also a really cool invitation of not just getting to learn about some really cool things with content consumption and engagement and her awesome company. But I’m also generally just so excited to get to know you and how, why did you create this? And what’s your backstory. I love hearing stories like this. So if you’re listening stick around, this is going to be an energy and content impact episode.
AJV (02:34):
Now on a, a very high professional level, I will read Nora’s bio for you. But just really quickly
NS (03:34):
Oh my goodness. Thank you for having me. I’m so excited to be here.
AJV (03:38):
Hi, I am so excited. And so I wanna continue that conversation. I wanna help, I wanna get to know you more in our brief conversations, I, haven’t got to hear this part of your story. And I know our audience is many people who listen to this are in this transition of, you know, do I keep doing what I’m doing or do I really go for it? Right. Do I really like go out on that limb, jump off the cliff and do what I feel like I was put on this planet to do, or do I stay comfortable? Right. Do I play it safe? And I just keep doing the thing that I’m doing, but you, you took the leap, like you left it and you started hello audio. So I wanna know the story. How did, how did you do it? Why did you do it? Like, how did you get to where you are?
NS (04:18):
Oh, I love it. So I did, I took that traditional path to success or what we were taught right. Is that traditional path. I have a handful of college degrees, right. I started in computer science before there were many women in computer science. So I’ve got that degree. I’ve got an MBA, I’ve got a master’s degree in engineering. And I did, I, I started that, that corporate kind of path, that corporate climb and what I realized, and I didn’t, I’m not one of those folks that hated corporate. I had great experiences. I learned just, I’ve worked with so many different businesses, even, you know, exact target before they sold to Salesforce before they had a successful exit. I’ve worked with so many amazing humans along the way. And so, as I climbed, I would say up that ladder, I think I got further away from what one of my core values is.
NS (05:08):
And I am obsessed with client success. Mm-Hmm
NS (05:53):
Cause I almost didn’t have a family. Right. I almost didn’t have that. And so at, at the time my dad was diagnosed with cancer and I knew that our time was limited and after he passed away, it’s just like, you know, we all have those moments in our lives where we have that realization of, you know, life is short and am I doing what I really want to do? Is this an opportunity for me to reassess some of those decisions? And, and to, like you said, stay comfortable, which there was there would’ve been nothing wrong if I would’ve stayed, you know, in that trajectory and kept going or do I want something else? And so I think that was one pivot point for that kind of help me wake up if you will. And maybe jarred me a little bit to rethink things. And the other thing that was happening was at that point when my dad passed away, I had a little kindergartner.
NS (06:40):
My oldest was in kindergarten. She is now in high school and getting her license, which is crazy. So time has definitely jumped here and I’ve been doing this for a while, but at the time she just, she was obsessed with the school bus. I wanna take the school bus home and I’m like, I am at the office until six o’clock like, you can’t take the school bus home. No one is home at 2 35 when that school bus is coming home. And so she just was like, I wanna take the school bus home. And I’ll tell you, I was sitting in a corporate meeting and there was a lot of meetings in corporate. And so I think this was one of, of many, and I just felt frustrated. I was feeling that sense of not being happy. And, and I, you know, some women collect shoes and handbags, I collect domain names. So I probably have like 600 over 600 domain names the time
AJV (07:28):
My husband, oh my gosh,
NS (07:30):
Can’t help it.
AJV (07:31):
The amount of go daddy, renewal fees that he’s come across my, my credit card.
NS (07:35):
You don’t wanna total. And when you total it up for your taxes, you’re like, oh my gosh, I need to sell. So, and I have sold some, I made some, but still, yes, it’s not. I don’t know if it’s any healthier than a shoe obsession. Quite frankly, it mights probably a lot more expensive. But as I said in that meeting and I bought the domain F the meeting.com, I still own that domain, but I was like, wow, what that, and, and as I look back, I’m like what energy that is, like, if that’s where I really was in life. And I knew it was a lot of things happening. So I left that day and I allowed my daughter to take the bus home. And so as she took, and I met her at the corner and the bus came and her, the joy that she was filled with as she came off, that school bus, granted, even a kindergartner, she was so excited. And I thought, you know what? I want more of that.
AJV (08:24):
Yeah.
NS (08:24):
Amen. I want more of that. And so I started putting things in place to plan that exit. And, and, and I’ll say this for anyone that is in that situation. Well, I think one of the biggest mistakes, or one of the biggest things we’re told when we look for a business opportunity, right? There’s a lot of folks that wanna sell you a Bizo right. There’s lots of different types, lots of different things, but where I think I had the most success in terms of that transition and that exit was, I started with my existing reach. I didn’t just build a product or create a service and then wonder how to get in front of people. Because I think that stops a lot of folks. I think one of the biggest things I did correctly was I started with my existing reach. I didn’t just say, okay, there’s this internet out there, this black box who the heck knows who’s in it, but they’re my clients.
NS (09:14):
I don’t know them yet, but they’re clearly who I need. And instead of doing that, I was like, no, who are the people already around me? Who are the people that already, that already know me that already trust me? And you know what that looks like. We, we forget our real life connections. And I know things have changed pre you know, post pandemic and all the things. But I, I looked at, okay, I was going through my TaeKwonDo. I went and got my first degree, black belt and TaeKwonDo with my daughter. I’m like the studio, all the people there, they’re in my network. Think about your professional network. Think about your personal network. Think about the stores you go to each and every day, the clubs that you’re a part of the memberships that you’re a part of. We don’t, we overlook all of these people that are in our existing.
NS (09:59):
And we’re like, oh, I don’t, I don’t have an audience. I didn’t have an email list. When I started, I had existing reach in every single person listening to this, you have your existing reach. And so I started there and I was like, you know what, I’m looking at, what I can do for people and the results, cuz I’m a very, like I said, I’m obsessed with client results. So what can I do for folks knowing my expertise, knowing my experience. And then I looked at my existing reach and I looked at what, where, where that intersection was now. I didn’t worry about like, well, what if I don’t wanna serve this audience five years from now? Mm-Hmm
NS (10:47):
And that’s how I started. So that was how I ultimately got to the point where yes, I was doing the side hustle in the evenings and on the weekends and before work. Right. Everyone’s like, yeah, you have a nine to five. Well, I didn’t have a nine to five. I felt like I had a seven to six. And then I was, you know, doing things after the kids went to bed or in the morning before they woke up or on the weekends when they went down for naps or all the things, cuz I had a, I had a younger one as well at that time. So I had two and I, I looked at that and I said, that’s the, that’s the path. It’s just step by step. But I think one of the biggest takeaways for me there is start with your existing reach and that’s ultimately so step by step by step. I put those things in place and I was ultimately able to leave that corporate position. And I created a marketing agency of my own and that was my first step into Andre. And I didn’t stay there, but that’s how I initially stepped from corporate into this entrepreneurial space.
AJV (11:42):
Oh, I love that there are so many gems and even the, your story of, you know, I already wrote down like two things and this is, we’re so aligned in this. And I know that we, we don’t know each other, all that well at this point, but I like one of my life mantras is that you do not have to have millions of followers to make millions of dollars. Yes. And we, we try to like instill this and it’s a great reminder to everyone who’s listening. Is that just start with the one? Yes. Like, and it’s, it’s a weird thing because offline, right. And our actual real circle of people we see every day, if we knew that we impacted one person’s life, that would be, we would be so fulfilled and content with that. It would mean something. But yet if we only have one like or one share or one comment online, we somehow think it’s a failure.
AJV (12:36):
Absolutely. It’s the online digital nature somehow often minimizes the impact of a changed life. And I love that. We talk so much about your offline reputation, your offline strategy, as much as your online. I love that. I love that so much. And I love too that you said it’s like the path is always step by step, right? It is. You may not be doing this in five years, like focus on what’s the next step. That’s true. So, so you went from marketing agency, so you left corporate yes. And had your own agency. So then I’m so curious to know is like, how did you go from that to hello audio? And then also tell everyone like, what is, hello, audio? So what was the path of creating a SAS product and how did you get to where you are now?
NS (13:23):
Absolutely. so I had that marketing agency and I grew that marketing agency agency in a multiple six figures in less than nine months. And it was at that point. And if you have, if you ever had a marketing agency or if you’re done done for you, you E you have a choice to make, you’re either gonna grow and you’re gonna hire more team members, or you’re gonna kind of stay in that niche kind of boutique kind of space. And, and it’s a choice and there’s not a right or wrong choice. It’s just a choice of what kind of business you want. And around that time where I was making a decision, I had started to use ClickFunnels in my agency because everything was WordPress. Right. And then click funnels was brand new at the time. And I mean, brand spanking new. And so I started using it, Russell found out what I was doing.
NS (14:03):
And all of a sudden I got a Voxer from Russell Brunson. And I, you, I mean, if I could’ve captured the look on my face, when I got that boxer from Russell Brunson and it was like, Hey, I think we need to talk. I would like you to rebuild my certification program. And so I was like, well, okay, right. Like this is, so here I am trying to make a decision if I’m gonna grow or grow this agency or kind of keep it small. And now I have a third option, which I never suspected, which was shut it down and go work and partner with Russell Brunson and rebuild one of his training programs. And so, you know, talk about what an amazing opportunity. So I’ve of course said, yes, partnered with Russell rebuilt. That certification program took that from like 300, about 300,000 a little bit more to like 4.1 million in 18 months built another seven figure coaching program for Russell.
NS (14:54):
And again, this is because I was so passionate about client success and SAS, right. I love technology. My first degree was in computer science. So this was a natural fit. And through that work and, and reviewing thousands of marketing campaigns and helping just so many people have success with their marketing campaigns. I ended up meeting Lindsay and Derek Padilla, who are the co-founders of, of hello audio. And, you know, I was actually, both of them are former community college professors who really also genuinely care about student success, right? It’s what they do. We all want our students to succeed. And so we had this shared value and as we had both started helping folks kind of with their online courses. And really, I was kind of maybe more focused on the marketing and sales piece of trying to help your digital products grow. And Lindsay was helping folks help be essentially become a better teacher online.
NS (15:49):
And so it was such an amazing partnership and, and a relationship that started there. And then it was Derek that kind of said, Hey, people don’t finish. Like the stats are there. They’re not finishing online courses. What can we do to help? And that’s how hello audio started. So it came from both of us, all three of us actually being so passionate about our, our students having success and knowing that consumption was getting in the way, which sounds silly. But depending on the study, you read, it can be like 3% or maybe I’ve seen a few that say up to 20% of courses get consumed or content is consumed. And people, when they don’t consume your content, they don’t get the results. And so that’s actually how hello audio started. The original product name was podcast, your course. And so as we look at, okay, what does that look like?
NS (16:38):
What are you talking about, Nora? Like, what’s this podcast thing isn’t like, right? Most people are familiar with public podcasts, right? If you’re listening to this, you already know this is an amazing public podcast. And so if you think about the way public podcasts are structured, most people are like, they assume you have to have a show it’s updated daily or weekly. And, and it’s open to the general public, right? As, as a public podcast, anyone can subscribe private podcasts. On the other hand are a little different. They look and feel like a normal pod pod, right? They still, you can play them in your favorite podcast app, your favorite podcast, player of choice. But as a, as the content owner, as the content creator, you get to choose who gets access to that. So now you could actually put some gated content, whether it’s your opt-in or whether it’s your course or other paid content.
NS (17:27):
Now it’s not kind of change a little bit about what it, what it means to be a podcaster. You can now have a podcast without having a show. You’re just using podcasts as a communication channel. And you’re meeting people where they’re already at. Cuz as we look at the numbers, millions of, of north Americans are listening to audio content in their podcast app each and every week to the point where the hours consumed are actually rivaling the number of hours that were consumed in Netflix every single week. Wow. So I’m thinking, why are we not meeting people where they’re already at? Your audience is already in their podcast apps, listening to content. Why aren’t they listening to you? And so that is how we originally started. Hello, audio. And then the use cases just grew from there.
AJV (18:13):
So, okay. There’s like, I could go like 15 different ways right now. I know, I know things. So one of the things you said is that consumption, right? The data around the consumption was like a real problem that is you guys could solve. So I would just love to hear your feedback rather. That’s just your own personal opinion. Or if it’s more scientific, whatever you’ve got. Why, why do, because I think, I think this is same ha it doesn’t matter if it’s a course or whatever. It’s like, we do the same thing with books. Like how many books they’re sitting on my bookshelf at a bot with great intentions, like, oh one day, right? Same thing with courses. And then there’s other books where I’m like, you know, I must finish this. Right. And so I’m so curious, like what is the data around consumption with courses and online content and why do you think that is?
NS (19:00):
You know, it’s fascinating as I look at it’s it, and it varies the percentage it’s fascinating to look at, is it just the login that we’re requiring people to log in? I look at the work involved and the effort involved, and this is kind of back to anything that we offer for sale. Right? I look at their belief, so that consumer needs to believe that by doing the work or by participating in their own success, they’re going to get a result. So that level of certainty needs to be a certain level. I think, for people to engage like it, whether it’s a book, I believe I’m going to enjoy this. So the level of certainty, I think the higher that is the more likely they are to engage. So a and by the way, they’re, they’re a lot more likely to buy your stuff.
NS (19:42):
NS (20:28):
And yet it’s so convenient for you to play at any time, anywhere when we’re not sitting here at the screen. So if you think about what audio does it unlocks all of the hours of the day that you can reach your ideal person or your customer or your student, whatever that looks like for you when they’re not sitting at a computer and I’ll tell you, especially post pandemic, people don’t really wanna spend that many hours sitting at the screen. And so you’re giving them that option. Let, ’em listen to you while they’re walking the dog, while they’re sitting in the carpool line while they’re taking a walk that’s to me, it, it like ease in convenience, allows for greater consumption. If you make it a lot more difficult. And that also is the medium too, right? If, if you’re doing like a 60 some page ebook or are like, that’s, that’s gonna go to the graveyard of PDFs, we all have one. We all know it’s there. I have multiple bad Dropbox and Google all these.
AJV (21:24):
And I’m like, oh, when am I gonna ever have time to get through 4 45
NS (21:28):
Pages? You’re no you’re. And, and with good intentions, you were interested in the topic. We all raise our hand and we’re like, that sounds cool, but you know what? That’s a lot of work. Yep. And I’m not gonna get to that. And so, and then, so that would be the second thing, easing convenience and, and dove dovetailing into the, the third and final one here I would say is time, right? What do we, time is money. We pay to shortcut our path to success. And so if I look at your content and I think this is gonna take me hours to get through, or, you know, if I can’t fit it in to the time pockets that I have in my day or in my life, that’s just gonna be really a lot more challenging for me to consume. And so if I look at for whatever content you’re putting out there, this is fulfillment content for your courses or your coaching program, or, you know, your book.
NS (22:17):
Or if I’m looking at your marketing content, I’m talking about your webinars, I’m talking about your summit presentations, all the cool stuff you’re doing in, when it comes to creating content, if I can make it easier and more convenient to consume, if I can shortcut the path to success and, and, and allow folks to get that, like reduce the time to, to value as, as another kind of term to reduce the time to value. And if I can increase the perceived likelihood that they’re going to get the result that, that, that we’re promising or that your content is promising, that level of certainty people are going, you’re gonna see engagement go up. Those three things I think are critical in order to see your engagement and consumption rates go up.
AJV (22:59):
Ugh. I love that. There’s so much like I wrote just like the, I wrote four. I, I made one up or I heard one extra one. I love
NS (23:07):
It. It’s okay. Bonus.
AJV (23:09):
But I love this. I think this is so powerful for anyone who is listening, who is a content creator of any, of any type, whether it’s written or video or audio, but four things to increase consumption one, make it enjoyable.
NS (23:23):
Yes. Right? Oh,
AJV (23:24):
Yes. It’s like, I’m not gonna do it if I don’t like it. If it, if it’s hard, right.
NS (23:29):
I don’t want it.
AJV (23:30):
I gotta want it. So make it enjoyable. And I think a huge part of doing that is the combination of the story, right? The emotional parts. It’s like, it’s, I think about some of the, my favorite and this, I always think about this. Some of my favorite books are also my least favorite keynote speeches.
NS (23:50):
Yes.
AJV (23:50):
And true. Right. The content is so good and the stories are so good in the book, but then when you hear the speaker, I’m like,
NS (23:58):
What happened?
AJV (24:01):
You know? And it’s like, yeah. And it’s like, it’s weird because it like dolls the value and all of a sudden this great content I’m like, all I can think about is how horrible about 60 or 90 minutes was. Yeah. So it’s like, make it enjoyable. It’s gotta be somewhat right. Edutaining right. The combination of that,
NS (24:17):
To, to that point. Exactly. Most people think the only way they can add value is to give more information. And that’s not true. You can add value by being entertaining. And by being insightful, like there’s, it’s, you can do more, you can add value more ways than just more information.
AJV (24:33):
Absolutely agree with that. But I think that’s just, that’s a great takeaway. If you’re listening is like more information does not equal more value. No, that’s really important. Right. Write that down people number two. So the first thing was, make it enjoyable. Number two increase the likelihood of results. Yes. So tell people, what are the results you’re gonna get if you complete this, like, that’s really important. Like how many of us buy something going a hope, this has the answer.
NS (25:00):
Yeah. Let’s hopefully it’ll work. I
AJV (25:02):
Need you to, I need to know that it’s in there. Right. So increase the likelihood of results. I love that. Three, make it easy to use. I wanna come back to this one, cuz I have a question for you about this one. Sure. and then the last one is reduce time to value, right? Like I think we do the same thing where it’s like, well, I’m gonna make it eight hours and oh, 165 pages because then it’ll be worth the dollar.
NS (25:30):
No, right. No, it’s just not gonna get consumed. That’s what’s gonna happen.
AJV (25:36):
But it’s like, we do that all the time. It’s like these whole value ladders are built on and you get this and you get this and you get this. And it’s interesting because sometimes I’m going, what am I gonna do with all that?
NS (26:30):
Yes. Amen.
AJV (26:31):
I would, I would pay five times the amount of money versus it’s like, this is a 16 hour course with and I’d be like,
NS (26:38):
No, thank you.
AJV (26:39):
I couldn’t pay enough money to do that.
NS (26:41):
Can I pay to have someone do that for me? Can, is there add an option?
AJV (26:46):
Can you just give me the cliff notes? Can you tell me what you learned in a 15 minute coffee?
NS (26:50):
That would be great. Where’s the summary.
AJV (26:53):
The cliff notes please. But I think those are like really important things of like, we get it wrong. We try to add and add and add and add. And really what that’s doing is it’s like when people get in there and they don’t use it, then they think they’ve wasted all this money. Yes. When really the core thing, if we would’ve just kept the main thing, the main thing we could have added even increased the price tag because it doesn’t, it’s not gonna take you that long to get there.
NS (27:18):
That’s right. Because time they value that time. They value that time. And, and to your point, you should know your primary currency. So I like to talk about like, what’s the big promise of your product or the thing, or even if it’s a free training video, you still have to sell that thing. It is still a free offer. What is the primary currency? It what, okay, doesn’t matter if people are sending you their email address and then you’re giving them back something in return or if they’re giving you cold, hard cash, doesn’t matter. There’s still a currency exchange happening here. And so what I like what, this is a great exercise. If you’re listening to this that I love doing this, put you have a column for increase and a column for decrease. And I want you to think about what is that thing, the training, the product, the course your workshop, your book, what are, what are all the ways it can increase something in their life or in their business and decrease.
NS (28:08):
And I want you to try to be as specific as possible. If you can put a timeline on that, cuz we just know time, time is, is key here. People pay for that shortcut to shortcut to success. So do you help them to X their revenue in six months? Do you help reduce or decrease churn in their companies in the next 90 days, whatever that is for your business. Try to think of it and articulate it in, in a, in a currency exchange. Because that way, if you look at and, and chances are, I’m sure all of the folks listening to this, you’re all amazing. You can do more than one thing for people. There’s probably you’re gonna do this exercise. You’re probably gonna have 20 different things that you can increase or decrease in someone’s life or business. The key is to understand what’s the primary one that they care the most about. What’s the one that they’re going to pay the most for. That’s how you’re gonna be able to monetize your expertise in a, in a very scientific kind of a way.
AJV (29:04):
Oh, that’s so good. And it’s like, that’s really a short list of answers. Really? Yes. I mean it’s like most people are gonna pay to get more time. Yeah. They’re gonna pay to make more money or they’re gonna pay to have more fulfillment.
NS (29:18):
Yes. Less stress,
AJV (29:20):
Less stress,
NS (29:21):
More ease. Right. You can go on and on. But if I love the idea of like, oh, they’re actually giving me something and I’m giving them something in return and the clear I can be about what it is and why it’s so valuable, the easier it is to be able to sell.
AJV (29:37):
That’s so good. Do you feel like that translate into copy as well?
NS (29:42):
It does. Oh my God. That is your, I mean, to me, that’s copywriting gold. I would say that exercise. And then the other exercise I always recommend for copywriting is you have to get into the mind of your consumer and write down all of the potential problems they think they could have. And all of the ways that you’re providing a solution for those problems, it’s like problem, solution, exercise. Even if you think it’s crazy. Like I don’t what, and there’s honestly, if you go through this, there’s gonna be some pretty common ones. I don’t have time. I, I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t believe this is gonna work for me because I’m special or my business is special or I have this special circumstance. Like there’s very common ones that come up. But if you can be able to, you know, those going into your marketing and sales campaigns, then your copy addresses them directly. I think those two exercises, the currency exchange. And then I would say your prospect problem list and your solution list is gonna be the two biggest things you can do to improve your copy.
AJV (30:37):
Ah, so good. And keep it short, right? Yeah. Like that time to your novel emails. No, I had to write a text. This is so funny. I literally one of my newer friends who is helping me break into the sport sports world, her name is Ashley. And she’s like, I’m not really good at email. I’m traveling all the time. So just, can you text me all these things? And I’m like writing this text and I get down. I’m like, oh my gosh, I have just written the longest text ever made on planet earth. And I literally, I sent it and I said, and now I know you’ll never read this. So I’m going to have to send an email that is a third of this link. And it was like, like as I’m writing it, I’m so annoyed with my stuff. I’m like, oh my gosh, why am I still typing?
AJV (31:23):
Why is this so long? Why am just taking so much time? But it’s so true. It’s like, if I have to scroll, I just go, I’ll do it later. Yep. I have to do, it’s gotta stay above the fold. Right. I think those, those are so good. Okay. So I wanna come back to this really quick thing. I literally could probably spend another hour talking to you. This is such a great company. I love this Nora. So ease of use. How do you make it easier for people to use? So I wanna answer that. And then I’m so sensitive of the time. I also then wanna go out, like, I want people to understand like, what is hello, audio, and really dive into this concept of a private podcast. Because at least to me that’s a really newer term. Right. And this gated content, but like how does this help? So, okay. So first ease of use and then let’s talk about private podcast.
NS (32:08):
Yes. Ease of use. So one of, I will say, even from a hello audio perspective is we were building this tool yet. Yes. It’s important in SAS, but I would argue it’s important in anything that people buy, but SAS specifically, why do people not buy software? Because they have a perception that it’s going to be a pain in the butt. They have a perception that it’s going to take them a long time to incorporate it into their business.
AJV (32:31):
A lot of money
NS (32:32):
And yeah, it, it is. Yeah. And depending on where you’re coming from a lot of buddy but it’s, it’s really the, the ability to kind of speed up that time to value, reduce the time to value speed up that success path because you’re making it easy for them to do. And so what other doesn’t matter, that’s why we see for example, authors, when there’s like the PDF version of your audio book or the, the book, and then you have the audio book tend to, if we look at comparisons, a lot of times your conversions on the audio book will be higher because it’s easier to consume. Right? Right. So if we look at your course, is it, are you making it easy to get through meaning are lessons maybe two hours long or are you chunking them up with very specific kind of headlines or very specific targeted engagements if you’re a coach and you do coaching calls, are you putting those replays in a locked membership site where you’re not providing time stamps or, or how can you make it easier for people to get through the content or to take the action?
NS (33:30):
So whenever I’m building an online course, I look at all right, what’s the information they need, what are the actions that they need to take? And what is the support that I can provide her that they’re going to need to take those actions and it, every single step of the way, how can I make it easier for them to consume the information? It it’s again, not creating 16 hours of content. It’s giving them only what they need to take the action. How can I make the action easier to take? Sometimes that’s templates, sometimes it’s swipe files. Sometimes it’s, it’s a certain level of support, right. And giving them that. But it’s all about making it easier. And with hello audio, when we built that, that was actually one of the non-negotiables in building that piece of software is it has to be easy to use if it’s not easy to use, people are not going to use it. And we, that was, that was how we, so now when we look at 70%, I think it’s a little over 70% of our folks said, join, hello, audio, and, and create their first private feed. They do it in less than a day. They launch their first feed in less than a day. And that isn’t a very important metric for our company, because if our product is not easy to use and they can’t get that value quickly, then we’ve done something wrong. That’s kind of what, what we truly believe.
AJV (34:45):
This is so good. So, alright. So I have a personal question for you that. Sure. So while you were talking, I pulled up think GI where we house all of our courses. Right? So as a part of brain builders group, our membership program, you get access to 14 courses. And so I it’s a lot, it’s a lot, right. That’s where I’m going. Right. So I broke it up and that’s why I pulled it in here. And so this has been a, it’s been a hot topic in our company because we have broken everything down into six lessons. Right. And at first everyone was like, that’s just too many. But the reason we did it is to make it bite size. Yep. So here’s what I’m curious to know is like, do you think the way that we’ve broken this up is still too long. So there are six lessons and in each of those lessons, we break them up into a training, a hot seat. And then a workbook. And so the training is 29 minutes and then the coaching hot seat is 15.
NS (35:38):
Okay. But they’re, but they’re distinct. Yeah. Which I love. And I think that, I mean, if I look at a 29 minute training, is that too long? No. Be, and I don’t think it’s never a number. I always look at the content. Are you giving more information that’s necessary knowing you no. Right. Like you’re giving exactly what they need to take the next action and nothing more. Does that mean you don’t care about them? And that you’re like, oh, let me over deliver. No, I like you are over delivering by keeping it as tight as possible. And that’s what I love
AJV (36:10):
Makes me so happy to hear, because if you told me something different, I’m pretty sure my team would’ve been like, we’re done. We
NS (36:16):
Quit. Your team is amazing. Your team is amazing. And here’s what I’ll say
AJV (36:20):
Backwards. Taking more ideas in here. That’s thing helpful to know. Cause it’s like we spent six months basically re orchestrating this from basically what you said is people are like, it’s so long, it’s hard prior to doing this. If you add all these up, you know, it’s like 12 hours of content. And it’s like, we had, ’em when we first started, this is so good for everyone to know. Like, don’t think just because that’s the way you start, that’s the way you have to end up. I know. But you know, when we started putting all of our courses in here, they were in two day, segments is a day, one and day two
NS (36:56):
Are long days. Those are
AJV (36:58):
One was six hours and then day two was like five hours. Right. But that’s how it was. And it wasn’t until like, we probably just had to have it that way. Cuz we have so much curriculum for, it was probably look that way for almost two years before we said, okay, let’s start going through our curriculum and how do we break this up? But that took a process of going, what is the best way to break this up and what is that right amount? And do we include both video and audio or is that too much? And we opted to do both video and audio right. As a, you know, but it’s really interesting of like even going through this, like we just launched our new version of our course membership just April 1st. So we just got it to the way that we wanted four years later. Yeah. And here’s the thing that I think is fascinating. The content itself has not changed.
NS (37:52):
It’s still valid. It still works.
AJV (37:54):
Yeah. And I think that’s a great reminder to anyone who is listening. It’s like just because you’re constantly reinventing and changing doesn’t mean the core content has to change. It’s just the format, the medium, the duration, the delivery mechanisms of it change. This is always a great reminder to me. I’m not sure if you know this, but our first book, so my husband launched his first book, take the stairs which hit number two on the New York times, we were super grateful, super blessed. It was a really awesome time, but we just celebrated 10 years of that book being out. And here’s the funniest thing B the exact same keynote today that he did 10 years ago, when the book launched
NS (38:38):
Still,
AJV (38:39):
When it launched, he was probably charging $7,500. Now his fee is 30. Yep. It’s the same content. The only thing that is different is the way that he delivers the content. That’s it? And I think that’s a great reminder to us is you don’t have to make new content. No. To make it better.
NS (39:00):
Yes. I, and I love that. And the fact that you’re zeroing in on the delivery mechanism, our, you gotta keep in mind markets evolve our habits as consumers evolve. I don’t know anyone who’s listening to this that does not have a, have an ideal customer that is busy. We’re all busy. And so while we, you know, before we would deliver things on like tele seminars, I don’t know about you, but the thought of sitting on a phone or having a phone for like hours on end, like we used to, you know, granted this was over a decade ago, but that was really popular. We have to continue to evolve our delivery mechanisms and our delivery channels to meet people where they’re already at. And that’s why I love. And we actually do integrate directly with think GI we have a lot of folks that host their courses on think GI and they automatically create private podcasts for courses because it’s just the delivery mechanism.
NS (39:54):
Some people will absolutely have time to log in and go through the videos. And I would even argue if you even have a visual course, there’s still benefit for people listening to where you’re taking them. Cuz we all know with learning repetition is key. And so when you sit down to watch that video where you sit down, it sounds like when you have your amazing workbooks and people are working through that, they’ve already heard it. Right. They’ve heard it once and they know where we’re headed or they know where you’re taking them. And that can provide a massive difference in terms of the results that your folks get.
AJV (40:24):
Hmm. I love that. And so you said something that’s really fascinating. It’s like you can create private podcasts yes. As courses in your membership site.
NS (40:33):
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
NS (40:36):
So with, with private podcasts, it kind of is it’s interesting that you can create all sorts of podcasts with different content. So we have a lot of teachers and a lot of online educators that use hello audio and they podcast their course. They have a private podcast version and Amy Porterfield who I know you just recently had on she’s one of a, she’s a hello audio user as well. And so she uses hello audio to deliver her DCA content to her, her audience because she has a lot of folks that are doing this as a side hustle. She has a lot of folks that are busy and here’s the thing. Her videos are amazing. They’re and, and she’s not trying to replace those videos. She’s just making it more convenient and easier to, for her audience to consume that information so that when they do sit down to do the work, they’ve already listened to it.
NS (41:23):
They have another option to get the information they need to get the results that they want. So for, for me, having, it’s easy to be able to just drag and drop all your course content and put it into a private feed that is still protected, right. That’s still very much protected cuz we all know that you put a lot of hard work into creating your premium courses. Right. But it’s also other things as well. We can, we can podcast. So if we look at the coaching calls, this is a great opportunity for coaching calls. You have group coaching calls, how many, and I know we’ve probably both invested heavily in coaching programs during our careers. How many times have we really logged in and watched that hour plus long zoom video really? For me hardly ever. Right. Hardly ever. And even if I start watching it, I have now opened bazillions of other tabs and I’m doing other things background
AJV (42:14):
I’m yeah. It’s just, it’ll just like, you know, absorb into my brain somehow. Yeah.
NS (42:34):
It expires, it expires and, and you get to set that time that it expires, you can set it to expire immediately. Or if you wanna give folks an hour because maybe they’re like me and they’ve got a bazillion devices and you wanna load it on maybe your iPad and your phone, you can do that as well, but we have it set so that you can choose to expire immediately after it’s used.
AJV (42:54):
So I’m curious, have you had any use studies on doing this for like private content? Just for your email list?
NS (43:03):
Yes. Okay.
AJV (43:04):
I’d love to hear
NS (43:05):
That we have folks. So we kind of use, if you think about a private podcast almost as the new inbox, right? So if your newsletters we have tar ZK is one of our users. She’s an amazing copywriter. Her emails are fantastic, right? Obviously she’s a copywriter, so she makes them, she’s a storyteller. They’re fantastic. And yet what she does is she’ll also read them and she has a private podcast called Tarzan, reads her emails, pretty clear what it is. Right. And it gives her subscribers a way to consume that content. Because I mean, I don’t know about your inbox. I probably have a lot of, let’s just say a lot. I don’t wanna get skewed a lot of unread emails in my inbox on a daily basis. So I probably will never need to read. Right. So just to give myself a little bit of an out, but it, it gets more and more crowded.
NS (43:53):
And so this gives her a way to con communicate and reach her existing list. And in a way that is, it allows her to express her personality. Think about reading that newsletter or reading that email and how different the experience is when you read it. And you’re listening to that person, read it with all of their intonation, their brand voice right now, that connection that we have with that person is more intimate. And it’s stronger because of the, the fact that it’s consumed in audio versus doesn’t this there’s nothing wrong with that email that email’s amazing, but it now takes our connection and our relationship to a new level.
AJV (44:30):
Yeah. Well that’s the, the thing with, you know, whether it’s, you know, audio or video, but it’s the audio component it’s like, don’t they say that hearing is like one of like the biggest sources of memory of smell and hearing, but it’s like one of the things too, it’s the thing that’s challenging about the written word is that you miss the tone and you miss those interests. I think, you know, it’s like we, I tried to all the time, it’s like, anytime I’m trying to write heated email, I’m like, delete that. Do not send that
NS (44:59):
That’s gonna not
AJV (44:59):
Be right. Cause it’s like, you always read it in the mood that you’re in, not the mood that it was sent, but totally different connotation and tone and feel when you hear someone in the intent that they desire to send us. Yes. Very much. I love this. This is so fascinating. Okay. So last two things, Nora. So what do you want people to know about hello audio?
NS (45:22):
Oh, well, hello. Audio is a great way for you to reach your consumers where they’re already at. And, and again, we made it easy to use, but even easier to try. So one of the things that we did with hello audience, we removed, I know a lot of SAS companies do this. They ask you to put in net credit card before you try it. We do not. So we have a free seven day trial, no credit card required to allow you to just experience it. So if you do wanna check it out and you’re interested in creating a private podcast for any sorts of content that you might already have, go ahead and go to hello, audio FM. And you can try it out for seven days without any requirements. No, no credit card requirements. It’s just making it super easy. There you go. Ease in convenience, reducing the friction
AJV (46:02):
Practice, what you preach. I’m gonna go from that. Absolutely too. And then last and not least, where can people follow you and learn more about you?
NS (46:11):
Absolutely. You can connect with [email protected] or on Instagram at Nora set.
AJV (46:17):
Oh my gosh, Nora, this was awesome. There is so much richness in this conversation and it’s like, I took an entire page of notes and I’m like trying to pay attention and come up with questions. Like I gotta write this down. This is so good. I love this. This was genuinely one of my favorite interviews that I’ve done. And it’s like, like I told you, it’s like into the audience, you know, it’s like we usually only have friends on it is very rare that we would take a pitch that somebody sent us. But I was so fascinated in this, that you have been the surprising delight in this conversation. Thank you so much for giving us your time today.
NS (46:53):
Oh, thanks for having me. I’m this has been amazing. I’m so glad we connected.
AJV (46:57):
Oh my gosh. I can’t wait to learn more. I can’t wait to stay connected. I’m so fascinated. And you, this has been such an awesome conversation. Thank you so much, everyone listening. Make sure you stay tuned. Come back for the recap episode and we will see you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 319: How to Get Publicity with Selena Soo | Recap Episode
RV (00:02):
How do you get publicity for your business, for your brand, for your book, for your mission, for the, for your nonprofit, for whatever it is that you’re trying to do or advance in the world. That was the subject of this week’s interview with Selena Soo. It was awesome. And I really enjoyed meeting her. I was the I, that was the first time I’d ever met her. I I’d heard about her for years just through friends and stuff. And I’m gonna share with you my some of my takeaways from Selena and also I’m gonna share with you some of my own philosophies here about how publicity works and things that we have learned. We’ve, we’ve done a pretty decent job of getting our share of, of publicity over the years. So it’s something that we definitely know about, and then also helping our clients regularly get national appearances for, for different things.
RV (00:52):
Which is, which is great. But one thing I wanna point out is even if you already listened to that interview with selena the first the first time you listen to it, you probably listen to it like as a student, which is like, sort of how, how I was like, what she was saying and trying to learn from her, but go back and listen to it again of not what she’s teaching and not what she’s saying, but how she’s doing it, of all the guests that, that I’ve ever interviewed on this show. And I won’t speak for all the guests that AJ’s interviewed, but of all the guests that I’ve interviewed on this show, I could tell that Selena was a true pro at being a guest because of the way that she sequenced the conversation. And she one thing led to the next and she had frameworks and all of these things, but by the way, if you’re a brand builder, like if you’re one of our messengers, one of our messenger messengers, one of our clients you’ll, you’ll hear her doing things like frameworks and pillar points and the things that we teach you to do and captivating content.
RV (01:59):
And so just like watch how she does it. She was a tremendous guest all the way down to her lead magnet and everything. So just two different ways to learn from her. One is what she was saying. And two was like how she was doing it all. And I recognize those things, cuz those are all things that I try to do and things that I do actually do that have made a huge difference for converting media appearances into leads for your business, right? Like you know, there’s, I, I, I am, I think of myself almost as a professional guest, I’m trying to be a guest and I have a limited window, a limited time, a limited opportunity to be in front of someone else’s audience to deliver so much value quickly in a way in a sequence that creates context for a, a conversation to continue and then to open the door and offer them a chance to find me and stay in relationship with me and us and our team at brand builders group. And then, you know, you know,
RV (02:58):
Turn that into revenue and impact and relationships and Selena did a, a magnificent job of, of it as well. You could go listen to me as a guest on someone’s show too, and you could also see some of those things. So that’s what we’re gonna talk about a little bit here. I was really, really impressed with her. So how do you get publicity? How do you get publicity? First thing that she brought up, which I really loved because I don’t think we hear about this enough is that if you don’t have a mainstream product, you don’t really need mainstream media. If you don’t have a mainstream product, you don’t really need mainstream media. Like, so what do I mean by that? I mean that many of us think, oh, I wrote a book and now I just, I wanna be on good morning America or the today show or Oprah or, you know, the school of greatness podcast or ed my letter, like we think, oh, this would be the secret.
RV (03:53):
Like this would be the key is I gotta get on mainstream media. But in reality you don’t because first of all, the riches are in the niches. The riches are in the niches. You you’ll you’ll often make more money, get more leads for your business by being in a, in front of a smaller number of people. But it’s the right people, this more like rifle approach versus the shotgun approach of like, I just wanna be in front of massive, you know, numbers of people, because if you don’t have a mainstream product, then that means it doesn’t apply to a lot of people. So if there’s a big mass general audience listening, then you’re going, you know, 99% of the audience may not care about what you have. And so it’s not serving that media outlet well, and it’s not serving you well, and it’s not, it’s not serving their, their listeners or their audience.
RV (04:42):
Well, and so you can sort of let go of that idea that in order to, in order for media to be successful, I have to be on the biggest podcast or I have to be on the biggest TV shows or, you know, I have to, I have to be interviewed by the most famous interviewers. You don’t, you don’t, the riches are in the niches. Like so I, I, I want you to, to think about that. Another thing, and I, I talked about this a little bit. I shared this in the interview with Selena, because this is something that we’ve started teaching our, our brand builders clients, which is think of your online audience as an offline room. Think of your online audience as an offline room. So what does that mean? It means for some reason, when we see, like, if you post a video online and you get 14 video views, like a lot of people would look at that and be like, oh, I can’t believe I got 14 video views.
RV (05:38):
Like, you know, I put all this work in for this 62nd video and only 14 people watch it yet. If you were gonna stand up in front of a real life, offline room of 14 people, you’d probably be excited about that. Right? Like your heart would get racing. Certainly if it were 50 people in a room or a hundred people in a room and it like, they are, it’s the same thing. Those are real humans, real people like it’s 14 or 50 people watching a video, just like it’s 14 or 50 people watching you in a room. So those are real human lives. And just, there’s something weird about when we think about it in the context of online. And it’s probably because we’re comparing it to everyone. Like, you know, we’re comparing it to people who have millions of views, like, or their video goes viral and we’re like, oh, why don’t my views?
RV (06:23):
My videos go viral, right? Like I’m only reaching 50 people, sweetheart. You only gotta reach 50 people. Like most of us don’t need thousands of customers to change our life. Most of us, our business would be radically transformed if we had like a dozen or two dozen of our perfect customers this year. Like you don’t need millions of followers to make millions of dollars as AJ says. So think of your online audience as an offline room. And that’ll give you a little more confidence and context of like, yeah, what you’re doing is making a difference. And it will also help you with your media strategy. Why? Because chasing mainstream media, it’s it’s, I don’t wanna tell you not to do it because it’s certainly not impossible. It, it is possible. And, and they, you know, the media needs you more than you need them. So that is true.
RV (07:11):
It’s just, you can expend a lot of energy chasing it and the odds aren’t in your versus you can go after things that you would think of as smaller or like not less important or less significant and actually get in front of a hundred people. And it’s like, that’s a hundred people. That’s a huge audience. You don’t need to be on a podcast that has millions of people. If, if you’re on a podcast that has a hundred downloads, a hundred, not a hundred million, a hundred, if those are the right a hundred people, that’s the same as speaking in front of a room of a hundred of your perfect prospects. So it’s like I would be more specific and target. And we talked about, listen, notes is a great, a great tool for that and spark Toro, where a couple great tools that you could look up that will help you research, you know, different podcasts and things on specific and different influencers on specific topics.
RV (08:03):
So you don’t need to have mainstream media if, if you don’t have a mainstream product. Also to this point, I, I was talking about how clicks are better than views clicks are better than views. So if we’re getting a media appearance, you know, like a, a five minute video clip on good morning, America is not gonna change your life. Like we, you think it will, but it’s not like it’s just not gonna drive that much website traffic. You’re not gonna get it that many opt-ins, you’re not gonna get that many. If any sales like take it from me, but on national TV a few times and had a lot of friends have done it now with a book launch, you get a national TV appearance. You might move a few hundred units with that, like, which is something, but it’s not gonna automatically make you an overnight bestseller just cuz you got on the today show one time, like it’s, it’s different,
Speaker 3 (08:54):
But what can help is when you get a write up and an online and somebody’s blog, like somebody who’s a huge blogger or you know, entrepreneur or ink or Forbes or fortune, if they have a link there to your site, that’s gonna move some people. So clicks are better than views. Although I, I think, you know, full length views, if it’s like an hour long video or an hour long, you know, listens like a podcast, those are super powerful cuz you, they, you have ’em for an hour. Other than that, the real value of national media is really how you repurpose it. It’s it’s, it’s making sure you put the logos on your website. You put the the video, you know, like the clips of you on TV, in your demo videos, in your sales videos and in your press kit, the clips of that, of course, all things we teach you specifically how to do and give you templates for if you’re one of our members which by the way, if you’re not a brand builder member, you should be.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
I mean, I, I mean our stuff is legit. I don’t, as humbly as I can say, we’re changing lives and we have a system that works like, and it’s not only working for us. It’s working for the biggest personal brands in the world. It’s working for people, just brand new intermediate people. Like we got people doing viral, Ted talks, book launches doing seven figures, eight figures in their business, growing their email list, growing their social followers, hundreds of thousands, people going viral with their Ted talks, like our stuff is working cuz it’s system, you know that we spend a lot of time. And, and if you ever wanna talk to someone on our team, you go to free brand call.com/podcast, free brand call.com/podcast and request a free call with our team it’s free. And then we’ve got different levels, right? We’ve got like stuff for beginners and you know, people in between and then, you know, private, like high end one-on-one coaching for like big time businesses and personal brands.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
So anyways, free brand call.com/podcast. Check that out every once in a while, if you haven’t yet. Alright. Second takeaway from Selena. If you wanna get on TV, there’s three things you need to do. Okay. So this is like divided into three subparts. So let’s, if you wanna get on TV and we have the actual TV conversation first of all, start local start with local TV, your local news channel. Why? Because there’s less competition. Two is because they need to feature local news, which is local people. So if you live there, you are a local. So it automatically skews it in your favor. There’s less people asking. They have the same amount of demands for putting out content every single, you know, day 24 hours a day. And and the other thing is because you get to practice, you get to practice, it’s a sandbox, right?
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Like you get to play there in the minor leagues a little bit. Before you go to the big leagues, big leagues, you don’t want your, I, I promise you, you might think you do, but I promise you, you don’t, you don’t want your first TV appearance to be the today show. You don’t want your first podcast appearance to be Louis Houser. Ed Mylet you might think you do, but I’m telling you, you don’t, you want to have practiced and you wanna be confident and tight and sharp and pithy and pointy and punchy and clear. And so that when you’re on there and you’re, you’re delivering your pillar points, it’s like bang, bang, bang. And you know, if again, I’m sound probably like an arrogant jerk here, but if you haven’t yet go listen to ed. My let’s show the ed, my let show podcast and listen to the interview of me on his show.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
What you will hear. There sounds like a spontaneous conversation. And, and in many ways it was and it was very honest and heartfelt and that’s part of the magic. But the baseline of it was that it was the greatest hits of what we teach at brand builders group delivered all in an hour. And so we have, I mean, we have dozens of comments there, there were thousands and thousands of comments, but dozens of comments saying, this is the greatest podcast episode I’ve ever heard on any podcast. Why? Because it’s four years of our life buttoned up and, and, and, and polished and put into this one, you know, 45 minute conversation plus Ed’s magic. And he’s amazing, right? And his audience and all that stuff. Like they love him. They trust him and, and we have great rapport and all that, you know, there’s a lot of things that come together, but we have hundreds of leads that came from that interview because it’s the right combination of all of these, all of these things, not the least of which is that, you know, ed is, is very trusted and he’s got a huge audience, but it’s, it’s a, it’s a great audience, right?
Speaker 3 (13:26):
And it’s like, I would rather have that appearance than the today show because it’s a, it’s, A’s an audience of entrepreneurs, which is our target audience, right. Experts and entrepreneurs. So start local learn to speak in sound bites, catch phrases. For those of you that are listening, that are brand builders internally and captivating content, we call these what pillar points and we teach you the six pillar point formulas. These are six different forms of sentence structure that make it sound smart. And what the way you say it is as important as what you say, the cadence of how we hear things makes it sound smart and even sink and sound smarter than the integrity of the idea itself. And you need to understand how to, to write, speak in soundbites. So like some of my more popular soundbites, success is never owned. Its rented in the rent is due every day.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
When you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. You’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were, you make a life from the problem or you make a, you, you make a, a living from the problem you solve, but you make a life from the passion that you chase. All of these kinds of one liners that automation is to your time. What compounding interest is to your money. These are all one liners that I’ve spent years crafting, right? And then you hear ’em on a, on a TV show and you go, whoa, and it’s, it’s tight. It’s, it’s not three minutes to explain a concept. It’s
RV (14:50):
Like, like the most concentrated core essence of a, of an idea packaged beautifully delivered eloquently in a way that hits the ear and people just go ding. And that’s what you need. You know, when I’m saying we’re going bang, bang it’s it’s soundbite, soundbite, sound bite sound, bite, pillar, point pillar, point pillar, point catchphrase, catchphrase, they’re all, all the same thing, more or less. And then the other thing that she said, which I always forget about, I always forget about this was probably my greatest personal reminder from Selena was think about how to make it visual TVs are visual medium. So if you’re trying to get on TV, think about how to make it visual, right? Don’t just go. Here’s why I’m awesome. And why you should have me think from their perspective, they’re trying to go, how can we put together compelling visual content that holds people’s attention?
RV (15:48):
So just the fact that you’re smart isn’t necessarily make you a great guest for TV. Even if you’re eloquent, cuz it’s like, they need visual elements. So how can I make this more visual? And that was great. And, and again, just to shout out to Selena, like her framework that, that she taught and ran, ran through, which I just loved and you know, it was super simple. The publicity pyramid, you know, she’s a pro she’s a pro like was really, really good. And then the third thing, this is the last one. This is quick one, have one call to action and make sure it’s a lead magnet.
RV (16:24):
Don’t, don’t send people to a thousand places when they’re at the end of the interview and they say, so Rory, you know, this has been great. Where should people go to find out more about you? Be like, well, you can get my book on Amazon. You can follow me on Instagram at this handle. I got a podcast over here. I did a webinar one time on this, you know, I’ll probably go live next week on Facebook over here. No, if you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. Send them to one place, one URL, one call to action, say one thing over and over and over. And again, go listen to me on the ed mallet show. Part of why we got hundreds of leads is not because I’m saying, check out my book over here and I do this and that. And you want info about me on a keynote speaker, duh da no.
RV (17:10):
Yeah. You wanna learn about me? Go to one place free brand call.com and then I give, you know, his affiliate, right? And so everyone there’s and it’s like, well, where else should they go? I would just start there, go to free brand call.com. You know, and his is ed Mylet. You know, the one we use for this podcast free brand call.com/podcast, right? That’s what I’m talking about here. So one call to action, be very specific, clear one URL and send them to a property you control, right? Don’t send them to Amazon. Don’t send to Instagram, right? Like you finally got a captive audience. You finally have an opportunity to build your list and, and, and to start a relationship. And then you send ’em to a website. You have no control over where there’s a million other things going on, send them to a URL, dear goodness, like, and, and learn to create a lead magnet, a lead capture.
RV (18:01):
What, what is that? Right. Okay. All stuff we teach you inside a brand builders group, formal formal training, but a lead capture is a form. A lead magnet is something of value to them, right? And you go, here’s a free training or here’s a free download. Again. Selena did a brilliant job on our show. She had this amazing 12 month media calendar. And I was like, she’s such a pro. She gives one lead magnet, her little calendar, which I, I went and she got me. She got me
RV (18:46):
Download open up PowerPoint, design a seven step checklist to blanky blank, save it and export it as a PDF, and then tell people how to go get it, where to email you and, and how to get it. Or, you know, as you get more sophisticated, you build it as web forms and all that stuff. But that’s the lead magnet is the thing you give them. The lead capture is the place you send them to actually get their information where you capture their info. So when you get these media appearances, oh my goodness, or a speaking opportunity, or you’re on TV or a podcast, like, please don’t send someone to go, go follow me on Instagram so that you can see 1% of my posts. Maybe if you even manage to find my profile and you don’t get distracted by cute puppy dogs or, you know, pictures of Teddy bears rolling around, like, and then if I’m lucky, you’ll see one out of every hundred posts I make no send them to a lead capture with a lead magnet where you can have them in your database and you can own their relationship.
RV (19:45):
I’m not saying don’t use social media. We use social media, but like, this is your opportunity. You just delivered value bombs on a media interview that you spent years practicing and sharpening and getting your pillar points down, make sure you harvest it properly, send them to a place. And don’t just send them to your website. If your website doesn’t have a lead capture on it, which it should be like, you know, lesson number one, lead capture, lead magnet on your website. Yeah. Make sure you have those things straight. So all, all things we’re gonna step you through. If you’re one of our brand builders and do time in, in the right order, but some great takeaways from Selena brilliant job she had, she had all the things we’re talking about, right? It’s not a mainstream media. Our, our podcast is not mainstream media, it’s niche, but it’s right in her niche. She knows that we trust people, our people, you know, we, we, we try to cultivate trust with y’all. We try to give you value. She’s speaking in soundbites. She has frameworks, her little publicity pyramid, one lead magnet, her little 12 media things. She gives you one URL, one place to go download it, pop,
Speaker 4 (20:47):
Pop, pop, pop, pop. That’s a publicity pro. So you know, anyways, we’re gonna get some affiliate links to, to promote some more of Salinas stuff. Hope you check it out. Thank you as always for tuning in. I love you. And thanks for listening to me rant here. I’m just trying to add value. I want to encourage you make sure you go you know, send Salina some love on, on social, like go follow her, leave her a comment. Tell her that you heard her on the influential personal brand podcast. Keep coming back, share this episode. Who do you know in your life that needs publicity? Who do you know, that’s an entrepreneur who do you know, that’s in a book launch? Who, who do you know in your life? Who’s like in this moment going, I’m trying to reach more people send ’em this episode, it’s free. All of our episodes are free. It’s unbelievable. The podcast. I hope you feel that way. I know from your reviews on iTunes, many of you do and you leave us great reviews, which help tremendously. So thank you for that. Thanks for your attention, your reviews, your sharing, your, your loving on our guests. And just for being here, we wanna see you succeed. We wanna see you exploit your uniqueness in the service of others. Have a great one. We’ll catch you next time. Bye-Bye.
Ep 318: How to Get Publicity with Selena Soo
RV (00:02):
If you’ve hung around here for any length of time, you know, that the way that we define personal branding is simply the digitization of reputation. And one of the ways that I vet podcast guests, that we’re gonna bring on to introduce you to is through their reputation. It’s what do I hear about somebody from other people? And that is why you are about to meet Selena Soo. Selena is friends with lots of people that we know, Julie Solomon and Susie Moore, and just like I’ve heard her name for years, Celine Da Costa, who we’ve had on this show, who I really love and adore. And I think she’s brilliant. She actually was the one who finally connected us directly to Selena and Selena is an expert in publicity, you know, visibility and just helping people get seen and, and have more reach.
RV (00:57):
So she, for I think 18 years lived in New York, she had a publicity agency. She’s helped people get featured in Oprah and Forbes and Inc. And she works with lots of you know, experts and entrepreneurs, very similar obviously to our core audience. But specifically in the area of publicity. And so publicity is one of the things that we sort of lightly touch on, but we usually farm out that work to vendor partners. And so she’s a total, a total pro and I was like, we gotta get her on the show so that we can, we can get a chance to meet her. So Selena, welcome to the influential personal brand podcast.
SS (01:34):
Thank you, Rory. I’m so thrilled to be here.
RV (01:37):
So yeah. So let’s talk about publicity and let’s start with the easy ones. How do you get on good morning America?
SS (01:46):
RV (02:33):
Oh, we love frameworks. We love frameworks. Yes.
SS (02:36):
OK, great. So, you know, imagine a pyramid, a triangle at the bottom of the pyramid that is your home base, that is your online presence, right? That’s your personal brand. Cause the first thing that people are gonna do when they hear about you, whether it’s Oprah’s producers or someone else is Google you, and if they Google you and nothing shows up, then they’re not gonna
SS (02:54):
Like exactly. Right. So even just having like a solid website, a social media presence with content like that is step one, right? To really like be present online. And then step two is guest posting. Cause that’s a natural extension from writing content on social media or your blog or your newsletter. So now you’re sharing that same content, but on third party website so that other people can see you. And the great thing about guest posting is oftentimes you can include a link back to your website, right? So that’s good for SEO. It can be good for list building. You know, if you can link up to a lead magnet and there are some amazing places like Forbes, mind, body green that are built on this model of guest posting thrive global, right? All these different places. So that would be the second layer of the publicity pyramid. And then the
RV (03:42):
Third before you, so before you go onto the third one, which as I do wanna hear this, but I will say like, you know, we’ve been on Fox, we’ve been on good morning, America, we’ve been on Fox and friends. We’ve been on, you know, several local. I will say I would rather have a online article with a link to my site than I would be on good morning, America. Like the power of an article that people can read. I mean, being on good morning, America and stuff helps a bunch with credibility, but it’s mostly, it’s kind of like you drive for show and you put for dough and golf. Like most of the national TV is like the publicity perception. Yeah. But when it comes to driving traffic and sales and leads, man, I love a link. I wanna a link
SS (04:31):
Yeah. I’m still on the same page. And that’s, you know, how I started, like following this publicity pyramid framework where, you know, I had my website and you know, my social media, but then I was writing articles and writing guest posts, including writing guest posts for influencers who yeah. You know, mail the guest posts, like to their email list. And that’s how I got, you know, my first gosh, like maybe 2000 subscribers through that strategy. Wow. Yeah. So guest posts,
RV (04:57):
Your first 2000 email, like in your database came from just putting articles on other people’s sites.
SS (05:05):
Exactly. Yeah. So that was my, you know, starting point for really like getting my name out there to the public. And then from there, the next level is podcast interviews and video interviews or guest teaching would also fall into this category. You know, when you’re getting started as an expert, you wanna start with, you know, sharing your ideas through it in content, and eventually then you’re gonna have these back and forth conversations with people. Now, this is really where I hang out on the publicity pyramid because, you know, even though podcasts or doing guest teaching, it can be more niche, but these are people that are raising their hands saying, yes, I wanna be in the room. Or I wanna be listening to this conversation and learning 30 minutes or an hour. Those are the same kinds of people that buy online courses and coaching programs. So that’s really, you know, where I primarily hang out and maybe, you know, a certain podcast might not have the brand name recognition of as Forbes, but again, not all publicity is created equal and it’s not just about the branding. It’s about are my ideal clients who are right for my offers hanging out there.
RV (06:05):
Totally. Yeah. I mean that, I think this is a great example. Like you’re, you, you likely would get more clients from this podcast than probably from a national TV thing because it’s like, you know, there’s a random smattering of people listening, but you know, I, well, something you just said, I’ve never really thought about, which I love is when someone listens to a podcast mm-hmm,
SS (06:47):
Yeah.
RV (06:48):
All right. So is there a step four?
SS (06:50):
Yeah, there’s four. There’s the next level? There’s four and five. Okay. So now we’re moving up, the publicity here, we’re getting more mainstream, so that’s gonna be magazines and, you know, magazines are powerful because people read magazines on the plane at the beach or the dentists office. Like you’re literally getting in front of millions of people. That being said with magazines, typically when you’re being mentioned in a magazine or featured, it’s usually, you know, your expertise, a quote versus like a fully written piece by you. Yeah. So you’re reaching millions, but it’s you know, less in depth. Right. And then with TV, which is at the top of the publicity pyramid, because it tends to be harder to get on TV than to get a podcast interview. That being said, as we move up, we’re reaching more people. But it can be less in depth. Like for example, a lot of TV interviews are just three or four minutes long. Yeah. So it’s kinda really
RV (07:41):
Powerful, even if you’re Tony Robbins like Tony, even if you’re Tony Robbins, you get you Dave Ramsey, you get four minutes and you’re out.
SS (07:48):
Exactly. Yeah. So, I mean, it’s a huge credibility builder to say you’re on good morning, America or CNN. And all of that. And it can be, you know, powerful if you’re spreading your message to the masses with like a mass product, whether it’s a book, an iPhone app or some kind of physical product. So it really depends on, you know, is your message one really for the mainstream mainstream masses, or are you going for a more niche audience? And then also like considering where do you really shine? You know, for some people they really wanna stick to the written word and that’s really where their magic comes out for other people like videos where it’s at. So but I would say in terms of like the law of least effort, the most natural path, it would be building out some basic online presence then going into guest posting then podcasting. And then if you want to moving your way up to magazines and TV.
RV (08:38):
Yeah. It’s interesting. You know, just that whole, this whole conversation that you just went through, which I love the publicity pyramid is what you call it Uhhuh. So, so great. Such a simple framework is so powerful is, you know, people go, oh, magazines and TV is so sexy, but like you’re gonna get way more business from podcasts and guest posting mm-hmm
RV (09:34):
They’re super credible, you know? Or they’re like, you know, some world renowned person in, in, in their field. Yeah. You know, or they’re like famous for, for whatever. And in TV a lot of times it’s like, oh yeah, of course they’re gonna have Brad pit or whoever on there for something. But when it comes to featuring books, I’m often surprised that if you’re a mainstream person, it’s not an automatic laydown they might not have Gary Vayner Chuck on just because it’s Gary Vayner, Chuck, sometimes they do. But a lot of times they have newer authors on or people that I, that you haven’t heard of. In other words, it’s, it feels more random in terms of the, in terms of the selection. It’s not like, oh, this person checks every single box. And so they get invited on this huge show. It’s a little bit of that, but I, you know, a lot of times they they’ll, they’ll grab people that are like newer. I mean, I got on Fox and friends as a first time author. Like the week after my first book came out was my first national TV appearance. And I was like, well, that’s random. Like what are they doing with, what are they doing with me? So like, how do, is there anything you can speak to until like, how do you get those spots? Do, is there anything they are looking for or not looking for? Like for TV specifically?
SS (10:48):
Yeah. I mean, I would say, you know, you wanna differentiate between local news and national news because for local TV they have a responsibility to share the stories and ideas of local experts. So, you know, if you’re an author, you know, think about, well, what cities am I connected to? Where was I born? Where did I go to college? Where have I worked? Where am I living
RV (11:09):
Now? Oh, that’s good.
SS (11:10):
Right. So I would identify all those places and really start with those markets. Because if you can mention your local connection, then you’re kind of at the top of the priority list. So that’s, you know, that’s important. And I would say that before you go on national TV, I mean, that’s incredible that, you know, you were on these national shows, but I also think a big part of it is that you done an amazing job of building your personal brand, that they, they probably had confidence that, you know, you were good on video, but I will say for national TV, they’re gonna wanna see that someone has ideally been on local TV first. Because you know, just cuz someone’s good at the podcast interview doesn’t mean that they’re gonna be good at TV. They’re gonna consider like, you know, do they have a great setup with lighting?
SS (11:52):
Can they, they speak in soundbites because some people, yeah, they can talk on a 30 minute or one hour podcast interview, but can you speak succinctly in a four minute interview? So there’s a lot more at stake and it’s not like with podcast interviews where they’re gonna be editing it later, like you kind of gotta get it right at the first shop. So I will say for like the big leagues, like the big national outlets they’re definitely doing the research in terms of what that person’s personal brand is. Have they done TV before? Are they confident? Do they, you know, smile? Are they presentable? So I would say the first stop is really, you know, to start with local news. And then once you have those TV clips, then when you’re sending in your pitch, you wanna share that so they can see, you know, you have that experience.
RV (12:34):
That’s so good. And, and that, that is, that is so true. Selena that like, you know, I love podcasts. I feel so super at home on podcast. TV goes so fast, it’s it? It four minutes blows by and it’s like, you don’t have time for a setup. There’s no time for backstory. It’s like, you just gotta deliver sound bites. They gotta be tight and sharp. It’s, it’s a different, it’s a different, it’s a different skillset. And, and being on local TV is, is, is, is huge. I love that tip about too, you know, what’s your connection to local. And I would, I would, I would tell somebody, listening, you know, you think you wanna be on good morning America right now, but you actually don’t, you, you don’t want to be on there until you’re ready for it, which is until you’ve had some, you’ve had some reps at local TV, you have the sound bites and like your website is ready for it. And you’re like prepared to like receive that traffic and capture. But yeah, TV is a TV is a is a, is a different beast.
SS (13:38):
And the other thing that I will say is with TV, like they’re really looking to capture people’s interests, you know, with visuals, right. Cause you’re watching TV. So, you know, if you have good role of you, you know, I don’t know, working with clients or if you have like live exercise that the TV audience can do, like those are gonna be things that are interesting if you’re just a talking head like, and it’s just, you know, all they’re seeing is someone talking for four minutes straight. It’s not as interesting. So just know that when the producers are thinking about, well, I have a person on their show, they’re gonna think about not just what are the words are gonna kind of the person’s mouth, but is there something that the person that can share that can capture visual interest or is there activity that would be engaging to the audience?
RV (14:21):
Gosh, that’s so simple, but that’s, that makes so, so much sense. So when you make a pitch, would you include notes about like B roll that you would show or like a, if there’s a visual or something?
SS (14:33):
Yeah. So if you were say a love coach and you were pitching you know, you could talk about, you know, that you have clients that could come onto the show or you have like B role of you working with clients and so forth, or maybe there’s like an activity for someone to do to attract, you know, their soulmate. And maybe you would write out like what the activity activity would look like. Like maybe they need to have a journal that they did. They, they journal in 30 days and you would like mention all these different props so that the segment would look very dynamic where there’d be the talking head, but there would also be props and activities involved.
RV (15:06):
Yeah. That, and that’s why you see probably all the time you see like chefs on there, cuz it’s very visual. Cause they can cut and show the food and like show, show all the stuff. So it’s almost like you, when you’re pitching for TV, what I hear you saying is it’s like, you’re not even just pitching like the content of what you’re gonna say. Yeah. But almost like you’re pitching, think of it as pitching a segment to them of like how this could fold out visually and that makes it an easier. Yes.
SS (15:34):
Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, TV producers are so busy and, you know, think about like with a podcast, there’ll be a certain number of episodes that are released, you know, per month, but TV, I mean it’s kind of 24 7, right. It’s every day. So they constantly need new content. They need to keep it interesting. So if you, as an expert can pitch yourself or as a publicist pitch, you and you’re kind of like mapping out what this segment could look like. You’re presenting something on a silver platter and making it easier for them to say yes. So when there’s so many options, of course we’re gonna say yes to the person who makes our job easy for us.
RV (16:08):
Mm-Hmm
SS (16:56):
That’s such a great question. So I think it’s important to get clear on with your expert topics. Are they niche or are they mainstream? So when I’m speaking of expert topics, it’s like the things that you wanna be known for. And I know a lot of entrepreneurs can be multi passionate at the end of the day. You wanna hone in on a few key things. So for example, at one point I had a business mastermind and people in the mastermind would ask me questions about scaling their business and you know, if they should hire a senior project manager, well, if I started getting bored of my regular expert topic and just wanted a podcast talking about how to grow your team, well then people are gonna circle back and be like, oh, I wanna work with you to grow my team. But like my mastermind is something that maybe is only four 20 people.
SS (17:39):
Whereas with my programs, let’s say I have 500 people you know, in a particular group program. Right. So my primary group program has been a program called impacting millions and that’s about publicity. So if my intention was, I wanna get people enrolled to my publicity program, then what I’m talking about in the media should match my offerings. Right? So looking at your own business, what’s the 80 20, what does the majority of revenue come from? Which offering will, you know, based on that offering, that should be what your expert topic is. And so when you look at your expert topic, is it mainstream or niche? So for publicity, I would consider that to be a niche topic. For me, a mainstream topic is something that applies to most people. For example, if I was to talk about being an introvert, well, you know, half of the population are introverts like approximately.
SS (18:27):
So that would be mainstream. Or if I were talking about networking or relationship building that applies to everyone, whether you’re a student at college or you have, you know, professional job or you’re an entrepreneur, whereas publicity typically, you know, it applies to entrepreneurs who are building their personal brands. So that’s a bit more niche. So knowing that with my offerings, I’m looking for a niche audience, not just kind of anybody I’m gonna target more niche media. So it might not have the same reach, but it’s gonna help me get in front of the right people. So those are the things I consider. But then there’s also, you know, there is a role for just personal brand building in terms of media. You know, there are certain brand names that are very recognizable, like Forbes and business insider. And so, you know, being featured in those outlets can also be really powerful whether or not your ideal client has actually read the article that you’re featured in.
SS (19:23):
But if they just see those media logos on, you know, your site, they see you as a credible expert. And the other thing that you can do with your email list is when you get your media features, you know, put them in front of them, you can add them to your email nurture sequence. You know, you can add those, you know, media logos and trust symbols next to you know, places where people opt in or, you know, make purchasing decisions. So I think that when it comes to publicity, it’s sort of multifaceted. I would say primarily you wanna get in front of people who are your ideal clients, but there is also something to be said about prestige media as well.
RV (19:58):
Yeah, that, I mean, I, I love that. And I agree with that so much. The I have found that most of the major national stuff, the real, the primarily the only real value of the media appearance is how you repurpose the appearance, basically putting it on your website. Also those of you that are speakers, you know, in your demo videos, or even if you’re a coach and you’re not a speaker, you could still have like a little, you know, little bio video. And I’m just pulling up, I’m pulling up a data point on this just for everybody. So one of the things that we did Selena was we led this trends in personal branding, national research study. And we we partnered with this PhD led research firm. And we asked, you know, all these different questions, but one of the questions was how important are each of the following when it comes to paying someone more for a product or service.
RV (20:58):
So I just wanna put a data point here behind something that Sina is saying. So, and we asked you have a, a Ted talk, a New York times bestselling book, a wall street journal, bestselling book a social media file. I’ll go ahead and show this on the screen for those of you that are watch watching this on YouTube. So I had to, I had to pull it up quick. So page 60 of our, of our report which is free, y’all know that you can, you can download this at on brand builders, group.com. But the number one thing that clients say they’re willing to pay more money for is when they see testimonials from their, from their customers. The second is that they’re paid to consult or speak, but the fourth. So this is a list of like 20 things, the fourth, and this is waited to the us census.
RV (21:49):
52% of Americans say they are more likely to pay more money to, to buy a product or service from someone who has been featured in the media as an expert. So that is an actual data point that is supporting what Selena is saying. And of course, we’ve, we’ve talked about this study in other times. And usually the point we make is actually the average pub person in the public doesn’t care that much about a New York times bestselling book or a wall street journal or a viral, you know, Ted talk, they care about testimonials and they care about, are you being paid to speak or, or consult. And then the fourth is that they care are that you’re appearing in the media. 52% of Americans say, they’ll pay you more money just because you have those logos on your site. So like Selena, that is amazing. Like, what do you call it? Prestige? Is that what you called it? Prestige. Pre
SS (22:45):
Prestige. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-Hmm
RV (22:48):
I love that. So prestige PR, so that’s really, really cool. And so the mainstream stuff too, is like, you know, so it’s like money, sex, careers relationships, like, you know, self
SS (23:03):
Productivity, success,
RV (23:04):
Productivity. Yeah. Those mm-hmm
SS (24:08):
I think it’s the same thing. Like having media, it builds your credibility as a go to expert, as you said, people are willing to pay you more, but also people are more interested inviting you to come in to be a speaker at their event. You know, there’s just more trust or more likely to take the meeting. Right? One of the first things that anyone does, you know, before they respond to someone or say yes to a request is they do a quick Google search on them. And when they land on their website, if they see media logos, it’s like, okay, this person is the real deal. And it just also shows that like, you’re taking your work seriously. If someone is just like quietly, you know, doing their work, but they’re not out there sharing their ideas. They’re not building that body of work. They’re not really seen as the real deal. So I would say that media is the ultimate credibility marker. It’s something that every person understands. Whereas if you’re like, oh, I had a webinar with, you know, a thousand people on people don’t really know what that means, but they understand what it means to be featured in a top, you know, magazine, newspaper, podcast, and so forth.
RV (25:07):
Yeah. Yeah. It is. It’s definitely this like universal credibility indicator. I, I I know we’re wrapping up one thing I wanna do how do you find these people? Okay. So, so let’s say, I mean, of course you could hire a publicist and then when you hire a publicist, you’re sort of treading off of that. They already have contact information and relationships with people, and that’s really what you’re paying for. You know, when you, I, I feel like when you hire a publicist, you’re paying for someone who has the contact information readily available and who has relationships to make that for you? They don’t, none of them guarantee results. Yeah. And and they get varying results partly based on their relationship, but largely based on your position in the marketplace. But if you’re gonna do it yourself and, and we’ve, we’ve actually had a lot of people be very successful doing it themselves. I, it how, how do you find the outlets? Like how do you find the people? I mean, do you basically just go to Google or like there anything specific you’re typing in to like find the right person to pitch to?
SS (26:13):
Yeah. I think the first step is figuring out what are the right media outlets for me. So I can share like a couple of very quick strategies that I think will help people a lot. So one of my favorite techniques is called the follow, the leader technique. That’s something that I created. Yeah. So getting clear on, okay, what’s my expert topic. So let’s say someone’s expert topic was, you know, public speaking then they wanna think about who are some other leaders either in their industry or connected to them, right. So they might be looking at well, who else is teaching on visibility? Maybe it’s a publicity expert. Maybe it’s a public speaking coach. Maybe it’s someone that specializes in getting people Ted talks, right. And then doing a Google search on them and seeing what kind of media they’ve been featured in, you know, maybe going to their website and seeing if their media page or even going to specialize search engine.
SS (27:05):
So there’s a search engine called listen, notes.com.com it’s for podcasts. And so if you type in someone’s name into that search engine, within moments, all the podcasts that they’ve been featured on are gonna come up. So if you do that exercise with five people in your industry in no time, you’re gonna have a media list of dozens of targeted outlets that top leaders in your industry have been featured in. And so these are places that you’ll wanna be considering for your own media list. So, you know, using the fall a leader technique is super, super powerful. Also even doing things like leveraging existing research, if you wanna be on top business podcast, literally type into Google, a top business podcast, and people have compiled the top 20, the top 50, the top, you know, a hundred business podcasts. And you can leverage that existing research to start building your own personal media list.
RV (27:55):
Yeah, that’s funny. Yeah. That’s how I, that’s how I met Celine. Actually, she was doing a four podcast on the top personal brand. No, I think it was top podcast for business and, and somebody. Yeah. John Lee Dumas introduced her to us. So that was actually, she put an article together, which was an amazing article. Yeah. And yeah, you mentioned listen notes, which is a great one because that is I was gonna, I was gonna mention, I was gonna mention that there’s another really great tool and I’m trying to remember what it is that will tell you that’s kind of similar listen notes is the best for podcasts for sure. There’s another one that you can like search by topic and it will tell you all of the people who are spark Toro, have you heard of spark Toro?
SS (28:49):
No, I feel like I need to write this down.
RV (28:51):
SS (29:54):
Absolutely. So the thing I’m most excited to share is my 12 month publicity calendar, because when it comes to getting to the media, there’s a few things that you need to understand. First of all, like what kinds of story ideas are they looking for? And one of the things that they’re looking for are timely story ideas. So every single month there are certain themes. And if you can hit on these themes, you’re more likely to get accepted onto podcasts, onto TV, in magazines and so forth. So I have a 12 month media calendar it’s full of 40 pages worth of store ideas, special hooks and dates to help you get into the media. And you love it. Yeah. Impacting millions.com/calendar. And people have used this to not just map out their publicity plans for the year, but they’ve also used it to map out their social media content, their newsletter content. So people can go ahead and get an impacting millions.com/calendar. This took me like a ridiculous number of hours to put together. And it’s 40 pages worth of time saving tips and resources and dates to help you get into the media. So you can go ahead and check it [email protected] slash calendar
RV (30:59):
Genius. I we don’t even have an affiliate link for this, but I went and did it myself. Great lead magnet, so useful and so practical because yeah, it gives you a way, like, all you need to know is what are the topics they’re interested in every month and then just like position what you do to that. Fantastic. So I’m downloading that we’ll put a link to impacting millions.com in the show notes slash slash calendar, impacting millions.com/calendar. You guys can check it out make sure you follow Selena online and send her some love. If you picked up some tips, let her know that you found her from our crew here. And gosh, Selena, this is just so cool. And I’m so great. I’m so glad to finally meet you in person. You, you are an example of your reputation procedures, you, and that’s what we want all of our clients to be. It’s what we try to aspire to be. And you got great tips, a great lead magnet, just, you know, I love it. So we wish you, we wish you the best. Thanks for coming.
SS (32:00):
Thanks so much.