Category: MARKETING

Ep 225: How To Get 1 Million Followers with Brendan Kane | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
Brendan Kane was this week’s appearance guest on the influential personal brand podcast right now, myself and our CEO, Amanda Johns Vaden are going to be breaking down this interview. Which was, whoa. It was awesome. This, I loved it. This is one of, probably the most where I, like I learned the most personally AJ so anyways,
AJV (00:30):
Heavy content episode where you will undoubtedly, no matter what level you’re at, learn something, it is really good.
RV (00:38):
Yeah, totally. And it, it, there was like a few things that it changed my mind on. And then there was some things that were, that were very different than I expected. And I guess I’ll start, I’ll start with that. So, so my first takeaway was like really early on where I was like, I was kind of joking with him, like, yeah. So how do you hit 1 million followers, which he has, which you know, is kind of the premise of his first book was how he did it. And I was, I, I, you know, I was kind of saying it tongue in cheek, like, yeah, what’s the secret. And he just very like approached it very systematically. He’s like, yes, there are four ways to hit 1 million followers and, and, and just started like rattling through them. And I was like, whoa. And so, you know, one is organic and algorithms and playing that game, which is why I think what most people think of.
RV (01:26):
And the thing about that, that I loved that he just nailed was he was like, look, it is, there is not any sort of slant or favoritism or politicalness to the content. There’s no way they could keep up with all of the content creators in the world of what they’re saying. He said it is completely objective. It’s completely democratized based on one thing. Does your content keep people watching? Yes or no? That’s it like, it is a very straightforward, fair metric whether you like it or not, doesn’t matter, but it’s like, does your content hold people’s attention? Yes or no. If yes, it will get shown to more people. If no, it will not get shown to more people. And that was, that was really like good to hear. But then he also said giveaways, giveaways are a huge way that people get lots of followers.
RV (02:25):
Now. They often get, you know, the, the question is, do you get the right followers? And people will unfollow, but giveaways work and you don’t, we haven’t heard anybody really talk about the power of doing giveaways on social and then influencers and doing trade for share for share, like you do a post for me, I do a post for you. And then pay paid, but specifically with paid. And this is the thing that I want to highlight was, you know, we’ve been, we’re really set, been setting the stage to some paid campaigns, but he said specifically for followers, I would not run paid ads. If the goal is to get more followers, he was saying, I would do promoted posts. And I would pay me my accounts to do a post that’s, how you’ll get the most followers is by being tagged in someone else’s posts, which is like, duh, that’s true. Like we know that organically, but, but don’t think of that as like basically a brand deal, like go pay people with lots of followers to tag you in their posts. Like that’s a much smarter way to go about doing it. So anyways, that was, that’s all I know, that’s a lot, but that was those, those were good things and hit me
AJV (03:39):
Hard. It was that all one takeaway.
RV (03:42):
That was all one takeaway. That was, that was one fun four-part takeaway.
AJV (03:48):
So yeah, it was my first one was very similar to that and it was kind of around that question. It’s like, you know, how would you grow your following? Right. And I think you asked that in the very beginning. And it’s like, if I had money at all, I would be using it to build growth. But building your audience is a longterm play. Right. And so it’s like, you gotta be doing it in a few different ways. And so the kind of thing that I highlighted was harnessing the traffic of a different source, right. It’s go where the traffic is. And if your platform doesn’t have the traffic, then how do you get your content on a platform? That’s got a lot of traffic. Right. And I think there’s just a lot to that. And I think the one thing that came up to my mind and all of these different interviews is I’ve kind of been adverse to like getting on Tik TOK because it’s not for me.
AJV (04:36):
But that’s where tons of our customers and consumers are. And Roy’s like, they, we got to get them ticked off. I’m like, you get on ticked up, but it’s kinda like one of those things, it’s like where you’ve got to go where the traffic is and the traffic is on tick-tock. So it was like, then how do you use that to harness all of these different things? And so I think that was like the big one for me. It’s not just go to the platform that you prefer to consume content, which is something we just picked up from the Jasmine star episode. She go check it out. But it’s like have a preferred platform in which you create and you need to create where your customers are. So where are the customers? Where is the traffic? And I just, you know, it’s like, tick-tock just you know, labs YouTube for most time spent on any platform. And it’s like, kind of undeniable, it’s no longer should I it’s like, well, you need to, but it’s in an effort to grow your following. And so I thought that was really good and it just connected a few dots for me. So that would be my first one. It says, you just have to go where the traffic is.
RV (05:36):
Yeah. And that was, that was my second takeaway was, was just talking about that, which is we, you know, in our high traffic strategies event, we teach it that’s the kind of the central premise of the whole event is find an existing audience and figure out how to get in front of them. But, you know, here he was referring to it as like content distribution, which is a little different from going, okay, search engine optimization is like, there’s people searching this. I want to get in front of them versus he’s, he’s kind of going, yeah, just get your content distributed to somebody who has an audience. And I’ll tell you one of the things that our team immediately did after this episode or after the, you know, the interview was we immediately started researching meme accounts on Instagram. So for our topical areas, we immediately started going, okay, we gotta go, we need to go identify.
RV (06:30):
And just so you know, if you’re, if you haven’t listened to the episode, a meme account is an account that is it’s themed. So it’s not like a person’s account, like a Rory Vaden or an AIG Vaden. It’s not a company account, like a brand builders group. It’s like, you know well, like the one that came up a couple of times was the good quote and that’s a huge account. It’s got millions of followers and it’s, it’s all just like inspirational quotes. And then, you know, you can pay up a truckload of money and they’ll, you know, for certain people they’ll do, they’ll do promoters partial posts, but basically it’s is the, you know, do you know, do you know what those accounts are? And those accounts exist for the purpose of doing what we’re talking about here. Like that is their business model is to find great content and build an audience around it so that people who are interested in that topic will come and pay them to do those posts. And just like in my mind, that was just a big, giant disconnect and just got super clear and went immediate into action mode. So that was my second takeaway. I’d say, what was your second one?
AJV (07:40):
My mind was the content itself and asking yourself is your content holding someone’s attention? Because at the end of the day, that’s the only care of the platform is can you keep people on the platform? So if you want to win, it’s like, are people staying in tune with your content? Is your content holding attention? And then I love this. Cause I thought he shared some really amazing like little stats. He said one of the big ahas we had with the 28 seconds of content versus the 21 second hold. And if that’s like a very, like, you’re talking about seven seconds, right? And this isn’t like three minutes or five, no seven seconds. And attention span of like, how do you go from this to this? And if you can’t keep people’s attention for 21 seconds, you will lose. And so to that, I go, wow, that’s really amazing.
AJV (08:31):
And like, and I thought to myself, it’s like, how much content can you really teach in 21 or 28 seconds? And the answer to that is like none, pretty much none, but you can tell a really good, quick story. And I think those are like those kind of like, what are you doing in those first? Let’s just call it 30 seconds to get someone latched, to get someone hooked. And I love, he said, it’s not about super high production. It’s not about like tons and tons of content. In fact, the content doesn’t even have to be that great, but it’s got to have an emotional tug, right. You’ve got to be pulling up those heartstrings. So it needs to have a good story and it needs to be something that can suck someone in really, really quickly. And so it’s like, how are you starting all of your videos?
AJV (09:15):
And that’s like, I know for a while, we’ve since done away with this, but it’s like, we had all these like bumpers that were seven seconds. And I was like, gosh, we probably were losing tens of people for it. I get to the end of the bumper. And so it’s just to me, it’s coming, going back in, it’s not about high production value. It’s about the realness. It’s about the stories. And then he talks about a couple of different accounts to go and follow. One of them, he said was the Dodo. But then I actually thought about Jay Shetty’s Instagram accounts because Jay Shetty’s Instagram account is like every single time I watch one of those little videos he shares. I’m like heart love, like so good. So funny. But here’s the thing it’s like, he didn’t produce probably 90% of those, right.
AJV (09:53):
That’s already existing found content, but it’s like, I love that account because they’re all inspirational motivational, like heart tug stories. And they’re really short and they’re quick someone who hasn’t seen a loved one in like 21 months for, because of COVID or, you know, a dad coming home from, you know, overseas and surprising his kids at graduation. And it’s like, I love all of them. And I thought, well, movies. And like, when I listened to this, that was what dawned on me. It’s like, you don’t even have to be the creator of a lot of really good content to build your following, but you need to be a curator of really good content. So there’s some that’s created and there’s some that’s curated. How can you make a combo of both?
RV (10:34):
Yeah. That, and that that case study he was using was a, I think it was from Alex stamp where he said one video got 90 million views. The other got 5 million views. And the difference was a seven second watch time. So it’s like that even making an incremental improvement in the watch time of seven seconds can be the difference between 5 million views and 90 million views. And and that, you know, this was my third takeaway too. I mean, just moving people emotionally, it’s gotta be what moves your audience emotionally? Like, it’s that inspiring? Or, you know, and even the angry stuff. I mean, like, I don’t know that you want to like do stuff that makes people angry. But if you, if you think about it, it’s like, why does the very political content get, get so much reach on social media? It’s not because the platforms are going, yeah, let’s put this political content in front of people.
RV (11:39):
It’s saying people are engaging with this. They’re reacting to it. They’re responding to it. So the things that activate our human emotions, the things that make us laugh, the things that make us cry, the things that make us mad, the things that, that make us sad, the things that make us inspired or ambitious, like those are the things that people watch and they watch it all the way through and they share it and they comment on it and they engage with it. And so you got to find a way to make your content more emotional. It’s gotta be more, more captivating and just understanding the kind of funded, you know, fundamental things. And like, you know, you’ve mentioned the word AAJ. It’s like, if you don’t know how to do that on purpose, just tell a story, like stories inherently keep us hooked because we want to know how the, how the story ends. So just really, really good stuff. And, and you know, you, you also said this, like, it’s not the quality of the production that matters. It’s just the quality of the storytelling. That’s, that’s, that’s the part. So I loved, I loved it. So what was it? The third
AJV (12:47):
Oh, mine are mine is, is kind of like the summary of like the three things to be asking yourself, which I thought were just really simple and powerful. It’s like one, how are you stopping the scroll? So what are you doing to make someone go? I need to watch that. I need to read that. I need to look at that. So question number one, how are you stopping the scroll question? Number two, how are you holding their attention? Right. So what is it that’s going to pull those heartstrings and suck them in. We’re not going to start to see what happens here, right? So what are you doing to stop the scroll? What are you doing to hold their attention? And then how are you going to monetize that attention? Right? So if this is a part of your business, it’s like, what is the next step? Right. So it’s like, is the next step, just a follow me? Is it subscribed to something? But it’s like, how are you using that to grow your audience and to monetize your business? So just again, it’s like, how are you going to stop the scroll? How are you going to keep their attention? And then how are you going to monetize it?
RV (13:52):
Simple stuff, simple stuff. But it works really, really, really powerful interview. I was totally impressed with, with Brendan. And he clearly lives in the world all day, every day,
AJV (14:04):
Very content rich. It’s really, really good with, I think really actionable, like, okay, that’s what you do. That’s how much you spend. And then also some really good, quick case studies that really back it up. It was really good.
RV (14:17):
Love it. I love it. So go listen to it. Listen to all the episodes, dang it. They’re all really good and listen to it for a long time and then share them with everyone, you know, and be like this At least 30 seconds, 27 seconds worth. It’d be like this podcast is amazing. So we are grateful for you. We love doing the show. We love reading your comments over on iTunes and seeing all the testimonials and stuff. So make sure you drop us one of those, if you haven’t yet. And keep coming back, come back next week. And we’re going to be talking about Jeff Goins and being an amazing writer and finding your, your, your brilliant idea. So we’ll catch you soon. Bye bye.

Ep 224: How To Get One Million Followers with Brendan Kane

Speaker 1 (00:05):
[Inaudible]
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 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.
RV (00:53):
So I straight up overnight manifested 1 million followers. And some of you are out there like trying to get a million followers. I manifested it. I literally like went to bed thinking, ah, what, what do I need to do to get a million followers? And the next day, the next afternoon, I got 1 million followers. It wasn’t 1 million followers on social media. Someone dropped this book off at my house the next day, true story, 1 million followers by Brendan Kane. And so I read the book 1 million followers. I’ve read it, cover to cover. You’re about to meet Brendan. We’ve kind of hang out in some of the same circles we’ve never met in person though. This is our first time interacting. He has a new book called hook point, how to stand out in a three second world. And he’s worked with a lot of celebrities. He’s worked with Rihanna and people like that. Taylor swift and for years, like at MTV working like helping with that. And some of my other friends, I know Vishen from mind valley and people you would recognize, but kind of like his personal claim to fame was that he built a million followers in 30 days. So anyways, I’m just really excited to meet him in person and introduce him to y’all. Cause you might not, you may not know him or maybe you do, but anyways, Brendan, welcome to the show.
BK (02:21):
Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to connect with you and everybody listening to this.
RV (02:25):
Yeah, man. So how do you get a million followers? I mean, that’s the name of the book? That’s like what you did and you know, just to kind of dive in to that as, as a, as a starting point, like if you had to sum it all up in a couple sentences, how do you, how do you do it?
BK (02:44):
Well, I mean, in a very simple high level is you create a piece of content. You put it in front of somebody and that motivates them to click the follow button. That is the simple way to do it. Now it’s not necessarily because there’s a lot of nuance that comes into specifically the content side of things. There’s many different ways that you can do it. You can do it through paid acquisition, through paid advertising distribution of content, through other channels or influencers giveaways. You can do it that way, or you can do it purely through the content and playing to what the algorithms are looking for and get mass reach because the algorithms deem your content is playing to the goals that they’ve set for us. We’ve done it every single way. We’ve tested every single way we continue to test every single way. But first and foremost, it comes down to what is the piece of content that is going to motivate or inspire somebody to be like, I need to go and follow this account.
RV (03:51):
Yeah. Well you, that’s interesting just in and of itself, you kind of lifts it off like four big buckets there paid influencers, giveaways and organic. And like when I think about my personal journey, like we had we had six figure followings and then we sold our accounts when we sold our company back in 2018 and actually had to start over in 2018. And most of the followers that we have now are from influencers. They have come from just our network appearing on other people’s shows. We’ve never done a giveaway. We do do organic. We’ve never done paid. So let’s talk about paid. If you had, let’s just say, let’s say you had $20,000 and I say, okay, I’m gonna just go. I’m going to put $20,000 aside sheerly with the objective of growing my reach and growing my following. How would you spend that 20 grand?
BK (04:55):
It depends on the business. So it’s a, it’s a great question. And the, the first place that I always start when working with a client is really understanding the fundamental goals because there’s, there’s a lot of people out there that will think, okay, if I get 10,000 more followers, a hundred thousand, a million followers, my business is going to take off. I’m going to sell a bunch of product, my profit margins, going to go through the roof. I’m not going to sit here and say that that never happens, but it’s a longer term play like building an audience is a longer term play for the business. So if, if it was a business to be like, I need leads, I need revenue. I need to generate profit. Then we’re going to take that $20,000 in and work on lead gen campaigns or conversion-based campaigns to drive that revenue, drive that profit that can then be reinvested in the growth because is it as effective if you sell a product and correlate that purchaser into a follower versus going after a follower?
BK (05:57):
No, but does it happen? Yes. Like if you sell a lot of product through paid acquisition, it will lead to followers. If your product really resonates with you with if your brand does now let’s just put that aside. That’s the first step that I take now, if we’re just like, no, we’ve got our revenue, we’ve got our lead gen campaigns. We’ve got all of that set up. I just want to go after followers. Then it heavily dictates the platform that you’re going on. But one of the most successful ways that we found and you’ve alluded to it, cause you did it organically is if you have other people sharing your content on their channels, that will lead to follow our growth. It’s all a distribution model is like, how can I get my content distributed in other channels that will lead back to mine?
BK (06:52):
And there’s several different ways. Like you said, organically, I do interviews on podcasts or I’m friends with influencers or work with influencers and they talk about me in their posts or they have me on their podcast or they talking about me on their stories. That’s one way of doing it a second way of doing it. One of the successful ways with Instagram is meme accounts, you know, accounts that are all around a specific niche, like there’s meme accounts around quotes, like the good quote or inspirational pages, like note for me, there’s one’s around food or fitness and things like that. And that whole ecosystem is built off of selling advertising, quote unquote, like a shout out on their accounts to correlate back to the followers. So if you don’t have those influencer connections, meme accounts are kind of that next best thing.
BK (07:39):
The next best tactic that you can do, you can leverage the paid advertising networks, but we haven’t really see seen a high enough conversion rate to warrant the spend behind that. I’m not saying that I haven’t heard of people having success with it. We’ve tested extensively ourselves. Facebook super easy to use those platforms for follower acquisition. The other platforms, not so much, but I think at the, at the high level we look at just, how do you get your content distributed across? And I’ll look, let’s look at some larger examples is like you look at the rock. For example, who I think is still like the most followed person on Instagram, people will say, well, he grew that completely organically. No, he didn’t. Every movie he’s in that marketing budget for that movie is a hundred million dollar plus he was in the WWE for years.
BK (08:31):
The, that that company, you know, spends tens of millions of dollars to market their people. Or if he follow tennis recently a young girl, an 18 year old girl won the us open. She went from, I think like a hundred or 200,000 followers to 2 million followers in a two week span. Wow. Because of that distribution of her being on television there was another breakdown that I saw a guy hit a million sub sub subscribers on YouTube. He did a collaboration with Mr. Beast. So if you want to just think about generating followers at a high level, it’s all about how can I get my content distributed in front of the audience that I want and making sure that, that story or that connection to that content that they’re seeing will correlate back to them saying, well, I want to follow this account.
BK (09:22):
So it’s like what I learned early on in the movie industry when I first started is go where the traffic is. Don’t start it from scratch. And even the, the, the core social platforms we’re talking about were built this way. So YouTube was sold for $1.7 billion. And I think it was under 24 months. How did they do that? Well, the predominant player at the time was my space and my space didn’t have a video player. So YouTube had created one of the first embeddable YouTube players. So people that had my space profiles would see their friend upload a video to YouTube or take a movie trailer or something, put it on their profile. And then when you saw your friend had one, you would click the YouTube logo. Cause you’re like, I want one. So that’s how YouTube scaled their traffic so quickly is harnessing the traffic of a different source. The same principles apply to growing a social following. And as we mentioned, there’s many different ways that you can get your content in front of people, but it’s all about how do we get our content, our brand, our message out to where the traffic is and then drive it back to follow our account. What,
RV (10:31):
Yeah, that is such a simple, but powerful concept is interesting. And so when I said, if I was going to put money into it, your thought would be not going promote your page or take a piece of content and like boost it or run it as an ad on Facebook or Instagram. But your thought would be to go, where can I find like a meme account more, more like you’re paying an influencer or you’re paying whatever you can, whoever that person, more like a brand deal rather than running it as advertising. How do you find those? Not, not, how do you find those accounts and then how do you contact them and like get their rates and pricing and stuff.
BK (11:16):
Yeah. Finding them is just searching like one of the greatest assets in the reasons that we’re successful that I find other people don’t do is we are constantly doing research. Like I’ve been in the social media space since 2005 and still to this day, me and my team are always passing, references back and forth, looking at content, looking at content creators. And if you do that, it’s pretty easy to find like you just search. Like if you’re a fitness instructor, go into Instagram, go into Facebook type in fitness, see what type of accounts come up that are driven. Again, it’s not an influencer. It’s not a brand. It’s an account all about that. Or like travel. There’s a lot of travel based ones. Like beautiful destinations is a perfect example of a meme account around travel. So it’s, it takes a little bit of time, but it’s pretty easy to find if you’re actually looking for it.
BK (12:11):
And then most of these companies, even influencers themselves, they’ll have an email for business opportunities, contact us email, or you can direct message them and you can straight out ask them like, what does it cost to work with you? So it’s not super difficult to find it takes some time, but I recommend that if you’re spending any dollar, don’t go with the first person you find, you know, it’s like, actually do your research, do your due diligence of who works. And then always test don’t, don’t spend all of your money with one account until they’ve proven themselves with you. And it’s the same with like in 1 million followers, as you remember. I interviewed a friend of mine who is the chief growth officer for a company called fab fit fun. They reached a billion dollar valuation in a matter of a few years.
BK (13:00):
And it was all through paid acquisition and they’ve tested over 10,000 influencers. The last time I talked to him, it’s probably well over that. And the thing is that, that they know the model they have written on the walls is we love low CPAs. So that’s their benchmark is they love low cost per acquisition. So everything that they do is benchmarked across that. And that goes again to influencers is like they would test and constantly test these influencers. They wouldn’t put all their money into Kim Kardashians. They would test to see who’s generating the content who’s generating the, the reach, the engagement and that, that key KPI that we’re going after, same principles apply here is you test and you iterate to find what is the best growth mechanism for hitting our key KPI in this case, we’re talking about social followers. Interesting. And so there was actually, before you move on, it was interesting.
BK (13:55):
I was watching a video last night and I haven’t seen the show, but squid game and Netflix is the hot commodity. And I think it was Colin and Samir was doing a breakdown of it. And they said that one of the actors is now at 19.6 million followers off of that shell vans, which the key characters are watching their sales are up 7000%. So again, it just goes back. And the thing that I want to engrain in everybody’s head is go where the traffic is, harness it to your ability. But just because you go where the traffic is, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to correlate if the content is not there. Like for example, if squid game was no good, if the show sucked, would that actor have hit all those followers? Would vans have that increase in sales? No. So just because you get on Netflix, just because you get on a meme account or if you’ve ever run a paid ad, just because you’re getting in front of doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to correlate to the action if the content is not designed properly.
RV (15:01):
Yeah. So I want to talk about the content, but on the topic of dollars, I mean, this is, I think, I mean, there’s so many takeaways. I mean, I’ve got like just all these pages, all these pages that are earmarked in here, but you know, like one of the, I mean, you hear about it a lot, but something, it seems like you’ve done as you just kind of split tests. And so like in my mind, I’m thinking, okay, if I’m going to go target like a meme account, not only do I want to do a lighter budget with them, I probably want to test that piece of content organically on my own place, put some money behind it to see how it responds and cold traffic, even just like whatever few hundred bucks or something, and then try to show up and could play the hits basically like give them the best, the, the, the the best stuff that I already know performs, and then just basically use them to throw gasoline on the fire. Yeah.
BK (15:52):
Yeah. I mean, I wouldn’t put, so the way that I would approach that is see how it performs organically. If it’s not performing organically putting paid behind it. And we can talk about the algorithms if you want, but you’re basically training the algorithms that your content is not good. So I would rely heavily on the organic and your best performing organic ones, because I know people like Jay Shetty prince EA even a Gary V they have built massive audiences off the distribution of their content. However, their content performs well, so well organically that when a meme account takes it, and I’m not, you know, most of these people will do kind of like share for share deals or distribution deals, or like in your case, just friends, reposting content their content is designed so well that it’ll perform. So let me give you an example, like there’s, there is a, a meme account called the good quote, and I don’t know what they’re at followers wise.
BK (16:52):
Now they gotta be over 20 million, but I know prince EA and Jay Shetty have a relationship with them. I don’t believe it’s paid, but the good coat will post their content because it’s valuable content. And by the good quote, posting their content that can lead to 25 to 50,000 followers off a single post. However, if you, and we’ve tested with them, if you have a non-optimized piece of content that goes to a good quote or any meme account of that size, and it’s not designed properly, especially from an organic perspective, even if you’re posting it on an account of that size, it may lead to like 500 followers or less. So again, it comes back to how, how good is the content designed to a play, to the reach of what the algorithms are looking for? And then designed in a way that’s like, this person is really fascinating. This person is really interesting. I need to follow them and consume more of their.
RV (17:51):
Now, when you say that, like, people like prince EA and whoever that they have, they have built their followings based on distribution. That’s what you’re saying is that basically they either, you know, their content performs well organically, and then they either build organic relationships with influencers, like what I’m talking about, or they will be able, they’ll just pay to have their content displayed somewhere where there’s a lot of traffic.
BK (18:20):
Yeah. Well, I’m not going to say that Jason,
RV (18:24):
It’s not those two people specifically. Right. But just conceptually.
BK (18:27):
Yeah. And listen, their content is so dialed in that they’re getting organic reach, which is leading to your followers. They’re like the best content creator. So, but they also understand the power of distribution of content on other channels that just fuels that growth even further. Again, going back to the analogy of like the rock, the rock started on the WWE, the wrestling Federation. So that was one channel. And then he’s like, okay, this is interesting, but I want to diversify my brand. So then he was in movies and then he was on magazines. Then he was on television shows. It’s, it’s syndicating out that reach, which keeps amplifying that brand. You know, it keeps amplifying and going in these different directions. It’s not just pigeonholing yourself into one distribution outlet, being your own channel. It’s going to all of the different audiences and driving it back to you yourself.
RV (19:24):
I love it. I love it. So you you’ve mentioned the content, obviously the, which is normally where we, we probably should, you know, start the conversation. I think what’s awesome is you go, yeah, you post it organically. If it’s a winner organically, then it should perform some somewhere else. Is there, is there anything, cause I do want to talk about hook point. I’m fascinated. I think it’s a wonderful title and concept, but on, on the topic of content is there any thing that you feel like we, I mean, I know there’s a lot, you’ve got to say about this and people could obviously get the books, but on content design specifically, is there anything you think that we should know that we maybe haven’t heard somewhere else or you think people overlook?
BK (20:08):
Yeah. And this is one of the core focuses of how we work with people today is working with solo premiers all the way up to companies that are doing 30 billion a year in revenue. We find that that most people are struggling to achieve success with social, whether it’s paid or organic or struggling to break through to the next level is they’re lacking process. And we have a viral content engineering process. That’s backed by over 50 billion views, organically, we’ve generated hundreds of millions of followers for our clients using it and billions in revenue. And that is the biggest thing is most people are just designing content in a vacuum. They’ll basically, you know, set brand guidelines and ideate off of that. Or they’ll just come up with ideas that they like without actually having a process of how to engineer virality. And there’s a lot of misinformation in the market today, mainly because a lot of it has been outdated.
BK (21:11):
So you’ll hear a lot about consistency, frequency, hashtags, time of day, all of those things to drive growth. And yes, was there a point in time in social media that that stuff worked? Yes. but it really doesn’t work as well anymore if your contents not dialed in. And the reason is the amount of people on social media. So we, I remember when I first started in this space you know, Friendster was kind of on the fringe, but MySpace was the big player. And I remember when MySpace hit a million users were like, oh my God, that’s a ton of people using this social media platform. And this was like 2005, 2006. You fast forward to today, there’s 3.9, 6 billion people on social media. And there’s hundreds of billions of pieces of content seated on these platforms every single day. So we went from a million people on MySpace to 3.9, 6 billion people producing hundreds of billions of pieces of content every single day.
BK (22:16):
So what does that mean? I mean, there’s only when you open up any of these apps, no matter which one, they can only see you. One piece of content at a time. It’s not like they can see you a million pieces of content for you to choose from. So the algorithms, and there’s a lot of conversation around the algorithms, what they are. There’s a lot of demonization. There’s a lot of myths about it. Like one of the biggest myths about algorithms. They’re there to get their suppressing, your reach, to get you to pay for it. And it’s completely false because then that means nobody would go viral organically. If that was the case, the algorithms have one job and one job only to keep people on the platform longer because the longer you stay on the platform, the more ads they can serve you. In addition, that means they’re having a better experience and it takes your attention away from the other social platforms.
BK (23:04):
So these algorithms have billions and billions of pieces of content to choose from to keep you on the platform longer. So that’s where people are really struggling is, and I’ve seen it across the board. I’ve seen people generate purely organic followers and have suppressed reach. And I’ve seen people that have generated purely off of paid and are going viral. So I’ve seen it across the board that the most important thing is the content is the content playing to what the algorithms are looking for, which is holding people’s attention. I’ll give you an example. As I’ve, we’re launching a magazine called viral content engineering, and I was interviewing a friend of mine that just hit 20 million followers on Tik TOK. And his name is Alex stamp. You should look him up. He’s amazing. And we were doing an analysis of his, of his content.
BK (23:56):
We looked at his highest viewed video, which was 90 million views. And we looked at another video that was 5 million views, which is kind of like the 5 million, three to 5 million is his average. The 90 million view, the retention was 28 seconds average. The 5 million was 21 seconds. So we’re talking about a seven second differential that made up 85 million views and performance. Wow. That’s the world that we’re, we’re living in. That’s, it’s, it’s just a cutthroat world based upon the amount of content that’s published out there. So that’s where it’s really having a solid process to follow in creating content is critical so that you’re not relying on luck.
RV (24:38):
Yeah. So basically you’re talking about a structure and a process for ideated shooting, editing content that just holding people’s attention for as long as possible. And in this case it’s it’s that, that, that extreme like seven seconds can make a massive, massive difference. But that’s really, it’s really the game. It’s not even necessarily to make good content. It’s just to make content that holds people’s attention, which doesn’t necessarily have to be
BK (25:10):
Good. I don’t know that. I agree with that. I would say that to hold people’s attention, there has to be something that’s good about it because of the, because of the amount of choice that we have in terms of content. Because if the content is not good, I know that there’s 50 other pieces of content I can find. And I would say the best content creators in the world that hold attention are doing a good job, but that doesn’t mean it has to be high production value. Doesn’t have to be a motion picture, but the storytelling technique is, is good. Like I can give you some examples is like the Dodo is an amazing account. It’s all about pets and rescuing pets and things. And most of it’s found footage, or if they’re doing interviews at zoom interviews, the quality of the production is low, but the storytelling is amazing.
BK (26:00):
Like it really connects with your heartstrings about these animals and these rescues and things like that. Another thing is like the top YouTube is used. What’s called the Jenga effect, which is if you’ve ever played Jenga, you know that you have all these blocks stacked up on a table. And with each one, you pull out your closer to the outcome, which is the whole thing falling. But with each block that has pulled out the tension built, you know, what the outcome is, but the tension keeps rising. So an example of it is there’s a YouTuber. That’s amazing named Graham Stephan. And he teaches like millennials about financing. And he did a video. His number one video, I think is about how he got a Tesla for $76. And you watch that video. He doesn’t reveal the math of how he actually did it until like eight or nine minutes in. But that doesn’t mean that he’s filling it with fluff, just to rig the system. He has a storytelling technique that kind of ebbs and flows and builds that tension to the eventual outcome. Mr. Beast, one of the top YouTubers in the world does the same thing is you look at his crazy stunts and you think, oh, it’s just a crazy stunt pulling people in, but it’s not. It’s a storytelling that builds to the ultimate outcome that you came in for,
RV (27:14):
Man. Yeah, that is, that is fascinating. Okay. I, we have to spend a few minutes on hook point. This is, this is what you’re talking about now. So you hear people say this all the time. What’s the, like, what’s the hook, what’s the hook. But they say that in music, what’s the hook. Like they say that, or the cover of a book title, like what’s the hook? What the heck is the hook? Like when people say that, like, what do they mean? And what, what is a hook?
BK (27:40):
So for us, there’s three key pillars to a successful hook point. So first is like, how do you grab that attention? How do you stop the scroll? How do you earn the click? Because without that, in the world that we live in with those billions of competing messages, people are going to move on because there’s so much choice. So your first job as a brand, as a marketer with any piece of content you’re creating, whether it’s organic or paid is how are you stopping the scroll? How are you earning the click? How are you getting that email open? Because without that, you’re never going to get to your store. You will never get to retaining the audience’s attention. So you get completely lost in the noise. And that’s the first signal to an algorithm that your content is not going to retain attention, because if they see people’s filling, plants are not clicking, they’re automatically suppressing reach.
BK (28:28):
The second part is once you have the attention, how do you hold it? Because we don’t, you know, clickbait is kind of gone in a way that the algorithms have picked up on it. I’m not going to say that there’s nobody that’s that successful with it, but the algorithms and even the auctions too, are looking at your ability to hold that attention, because all the attention to the world with no substance doesn’t mean anything. So how compelling is your story to maintain that attention? And then third and finally is how are you monetizing that attention? How does it play to the overall growth of your company of your brand? Now that doesn’t mean that every piece of content has to sell something, but there has to be an underlying foundation and monetization strategy to make it sustainable because otherwise you’re going to burn out or you’re not going to have the time or the resources or the money to keep reinvesting in it. So again, the way that we look at a hook point is a holistic picture is how do we grab attention, hold attention to that, monetize that attention.
RV (29:30):
And in terms of stopping the scroll, grabbing attention like you mentioned clickbait, right? So that would be the sort of like the lowest form of it. I mean, how do we stop the scroll? I mean, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s one thing. And I’d like to you to think specifically about like experts here. A lot of our audiences experts, if you’re an entertainer, it’s, you know, I think it is a little bit different if you’re, you know, you’re showing a cat hanging up the side of a building that grabs our attention, or if you’re a news channel, you’ve got some scary statistic or something
BK (30:05):
That grabs our attention. But if you’re just a, an expert trying to like teach people how to, you know, save money on their taxes or, you know, a lawyer trying to do, you know, just talk about your business or an author, something, how do you grab the attention without like, what are the ways to really capture attention without kind of the you know, kind of, I guess, spamming this kind of things. Well, the first place you have to do is you have to start with research. You have to identify the patterns of what people are talking about of your subject, and also identify the patterns of what’s happening in content. So let’s break down both of those first understanding what and how people are saying about your subject in your specific niche, because the minute somebody sees something and they think that they already know what you’re going to say, they’re moving on.
BK (30:55):
Even though you may have a completely different spin on it. It’s like if you’re a meditation teacher and you, you say in the first three seconds, meditation is the key to content or success or whatever. And I think, okay, I already know that I’m moving on. I’m not giving it a second thought. So identifying the patterns of what everybody else is saying so that you can break those patterns and stand out. Secondarily, you have to understand that people are scrolling through social media. So they just watch LeBron James dunk, a basketball, they watch the squid games trailer. They watch Kevin Hart tell a joke. Now your piece of content comes up. So understanding how do I break that pattern of all these things that they’ve said already? So that is the fundamental core of where you start now, there’s nuance details for each specific sector or industry that you can play with. But in order to design an effective hook point, you have to identify the patterns so that you can break them. And that’s where most people are going wrong with it.
RV (32:00):
And that’s what I heard you say as both the pattern of what other people are saying on your topic and the overall pattern in the way that content is being presented by anybody, which is, which is interesting. It’s like even a video on certain platforms a couple of years ago. Just the fact there was a video would be a pattern interrupt. And today it’s, it’s not at all. Cause we all, we all are used to seeing content that way in the feed. Phenomenal stuff. Brandon, where do you want people to go? This, this was awesome, man. Like I you’re really, really brilliant and just have a real natural mind for this. And I love it cause I don’t find it to be something we’re pretty good at making money, but I don’t think we’re as naturally good as the Martha marketing pieces. And I love this. So where do you want people to go if they want to learn more and connect with you?
BK (32:49):
Yeah. If they want to learn more about the process, they can go to hook point.com. There’s a video that breaks down what we talked about in more detail. And there’s a deck that they can download for free, or they can schedule, call with our team, or if they want to check out the books for hook point, they can buy it anywhere. Or if you go to book dot hook point.com, there’s additional there’s additional ad-ons there or book that 1 million followers.com. But I think like really, if you, if you were intrigued, you want to dive in a little bit deeper, start with hook point.com. Cause there’s a lot of free information there that people can dig into.
RV (33:24):
I love it, man. Well, we will, we will put a a link there. Fascinating, absolutely fascinating stuff, practical stuff. And just a lot of fun I think in breaking this down and I definitely, I definitely recommend it obviously. That’s why we had Brendan on the show and thanks, man, for the gift of your, your wisdom and spending some time with us, we wish you the best.
BK (33:44):
Yeah. Thanks for having me. It was true. Pleasure to connect with you and everybody listening to this

Ep 223: Secrets of Growing a Social Media Following with Jasmine Star | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
Welcome back to the influential personal brand podcast recap edition today, me and Aj are breaking down the interview with the one and only Jasmine Star, which is pretty awesome to get a chance to have a conversation with her and just get some of her thoughts and behind the scenes kind of secrets on how she’s built a huge, awesome personal brand and social media following. So AJ, welcome to the show.
AJV (00:32):
Happy to be here.
RV (00:34):
Yeah. so we’ll share our top three highlights. I’ll go first. I think, you know, the first one that jumped out for me was where she said, I’d rather be liked for who I am than for a carbon copy of who I am or for a pretend version of who I am. And she said, this is, this is the line that she said, having lukewarm followers, isn’t powerful having lukewarm followers, isn’t powerful. I want to attract or repel. And that really stuck with me about just like the lukewarm part of it. And just having people that are really engaged in the way you have people really engaged just by being like yourself and letting people, letting people see you. And I, that kind of hit me of like, I wonder how much I’m doing that online and should I be doing a better job of that and doing more, you know, but anyways, that I thought that was super powerful. So that hit me hard. I knew that was my first takeaway.
AJV (01:35):
I love that. I love that people do fall in love with who you are, not the carbon copy. I love that. That’s really good, not my first one, but I love that. I think that’s really good. My first one was when she was talking about a platforms of choice and she said, I’m not choosing a platform on where I want to be. I’m choosing my platform based on where my customer is. And I think that’s really good because so often we hear so many people talk about, you need to be on every single platform and it’s going, I just hear more and more these days. Well, is that really true? And why would you invest time on being on a platform that your audience is not on? And I think that’s just really good. And I think it’s really important to go, where is my customer?
AJV (02:23):
And I think the second part of what she talked about that I thought was really connected to this and like really like close the circle on this was if you have to choose just one platform, then divide the platforms and how you choose them. In other words, separate where you want to consume information versus where you want to create information. So if your platform of choice is Instagram, because you love it and you love pictures and you just love keeping in touch well, that’s where you consume information, but if that’s not where you’re gaining traction and that’s where your audience does not live, then you don’t need to use that platform to create you have one to consume and one to create, which really allows you to have a preferred platform in which you consume information because you enjoy it, but a separate one where you create information because that is where your audience lives. And I just loved that. I thought it was very clear. We’ve heard a lot of conversations around that over the last few months. And I just love the way that she just split the two and to have a place where you consume, have a place where you can create, maybe they’re the same place, but if they’re not make sure you’re creating where your customers are.
RV (03:30):
Yeah. Amen. I love it. The second thing for me was, was it was towards the end where we started talking about monetizing kind of your following and going okay, how do we turn this into money? And she said, basically people get discouraged because they try to launch something or do something. And nobody buys and they have these really low conversions. And she said, don’t think of low conversions as a no think of, think of it as a, not yet. And that shifting is really good. I that’s the thing I’ve shared before on other episodes that I learned from you AJ that you you’ve always said, like, basically there’s no such thing as a, no, like everyone will buy eventually. And that, so hearing her say it was a good, it, you know, I guess edification and iteration of it, even on like social media and your funnels and stuff is just like, you can’t think of it as a fail or a no.
RV (04:25):
Or I don’t like you, or I don’t want you, or I’ll never buy this thing. It’s just the idea that you have a lot of trust to build and you have to add value for a long time. And if you out serve them in the meantime, eventually it catches back up with you. And I don’t think we can ever hear it enough. And the other thing I want people to hear, which is between the lines on that is I also hear her saying even I don’t convert massive percentages of my following, right? Like you don’t, you assume that people are like, oh, they make millions of dollars. They probably have 50% of the people that buy, but that’s not at least our experience. She didn’t say that directly. But you know, we see behind the back behind the scenes of a lot of these funnels and even the biggest names in the world convert 1, 2, 3, 5%. And so the way they keep going is, is this mindset. And so don’t be discouraged if that’s you, you just need more people and more time don’t give up.
AJV (05:24):
Yeah, I like that. And my second one was kind of connected to that. I’m very similar to, it’s not just a it’s not a, no, it’s not a, not yet, but not just that in terms of helping people get to know you, you have to have multiple points of entry. So multiple funnels. And I share this because I just know so many of our clients have one it’s like one lead magnet, it’s one video funnel, it’s one webinar funnel. And I’m just going, it’s like, really think about how do I have one of each right, for the people who just want the immediate gratification of here’s this immediate thing, I’m going to get a PDF. We have to be able to fulfill that desire and our audience and for the other people who want a really short video course, or for the people who want longer form content and a 2, 3, 4 hour webinar, it’s like we have to be able to create multiple funnels so that once they complete one, we can feed them another one.
AJV (06:20):
And once they complete that one, we can create another one. And it’s funny because this is literally what we were talking about on our internal marketing today is our marketing cycler of how many different funnels do we want to constantly make available to our audience, that people who haven’t bought yet? Because it isn’t a no, it’s a not yet. And people have to know you and trust you before. They’re really willing to give you their money. And it can’t just be one quick PDF. And you’re like, why didn’t I buy or one video funnel? And you’re like, well, that didn’t work. It’s like, no, this is a relationship. And that takes time. But it’s about that relationship building process. And multiple times the more you can have multiple times in front of them, the better you’re going to be. So similar to yours with just a little add on of like how many different points of entry do you have and then how do you combine all those? So people can constantly get fed all of your information over the course of time.
RV (07:19):
That’s funny, AJ and I literally came off of a call like a 2 hour call. And if you ever hear us use the term marketing cyclers. So that’s the term that we use, which is like we’ll cycle people from one free training to the next free training to the next free training, and basically just drop value, value, so much value that it’s like, eventually they have to go. These folks are awesome. I want to talk to them. So that’s so good. My, my third takeaway, it was funny cause it’s, it was actually more like emotional. You know, she used a word that is is sort of near and dear to my heart is this it’s in the subtitle of our second book permission. And when we wrote procrastinate on purpose, we talk about the emotional side of productivity. And we say, what people are missing is permission.
RV (08:07):
They have to give themselves permission to say no permission for imperfection permission for the incomplete. And Jasmine hit that word really hard in this interview with just permission to succeed. So it was a different, a different context, but I love where she said, one day, I’m going to write a book. And the last page in the book is going to be a permission slip that you have to fill out for yourself. And you’re going to write your own name in and say, I give myself permission to blank. And that really hit me hard because I was like, how many of us have a dream? But we don’t even give ourself permission to daydream about it. Or we have a tactic we know we should do, but we haven’t given ourselves permission to try it. Or there’s something we’re doing that we D we, we don’t really want to do. We feel like we should let it go, but we haven’t given ourselves permission to just let that thing go. And I just thought that was really good. Like, what do you have to give yourself permission to? And the permission slip. So I, I, that really was simple and clean and powerful and inspiring for me.
AJV (09:18):
I love that. I think that’s really good. And I thought for a second, that your third one was going to be my third one. Cause when you said emotional, I was like, oh wow, we’re gonna have the same one. But it wasn’t, it’s completely different. And so my third one was give people who follow you the opportunity to have an emotional response, to getting to know you. And I thought that was really good. It’s, you know, social media is giving someone the emotional response to knowing you. And I know that oftentimes we can get stuck in the content side of what we do, and it’s all about information and content and value. And at some point it’s like, but who is the person behind this information and this content. And it’s like, how do we create that emotional connection to the human being who is creating this?
AJV (10:12):
That’s allowing them to get to know you, to get to know your family, your likes, your interests, your dislikes, what you believe in. And although that’s connected to your content, it is different. It is less letting people know you for who you are, not just for what information you can provide. And I thought that was really good of, I think that the idea of these perfectly curated Instagram accounts or social media accounts, although in theory and even visually they’re real pretty, it’s like people don’t really want pretty, they want real and authentic, and they just want to know that it’s not curated, that it’s just who you are. And I really appreciated that. And also it’s like, don’t be afraid to, you know, have a series of content next to you making spaghetti with your kids or Halloween costumes, or just the, the realness of who you are as a person. Because that’s what really makes people fall in love with you. It isn’t just what you teach them, it’s who you are. So I love that.
RV (11:11):
That’s really, really good. And y’all, I mean, this is an episode. I mean, Jasmine is, I mean, she’s one of the best in the world that organic content, viral marketing, social media, like go listen to the full episode. If you haven’t already there, there are so many nuggets and we talk about Instagram reels and how they’re, over-indexing lists a lot of like really important practical tips. And also some, obviously some inspirational ones like we just shared, but check out the full length interview. Thank you for being here. Keep coming back. We got lots of amazing guests and you know, we’re, we’re getting people to tell the stories of exactly what you need to do to be successful. We’re glad you’re here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 222: Secrets of Growing a Social Media Following with Jasmine Star

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 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.
RV (00:54):
Oh my gosh. I am so excited to introduce you to Lee legitimately. This is my favorite bio point about Jasmine star is that she is one of my favorite people to follow personally on social media. I love her content. It’s so practical. It’s fun. It’s inspiring. You can just tell that she is one of you, a mission-driven messenger, and she just has become one of the most influential creative entrepreneurs in, in the world. She started as a photographer. She dropped out of law school, picked up a camera, was doing her photography business and has just since grown this huge personal brand. I got to meet her a few years ago. When I was with Louis at his mastermind event, she was there and then we kinda lost touch. And now all of a sudden we’re like seeing each other three times here in a matter of two weeks. And her most recent project is something called social curator. This is a subscription that is for business owners to help them do social media marketing and keep up with all the trends that are happening, understand how to do it right. And I’m hoping that’s a little bit of a preview of what we’re going to get today. So Jasmine, welcome to the show.
JS (02:04):
I am so happy to be here and right, lest you forget, we did not lose touch. Your girl was creeping from a distance. We are just now happy that I can creep openly. So now, you know, I’m creeping on you openly as opposed to privately. I’m happy. I’m happy to be here. Thank you.
RV (02:18):
Yeah. Well, and, and I know, and so AIJ, so my wife business partner, our CEO, you guys shared the stage at Amanda tresses event for faster way, and Amanda’s a close friend of ours. And and you and I are speaking at Christy Wright’s event here in a few weeks, and it’s just awesome. All good. It’s weird to say, I feel kind of weird to say this, but like, I’m, I’m so proud of you. Like, I, I love that you’re winning. I love when good people win. I feel like a lot of times, not always the good people win, but you’re like doing it the right way and,ly winning. And so yeah, so I have to share us your shares your ways.
JS (03:00):
Oh, well, okay. Well, before we get, before we get to the ways, cause I’m like, you set that bar really high. You set that bar like Olympic level high. Let me lower it a little bit. I have to say that one of the things and part of the reason why I still feel such a closeness to you and to your business and an affinity for what it is that you teach is when you had started this podcast, you had said, oh, and we with Lewis one that is like an aspirational model. I hope that one day you’re in a podcast like, well, when we were a Jasmine, when you become just your first name, you know, you’ve made it. It’s kinda like when we were Louis, everybody knows it was like Lewis house. Like
JS (03:42):
There you go. You know, very few can get to that singular letter like Oprah. But oftentimes I feel your presence when I really do talk to a business owners, because one of the things, I was a member of Lewis house mastermind, which is where you and I met. And one of the things amongst many that I had learned, and you had an hour presentation and I just had a book full of notes, but one of the things that just has stuck with me for years since that point is what I believed you call. At least I attributed to every time I say this, I’m like, well, Rory Vaden calls it the five X role. And it was one of the things that you had said is when you are teaching somebody to do something, you do, it will take them five times as long to do it, which was such a profound thing.
JS (04:24):
Because when our paths first crossed three years ago, we had like two people on our team. And now we have upwards of 23 and it’s always going back to man. It is really, you got to slow down before you speed up. And so I always think to myself, if it takes me X to do this thing, it’s going to teach me and take somebody else at five X. So let’s build that into our plan. And it’s just given us so much permission to slow down before we speed up. So thank you friends for that legacy.
RV (04:51):
Well, and you nailed the word, so that permission. So for those of you that are listening. So this is from my second book procrastinate on purpose five permissions to multiply time which was what my Ted talk was based on. And that word is permission like it is. So this is the delegate chapter you’re talking about. And we, we call it the per the permission of imperfect and granting someone else. The permission of imperfect allows you to free yourself. Which I think is interesting. So that conversation is about time. And one of the things that we learned when we were studying and putting that together was that 80% done right by someone else is always better than a hundred percent done right by you.
JS (05:33):
Oh, hold on, hold on. We need to slow that down that you need to say that again for the people in the back, because you say it because it’s just your truth and you know it, but oftentimes it’s like, Rory, like, say that again, say it just to me, I’m sure your audience is like, he says it all the time. Listen, I need to hear it. in Rory’s voice so that it sits in the back of the crevices of my mind. Please
RV (05:54):
I’ll say it. And then I want to segue to why saying it again. So 80% done right by someone else is always better than a hundred percent done right by you. And we call it the permission of imperfect and it’s it’s it’s the struggle is what got you here as a performer, won’t get you there as a leader because you got here by perfection and being good and crushing it and doing everything neatly and tightly in organized. But when you become a leader, it’s not about doing things yourself. It’s about getting other people to do. And so you have to grant yourself some imperfect. When I hear you talk about getting on camera and doing reels, that same emotional permission of imperfection is something that I’ve learned from you is just like, it’s the same thing where you go, you’ve got to give up that feeling of control and being perfect so that you can create I mean, I feel like that’s a big part of your message. [inaudible]
JS (07:00):
A hundred percent, a hundred percent. If I, if, if we can just get down to that, like I’ve often said, if I could write you a permission slip, I would, in fact, I’m telling you why I have no, I’m not writing a book right now. I have no plans. I’m not pitching. So if people are listening, I was like, I’m an agent. No, no, no. I don’t need to get the DMS. I’m nowhere near that. I know the title of my book. I know the purpose of my book. I am not ready to be a vessel for the book, but let me just tell you that what I know to be, to be certain is on the very last page, I am going to have a template for a permission slip, and people are going to write their name in, and they’re going to write the thing that they want permission to do.
JS (07:39):
Now, I don’t care what you do with that piece of paper. You can put it on your fridge. You can put on a wall, you could take a picture of it. It could be a screensaver because oftentimes we are looking for people to give us permission. When the only people who can give us permission is ourselves. But sometimes it’s nice to hear it from somebody else. I asked you Rory to repeat it back to me because that message is something I needed to hear this week. And I’m going to keep on replaying it because 80% perfect by somebody else is better than a hundred percent perfect by me. And that’s the thing I needed to hear. So yes, and amen. That’s where we started this conversation. We are hitting the ground running. I don’t even know if people, I don’t know if people’s hearts are prepared. People need to prepare their hearts for the heat that the Jay star and Roy are bringing in
RV (08:27):
And let it be done. When you get off this call, you’re just going to have to shorten your Instagram handle to J-star this is happening. So can you tell us about the early days? That’s one of my favorite things about this show is, you know, people are listening and it’s you know, they see, they see you and frankly go, holy moly, like this, this woman’s awesome. She’s crushing it. She’s up. People should make money, like tons of followers and stuff. And one of the things we want this show to be is tell me how it was when nobody was there. Tell me how it was when you posted a video. And there weren’t hundreds of thousands of people. And there weren’t views, like, take us back to how you got started and like, what did you do? And, and how did you feel? And like, how did, how did this come about for you?
JS (09:18):
Well, before I answer, I actually do want to call something out and it’s like very, very, very clear. And it is my truth is that for every person who says, wow, she’s crushing it, she’s doing a great job. I know there’s about three. Who’s like, she’s a hot mess. She’s not that talented. She’s not saying anything new. That’s not a great idea. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, I was accidentally BCC on an email where somebody said, oh yes, yes. Not that innovative. I’ve seen better in reference to the thing that I was working on. And I’m like, I sat on it. Right. I sat on it and I was like, should I say something? Am I going to be a petty, Betty? And I let it go then, and then said, person asked for a favor. I agreed to the favor. I shared my insight and advice.
JS (10:08):
And I also sent a screen grab. And I just said, I saw it, but we’re still cool. But the best thing that you could do in our relationship moving forward is if you tell me directly and this person agreed this person, so let’s just start there, right. Because I don’t wake up and be like, oh my God, it’s so great on social. Everybody loves me. Everybody sees I’m crushing it. No, there are more people who do not like what I do. And to that, I say yes. And amen. I would rather be disliked for a hundred percent of who I am than to be liked for a carbon copy of who people think I need to be. So thank you for you thinking I’m doing great. Thank you for being a champion of who I am. But I also realize there’s a ton of people who don’t like me, but I would rather have somebody not like me or entirely like me being lukewarm.
JS (11:00):
Having lukewarm followers is not my cup of tea. That’s never the thing I would want to do. One of two things. And this goes back to building a brand. I want to attract, or I want to repel. If I am not doing one of those two things, I’m doing a disservice to my brand, into the experience. I really believe with all my heart that a personal brand goes farther with a small group of people who wildly believe in the mission and the ethos and who you are. Then a lot of people are kind of like cool, forgettable, not sure I care enough to have an opinion. And so I know that it might be a little counter opposite or a little intuitive. So as I get into like origin stories, like, please know, I don’t think I’m the best thing since like flour tortillas. That’s not the case.
JS (11:39):
I just do my thing. And if some people like it great and have others, don’t, it’s equally as great. So I so one of the things as we kind of started building things out was I am the, of an immigrant I’m first-generation Latina first generation college student first-generation post-grad. I went to UCLA law school on a full academic scholarship, and I’m also first generation law school dropout. My mom had brain cancer and she had a relapse when I was in my first year of law school. And it really brought to the surface asking a big question of why, what am I doing? And I believed that getting a degree or having multiple letters after my name would be the ticket out of the body of would be a way for my family to move from one socioeconomic level to another. But I never asked if that was the thing I was supposed to be doing.
JS (12:30):
And so in combination with my mom’s relapse and culmination being me being wildly unhappy, and in combination with me having my first bout with depression, I was like, I’m unhappy. And this isn’t working. And when I gave myself again and let’s talk about permission is I couldn’t give myself the permission to truly ask what it is I was supposed to do, because that’s not, when you do, when you’re a daughter of an immigrant, like you see your parents do whatever it takes to put food on the table. And so all of a sudden it felt very luxurious for me. Like, let me punch suffocate. What makes me happy? It’s a very American notion what makes me happy? And that’s all the thing that my parents wanted, but I felt like the weight and the responsibility being the eldest of five children. And again, it was a story I’m telling myself.
JS (13:11):
So then we’re sitting at dinner and my husband has the conversation and says, well, what do you want to do? And it was the first time in my entire life where I’m like, what do I want to do? And I vocalized that I wanted to be a photographer. And he said, great, but you don’t own a camera like that might help. So decide to get a camera. And the thing that I realized as most people starting, any, anything, this is the conversation happens in 2005. I get a camera 2006. Okay. I get my first gig paid gig late 2006. And then 2007 is when I file a DBA, like 2007 is my first year of business. And I was terrible. I was terrible. I wasn’t even bad. It was like, so my daddy is the pastor of a church in east Los Angeles. And so, you know, you’re really bad when parishioners of the church don’t even want you to shoot their photos for free.
JS (14:08):
Like, you gotta, you gotta be real bad. I was like, yo, they’ll look, God, like, you know, it’s like, there’s like, where’s the nepotism here. So you know, that’s the case. But the thing that I started to do, which was very new at the time was to share what I was learning. And a lot of people who were seasoned in the industry, if they happen to see the content that I was putting out. And by this time there wasn’t social media, it was just putting out on a blog. I was putting out the blog on my journey, what I was doing, what I was learning, the pitfalls and the struggles and people who are seasoned, who happened to see that would be like, well, that’s a stupid idea. Nobody like nobody cares where you’re going on vacation or nobody cares what you’re shooting, sweetheart.
JS (14:42):
Why don’t you just get a camera and get some practice? And number one, I agree with the sentiment, but what happened was the climate of the way that businesses were being built was wildly changing. And the thing that I understood early on as a result of putting stuff out imperfectly, was that people were buying a highly emotional pro service wedding photography, which is the thing that I was doing, having no idea of the intellectual property or the talent that it took to create the thing that we did. So photographers want to lead with the camera, the gear, the awards, the studio, the albums, the flash, and then along comes somebody and breaks the paradigm of listen. You’re selling something that people really don’t understand. If I could sell on emotion, that somebody would invest with me as the photographer, in addition to the photography, the game shifted.
JS (15:29):
That’s what I started to do. So I was writing blog posts when nobody were reading blogs, I started getting on Twitter early days of Twitter. And I’m just like, let me just see what I can do here. And I realized that what was happening on the blog was unidirectional conversation. I was writing about what I was doing and people would come and read, but it was coming to me. Very little dialogue. Twitter changed the game in that the dialogue became two-way. And I started realizing that I can create experiences. Having somebody have an affinity toward me or the thing that I was creating simply by responding. Now, this is not, I was having a two-way conversation because my work was so good or my business savvy was so impeccable. It was truly, people started caring about what I was producing simply because I cared about them.
JS (16:11):
So I learned that in 2009, 2010, and that has been foundational when it comes to building a brand on social and on the next big thing, people are like, oh, well Jasmine’s about Instagram. And I was like, yes, but I was about blogging heavily. I was getting 25,000 unique views a day before social media came around and I started realizing, okay, I’m going to start building a hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. And then all of a sudden Facebook came around and I did the same with hundreds of thousands on Facebook. So you tell me the next thing I need to do. So worry. If you were to tell me Jasmine, to build a personal brand, you need a ride to donkeys and a clown suit and be whistling to kazoo. Watch me buy a kazoo. I will do whatever it takes to make somebody feel something about me. And I’m less concerned about being perfect. The most talented, the most qualified or the richest that’s in me. And I could be wrong to me. A foundation of a brand is what somebody says about you when you’re not in the room. And the way that you buttress, what people say is about caring about them first, before you want them to care about you.
RV (17:06):
Yeah, that was so good. Although I do think J star could be a kazoo.
JS (17:13):
Why don’t we, why don’t we for every person that leaves a review for the podcast, we send a little J star kazoo
RV (17:19):
Is blown up a Shopify store, J star. Cause yeah, so, well, I mean, that’s the irony of the whole personal brand. Like even the, even the, even the name, personal brand, it’s like, it makes you think it’s about you. And it’s like, it’s not about like the more you, the irony is, the more you care about yourself, the more you’re worried about what other people think. The more you’re trying to put out perfect content for you, like the less effective, it feels like it’s such a great paradox. Yes.
JS (17:54):
A thousand percent, a thousand percent. Like you have a stronger personal brand when people have an opinion about you. Like you have a stronger personal brand when people feel like you are never above taking the time that you have to respond to a question or comment. Now, do I think that you need to respond to every comment in every DM? Well, it depends on your bandwidth, but as long as you know, you’re walking in integrity that you’re doing as much as you can, however you can, than anybody else can’t expect enough. And people feel it, people do feel it.
RV (18:24):
Yeah. So I want to talk about the platforms for a second. Cause, cause you know, the principle here is the same and I think brand builders group operates more in principles that we do in tactics. Like we’re where frankly, we’ve never been that strong at like the keeping up. We’re not moving fast enough. I think a lot of times to keep up with some of the tactics and algorithms and things like that. But the, you went from blogging to Twitter, to Facebook, Instagram, these
JS (18:53):
Youtube in the middle, the YouTube in the middle and then Snapchat and Pinterest and clubhouse.
RV (18:58):
Are you still doing all of them? Like, so are you still doing all them? Is there one that you’re hanging out in and you know, people talk about all the platforms are different. Do you feel like they’re really different or is there, are there principles that make them the same and then kind of like, where are you now? Like where do you see this going?
JS (19:17):
So they’re, they’re different enough. And that’s the thing that I really want to put like a little, a little bit of a pin in is that I am not choosing a platform based on where I want to be. In fact, my preferred platform is not where my customer is now, but I do believe it’s where my customer will be in the future where I, if I have free time to spend on social, I’m going to tech talk. I just think it’s fascinating. I think the algorithm is spot on. I think that they serve content. So it almost feels like, you know, you like lift your head up and you’re like, where did two hours ago? And you know that they’ve hit on something when you hear that quite often from a lot of its users. And so am I still active on Facebook?
JS (19:56):
Yes. Am I still active on YouTube? Yes. Am I still active on Twitter? Yes. Do I have a Pinterest strategy? Yes. Am I still blogging? Yes. Am I on Instagram? Yes. But oftentimes we talk about like having a pillar strategy. So it’s quite often and I have a podcast, the Jasmine star show. So we have two pieces of anchor content. It might come in the form of a long form blog post or the form of a podcast. And then based on the topics of the blog post or the podcast, we then can create subsidiaries for each of our social platforms because Facebook, you can get a little bit more long form than people are used to normally reading on Instagram. So what we can do is we create like our primary, our primary platform. And that for me were our customers for social curator are right now is Instagram.
JS (20:37):
That’s where they’re spending. Most of their time, my focus is on Instagram. And then we have like a, like a tailwind from there. So it’s like a week and four hours later that post slightly different copy. So that it’s tailored for the Facebook group, Facebook users. And it feels native. So anything that at mentions or hashtags that existed on Instagram, they’re not going to be pushed over automatically to Facebook. We have to contextualize the content that we have. And then another four hours later, we’ll be putting that out on LinkedIn. If we created a video and like an IETV that is edited in a vertical format. So it feels native to the platform, but then it’ll also be edited in a horizontal format so that when we put it on YouTube, where we put it on Facebook, it feels native to it. So I don’t think that I am like, so all-knowing to create and choose a platform. I am just saying the more that the social curator content exists on these platforms, the higher likelihood it is to find a customer. Now I know that sounds wildly overwhelming to a lot of people, but I’ve been doing it now a decade. So I can think, I think
RV (21:38):
Content on the team. Yes,
JS (21:41):
But it’s not for my personal brand. That’s where social security that’s for social security. The vast, yeah, the vast majority. Definitely. So are
RV (21:48):
You editing all that? You’re not, I
JS (21:50):
Don’t edit, I don’t edit videos. I have a videographer, but when it comes to creating reels, I am creating reels. When it comes to recording podcasts, I’m recording the podcast. We do have a podcast producer, but it’s like, for us, it’s like, I’m doing like intro, body outro and we don’t have any ads. So it’s, we try to keep it as streamlined as possible. We want to work smarter, not harder. Now having said all of that, if somebody is listening and immediately hears, this says, this is so not for me. Great. It pushed you. Remember, I only want to attract a repel. So if I’m repelling you in situate, let me see if I can bring you back into the fold with one thing. Can you choose just one platform? And it’s not the platform that you really like, because you might just love Instagram, but if you know your customers on Facebook groups, okay, then you separate your time with where you want to consume versus where you want to create. And once you’ve chosen, where you want to create on the platform that you think is most inclined where your dream customer actually exists, then your strategy is just to focus on that platform and crazy enough. And just test me on this. The more that you’ve become familiar with one platform, the easier it is to scale when you go to a second, but right now resist the temptation to create for all platforms and always focus on one, build out the strategy, see what’s working and see if you can duplicate it on a secondary platform.
RV (23:01):
Yeah. And to what you’re saying, cause we, we teach something called the content diamond, which is a very, you know, similar kind of thing where you’re just taking one piece of content and, and fractionalizing, if you have the team, you have the capacity, you can do it. So it’s not that you’re creating unique content for each platform. It’s that you’re contextualizing the content you have for each platform.
JS (23:24):
Correct? Correct. And whereas right now, you know, Instagram is heavily indexing on Instagram reels. Well, there was a time where I was testing, repurposing the reels onto Facebook and it just didn’t work. That was just like the views weren’t there. It just sat, there was a really low engagement. And so what I took from that, and which is very clear is that people on Facebook are not about, so when I’m posting a reel, I will not be repurposing it on to Facebook. I might repurpose a real on Facebook stories because it disappears after 24 hours and a real on Facebook stories looks a little bit more native to that platform, which is fine. But what would go in its place would be something entirely else. That’s going to be serving the Facebook audience in a way that they deem most valuable.
RV (24:07):
And so how do you know, like you’re, you’re you you’ve said a couple of times like go where your audience is, by the way, you know my personal brand, when we exited our former in 2018, we had to start over from scratch all our social media, zero podcast, zero email database back on zero. So it’s been interesting building it from 2018 on versus when we had originally started back in 2008, but our team kind of runs, we run the content diamond on my stuff, but what AIG does, we’re just now starting to build AIG has been built in most of the companies, just the CEO, like she’s really been focused on the company. We’re starting to build out her personal brand, but what she’s been doing in the interim is exactly what you said. She consumes on Instagram, but she creates for LinkedIn.
JS (24:54):
Oh, I was going to say that I was like, y’all know, you guys are on LinkedIn. Like that’s, you know that that’s your platform easily. Yeah.
RV (25:00):
And she has a lot of traction there and you know, she just like has a lot of that background that like B2B. So she, she does it. But when you say go where your audience is in terms of where do you create for, are you doing that based on demographic data of who the users are? Are you doing that based on UTM tracking based on who’s clicking through and coming into funnels and buying, is there some other measure? Like how do you, like you’re saying your, your audience right now is on Instagram, but you’re not, you’re not saying that’s because you like to be on Instagram yourself necessarily. So how are you coming up with that answer?
JS (25:39):
So we know that our dream customer is 33 years old and she lives in Manhattan beach and she has two boys aged three and five and she drives a white and black range Rover. And her husband is a lawyer and they met in college. We also know that she was raised on a goat farm in Ohio, California, which is where she developed her craft at creating goats milk soap, which he started selling in Manhattan beach farmer’s market, where she came across a buyer from anthropology who really liked her product. And then she just realized that if she wanted to create a business, you can no longer have a hobby disguised as a business, but to actually create a business. And at this point in time where she’s looking at, how does she create the marketing resources and building brand resources online. And that is how our paths intersect
RV (26:21):
And you’re, and you’re, you’re saying she’s on Instagram.
JS (26:24):
That in order to determine with the platform you should be creating on, you must first and foremost know who your customer is, because if your customer is 33 years old with two kids in an affluent area and educated at this point in time, she’s on Instagram. Now, if you’re creating resources for millennials and it’s a printed tea shop, despite what people say, Snapchat is alive and well, I would over-index on Snapchat. If I was creating that type of content, I would also go over to TechTalk. Now, if my target demo is a 49 year old professional male or female who has expendable income to invest in like my business, coaching, marketing resources, whatever the case may be, I’d be on LinkedIn. So again, part of why people have a difficult time choosing the platform is they need to first and foremost clearly identify who they’re selling to. And then you could just simply look at the analytics, where are those people at? And then you go there.
RV (27:19):
Yeah, yeah. Got it. How do you make money from all this? Like so you put in all this work and you never sell on social media. Like it’s all this value you just don’t, you know, like where does the money happen? Like because if you just go online, you make reels of like five reasons you should, you know, buy my program, right? Like, no, one’s going to watch that. So how do you, how do you make that transition from I’m providing value and adding content to I’m converting a customer and collecting money. Cause mama has got to pay the bills.
JS (27:59):
So it’s not a one size fits all answer, but what I can say, and you and I had a conversation earlier today, and so forgive me for repeating, but I firmly believe that a strong entrepreneur does three things in their business. They build a brand, they market their business and they get sales. That’s like, that’s sort of the three. I mean, obviously there’s a lot of minutia and nuance in that, but those are the three main pillars. Social media is so good at building brand, giving somebody an emotional response to who you are or what it is you sell. The more that you give a K the more that you give away content, when you share your insight, your resources, how you’re set apart, bringing people on your journey. That’s all brand-building. What is somebody saying about you when you’re not in the room? AKA, when are they sending a post to one of their friends who says, you really got to check out this brewery guy?
RV (28:41):
That’s the litmus test right there when they, when they send their best friend. And they’re like, thank God to see this. That’s like,
JS (28:47):
But that’s brand. Now when somebody is getting somebody else to co-sign that brand experience, they’re going to get to your page. And once they scroll past two or three posts, you’re now marketing. You are then there to set somebody up to educate them on what it is you do. That’s marketing. You’re not selling at this point in time. You’re just talking about the benefits of drug testimonials. Talked about insights. You talk about how it is that you do what you do when you talk about this diamond thing. I’m so intrigued. One thing that I could do a heck of a lot better job is like owning frameworks. They’re like the five X role I member. Now. I’m like he’s diamond ring fraction. You know his content. And here I would like, we have pillars either way. We can definitely get better at that, but that’s marketing.
JS (29:25):
Now, if you will, you’ll be hard pressed to, for me to be creating a lot of content selling social curator. What we try to do is to create multiple funnels of getting people in by giving value. We know that our conversions are quite high because far before that they have typically been on our list or in a funnel for more than four months. Now let’s pause here. Social curator is $49 a month. For some people that’s like blink away money for other business owners. That’s a considerable chunk of money each month. However, if it took on average four months to convert somebody new on the list or in the funnel to actually a paying subscriber, how much more longer will it take for somebody to convert somebody at a $500 price point, a $5,000 price point of $50,000 price point. A lot of the misconceptions when it comes to I’m doing this work and I’m not getting sales.
JS (30:16):
And I’m like, yeah, how much is your product or service? The more expensive it is the longer the gestation period will be to convert them strictly on the back of social, which is why whenever I get a DM and someone says, Jasmine, I really want to learn how to build a brand. I’m not using my two thumbs to be like, well, first things first make like one, you’re not paying me for consulting. So what I want to do is I need a list of top 10 frequently asked questions. And then I created a free resource. That number one serves the heck out of them. Number two gives them such high valuable content. And number three empowers me to build trust. And when somebody says, Hey, Jasmine, I’m really wanting to build a personal brand. What I do is like, I’m so happy you’re here. Let me give you a download link to a free brand building guide.
JS (30:54):
I dropped the link for them when someone’s like Jasmine, I’m having a difficult time with Instagram rules here. Here’s a link of a resource that I created. Step-By-Step on how for you to do that. Jasmine, I really need an Instagram marketing guide. Got that for you. So what I’m doing is list building in my DMS because having somebody a paid to click from an Instagram post is so, so, so, so, so highly unlikely and largely happens for lower ticket items. And I’m telling you that as a monthly subscription for $49, the push to click to buy is so low. We have to do is cultivate. Give trust, gives so much value that they believe when they hand over their credit card, they’re going to be getting a five or 10 X return based on if that’s what I got for free. Imagine when I get on the inside,
RV (31:35):
That’s that’s so convicting to hear you say that to just your level, going, even for me to get someone, to pull their credit card out for 49 bucks a month, it’s hard. Like people, people have, you know, they have 25 people show up for one webinar and no one buys and they go, this stuff doesn’t work. And it’s like, no, like it takes trust. It’s trust. You have to build trust. And oh yeah.
JS (32:00):
So Roy, if we, if we tap there for a second, you have just said 25 people come on a, on a webinar. Now, if you’re converting on a webinar, I tip my hat to you. That’s hard. That’s where the gangsters play because you’re giving your heart and soul. And you’re speaking for 35 to 47 minutes before you get into a pitch. And then you sit and you hear crickets. And even though you had 25 people to show up for the webinar, you know, by the time you started pitching about four to 5% of them just completely clicked away. And they’re just waiting to get to that free Q and a, and then you’re like giving your last breath and you don’t see anything conversion. Now we have to say that none of that was in a void. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum. That’s just their inception point.
JS (32:40):
When I teach a webinar where we will get on average 30,000 people to sign up and around 3000 people will convert. You think I’m crying or bemoaning about the 27,000? I say, no, you might’ve said no, but I don’t hear no. What I hear is not yet. My objective is to come back and out, serve you so that you’re like me. I tried, I tried and I couldn’t resist giving her my credit card for the 27,000. I just want to be like, thank you for coming to the party. We’re just getting started. I think that that approaches so much of a better cause it keeps you going and it gives you a reason every day to get up and out serve,
RV (33:11):
Hey man, that is what we’re going to land the plane. Jasmine, where should people go to learn about you and social curator and everything? Your,
JS (33:20):
I appreciate you so much and all social platforms, you can find [email protected].
RV (33:28):
Huh. It will be J star, but not yet. [inaudible]
JS (33:33):
Let’s build on, let’s go and get that URL like J star kazoos let’s let’s make it happen on Shopify.
RV (33:39):
I love it. Well thanks for encouraging and just, just the honesty here and just keep doing what you’re doing. Like you’re, you’re inspiring people and yeah, like just keep winning because you inspire me. I know you inspire ha and so many people, it just it just get it’s tactical and all that, but it also gives you hope that you don’t have to be a shyster to do this. Like you don’t have to be someone that’s Hocking your stuff and pitching your stuff and making wild claims and you don’t have to use flashing yellow boxes all the time. And like, you can just out serve people and just love on them and build, build trust. And it still, it still, it comes around. So.
JS (34:27):
Oh yes. And amen. I thank you. I thank you. A thousand times over.

Ep 215: Video Content Systems with Marley Jaxx | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
Youtube and video domination. This is a topic that I am growing more and more interested in. Hey, it is Rory Vaden. Welcome to the influential personal brand podcast recap edition of the Marley Jaxx interview. I am doing this recap solo. I got no, AJ with me side-by-side today, but I’m going to break this one down for you. And I’m telling you, like, this is something, when I think about Rory Vaden, a Brand Builders Group, and in two years, it’s like, we better be dominating YouTube. Like we better be figuring this out. And so we’re learning a lot. And this, this interview with Marley was just fantastic because I just, I think this is so important. I think this is such a big part of, of the future and such a big part of like content marketing for professionals as is YouTube because you know, the, the big thing here and I’ll get into my, my, my top three takeaways from Marley.
RV (01:13):
But at a high level, the thing that I hope you’re getting, not just from this interview with Marley, but from some of the, several of the interviews that we’ve done with some video folks, and you know, some of our, some of our various friends, people like Sean Cannell and others that we’ve had on the show is just that, you know, video is the future of marketing period. I mean, it’s also the presence and in some ways it’s the past, but content marketing is, is video. And this even, even Instagrams found, or it was several months ago at this point, but Instagram sharp started as a, as a photo sharing app, right? That’s how it started. And, and, and Instagram, not their founder, but Instagram CEO announced that the, it is now a video tool, and that it is focusing on video.
RV (02:12):
That why, because the engagement is higher for everybody with video. And that’s what these apps want you to do is create content that keeps people on their platform. That’s what they’re interested in because of advertisers, which is how they, they make their money. And so the longer you keep people on their platform, the more ads they can show up their advertisers and the more money that they make. And so that’s why they want to keep people on these platforms. Well, that’s, you know, something like Instagram, Facebook, any of the social media platforms, but YouTube is really different because YouTube isn’t social media in, in a lot of the ways that you think about it because YouTube gets better over time. It’s like search engine optimization and you know, on Facebook and Instagram,
Speaker 2 (03:00):
The, the, the posts that get the most traction are the ones that were posted most recently. And so you have to constantly be pushing stuff out there. If you want people to see it, people don’t see, there’s not a lot of traffic to your old posts, but YouTube is the opposite search engine is the opposite. Like an article that you wrote on, on a blog 10 years ago is worth more in value than an article that you wrote last week. It’s got that one of the it’s got like more Google juice, so to speak, right? It’s got more history and everything with Google, which YouTube of course owns Google. So it’s, it’s all about kind of the legacy value of a piece of content. And, and it grows, it can grow over time, more like a fine wine. And so creating and producing video content and optimizing it in an intelligent way is a really big deal.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
And of course, you know, go back and listen to this, this interview, this episode that we did with Marley. But I just want you to really get that, or at least make sure you, you catch the gravitas of which I’m viewing that. And, and, and part of it is this, cause I think I’ve just missed the boat really badly on, on this. And so it stings a little bit every time I hear someone talk about YouTube and, and we’re still not there yet, right? Like we still don’t have our ducks in a row to like do this or working on other things. And our clients are going really fast. So our, you know, we’re focused on servicing them, but as we’re, as we turn towards scaling and ramping up our team, it’s like, this is a, this is a game that we up, we got win and, and video just lends itself well to professionals and experts because it’s all about trust.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
And I need you, if you want people to trust you and they trust you more, when they see you, they do. And they just, you trust the people that you see every day. That’s why we trust celebrities. We see them on TV. We trust them. So video is a big deal. But anyways, here’s my three by three takeaways from Marley, which I thought were acute not cute. Acute. They were acute. They were sharp. They were poignant. They are they’re, they’re not things that you always hear in the first one is more emotional. And it really hit me when she said, look, you’re going to be judged either way. Like the reason why we don’t turn on the camera is because we’re afraid of being judged, right? We’re afraid of some kid that made fun of us in elementary school, like seeing this video and be like, hi, you’re stupid, right?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Or, or the online haters or we’re, you know, we just, aren’t confident with how we appear on camera or whatever, whatever. You know, and, and her point is like, in your life in general, there is always a risk of doing it, but there’s a risk of not doing it. Also there there’s, there’s a, there is a cost of doing it. Like there’s a potential loss there. If you do something and you make a mistake, but there’s a bigger guaranteed loss and not doing it, not trying for it, not going for it, feeling this, calling this prompting in your heart, that, that you’re supposed to share your message or that you’re supposed to teach, or you’re supposed to encourage, you’re supposed to educate, inspire entertain, and you feel this prompting on your heart. And yet you’re losing to this, this self doubt, this, this fear, this fictitious imagination, like imaginative dream of all the bad things that could happen.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
And you’re not counterbalancing that with all the good things that might happen and ignoring the fact that if you don’t take this risk, then all you’re going to have is more of what you have right now. And that’s guaranteed. And so you’re going to be judged whether you do it or not, there is risk whether you do it or not there, if you do it, there’s gonna be, there’s gonna be losses, but there’s also gonna be wins. But if you don’t do it, then there’s only losses. There’s just, there’s just no attempts. And, and grasping this idea and go, and look, we got one life. Like we got one shot at this. We got one chance to show up and bring our best to the world. We got, we got one opportunity there. There’s one season that you’re going to be of like healthy mind and healthy body.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
We’re living in this incredible era where never before, has there been such an opportunity to use a tool like video and social and digital and, and, you know, whatever the internet to just impact the world. Like this is a very unique time in history. So do it like go for it. What are you waiting for? Take your shot, take a chance, start doing it. And, and, and who cares about all the reasons you might feel silly or what people are going to say that you don’t care about and, and, and do it. And by the way, like maybe you’ve been waiting, like you’ve been listening to this podcast and you haven’t done a free call with our team. Go freaking, do it, go to free brand free brand call.com/podcast. Right. Go there right now. Let me double check to make sure that link works here.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
A free brand call.com/podcast. It does work. Okay, great. Go there and request a call with our team and we will help get you started. Right. So, and if you’re not ready for that step, or maybe you’re already a member and you just haven’t turned on the camera, turn on the camera. Like I loved when I asked her, what’s the right, what is the best camera to have? And her answer was so perfect. I said, what’s the best camera to use. And she said that, she said, whatever camera you have, that is such a great answer. So you got to do it now. Now there are two things are more technical and these are just super quick ones. So that I thought, gosh, these are really interesting. I’ve never, I’ve never really heard someone say this so sharply. So my second big is the concept of an engagement break and engagement break.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
And so you, you often see people do a call to action at the end of your video, which you should do, right? Like whatever, like share this post with someone who needs to see it, or leave me a comment below or whatever. But especially if you’re creating content natively for YouTube, and it’s more like a nine minute, 10 minutes, 12, 15 minute video, whatever, having engagement breaks along the way, like in between the points of your video. And so if you’ve got three points that gives you a chance to say you know, between point number one and point, number two, you go, Hey, if you are not, if you, if you’re not already subscribed, press that subscribe button, like there’s a lot more to come. I got two other points to share, but make sure you’re tuning in and subscribe to what we got going on.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
All right. Point number two is right. And just that little kind of, it’s a great little break in the action. It’s an opportunity for another, you know, conversion. And I think it’s, it’s, it’s really brilliant and elegant and simple. It’s super simple and it’ll make a big difference. And the other thing is, you know, a lot of times you don’t keep people all the way to the end of the video. So take advantage of this. And I really, really love that. And you can tell people to leave a comment like rate, subscribe, share or give them a link to go off and do something else and buy whatever, whatever. So use engagement breaks, how simple, how Al straightforward, how practical I love it. And then number three was to put your link right in the description of the video below. And for me, like that should be obvious probably for someone like me, but it wasn’t.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
And so maybe it’s not as super obvious to you is to go, you know, the concept of a funnel, which is something that we, we teach. It’s it’s in our more advanced trainings for our members and our community. We teach them funnels in the strategy and the psychology and the technology and all the things you have to do to like make a funnel work. And they’re, they’re amazing, but like version 1.0, can just be a video of you providing value with a link down below for someone to click and request a call or click and go to your sales page and buy. And that’s so simple like that, that is a funnel like a funnel as anything that is proactively nurturing somebody in a way that you’re giving value. First, you’re giving first giving first giving first you’re adding value to their life. And then you offer them an opportunity to take a next step.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
What could be a more simple, elegant way of doing that than just posting a video on YouTube, teaching them some stuff, and then saying, Hey, if you want more click the link down below in the description, you know, or, or and, and that’s it, that’s a simple call to action. And when you do that, then it’s like each video that you create is like a warrior out there. Who’s like recruiting for you. It’s like a marketing warrior. This soldier who is living out there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, that anyone in the world can watch you click on when you’re not there. It’s this, it’s this scalable vehicle mechanism. It’s, it’s like if like hiring an employee for your company or something that is always there and you go, what happens if you create a thousand videos like that? Like somebody’s going to find you, somebody is going to buy from you.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
And if you’re just talking to them and you’re adding value, and then you offer them a simple call to action, click the click, the link in the description below, that’s it, that’s the whole call to action. Give value, click the link down in the description below that is a funnel, because a funnel is not about a certain amount of technology. It’s about psychology and the psychology is give before you ask help before you sell, right, like offer before you, before you inquire and, and a video does that. And that’s just something that it’s like, there’s just, there’s just no excuse you carrying around a phone in your pocket. You can record a video in literally, you know, two minutes you can turn on and record a video. And that’s what I’m starting to do. Like that is what’s crushing for us on social is no fancy graphics.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
No, you know, fancy borders. No, on-screen text no B roll, no music underneath. Just literally hold the phone up, hit record and talk and, and pro and say something inspiring. You know, it’s basically the three E’s it’s entertaining educational the w hold on, let me think here, you got, you got you’re entertaining. Oh. Or encouraging you’re entertaining, educational or encouraging in some mix of those. You have that power, like never before. The only thing that’s holding you back is fear is the only reason why you wouldn’t do it. You’re afraid, silly. Don’t be afraid. Don’t lose to your fear. Don’t let some stupid made up story in your mind about what might happen, be the thing that holds you back, right? Like if you could fast forward your life in two paths and go, okay, what if I could see ahead in the future?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Well, one path I took action. And the other one I did not. And you, and what if the one where you took action led to every single dream that you have coming true. If it’s like all of the, the deepest desires of your heart were all available and you could actually see and go. The only reason I never got to have that in my life is because I allowed myself to lose to a fictional made up story that I allowed to play in my head over and over. Imagine all the people that you could have helped that you didn’t help because you allowed yourself to fall victim to this fake fictional made up story. It’s not worth it. It’s not worth it. So don’t let it happen to you. You got to stay encouraged. You got to. And by the way, that’s why you got to stay plugged into what we’re doing.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
If you’re not following me on Instagram and AIJ and brand builders group, like you should be following us on LinkedIn and follow us on Instagram and make sure you’re tuning into the podcast. And goodness, if it’s, as soon as you can please become a member of the community, because we’re going to give you the encouragement, keep you going. We’re going to plug you in to other people who are on the same journey as you, because a lot of this battle is just, it is emotional, man. It, it is, it is about fear. It’s not just the tactical, it’s emotional, but if nothing else, please keep listening to podcasts. Please keep coming back. Yeah, leave us a comment. Let us know on iTunes, give us a review and tell us your feedback. What kind of guests do you want to hear more of? Like, who do you love? What are your favorite episodes? We read that stuff. We’ll pay attention to it. And just more than anything, just keep coming back, stay encouraged. Listen to that. Calling in your heart, go out, make something happen, serve somebody. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 214: Video Content Systems with Marley Jaxx

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 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.
RV (00:54):
One of the greatest mistakes that I have made in my career as a personal brand is I missed the boat on YouTube. I missed it badly. And then and then we sold all of our social media and I had to start over anyways. And so I started over on YouTube right away, but it’s difficult to build a following from scratch. And that’s one of the reasons why we brought in Marley Jaxx today. I had an opportunity to see her live. She spoke at an event called funnel hacking live with Russell Brunson. She shared the stage with him and Tony, Tony Robins, and Tom bill, you and Frank Kern. And she’s worked with a lot of other, she’s worked with other friends of ours. Alex Charfen has been a long time friend of ours. And we really just enjoyed her content talking about video and her specialty, I think is, is understanding video and YouTube and specifically using that to drive leads for your business. And also I think another specialty of hers is selling high dollar offers and kind of like more complex offerings, not just the, you know, the $200 video course, but you know, converting it into high high-dollar offers and high ticket stuff. So anyways, Marley, welcome to the show.
MJ (02:09):
Hello. Thank you for having me.
RV (02:11):
Yeah. So I wanted to just start with the, like the, the camera in general. I think, you know, a lot of people are still uncomfortable. They’re kind of camera shy. They you know, they, they get a little nervous about YouTube and just kind of video in general. Do you have any, like, what do you think are some of the big mistakes that people make or do you kind of have any advice for somebody who’s kind of sitting in that mode going like, yeah, I kind of want to step out of this, but I’m still nervous and reluctant. Yeah,
MJ (02:44):
Definitely. When people say they’re, they’re afraid of the camera, I usually try to lighten the mood and kind of joke. Like you’re not afraid of a camera, it’s a piece of metal and plastic, what you are afraid of. It’s the fear of stepping out of your comfort zone, but we know that nothing grows there, right. And the fear of what other people will think, but you’re going to be judged no matter what, whether you’re doing something you hate or that you love. So you may as well be judged for doing something that you love that you know, is making an impact and is part of your passion and purpose. So when people say that they’re afraid of the camera, it’s typically or shy, you know, it’s typically something like time tech or talent. It’s what do I say on camera? What kind of equipment do I use?
MJ (03:27):
What, what do people actually want to hear from me? And that’s where that’s kind of the, the personal development, the self discovery and the research of, of your audience around you and what you’re good at that people are asking you for that they want to hear your stories and your message. And, and just starting, you know, sometimes I compare Gary Vaynerchuk, who a lot of us know, he’s, he’s a very popular figure online and he’s got like, whatever, 5 million people following him now. But when he first started his YouTube channel years ago, wine library, TV, he didn’t have many people watching at the beginning, but he kept going. He kept finding his voice. You don’t always get to see the 10,000 hours someone puts in to find their voice. So when you start creating content, you first start creating content for you to find your voice. And that’s, what’s going to build the audience.
RV (04:17):
That’s interesting. Well, and on the tech thing for a second, cause I do think that people get tripped up and you know, at this, at this point, even now, like I have, I have a ring light and and my phone and I shoot all this stuff on the phone, but w w is there like a camera that you recommend or like a, something that’s not super intimidating just to get going, or like, what’s the, what’s the big tech thing that you, you just need to know? Like, if you just want to hit start and you just want to go and you don’t want to spend like six months learning about equipment and all that, but, and you also don’t have a bunch of money to hire a team. Like, what would you recommend for that?
MJ (04:56):
The best camera to use is the one you have. And often in these little smartphones that are attached to our hands or hips at all times, lady Gaga, Selena Gomez, they filmed some of the recent music videos on their iPhone and they’re good quality. And honestly, you can get a little tripod from Amazon. You can get a ring light, or you can even be in front of a window for natural lighting. And those can be really high quality. And the thing is, people want to watch people that are relatable. So sometimes when you think, oh, I got to get all this big fancy equipment and gorgeous luxury is backdrops. That can almost take the personality out of it. So I say, start with your iPhone and what you have.
RV (05:37):
Th th this is one of the things that we learned is you know, every week we kind of do like a little five minute video and we re we have some editors, they run a process, you know, just some, just some basic stock photography they drop in there. And some like royalty free music, those videos perform about a third as well as when I just am in a t-shirt with, with my hair on done. I turn on the camera and I just talk for two minutes and post a to GTV. It will outperform the professionally thing, three, two on every single time.
MJ (06:11):
Yeah. We want to see people that are relatable, that we can see ourselves in them to think they’re just like us.
RV (06:18):
Hmm. Yeah. I love that. I love that the best camera that you use is the one that you have. So, so, all right, so now we get up the courage to record you know, you mentioned time tech or talent when it comes to talent. I think of that as like, what selecting, what do I talk about? What do I say? You know, and everyone that listens to this podcast is, I mean, we have literally billionaire billionaire entrepreneurs who listened to this. We have New York times bestselling authors, and we have, you know, 16 year old kids, like in high school, trying to figure out how to make money on the side. So you’ve got a broad mix of people, but how do you know what to talk about? Or like, you know, what your talent is in terms of what you should put on camera?
MJ (07:07):
There’s a few different places that I recommend looking when you’re trying to come up with, what, what do I talk about? What are the topics to speak to? The first one is the frequently asked questions. You get, what are people asking you all the time? What are the, what’s the experience, the expertise, or the stories that they want to hear from you, that’s going to help them along their journey, or even think about the questions that you were asking that you wish that there was someone like you to answer for, for yourself years ago. And it’s also pretty easy to look right on YouTube or Google and see what are people searching for. Like, you know, when you start to type in the search bar and it autocompletes a tries to finish your sentence, to, to suggest what it thinks you’re typing. Well, that is auto-populated based on what people are searching for.
MJ (07:48):
So if you start to type in how to train your dog underneath that, it’ll be like how to train your dog, to sit, how to train your dog, to stay, how to train your dog to bark. All of those suggestions are video ideas, because that’s what people are searching for that like Google is giving you the data right there. You can also look at other people in your industry or niche and see what kind of content they’re creating. And you could do a similar topic with your own spin, your own story. And, and that’s going to be able to help your audience. And especially when you’re on YouTube, you want to be creating content that, you know, your audience is searching for because YouTube is a search engine, not a social media platform.
RV (08:26):
Yeah. That’s a big distinction to understand. And I, it’s almost like you know, the, the search thing, like you know, there’s all these, these different tools [inaudible] you know, SCM rush and yada yada, that will just, or even just Google, even just a Google like analytics. I forget what the, I think it’s Google keyword research, keyword research tool that will tell you, these are the topics that people are searching. Like these are the, the phrases people are searching for related to your topic. And it just gives you the content calendar. Or the other thing is Quora that website Cora has like a bunch of questions that people are asking. and so you just basically answer one video, answer, one question per video, you’re like off and running
MJ (09:10):
Done. And like, there’s another tool that we like there’s answer the public there’s SCR, where you can just type in a keyword and it’ll populate with tons of suggestions based on exactly how people are typing them into search. And you could make all of those videos, like you, you will never run out of content ideas as long as you just know where to look for them. Yeah.
RV (09:29):
I love that. So, all right. Now when it comes to optimizing and I will, I will openly admit here, this is where we are lazy. Like we is even saying it out loud. It’s so stupid. Cause it’s like, why bother doing all this work? And then not then not optimize the video, but we, we haven’t, we, I think the reason why we haven’t is because we’ve been like, just start just, you know, we have to start over our channel rebuild from scratch. It’s already discouraging. And it’s just like, let’s just get con like, just get going, but now I know we need to optimize and why do we need to do right. So, like after the video is up there, is there anything, or as you’re putting the video up there, like, are there a couple kind of key things that we should be paying attention to and spending the extra few minutes, like they’re worth the time to do? Yeah,
MJ (10:21):
Definitely. Well, the first thing is the title of the video. And you should, you should know what the title of the video is before you even start filming it so that you’re framing the message the right way that you’re answering what people are coming to. You don’t want to bait and switch them and you know, make them click off because they’re like this, isn’t what I clicked here for. So the title of the video based on how people are searching for it, and you’re just going to put that title of person, the headline of the video, and then in the description of the video, you want to be reiterating that title and other keywords similar to it. So that when YouTube and Google takes like just a snapshot of this video, they know this is the topic. And typically in my intro of the video, like when I’m physically, when I’m speaking on camera, I will say the title of the video in the beginning, in my first few sentences, because YouTube also they’ll transcribe your video. So then that also gives more keywords and input to what the video is about. And your thumbnail is also one of the most important things, because when you’re searching for a video topic and all these all these options come up underneath, you’re typically going to choose the video based on the thumbnail that stands out the image that’s more cooking or engaging or someone that you might think might look familiar if you know them already, someone that you already follow, or just that it captures your attention.
RV (11:39):
Yeah. That, you know, it’s interesting. So like one of our close friends is Lewis house. And, you know, I noticed that the titles of his videos and the thumbnails don’t match and his, his YouTube channel has really been a big, it’s really been a big focus this, this last couple of years, and they’ve, they’ve really done a great job of adding the optimization and you know, so like that thumbnail is interesting. It’s almost like it’s a whole separate strategy in and of itself to just go, like, what I mean, other, do you just basically go, what would someone need to see in order to click on this? Or like, is there any other kind of thought process that you use or for what makes a great time nail?
MJ (12:24):
The, the thumbnail is a whole other opportunity to hook people in. Like, it, it’s something that is, you know, is thumb stopping worthy. Like it’s going to stop their scroll because it, it, it stands out among the rest. So it’s not just like you smiling and the title written on, on the thumbnail. Again, it can be another like curiosity hook. Like you’ll never believe what this person said to me, or how did I make a million dollars in 12 months or whatever, like something that’s different than the title of the video. And then the picture next to it that really demonstrates that, like I saw one the other day from Alex, her mosey, he’s a channel that he’s just blowing up so fast he’s. So well-spoken he and his wife, Layla they’re both, their channels are incredible. And Alex had I think the title was something about like spending a hundred thousand dollars and the image was like influencer, like other influencers that we recognize, like grant Cardone and things like that. But then there was also like a supermodel in the background. So it makes you think like, what did he spend a hundred thousand dollars on? So it’s something that leaves that curiosity hook, or that question in your mind that you’re like, well, now I got to click this video to find out what exactly he’s talking about.
RV (13:35):
Yeah. I mean, the neuroscience, there is super powerful as the brain hates incomplete things and the brain hates unanswered questions. So it’s like, if you can create a question of some type with the thumbnail, it’s almost like we’re addicted to watch it to just to answer whatever that question is. Some people call them opening, like opening a loop or opening a question. So I love that. So then, all right, so now we got this put together, we’ve done some keyword research. We know people are searching for we’re answering this question. You mentioned early on you say in the first few minutes, what the video is about. Is there anything in terms of like, when you put together a video and you think about how to structure, like the outline of it in terms I’ve also heard competing answers on how long a video should be.
RV (14:33):
Some people are like, oh, they should be short. People’s attention spans are short, but then it’s like, well, no AVD average viewer duration is the primary metric on YouTube. And so they want it to be long, but they also pay attention to how many people watch the whole video. And if it’s too long, then people don’t watch the whole video. And I’m just like, oh my gosh, like what’s, can somebody just tell me what the answer is? Do you have a philosophy on the right kind of length of time and then like a general kind of outline for structuring one of these videos?
MJ (15:01):
Yeah. Typically, like we aim for an average of 10 minutes. And in that 10 minutes, we can insert about three content hooks, three different stories or frameworks, or three steps of one general framework inside that video. So that also makes it fairly easy to reach 10 minutes. When you’re thinking like, well, how am I gonna, what do I talk about for 10 minutes? So our formula for kind of putting together the script of the video is any intro. Like I mentioned, you want to repeat kind of the title of the video. So I’ll give an example. One of our clients, Cristy code red maybe her video is how let’s say that people are searching for, why am I dieting and exercising and not losing the weight? She’s a weight loss coach. So she could be like, if you’re someone that you are stalled, you’re at that plateau and just tank it that last few pounds off you’re in the right place you ever asked yourself, why am I dieting and exercising and not losing the weight?
MJ (15:54):
I’m going to answer that question for you in today’s video. So she reiterates the title in that intro. Then before going right into the topic, she’s going to give three content hooks. So this is teasing what’s coming up so that people hear that and they go, oh, I got to stay for 0.1 0.2 point and three for the things she’s about to talk about. But we want to introduce these again, as curiosity hooks, things are gonna, that are gonna open up that loop or that question. So she might say something like, first of all, I need to share with you the number one biggest lie in weight loss. This is one that we have all been fed to believe. And one that you no longer have to believe. And so that makes you think like, what is the number one biggest lie? Like I’ve been lied to.
MJ (16:33):
I need you to know, then she can go. And after that, I’m going to make sure. And then she could say and you know what? My clients come to me when they are stalled, when they’re plateaued, I changed these two things in their routine and they hit their weight loss goal faster than ever. Ooh, what are those two things? And then she said, and lastly, I’m going to share with you my strategy for how to get 10% of your body weight off every month without diet pills, shakes, or exercise. Oh, that sounds amazing. 10% every month. How do I do that? And so that creates these three bullet points. These three content hooks that are typically going to make people stay to the end because we’ve now opened up three loops and we want to keep people watching as long as possible.
RV (17:12):
And it almost sounds to me kind of like a table of contents to what a table of contents would be for a book, but you’re, you’re titling. And that actually made my mind go. Hmm. We should probably put more focus on the titles of our chapters, in a book for the same reason to help people to just like actually reading it. And that’s sort of what you’re doing, you’re doing here. So you tell them who the videos for, then you kinda like roll the little like bumper and then you just go in and you just do 0.1, 2.3. Yeah. I mean, it’s pretty straightforward. I mean, it’s pretty straightforward. Yeah. So how does it turn into money? So let’s not, let’s talk about that for a second. Right? Cause it’s like, okay, now I’m making videos. I’m, I’m putting them out there. How do we, yeah. How do we make this into, into money?
MJ (18:11):
So the greatest thing is that you’re creating content based on what, like we already said that people are searching for. So we know that by the time people land on our videos, they are already problem aware. They’re coming to solve a problem for themselves, that your video is now answering and sure you’re giving them lots of value. You’re giving them these steps, but then you’re like, Hey, if you want the framework or if you want the next thing you need, or if you want a done for you template or some kind of resource, that’s going to help you to now get results from what you just learned, click the link in the description below. And that is your lead magnet. It’s a freebie. Maybe it’s a low cost, low ticket thing to bring them into your value ladder, but that’s going to be the most important part is that you take them from YouTube into your funnel so that then you can nurture and ascend that relationship.
MJ (18:58):
And you can even bring them right on to maybe like you maybe bring them into a challenge. Maybe you bring them into a webinar, or we have clients that will bring them straight to a webinar or a challenge. And then from that can very quickly sell into high ticket because the clients that come through YouTube, like I said, they’re already problem aware. And often they’ll binge watch a few of your videos and then are just like, look at how much value I’ve gotten for free. Imagine how much I would get if I invested, if I spent some money and actually invested emotionally and financially into getting this result. And we have clients that say, if they get on a sales call with someone that has come through from YouTube, they’re like, they’re as good as sold. Like we have a a very high conversion rate because they’ve been warmed up so much through YouTube.
MJ (19:41):
So YouTube turns into an evergreen lead generation machine because people are finding this content completely organically just by searching for it. So this isn’t like Facebook lives where you can do a Facebook live or an Instagram story or whatever that disappears in the timeline. Like the algorithm pushes it down to put the more recent stuff up at the top. But with YouTube, like you can have content from years ago that is still showing up at the top of search. I have videos from 2016 that I made once never put any ad spend towards it. And it’s still generating leads for my business. Like I don’t even touch it. If I were to stop posting any more videos, these videos would still be building my email list. And because we have the funnel set up on the backend could still be driving sales consistently.
RV (20:24):
Gosh. Yeah, it’s so true. I mean, sometimes it’s like I did one Ted talk and it’s years ago we get more speaking leads from that Ted talk. Then every other thing we have ever done added up all together and multiplied by two, like I’m going, I should not do anything except just do another Ted talk. Like, because it’s, it’s that evergreen, that power of evergreen of YouTube, it’s totally different than the other, the other platforms. And so w you know, generally speaking, like here’s the thing that I always kind of struggle with is you go like one piece of content, one call to action. That’s super simple. Like, what you just said is basically deliver a 10 minute value bomb and then offer them a lead magnet to take the next step. And then that drops them into whatever your funnel sequence is, which is super simple. When, and how do you do the, like, hit the subscribe button? Like, do you w which one, like, which one do you do first, or do you do them both together or is it sometimes one and not the other, like, does it matter?
MJ (21:34):
So I never want, and this is what I recommend for clients is that we don’t wait until the end to ask for that subscribe. We want to be able to just go straight into the call to action. And even when we do the call to action, I don’t, I don’t want to lead my audience into thinking that I’m ramping down the videos. So you’re not like, all right, thanks so much for watching. I hope you liked this video. If you want some more value, click the link below, like we just go straight into it as if it’s another content hook. So like with the example with Christie about weight loss, and she’s talking about like the, how to lose 10% of your body weight every month, like this strategy works, I’ve seen this person, this, you can give some social proof and I want to help you with this next.
MJ (22:10):
So click the link below and join my 10 pound take-down challenge. That’s so she’s not like slowing her role. She’s, she’s going right into the call to action. But the best time to ask for that engagement is between your content hooks. So let’s say between content hook, number one and two. Now, before I tell you the two things that I change in my client’s routines, this is something that I’m talking about every single week. So hit that subscribe button to my YouTube channel. So I can help you with your weight loss goals, or it can be an engagement break asking for for a comment. Now before I go into my next point about the two things, I change in my clients for teens to help them to lose the weight I want to hear from you, what weight loss programs have you tried tell me in the comments below what’s worked, what didn’t work. Let’s all, let’s all collaborate here. So she’s, you’re always asking for the engagement in the middle of the video when people are still engaged and present. If you wait till the end, typically people are, you know, they’re losing their attention span by them. So we ask in the middle.
RV (23:05):
Yeah. So that’s the other one is about the comments. So you really have subscribe, comment, share, and then like opt in. So you just, you just kinda like vary them up and mix them in, but you do. I like, in-between the content, like, like I like that term engagement break. I’ve not actually heard that. Like, you take an engagement break, almost like a little commercial. I mean, it’s like, how, what on TV? It would be like a little commercial break, but it’s an engagement break.
MJ (23:33):
Yeah. It’s just subtle. So like, you don’t have to stop. And like, before I go into my next point, you could do that. That’s just the example I gave, but it could just go straight into the question. And by the way, I want to hear from you, like what, what weight loss programs have you tried comment below? I’d love to hear what’s worked or like, Hey, and by the way, I’m, I put out videos like this every week. So hit the subscribe button if you’re loving this just quick.
RV (23:56):
Yeah. That’s that that’s super quick. And then what about like the editing part? Like you know, multiple camera angles putting B roll footage under it, stock footage, all that kind of stuff. I mean, you know, jump cuts back and forth is all that pretty important. You can live without it. You do it if you can, or it doesn’t really matter. Yeah.
MJ (24:21):
Do whatever you have the capacity for. And honestly, I’m a huge proponent of outsourcing. And especially when you can hire people overseas who have a lower cost of living, that you can bless their lives by paying them more than even, you know, I hired my first video editor for $15 a video. And that was incredible for me, starting out as an entrepreneur. And that was more than what he, they were actually asking for at the time and my time, like how long it would take me longer to fill, to edit that video, then how long I could make $15 back. And then now knowing that that video can be an evergreen lead generation machine, I’m likely going to make more than $15 from that video. So I highly recommend outsourcing that, but when it comes to the editing quality and that can be a personal preference, it can you know, we want to make sure that it’s aligned with your branding, but typically you can totally go simple.
MJ (25:15):
Of course you want to cut out any ums and AHS or sometimes leave those in because it makes you human. But cut out any parts where maybe you tripped over your words and you restarted. One of the things that I really like to do though, is have attention resets. And that’s just very quickly like subtly moving the camera angle from like, you’re zoomed in now, you’re zoomed out. Now you’re a little to the left. Now you’re little to the right. And it’s very subtle that people don’t even really notice that it’s happening, but it just, it changes the view, but you don’t have to have different cameras to do that. It’s just all in the editing. And especially when you’re starting, I don’t film with multiple cameras. I think that that would be complicated. And what I want to focus on is the message that I’m sharing and who I’m speaking to. I don’t want my head to be caught up in the tech.
RV (26:03):
Yeah. I love that. Cause they’re just zooming in, zooming in zooming out to the side, they do all that. They can do all that in post-production. So the video, where do you find these people? So like you’ve mentioned this, this person and, and I, I’m a little bit shocked that there’s not, maybe I’m just looking in the wrong places, but in my mind, I would think that, you know, like there’s gotta be a whole bunch of kids graduating high school or college that are just like been editing YouTube videos since they were 12 years old and they can make good money doing this, but I’ve, I’ve had kind of a hard time finding these video editors. Are you just looking, where do you go to look? I mean, is this are you posting jobs on like job boards? Are you going to like Upwork and Fiverr and just doing that or, or like, where do you find them?
MJ (26:58):
My favorite ones to go to or Upwork online jobs.ph is specifically for people in the Philippines. So that’s another one that you can find people overseas. Fiverr is good fibers. Okay. I’ve just found more success on things like Upwork. And I think a big part of finding the right people is also you setting the right expectations and giving them what they need to be successful. So for us, like we have a very specific job description and examples of the videos that we want ours to look like. We have a branding guide of, of here’s what our colors are. Here’s here’s examples of videos that we’ve made even giving them some of the editing templates, like my lower third, how my name comes up on screen. It’s the exact thing. Every time I don’t have to ask him to, or my editor to recreate the wheel of here is the resource that I already have.
MJ (27:49):
And then from there, like go expecting that there’s going to be back and forth. Like I rarely even editors that I’ve worked with for years, we rarely have a, we call it like a one hit wonder, like it’s, it’s rarely perfect. On the first time there’s typically little things to go back and forth like, oh, the music I’m going to, I want to change this here to match the emotion a little bit better, or that lower third came in a few seconds too early. Let’s change this or oops, little typo here. Or the B roll. Let’s change out to this one. So expect that back and forth. And then the longer that you continue to mentor or nurture that relationship with your, with your new employee or contractor they, they can improve and get to know your branding and your style. So it’s, it’s just to be expected. And I actually have some YouTube videos on my channel where I talk about our hiring process for hiring video editors. So people can go check that out. Cause it’s, it’s quite a, kind of an intensive process because we want to make sure that we are finding the right people and that we’re setting them up for success.
RV (28:53):
Yeah. And the pay for this. I know I’m a very, it’s like you, you, you said you’ve been able to find people in the Philippines that can edit a good video if you give them some instruction and it’s, well, I mean, what’s the pay range that you’re usually seeing to like edit a video? Yeah.
MJ (29:09):
Sometimes people will will ask for like by the hour and they can be like five, seven, $10 an hour. Typically, and this is something that I learned from experience was I like to pay them by the project that we were both incentivized. Like you get paid quicker, if you are quick and efficient with this. And then I get quality of work at a, at a good timeframe. And we’re both incentivized. I had an editor once that would take longer to, to edit things so that they would get paid their hourly rate. So I just think it’s a win-win to be by the project.
RV (29:42):
Interesting. Yeah. I guess I’ve never thought about that. That way. You think of it as like, well, if they do an efficient job, they’ll make more money doing it by the project, but you’re in, you want to do that because if you’re happy, they still, you still have to be happy and sign off. That’s really cool. Well, Marley, this has been super helpful and tactical which is awesome. You mentioned, you know, you’ve got your YouTube channel. Where else do you want people to go? If they want to learn about you, connect more and see, like, see some of your other tips and stuff that you’ve got here on you know, video and you’re, you’re managing your YouTube channel and converting that stuff into revenue. Yeah, that’d be great.
MJ (30:20):
Well, YouTube is great. Instagram, instagram.com/marley jacks. I respond to all the direct messages there. So if anyone has any questions, please reach out. And we also have a free training. If you go to hello to high ticket.com, it’s a system that teaches you how to generate leads the hello through YouTube and the send them all the way to high ticket. So that’s hello to high ticket.com.
RV (30:43):
Well, there you have it friends Marley. This is just empowering. It’s just very clear and direct and straightforward. It makes, makes it feel like it’s doable. And that we could, we can pull this off. So thank you so much for sharing your expertise and your insight and your time. And we look forward to watching you. It feel like you’re a very much a rising star that you’re yeah, you got big, big things coming into your future, and we’re glad to catch you on the way up.
MJ (31:10):
I appreciate that. Thank you so much for having me

Ep 211: Gaining Instant Attention with Mike Michalowicz | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):

Here we go. We are back on the influential personal brand podcast recap edition today. We’re talking about the interview that we had with Mike Michalowicz, who is a long time friend of ours. Now at this point and a really brilliant author. We spent a lot of time getting to know Mike here in the last couple of years. And I know AJ has read some of some of his work and he’s just a friend, a friend of the community, and I am joined by AJ our CEO of brand builders group AJ. Welcome. Good to see you

AJV (00:32):

Always happy to be here.

RV (00:34):

Why don’t you kick us off today and share you know, let’s just kind of go back and forth. Here are our top three takeaways, but why don’t you get us started on, on what did you learn from Mike?

AJV (00:44):

Well, first of all, I had a really hard time watching this interview because all I could focus on was this enormous beard he has grown. So all I was like distracted the first 10 minutes of going, how long did that take? How does he care for this? Why is it so long? So first of all, just note like the first 10 minutes, I wasn’t quite focused, but what I did take away in those first few minutes, and I thought this was really interesting. So I don’t think this is necessarily like a tip or a technique or anything. I thought it was fascinating. And it’s that 98% of businesses in the United States are considered small business. Only 2% are considered enterprise businesses. So like, you know, your Amazon and your Googles and your Teslas only 2%, 98% are considered small business. And all of that, 98%, most of them are considered micro business, which means they’re doing under $1 million in revenue.

AJV (01:46):

Like that’s insane. And I just was like, wow, I think we forget because we focus on these huge companies all the time and the media and everyone’s case studies and comparisons. You’re talking about the Coca-Cola’s and the Amazon’s and Facebook. And it’s like, yo, that’s only 2% of us business. 98% are the rest of us like myself and Rory. And most of you listening and even a huge percentage of the 98% are micro businesses, which are doing less than a million dollars in revenue. And I think that’s really, really important when you choose what outlets to listen to. What books do you read what entrepreneurs to follow it’s. I think that’s really significant because I think there’s amazing. There’s amazing opportunities to learn from these enterprise businesses. Like I love learning about Disney and Nordstrom at the same time, I don’t have the ability or the funds or the Reese’s resources or the staff or the time to implement some of those things at that level.

AJV (02:56):

But if I was looking at someone who was just a slight step ahead of me, like, how are they doing this? I would be able to act so much faster and probably with a lot more confidence in going like, no they’re doing it. They’re just one step ahead of us. We got this versus like one day I want to have a customer service team, like the Ritz-Carlton and the four seasons, and we’re going to deliver, you know, Hain tattles to everyone who comes to our events. Right. and so I thought that it was really, really important just to take a step back and remember that for all of us, especially beaver, if you’re B2B and some capacity, it’s like, we’re really selling to other businesses who are considered small business and a huge percentage of those are micro business. And so how you reach those people, I think is fascinating, which is what the majority of the interview is about is your lead attraction process. But it’s just taking a moment and realizing 98% of American business or small business. And that’s what we’re going after. That’s who we’re selling to that’s who we’re a part of. And I guess that was a good statistic that I hadn’t heard in a really long time. So, you know, I was attracted to the, the statistic. But I just thought that was really good. So that’d be my first

RV (04:08):

Interesting, well, I think, you know, you make a good point there about like, if most businesses are micro businesses, then what would be relevant most relevant for us would be to learn from other micro businesses or ones that are a step ahead. And I think a lot of this conversation really was about gaining instant attention. And one of the things that he said was about relevance. He said, you know, our brain is designed to efficiently ignore things that are irrelevant. I thought that was such an eloquent, eloquent quote. Our brain is designed to efficiently ignore things that are irrelevant. And basically in marketing, you’ll hear this phrase. It’s, it’s a good phrase. It’s a good concept. It’s called a pattern interrupt that, that people, as they’re scrolling through their social media feed or zipping through their inbox, or just cruising along down the highway, you have to do something like that is a pattern interrupt that is sort of jarring or jolting to even get the split second opportunity to tell them what you do or introduce yourself.

RV (05:17):

And that you don’t, we don’t realize how much the brain is constantly ignoring and that the brain has to ignore there. The, I loved when he was talking about like, you know, if you just look around your office space, there’s so many things there that your brain is ignoring and you have to ignore it for survival as a way to like conserve mental capacity, to focus on like things that are really important and go that’s, that’s the battle here that marketing is really neuroscience and understanding the way that attention works. So I, that was, that was my first big takeaway.

AJV (05:50):

Yeah. I think that’s really, that’s really good and important. And similar and I had highlighted that as one of the, I thought that was a very interesting and what you said eloquent way of describing that the followup to that, and I’ll make this, my second point is don’t confuse different without rages. And I thought that was really good because I think some people think in order to stand out in order to differentiate, we’ve got to do something that’s completely outrageous. That’s never been done before. And that’s not necessarily the case, right. It’s just because you want to be different doesn’t mean you have to be so outrageous that it’s completely polarizing or it’s, you know, so outlandish that it takes some incredible ideas. Like that’s not really what we’re saying here. And I, I loved that whole concept of pattern interrupt and what it made me think about.

AJV (06:42):

And I thought about a couple of different examples of this. And for those of you who don’t know, you can go and Google the videos on this because they’re so stinking hilarious, but just a pattern interrupt, right? Just not outrageous, but different would be the advertising of some of these brands like Poo-Pourri right. Like that is just enough where it’s got personality to the brand. So you kind of fall in love with the personality of these people who were behind Poo-Pourri, which is like, you know, the spray that you spray on the toilet before you, you know, go to the bathroom, but the commercials are hilarious and they’re like these like mini series, like it’s, it’s not your typical 32nd commercial. They’re like three minutes. And it tells this whole storyline and you’re like, I got to see what happens next. What, what are they going to do?

AJV (07:27):

What are they going to say? And then the other one is the Squatty potty, right? It’s like that thing, which you put your feet on. I don’t know why are these are all about in the bathroom, but they’re so hilarious. And it kinda like gets you trapped in, and you’re no longer even paying attention to the product. You’re paying attention to the story. So it’s a true, you know, pattern interrupt. But that doesn’t mean it’s so outrageous that, you know, no one else could do it, that it’s just different enough that it catches your attention in a new way. So asking yourself, like, what is everyone in my industry doing? And then just think about how could I do it or talk about it or communicate it just a little bit differently. And I, I won’t go on a tangent on this because I could, but I thought about one of our clients and I hope he doesn’t mind me sharing the story.

AJV (08:16):

But one of our clients, his name is Matthew Davis and he’s an attorney, right. So he’s a lawyer and he’s got a law firm in Oklahoma. And, but here’s what I love about it is like, he’s also this like old school, like gun metal rocker. Right. So it’s like, you know, like eighties hair and like hardcore, like, you know, like I think about like seventies rock but just like Jammin, right? So I’m like white snake. And that’s like, that’s a huge party, like who he is deeply then this like professional, like white shirt and tie. And so they’ve got this whole new idea of talking about the lawyer. And they’re going to make all these hilarious, like, you know, F the law stuff. And I just think like, part of that is like, well, that is not what you would expect from the typical normal everyday attorney. Right. But it’s like just enough different where he’s infusing his personality. They’re not trying to be outrageous. They’re just living into how they’re already different and infusing that into their business. So a couple of rants there, but I thought those were all very relevant of you don’t have to be outrageous to be very different.

RV (09:24):

Yeah. That’s a good distinction. I, I, I made it, hadn’t made a note of that. My second takeaway was just kind of related to the first thing, but was that the brain immediately processes something as threat opportunity or ignorable, like threat opportunity or ignorable. And if you just think about like your website or your social posts or the start of your video, and you just go, okay, step back, detach yourself from the content for a second. And just look at the thing that you’re creating and ask yourself, is, are people going to see this as a threat and opportunity or an ignorable? And, and for most of us, you know, personal brands, we’re living in that space of opportunity. We want them to see opportunity. We want to, to quickly tell them what is in it for them, so that the viewer hears it.

RV (10:20):

And you know, this is, I recently heard a, an advanced training on like growing your YouTube channel. And this was one of the things that they were talking about is that basically the start, like the first seven seconds out of your mouth on a YouTube channel should be something like, Hey, welcome in this video, you’re going to learn blankety, blankety, blankety blank, and three reasons why you shouldn’t blankety, blankety blank, stay tuned, and we’ll get, you know, stick around. And then you go into the trailer and think, and so they’re like immediately hitting people with that opportunity. I think of the title tests that we teach at brand builders group to our, to our clients in our phase one course, one brain finding your brand DNA event. We talk about why most titles are terrible and it’s, it is very much connected to this conversation with Mike about just going, you have to demonstrate within milliseconds how, what you’re communicating is an opportunity for the viewer, for the reader, for the listener. And it’s very simple, but it’s, it’s super, super difficult. And you just, you just gotta be intentional about it.

AJV (11:26):

Yeah, no, I think that’s really good. You really went on like the science brain.

RV (11:31):

I know. Yeah. I was on the, I was in the nerdy. I was nerding out over this. I was like, Ooh, I like this.

AJV (11:37):

That’s awesome. Okay, so this is my last one. I’ll make it short and sweet since my other ones were really long. But it was he asked a simple question, like, what’s your number one source of lead generation. And for most small business, it’s word of mouth and words. It’s somewhat reactive, not a whole lot of proactive. And I think this is really true. It’s like even in our business, you know, ad say we’re just exiting our start-up mode from brand builders group. We’re three years in. And most definitely a hundred percent of the business that we have garnered in the last three years has come from word of mouth, through affiliates or clients or through friends and family and past clients. But it’s definitely been word of mouth. And here we are three years in and we’ve built an awesome, you know, multi seven-figure business off of word of mouth, but probably to go to the next level, we’re going to have to do something else.

AJV (12:31):

So it’s like, at what point do you prepare yourself to move from this reactive? You’re just doing such a good job. Everyone is talking about it to no. Now I’m intentionally going after growing and expanding, scaling my business with intentional proactive marketing. And if you really want to grow, then you’d have the responsibility to market. And if you believe in what you do, then you have the responsibility to go out and tell people about it. Right. And I think a lot of people very much put marketing off to the side of like, oh, we’re, we’re, we’re doing just fine. We’re going to let it grow organically. And I think that there’s no problem with that. And then there’s another school of thought of, well, if you really believe in what you do so much, that you think it helps and you think it changes lives, then you have the responsibility to get out there and make sure people know about it. And I think there’s, you know, somewhere in between is where a happy medium is probably where you should be. But I also believe that it’s like, you know, if what you do really helps, then it is your job to get out and tell people about it. I E marketing.

RV (13:34):

Yeah. That’s I think a marketing is just like one of those things. It’s a skill you have to learn to do it. You’ve got to do it consistently. You got to choose to do it over and over. And yeah. I think what you said there AIJ is so true. It’s like, so to scale, at some point you got to extend beyond just the, just the word of mouth. When I think about marketing lessons that we’ve learned which is also my third takeaway here, because Mike reminded me of it was that in your marketing, you have to tell people exactly what to do. Like the marketing cannot just be like brand awareness or impressions. You have to include a direct call to action, which would say, you know, make sure you like, make sure you follow, make sure you subscribe, make sure you share, leave a comment, register, click this link, sign up, go like you have to include the actual instruction and the order and the command because otherwise people don’t do it. And it just because you, they have to be told exactly what you want them to do. So don’t just tell them who you are, tell them what you want them to. And that’s a big, that’s a big thing that I’m trying to focus more on. And cause you see like all the top marketers are doing that all the time. They’re very clear with what’s the instruction that they are, they are driving with their audience. So on that

AJV (15:06):

Of you who are listening, what we want you to do is go and subscribe to the podcast, the influential personal brand podcast. Here’s what you need to do. Subscribe, make it very clear, just like that,

RV (15:20):

Just like that. And if you haven’t yet requested a call with our team, go to free brand, call.com and request a call with our team. And we can start working with you formally on, on crafting your custom personal brand strategy plan to help you build and monetize your, your impact in your influence. So check that out. Also keep coming back every single week. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand. Bye-Bye.

Ep 210: Gaining Instant Attention with Mike Michalowicz

RV (00:07):
[Inaudible] Hey, brand Builder, Rory Vaden here.
RV (00:10):
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 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. Well, my man, Mike Michalowicz is one of my favorite thinkers on entrepreneurship.
RV (01:00):
I, you probably have heard of his book profit first. He’s the best selling author of that book has got thousands of reviews on Amazon is very popular among the entire entrepreneurship community. He also has written several other books, clockwork fix this next. And he’s got a new book coming out at September of 2021. It’s called get different, which is what we’re going to talk about. But by age 35, Mike had founded and sold two different companies wanting to private equity, another to fortune 500 he’s a former small business columnist for the wall street journal. He was a make-over specialist on MSNBC and he travels the world speaking to entrepreneurs. He’s he? He is a speaker he’s on stages. We’ve met each other, gotten to know each other a little bit over the years. And I just think he is one of the most influential thinkers and thought leaders in the space of entrepreneurship. So Mike Michalowicz welcome to the show, man. I was in
MM (01:57):
The house. Yeah.
RV (02:00):
So get different is it what’s this is, this is the newest, you’ve got a nice, you’ve got a nice building brand, like a very consistent just body of work that you have done, which I love. So what’s, what’s get different. Why, why the need for this book? Why now?
MM (02:22):
So it’s the why I want to do is boil down what the essence of effective marketing is. And the reason is most small businesses are highly ineffective at marketing. Actually that’s the whole reason your business exists is because so many people, we can’t do it on our own, but what’s interesting is you know, this is kind of pre COVID with all the traveling that’s going on and starting to come back. But nothing like it was in 2019, is that when I go to events, I just ask people by show of hands, like an informal survey, what is your number one source of lead generation marketing cash lead flow. And I would say, raise your hand if this is the number one source word of mouth and like 90% of the hands go up. I like the whole survey is done with the first question and realized that most businesses are dependent upon their clients to do the marketing for them.
MM (03:18):
It’s a blessing. If your client wants to refer you business shows that they trust in your service. They think of you to a high enough degree to refer you. But at the same point, that means you’re at the whim of the customer to market for you. And so I said, what was the consequence of this? And consistently it’s these pendulum swings of too much opportunity for me to handle. And therefore we stopped doing service effectively, or we fumbled the sales process and we actually disappoint people, even in marketing and sales before they do business with us. And then the flip-flop side is no opportunity. We’re panicked. We have to start cutting costs. And as this kind of maniacal bipolar existence for business. So I wrote at different, I spent 10 years working on this. I’m in the research phases, extrapolating knowledge and stuff, but really in the last three years actively writing the formula and testing it and then writing the book and what it boils down to is a, a, we have responsibility to market like you, I, we, the listeners, if, if we have a offering that is of service for our clients, if our offering is better than the alternatives are considering competition doing it themselves, if what we offer is better, we have responsibility to market because if they don’t discover us, that’s going to be the client’s problem.
MM (04:41):
It’s, it’s admittedly our fault for not exposing our brand. So the first component is, is like, wow, people are afraid to market because we think it’s invasive. And the reframing is you must mark it because it’s the only way to be of service. Then I go through the elements of effective marketing and there’s, there’s these three key elements that if you miss any single one, your marketing is going to fumble. So that, that’s what the book’s about.
RV (05:04):
I love it. So maybe we’ll dance this into some of those three things, but the first thing is just going you know, word of mouth, isn’t predictable. It’s not scalable. It’s not controllable. There’s not a, there’s not a button that you can push or a lever that you can pull that says, bring me more clients. Right. And if you don’t have that, like if you don’t have that one button or that one lever, I feel that’s a pretty freaking scary place to operate. And you’re saying you think that, I mean, do you think most businesses, like the massive majority, the large majority, most som all, like, just kind of like how many people you think are living in that world.
MM (05:49):
Yeah. Yeah. So I’ll give you the shocking observation on buggy tobacco numbers. So the massive majority are highly ineffective and marketing, meaning they’re not doing any marketing whatsoever besides getting a referral from a customer which is not marketing in the first place. It’s this customers referring us out now, here, here’s the data that backs it. Over 98% of businesses are defined as small business in the U S so it’s only the, the very few that the mega corporations, the names recognize the Amazons and the Facebooks of the world are truly the exception. And others, 98% of small businesses 90% of them or thereabouts are micro enterprise, meaning they do less than a million dollars in revenue. So your company is Rory is the exception to most businesses. Most businesses are a handful of people. And the, the marketing is a kind of a shotgun or pot shot approach reactionary.
MM (06:50):
So we don’t have enough leads. Oh my gosh, why are clients referring us? We better do some marketing. Hey, I heard some potent rent. Someone ran Facebook ads in our industry and had great results to start running Facebook ads. So we go in, ill-prepared not understanding what the marketing is or how it works. And then when it fails to succeed, we’re like, oh, Facebook socks, no, we didn’t even understand the basic principles of how functions, but more importantly, we didn’t even know the basic functions of effective marketing. So it’s a very kind of knee-jerk reaction, which has no marketing at all. And sadly, that’s just the majority of business.
RV (07:23):
Yeah. Well, and it’s like, not only is the business vulnerable, the, the, you know, certainly the revenues vulnerable for the owner, but even the, the viability of that business. And so the job security of those people inside the business is a little, that feels, that feels pretty vulnerable. So what should small businesses be doing? Okay. So if they’re not, if they’re, if they don’t want to do that, or in addition, let’s say in addition to that, right. Cause you’re not saying word of mouth is bad. You’re not saying referrals.
MM (07:52):
I think it’s wonderful, but it’s Hey, right?
RV (07:55):
Yeah. Like what should we be doing if we’re not doing that?
MM (07:59):
Yeah. So if client referral is the icing, we need to be in a deliberate process. That’s the cake and what we first need to do. And we talked about this to some degree already is see that marketing is not a burden. It’s not to the client or prospect. Your targeting is not offensive. Marketing will either be ignored because it’s irrelevant or not seen. In fact, most cases it’s just not even seen. But when, and we’ve all been there, I, I need, you know, I’m, I’m so hungry. I need somebody to eat right now. I, gosh, I’m driving on the highway, going back to visit my Alma mater. Thank God for those marketing signs that say, you know, restaurant or diner this way. And that’s marketing because it’s satisfying a need. I have. If those signs didn’t exist, I wouldn’t find the restaurants. I wouldn’t know where they are.
MM (08:50):
Thank God for GPS has made. I can find it that way. So marketing satisfies need. And so we have to realize that marketing is a necessity, a responsibility that we also have because it serves clients. But then to market effectively, we have to go into these three elements that explained in the book. The first one is the acronym is called dad, dad. And the first one stands for differentiate marketing. Doesn’t get noticed once the same as everyone else’s. So you have to do something that is unique for your target audience. So for example, if my community of readers all get emails from other authors, all saying, you know, read my next book. Well, my message gets blurred into that. So I have to find a way to differentiate, to get noticed. And why is it so important is the human mind is wired to ignore what we expect and already qualified as irrelevant.
MM (09:48):
The classic example is, Hey friend, the first time I got, Hey, friend, email, Rory, I was like, who is this friend? Like, you know, it’s probably five, six years ago. I’m like, Hey friend. I’m like, oh my gosh, I have a friend called me friends. Like, which friend is this friendly friends? Like I told you, and as I was reading it, then I’m like, oh, this is not a real friend. This is a marketing message. That’s totally not applicable to me. Well, the next, Hey friend that came in a day or week later, I was like, Hey friend, last time was a marketing message. I read this, this one’s a marketing message. The third one, everyone, since the tens of thousands that got sent to me or hundreds, I don’t know what it is. I’ve never looked at one again because it’s habituated. Habituation is where our mind is designed to efficiently ignore stuff that is irrelevant.
MM (10:35):
And if you mark it and a common method that everyone else uses, you’re deemed irrelevant because it’s already known to be irrelevant. So stage one is do something different and don’t confuse different or outrageous. I’m not saying you’ve got to wear a bozo, the clown costume with those big floppy shoes. And you know, Wakawaka lapel and tell people to do business with you now will get noticed, but it may not pass some other tests. Just what is uncommon in your industry. Maybe you can take something from another industry introduced to your clients and there’ll be enough to awaken them. It’s like, if you and I were outside in your yard behind you there, and somebody squiggled on the ground, if it’s unexpected, we will take notice of it because we have to qualify it as a threat or opportunity.
RV (11:18):
Huh. Yeah. This is a kind of the concept of a pattern interrupt. Yes.
MM (11:24):
Right? What it is, it’s exactly what it is. So our mind, there’s a thing called the reticular formation. There’s a thing called reticular activating system that some people are familiar with. But reticular formation is this neural web that says the brainstem it’s job is to ignore 99.999. He goes on for a long time. Percent of the stimulus round is, and right now, where if you look around the that’s you’re at I look around mine. There’s stuff that could just draw our attention and go on for hours and hours as picked up this blue pen, I could look at it and say, well, you know who, why blue? First of all, who invented the word blue? Hello? You know, why is that rhyme with two? And whoever had the word and you know, it just goes on and on. It could just be endless consideration, but our minds are wired to ignore all the stimulus so that we can pay attention and gain value.
MM (12:11):
Hopefully the dialogue we’re having. So differentiate breaks the pattern and it works, but here’s the deal. It works for one 10th of a second. So I call us the blink test. If you do a deliberate blink now, as fast as you can, like your fastest blink ever, that’s still slower than how much consideration we put into something. Meaning as subconscious level, our mind can evaluate is something worth considering further or can it be flushed out in less than one 10th of a second? So differentiate gives you this one 10th of a second window, that gets you to the next part of our brain, which is the prefrontal cortex where conscious thought happens. And this part of our brain, the mind then says, okay, this guy know this got prioritized as something to consider that squiggly snake in the grass. Now I’m looking down at it.
MM (12:58):
I’m consciously considering this is this a snake. Does someone turn the hose on? It’s kind of flopping around what is this? Our brain is looking for three things, threat opportunity or ignorable. If there’s a threat, we’ll go into fight or flight or freeze. There’s other things, but we’ll, we’ll basically combat it. So you don’t want your marketing to be a threat. I can sell you, send you a mailing piece and say, you know, direct mail works so effectively when you put white powder in it, everyone pays attention. Yes. Yes. Everyone pays attention to the white powder coming out of the envelope, but it is a threat. I will go to jail. You know, you will call 9 1, 1. You will never want to receive or open that email, that message I sent. The next thing we go through, is this an opportunity? So by the
RV (13:37):
Way, on this one, so, you know, like people always, I was always confused. Cause I heard people say stuff like the first thing that people look at when you meet them is your hands. And so, you know, I heard someone say like, oh, that’s a reason why you should have, you know, get manicures or like take. And then I realized, I learned later that it’s like, no, they’re not inspecting your hands. Like, are they lotioned? They’re looking to see if you’re carrying a weapon. Like that’s what, when people say that, that’s what they mean is your brain is instantly calculating. Like, is, is there a, is there a threat? But even, but even that it’s, it’s almost like even a threat would be better than being ignored. People like to be like, you don’t, if, if you’re doing the same marketing as everyone else, you don’t even get that consideration. Like you don’t even make it to level two without the pattern interrupt. That’s correct. That’s correct.
MM (14:29):
A threat though. Causes problems down the marketing chain, but you’re right. Again, it guarantees attention. Like if you and I have a meeting, I said, Roy, we got to have serious conversation here. And I plopped down a gun. We’re gonna have a serious conversation. The thing is, you’re gonna punch me in the nose is the second. You get a chance. And take that gun away from me. So it causes conflict. The ignorable is a risk. Like if, if it’s, if we don’t see it, but once we get the attention of the prospect, if it’s not a threat, they will then say, is there an opportunity and an opportunity? Is there something that delivers value to me
RV (15:04):
By the way today is this attention, is that the D is differentiation, is this? And then the next
MM (15:09):
One is called attraction. Oh, okay. Yeah. So differentiate is stage one and it gets to the prefrontal cortex and the prefrontal cortex says, is this a threat run? Is it an opportunity consider or is it ignorable? And then it just, it qualifies it. Or it puts in the catalog to ignore in the future. If you get the opportunity at the differentiate level, you get forwarded on to the next step, which is attraction. Once I say, Hey Rory, I got I have someone that you got to meet wherever I get your attention. I got someone you gotta meet. Now I’ve positioned yourself for attraction. Attraction is where we go through the qualification process. Like, well, tell me about this person and why is this an opportunity? Our mind is now going into incremental segments of, should I continue this conversation? Is there a continuing value to me?
MM (15:57):
And yes, it plays out at multiple levels and we have a rapport. If I say someone you should meet. And that person is of no value to you. Since we have rapport, you may want to maintain that so we can maintain rapport, but the primary level is, are you going to derive direct benefit? And when I’m marketing, I have to show that very quickly, that direct benefit could be solving a problem. It can be entertaining you in some capacity, if we arming you for the future education it could be just a curiosity factor where you’re you keep people engaged in something as they learn more, as you kind of drip it out. The key to attraction is it happens in these millisecond increments also. So we’re, we’re looking to constantly stay engaged or dump out. And so our job during the attraction phase of our marketing is to keep people engaged.
MM (16:41):
The thing is the longer you try to maintain attraction, the less compelling it is to stay. And therefore people over time, if it’s not building a compelling argument, people are gonna drop out. So be concise and grow the compelling nature of it. So if it’s going to be long, make sure that keeps on building more and more interest engagement, not Dwayne waning, but growing. And then the final phase of effective marketing is the direct phase. So we differentiate to get attention, attract for engagement and then direct to compel the audience, to take a specific action. And is your, is your friend, our mutual friend, Don Miller says, you know, if you confuse, you lose and most people just kind of leave their clients or prospects in ambiguity. It’s like, w what do I do? I guess nothing. And they fade away. So here’s where we give them a specific action to take.
MM (17:33):
But the key for this is it needs to be reasonable. So say you’re in the market for a car and on the sorts of the sales guy and you come in and I’m like, Hey, we’re already nice to meet you. Give me a hundred thousand dollars. Now I’ll start searching for your dream car and wherever the distance difference is, I’ll it to you. You big? No, but what could happen is that you can come to the showroom and I say, Hey, Rory, would you be willing to give me your cell number? I will then text you pictures of the cars in our inventories. We discovered the cars to see if they match up with what you want. And we find the one and we can take the next step together. That may be much more reasonable action. And I have permission to market to you. So the direct stage for me, the person trying to do the sale, I want to move you or matriculate you as fast as I can toward the ultimate transaction by the car. And I need to balance that with you feeling safe at every step of the way. So that’s the three elements that
RV (18:26):
Huh. I love that. The, the, you said that last, that last line is, you said, I want to move you as fast as I can towards the transaction, but I need to be able to balance that, that you said an interesting phrase, you said with you feeling safe. Yeah. Why did you say that?
MM (18:48):
Yeah, because a threat is the trigger for avoidance or conflict. And so you’ll see every step of this, if the threat presents itself, transaction’s over. So if I differentiate, because I walk into the room with a gun, you’ll notice, but the transaction’s over. It’s about survival during the attract phase. I am putting threatening messages out there. If you don’t do this, I’m gonna destroy you. Now, I’m going to combat a situation at the very end, as I’m trying to direct you to take action. The second you feel threat, you know, you’re out you know, we’re, we’re like any other herd animal that the second that CA the antelope sniffs, a hunter it’s bolting. So I need to make sure that I’m moving you in reasonable substance, kind of the Goldilocks porridge. It needs to be just right, that you feel safe and comfortable taking that next step together that there’s trust building in these, these different interim transactions before the ultimate transaction. But also I need to do as quickly as possible
MM (19:42):
If I move so slowly,
MM (19:43):
We may never get to that transaction. You may be engaged in another marketing campaign or sales campaign. That’s moving into a transaction much faster, and I lose out. So I want to move you expeditiously to get to the transaction, but also reasonably so that you maintain a comfort level throughout.
RV (19:58):
Mm. Love it. Y’all I mean, that’s what I’m saying. Like these are so sharp and concise and understanding, you know, what I love about what you’re doing here, Mike is this book get different, is connecting the neuroscience of the brain into marketing strategy and the, and the fundamentals of marketing. So this has been so powerful. I think there are there’s, there are at least three ideas here that are going to stick with me for the longterm. Where do you want people to go? If they want to get, if they want to get a copy of the book or keep up with you and all, all the things you’re up to.
MM (20:38):
Yeah. I invite people to go to the one place, singular direct, right? Go to go get different.com. And the reason I invite people to go to site is if you want to get the book, there’s ways to get it through that site, all major retailers and so forth, but more importantly, there’s a resource link there. It has always different case studies. So we ran hundreds of companies through this, and we came up with these case studies. Some that you can apply immediately in your own business, out of the box marketing that is different, attractive, and gets results and case studies where you can just see how another company went through in the experience of implementing campaign like this. So it’s go get different.com.
RV (21:17):
We will put links to that. Go get different.com. I like the dad method. I like the dad model. Cause I’m dancing. That’s the stage of my life.
MM (21:29):
[Inaudible]
MM (21:29):
You’re saying at the end, any marketing you look at simply ask yourself, does data prove certain context is a little bit creepy when you’re older, but you
MM (21:36):
Know that doesn’t approve. We ain’t doing it.
RV (21:39):
I love it. I love it, man. Well, thanks for sharing your time and your wisdom and your insights. So sharp. I know we’ll see you again soon and we wish you the best. Thank you, brother.

Ep 193: How to Be an Amazing Show Host with Ken Coleman | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
On this episode of the influential personal brand podcast, I had a chance to interview her interview, a master interviewer about he prepares his interviews, his guests, uh, obviously I’ve known Ken for a long time. It was actually my first ever recurring media appearance was being on Ken’s old show back when he was in Atlanta. So this was really great. I’ve always loved Ken as an interviewer. And, uh, I’m joined of course by our CEO, my business partner, my wife, aj Vaden, uh, she is here. So we’re breaking this down. I’m going to hop right in to probably the, I guess probably the, the biggest takeaway or at least the first like this, this was a big one was when Ken said, don’t listen to what they are saying, but how they are saying it. And listen for the emotions, listen for kind of like underlying emotions that they might be experiencing that they’re not sharing.
RV (01:01):
And, you know, I thought this was really good because I, I think a lot of personal brands are doing interviews these days for whatever, for, for their, for their book, for their podcast, for their, you know, live show, whatever. But it also reminded me of the days of sales, like in teaching sales, where you’re, when, when you do sales training, you’re listening, you’re listening to what they’re saying, but you’re kind of listening for what’s behind the scenes. And I never really equated those two things like, oh, this is a skill that, you know, I kind of learned in sales that really applies to being a great interviewer. So that
AJV (01:36):
Was, that was the question. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That’s a good correlation there.
RV (01:42):
Yeah. It’s stuck that stuck with me. So what was your, what was your first takeaway? I
AJV (01:46):
Think the first one for me, I thought was really important and overarching is something that he talked about that he’s never intimidated when interviewing guests. And I think this is really important because we listened to a lot of podcasts interview. A lot of people, we are interviewed by a lot of people. Um, but I think there’s some real power in going first. Someone here was, you know, doing interviews of presidents and world leaders and various significance, uh, to give significantly low known individuals is that it’s like, you can’t be intimidated when you’re interviewing your guest because when they’re your guests, I get your show, right? Like you’re, you’re the boss, you’re, you’re the one leading the charge. And I loved, uh, he shared this example about Tom Brady, right. But he said, I’m never intimidated because of preparation and experience. Not because I know this person so well, or we’ve had all of these intimate conversations, it’s like, no, I prepared.
AJV (02:43):
And I’ve done this enough to know what questions make a difference and how to pull out really good answers. And he said, I love this little quote, relentless preparation leads to reflexive performance. I thought that was really good. Um, and then also just, you know, using this Tom example about, you know, him as a quarterback and how he can like lead this team on the field war, it’s like he didn’t go out there and do that for the first time. Right. That didn’t happen on try number one, but at some point by doing it enough times and preparing enough, it really becomes instinctive. Right. Um, and it’s, it’s not like you’re going out there going, okay, I’m going to study up on every single person to the, you know, millions degree, even though we’ve had other guests come on and say, that’s their unique advantage.
AJV (03:29):
Right. They do it. And that’s okay. But at some point you got to just be a good enough interviewer where you know, what questions to ask and you know, what to, how to pull out the question behind the question. And I thought your point was really good. It’s, it’s being intuitive enough that you can listen to the emotion versus just the words. But to me, it was more about, uh, you’ve got to know what you’re doing enough, that it really becomes instinctive so that you’re not worried about what’s the next question. I’m going to answer that you’re just present in the interview. Right? And I, this is how I’ll wrap this up. This was my, I thought this was the most interesting part in my first point, which was, he said always, always the best parts of the interviews are the ones that you do not plan. Right. It’s the best parts. And I just think that’s true in life. That’s true in life. Um, but it’s like the best part. So the parts that you don’t plan, but you can only do that if you’re being present and what’s really happening versus being nervous or worried about your list of questions or trying to make something fit, but don’t do that. Just be prepared enough and confident enough that you can be instinctively present in the conversation because that’s when the magic happens.
RV (04:44):
Yeah. I think it’s ironic how though, it’s almost like the more you plan, the more you’re able to do things spontaneous and unplanned just where that magic happens. So I want to dovetail on a dovetail off that because, um, this was going to be my third point. But since you were talking about prep, my second big takeaway was just how, like tactically, how he preps for an interview. I remember the interview we did with Jordan harbinger, which you can go back and listen to y’all, it’s still up on the podcast. Or if you, you go to our influential, personal brand, summit.com, you can listen to it there. But, um, Jordan reads like the entire book of every guest and his prep. That is his competitive advantage of one of the things he does. But he’s a, he’s a full-time interviewer, like that’s his gig. But what Ken shared here was that there were three, three things about how he preps number one asks, how can this guest provide value to my audience?
RV (05:43):
That is the core of it. Right. And putting yourself in the audience’s shoe shoes, um, was huge. And then he said, right, the last question first and right, the first question second, that was super tough. I love that. I thought it was super practical because it, if you write the last question first, it kind of tells you, oh, this is however we get there. This is sort of the arc that I’m wanting to go on, which I thought was powerful. And then the first question, second of which I think it’ll really stick with me, those two things. And he said, Hey, that first question, I always try to focus on an intimate detail from their life. That’s basically, I don’t think Ken said it quite like this, but at what resonated with me was he was going ask them a question about a detail of the, of their life that a normal interviewer never would have done enough prep work to know that question, to ask in the first place, because it creates that connectivity and it lets their guard down. Like it’s something they’re super passionate about. That’s maybe even unrelated to the interview. So a couple ninja tips there that are super practical on how to do expert interview prep. Yeah.
AJV (06:53):
Well, I’ll, I’ll dovetail off of your number two, because that was, um, because I, I wrote that down too, as a part of my point too, which is, you know, the most important thing is to really go, what’s the last question I want to ask and really like, you know, orchestrate the whole interview around knowing that, and everything’s leading up to that. Um, but I also wrote down a couple of other things that were very tactical and very technical. That would be very helpful. It’s just, first of all, you have to know as the host, right? The interviewer host of whatever it is that the interviewer is, what does your audience want to know? Question one, right? Question two. What is your audience need to know? And then three, what can my guest through their experience and expertise give to my audience based on those two things.
AJV (07:49):
I love that. And I think that is really a healthy juxtaposition of making the interview about both the guest and the audience. And I think one of the things that he had mentioned was that, you know, a great interviewer makes the interview all about the guest. And I would just add onto that is like a great interviewer, makes it all about the guest in relation to the audience. And I think it’s just this really healthy juxtaposition of like, yeah, it’s all about the guest. It’s not trying to highlight anything from the host experience or their background or their whatever. It’s like, no, this is really just about you, the guest and how you, the guests can provide value to the people who are listening. So what is, what do the people listening want to know? What do they need to know? And what can you, the guest give to them? And those two regards and your job as the interviewer is to make that connection.
RV (08:49):
That’s good. That’s good. Yeah. I like that. That, that’s a good thought. Like you have to know what your audience wants in order to be a great interviewer in order to be able to know what, what, how can I, what do I need to ask and how do I get the value out of them? You’ve got to be connected to your audience too. Um, I love that. So the, my third takeaway, which was really gonna be my second takeaway was about making your, how to do your interview in a way that it is entertaining also. And it kind of ties to what my first point was. But I asked Ken specifically about radio shows because radio shows are really difficult. Um, I did one for a while. Terrestrial radio Egypt probably remembers those day. I wasn’t very good at it,
AJV (09:32):
But we had the part of our past,
RV (09:38):
Well, it’s hard because it’s live and it’s, everything is compressed. There’s like, you’ve got, you’ve got six minutes to build rapport, get to know this person, get their backstory, get into the issue, solve their problem. And it’s like doing this in six minutes and be entertaining all at the same time. It’s really difficult. But when, when Ken basically said something to the extent of, of basically if you can get them to share their heart, it will be both powerful and entertaining. Um, so it’s like if they just talk from their head, it might be useful and educational, but if you can get them to share their heart, that will be entertaining, whether it’s sad or happy or, you know, like funny or, or profound or whatever. And so it’s kind of that same thing of what the first one was, was, was figure out what’s going in their heart and ask them about what’s going in their heart more than what’s going on in their head.
RV (10:37):
And I think, I think it gave me permission as, as a host. I’m sometimes also in the back of my mind, going, not only how can this be useful for people, but how can we make it sort of fun and engaging for them to listen to? And it, I feel like Ken relieved a little bit of that pressure to be like, Hey, like if you do this right, and you’re so present, like you were talking about ha like if you’re so present and you’re dialed in on like their real underlying emotion, that question behind the question, or like trying to access their heart, it’ll, it’ll be entertaining automatically as a by-product. So you can just like really focus on that. So that was a, that was a helpful thing for me.
AJV (11:16):
Yeah. Well, my third one isn’t necessarily something that I picked up, um, from the Ken Coleman, uh, interview, even though Howard, if you’re doing any sort of interviewing, you should definitely go listen to this. There’s some really great technical, uh, tips and, you know, just tactical strategies, like it’s really solid. However, my third point did it come from the interview, but more as a listener of a bunch of interviews and some things that I kind of jotted down throughout the course of this interview around like, no, this to me is just a listener sometimes. Like these are the things that are really awesome. And then also as a guest, right, as the person who’s being interviewed have some tidbits. And so I’ll just give a couple of quick are those, cause I think these are really relevant to the conversation. And the first one is like, I find that the best interviews of all times are the ones that are hyper-specific right.
AJV (12:07):
Like a great example, as I was listening to an interview, not too long ago. And one of the questions was, uh, what piece of leadership advice would you give to all the listeners it’s like, that is that it’s too broad. It’s too general. It’s too generic versus what is the one piece of advice that you would give to someone right now who is leading a team of people who do not see the vision. Right. And it’s the difference of something so broad in general that it doesn’t latch onto it doesn’t have that same, um, memorability factor. It’s like, I don’t even remember what the answer was. Um, but it was just at, it’s fine that there’s power in the specificity of the questions and the answers, um, that really allows you to hone in and go, oh yes. Tell me that. Right. Or also specific stories.
AJV (12:59):
Right. I remember some of the best interviews that I’ve ever heard are, do user stories. I still remember. And you would have thought, I’ve heard this conversation yesterday when it was like 10 years ago. And I think too, it’s the specificity of the stories as well as the points. Uh, but that has a lot to do with the person who’s asking the questions. But then also I would say as important as it is to be a great interviewer, people also need to learn how to be a great interviewee. Right. I think that is really important too, because I’ve listened to Sue minty interviews where I’m like, okay, that was not what it could have been to the interviewer, but also due to the interviewee, right? Giving generic, uh, stories and examples and not being prepared or not really answering the questions that the interviewer asked. Like, I hear that quite often. I’m like, well, I really wanted to hear the answer to that question. Not whatever you just shared.
RV (14:00):
That’s like a political move. It’s like the politicians, the politician answer
AJV (14:05):
The politician answer. Um, I think those things are really, uh, important. And here’s what I would say too, is just like a, an interview. We, uh, here’s something that I think is really important is not make it about the subject matter, but this is something that, um, Kim said, make it about the human, right. Like start with something that is humanizing. I remember one of my favorites, a podcast that I was a guest on here lately. And it just made me think about this, uh, was a good friend of ours, Carrie Jack, the happy hustle. Yeah.
AJV (14:39):
Um, but he was such a great interviewer, not just because he had prepared questions, but the enthusiasm he brought and the genuine excitement, like I felt genuinely like he was excited to be talking me. And he also does this like rapid fire list of questions to his guests, but they’re not always the same questions. And I think that’s really unique and it, you know, he was asking me about different, um, you know, uh, tricks or tips, uh, about all these different areas of your life. And I think it had nothing to do with personal branding, but it had everything to do with me, the guest, and it took the pressure off. It took the weight off of him and made go, okay, just for a minute, rapid fire, tell me the answers to these 10 things. And it’s really humanizing and fun and different. And I think really powerful to do in the very beginning because then it’s like, I get to know, even if it happens in 30 seconds, just enough about the personality that I’m like, oh yeah, I want to hear more of this. So those would be the things that really stick out to me. I’m going, those, those things are powerful of like, yeah, that person is fun and engaging in one of expected that, so it’s this humanizing factor that has nothing to do with the interview, but yet has everything to do with the conversation.
RV (15:56):
Yeah. That’s so cool. It’s being dialed into that person. Carrie does do a great job of that enthusiasm and making me feel so special and wanted. And that makes you perform better as the guests. I feel like when somebody is like, I’m excited that you’re here. Yeah. Um, well I love that stuff. Uh, again, very specific skill. That’s becoming more and more important and useful in the world in many, many ways, from one of the great interviewers of our time, Ken Coleman to go make sure you listen to the full episode, uh, and just keep coming back week after week, we’ll be here to support you on your journey. That’s all we got for this edition of the influential personal brand podcast.

Ep 192: How to Be an Amazing Show Host with Ken Coleman

RV (00:02):
Well, long before Ken Coleman was a Dave Ramsey personality. He and I were friends. He hosted a talk show in Atlanta and my appearing on his show as a regular guest was one of my first ever gigs like a regular recurring guest. And it’s amazing to see how Ken’s career has grown. He truly is like one of America’s number one, you know, like the number one career coach or one of the top career coaches, he is the bestselling author of a book called the proximity principle. And he hosts a nationally syndicated radio show now called the Ken Coleman show. And so he has been hosting. He also has, you know, he hosted the, the Rams, a YouTube channel. Now he has his own YouTube show. He hosts a lot of the events for entree leadership, the summit master series and all of these different events that they do. And he’s just an amazing guy and it’s been awesome to see how his career has evolved. His personal brand, at least, you know, as, as I perceive, it is really around helping people find purpose at work. And, and, you know, he’s got a new book coming out later this fall or around seven seven stages for how, how to really do that. And so anyways, I’m excited to bring Ken to the show. You haven’t talked to him in a while, buddy. It’s good to see you.
KC (01:30):
Good to see you. I feel like you couldn’t be any more of a beautiful serene setting behind you. There is. That is that real people need to know
RV (01:39):
It is that’s our, that is our back. That’s our backyard.
KC (01:42):
You have to finish the interview by running out and jumping in the pool so that we can see that that would be great.
RV (01:47):
So here’s the thing. So that’s the backyard, but I am in the basement. So it is a picture. It is, it is actually, it is a picture of the backyard. And then we just put it on a green screen. So it’s a little bit
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Magic of show business. I love it. Let me feel like I’m outside because I’m seeing it behind me, but I love it. So,
RV (02:11):
Buddy, can you just kind of catch us up on I mean, I thought it would be fun to talk to you specifically one, cause we’ve just been friends for years, but about hosting specifically. And I know you know, I was with Dave a couple of weeks ago. He told me that you had the interview with George W. Bush coming up. I know that you’ve done thousands of interviews on some of the biggest stages in the world. And and, and tell me about like the, tell me about the Ken Coleman show. Like what’s going on with what’s going on with that, where where’s it at now?
KC (02:45):
Yeah, so it’s very exciting. We’re now approaching 80 stations in national syndication. That’s just traditional talk radio. We’re also on Sirius XM live each day, Monday through Friday, I lead into the Dave Ramsey show. Of course we podcast that each day. So we have a daily podcast and because it is a, in my mind, it’ll always be, I’m an old school radio guy. So to me, it’s a radio show first, you know, now podcasts has become a part of our nomenclature, you know, in the United States for sure, and around the world. And so we take that live radio show and we, we put it out as a podcast because it is a color driven show. I do teach each day and give out great, you know, personal growth content and relevant data and stuff. That’s in the news that affects people that are trying to work on purpose and do what they were created to do, to make the contribution that they were created to make.
KC (03:42):
But we, you know, we do it on YouTube as well. So we have a different format on YouTube for that YouTube Bonnie’s cause it’s very different viewer and engagement habits there. So we’re all the platforms. But simply put, we are helping people discover what they were created to do, and then come up with a plan to make that purpose in your work or reality is based on this premise. We believe that everybody, every man and woman was created to fill a unique role in their work, that means that they are needed and it means they need to do it because somebody out there is relying on them, needs them to show up and be their best. There is a view of work. Roy, you know, this, there’s a view of work. That is, that is this cultural view that says that I work to live.
KC (04:31):
In other words, I work to get a paycheck. And then that paycheck allows me to take care of my basic needs. If there’s a little bit left over, we can make some memories with it. And so that’s pretty much the dominant view of work in the world. And I’m trying to put on a different set of glasses for people and say that you live to work. Now when some people hear that they’re like, Ooh, gross, right? That’s workoholism, it’s your identity. They’re all in place. Now what that means is, is that you were in fact created. I just believe that. So whether you’re a person of faith or not, I wouldn’t argue with anybody for two seconds over that, but I would say that you were created to work. If I substitute the word workout and put contribute, then it go, the yuckiness goes away and somebody goes, oh, that’s right.
KC (05:22):
Created to contribute. See, because the most confused person I’ve ever talked to on the phone or in person would say, can, I don’t know what I want to do. I just want to help people. Right? Most confused person will say that Y Aurora, you know, this, you’re a student of personal growth. You understand this. We all long to make a difference. We can just say it simply as that. So when we say created a contribute, created a work, I don’t think you can separate who you are personally from who you’re supposed to be professionally, meaning your worth is not in how you make your worth is not in your accolades, but, but you, but you get tremendous significance out of the contribution you make in work. So that’s the overriding philosophy of the Ken Coleman show. And so that’s what we’re doing.
KC (06:10):
We’ve got people that are calling in who don’t know what they want to do with their life. We’ve got people that are calling in that know what they want to do, but they don’t know how to get there. We’ve got people who call it, know what they want to do. They know how to get there and Roy, but they won’t do it because they’re scared to death. I get that too. Or they’re held back by financial or relationship issues. And then we have people who are on the path and they’re just trying to get promoted. They want to move up the ladder. They want that next wrong. And so I’m, I’m their coach. Well it starts out every phone call and the counselor first. Then I put on the coach hat and then I put on the cheerleader hat.
RV (06:43):
So I want to talk about that for a second because working with callers you know, when, when I think of hosting, there’s kind of two things I want to, hopefully we can get into one is working with callers. The other is preparing for like expert interviews, so to speak. But on the, on the working with callers which also could be, you know, in a live audience, you know, you’re engaging from stage with somebody, somebody out in the seats. It’s a, it’s a real skill set. And what’s amazing about terrestrial radio. Like I remember when I used to host a terrestrial radio show way back in the day, it’s such a short time, like you only have, how long is it? How long is an entire segment with with a guest? You don’t ask that a few minutes, right?
KC (07:26):
Yeah. Well, you you’re traditionally in an hour, you’re most radio clocks. You’re going to have at most an eight to 10 minute segment. So you might have a couple of eight minutes segments and you might have one 10 minute segment, but but yeah. And, and then you got at most, you know, six minutes with somebody you’re right. I mean, you have to, you have to,
RV (07:48):
That’s so hard. I mean, coaching calls usually are like an hour. I mean, and you’re having to do it in six minutes. So like, what are some of the, what are what’s some of your thought process? Because well, in, in, in, in, in here’s the, here’s the other thing that I’m, that I’m thinking about with you, right? Like, like I’m going, when you’re on a radio show, you’re trying to listen to the caller, you’re trying to get to the point, you’re trying to help them. And you’re also trying to make it quasi entertaining for the people who are listening in on the conversation. Like, how do you, what’s going on in your head when you’re working with a color like that? Yeah. That’s a really
KC (08:31):
Good question. And the reason that question is so good is because you can’t focus on those last two things. Oh, those last two things happen organically, which was well, so, so you got, so you got to coach them quickly, but you also got to be caused by entertaining. So it starts with though you got to listen to the caller. So you said, listen to the caller, give them the advice, coach them, but also make it quasi entertaining. Right? Right. That’s the way you worded it. So it starts with, you’ve got to really, really listen. And I’ve got the benefit of a call screener. So, you know, you get some of your clients who are thinking, Hey, maybe I want to do a call and podcast because what makes our show unique in the space that we’re in is that I’m one of the few, if, if only that are dominated by real live calls and by the way, not knocking anybody who does it this way.
KC (09:20):
Cause for some of your clients, it probably would be good to have somebody call them ahead of time, get some type of a worksheet and figure out what the issue is. Then they schedule a call to me. I think that’s cheating. If you really want to grow, you really want to grow as a thought leader. And as a content provider, put yourself on the high wire of taking calls live with no previous knowledge. So all I have when I’m taking a live call is I’ll see will from Kalamazoo, Michigan. And I’ll have one line that my associate producer will kind of say general direction of the call got two job opportunities deciding that’s all I know. And so what happens is, is I must listen. And now I’ve got a call screener who coaches that caller who’s nervous because it’s live right. And it’s a national show.
KC (10:08):
So coaches indigo get to your question pretty quickly. Be super specific. Ken will take over from there. So when they call in you, you have to listen. Not so much as to what they’re saying, but how they’re saying, like, so you, you can’t just listen to the question. Hey, Ken I got two job opportunities, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I need your help. You listen for their emotion. You listen for little clues and this happens over time. You don’t get this right away, but over time you realize that basically you’re getting the same five to seven questions every day. Just details. Details are different. And so what happens is you must listen. What is the real question? They may ask me this question, but they’re really asking me this question. Okay. So an example would be, instead of them, they’re not asking me they’re really not asking me which job they should take.
KC (11:09):
What they’re really asking me is, am I an idiot for wanting to take this other job because it’s less money. But it’s gonna eventually get where I want to go. The other one is on paper. It’s just a much better job. But this one over here, the heart’s telling me it’s right, is get the best payoff, little bit of risk. You see what I’m saying? So the question behind the question. So when I’m listening to the question, I’m trying to figure out what are they really asking? And many times I’ll just come right at him and go, well, what’s going on here? And so my job is to respond quickly with a scalpel. And the scalpel is the question. And from years and years and years of doing expert interviews with big name people and all this kind of stuff, and trying to develop conversation for an audience to get something from I’ve learned how to ask a question that goes about three levels deeper.
KC (12:00):
So the magic is listening for the real question, the emotion, the challenge, the desire, that’s what you’re listening for. And then you ask questions to get deeper to that and uncover it, not just for the caller to now answer your question full circle, but to uncover it for the listening audience and when the listening audience sees and hears that happening, it’s the theater of the mind because it’s radio or podcasts. So they’re picturing what I look like, the picture and what that person looks like. You can’t help it. And so that becomes entertaining when you uncover somebody and turn somebody’s light bulb on that’s entertaining as hell,
RV (12:37):
Man. So you’re just so basically it’s just, you’re focused on serving that one person and by virtue of doing that, it’ll be entertaining and engaging for the, for the listener. I like that. So that’s, that’s let me
KC (12:50):
Add one thing to that. You must serve the caller, but in serving the caller, you’re talking to the general audience too. You see what I’m saying? You’re taking, so I’m answering Will’s question, but as I’m teaching, I’m going and folks, Will’s not the only one, some of you out there right now are feeling the same way you drop in little moments like that. So it goes from Will’s application to their situation. They apply it, however they would, but they’re voyeuristically engaging, and that is entertaining to people.
RV (13:21):
Huh. And so you actually will step you’ll use language that kind of steps out of the conversation with you and will to kind of connect to the listener
KC (13:29):
And say yeah, sometimes I’ll apply it to everybody, but other times I’m just going to go deep with will and I’m going to go, will you feeling doubt? Why, what are you doubting? And by going really deep with him, everybody else in the audience, that’s listening to us, dealing with some doubt, they totally apply it to them.
RV (13:46):
So, so how do you go deep in six minutes? Like, so you
KC (13:51):
Have to listen to it. And I mean, I know you’re a busy guy, but you’d have to listen to it to really break that down the way I do it is again, I’m approaching 5,000 calls now in four years, live on the air. And so the repetitions, I know what I’m hearing. I, I mean, within 30 seconds, I usually know what’s really going on. And so your diamond did it dig, dig with questions and it seems
RV (14:16):
Like you’re really driving towards the emotion. Almost like it’s, it’s going, they’re asking whatever they’re asking. But the real issue is how are they feeling underneath the surface? And if you can, if you can get, if you can get them to open up about the emotions that they’re feeling, then we’re having a meaningful conversation. I must uncover their heart.
KC (14:40):
I’m all about uncovering their heart. I mean, I joke around with my wife about this, you know, but I don’t say this often publicly because it could sound cheesy, but I I’m in the business. I had a lady call today and she had two options. One was stay where she currently is where she’s crying once or twice a week. At the end of the day, she’s killing it. She’s making 180 grand. She’s really good at it. Loves the people there, but the job is stressing her out. She’s on the verge of burnout. And then she’s got this other opportunity where she’ll make 150 it’ll keep her on the same career path, keep her on the ladder. But it’s gonna be way less stressful. She may make 30 grand less and she’s called me. And instead of me telling her what I think, I just walk her through a series of questions and I get her to tell me, I said, I know what you should do cause I can hear it.
KC (15:29):
But I want you to tell us what are you leaning towards? Because I think your head’s telling you one thing and your heart’s telling you another is that right? And she goes, she starts giggling. And I’ve, I’ve had that call a hundred times where it’s a wrestling match between the head and the heart. So, but I got to get the color to tell me the voice of the head and then the voice of the heart. And then I go, before you called me, which way were you leaning? And she said, kid, I was 75%, one way, 75%. The other way I said, that’s impossible. She starts laughing again. I said, what’s your heart telling you to do? She goes, take the other job. And I go, what did you think I was going to say, she goes, you were going to tell me to follow my heart. She’s going to listen to my show long enough to know what I’m going to tell her, see the heart and the head should be in alignment, but it should always be the heart driving and the head joining.
RV (16:21):
And did I hear you say that you want them, there’s this wrestling match of the head and the heart and you want them to speak out both. What’s your head telling you and what’s your heart telling you? You try to get them to say them both out loud.
KC (16:37):
Absolutely do. And that’s for the audience. They think it’s for them, but it’s really audience because I want the audience to catch up and, and, and not just to follow along, but to see the exercise itself because that’s what we need to do. You and I have both been in a situations where we’ve been torn and we’ll speak to somebody that we know and we trust. And they’ll just however they do it. Maybe not as intentional as that, but they get us to that point where we go, I got to trust my heart here. My heart’s telling me this. I’m overthinking it up here. This is what the heart says is right. I’m going to go do it. And so then my head gets in alignment, but the problem is our brains are these logic machines. And that’s a wonderful thing from our creator, the greatest logic processor in the world, the greatest supercomputer of all times the brain.
KC (17:22):
But the problem is, is that I’ve been relearning this you and I’ve grown up in a world that kind of says our thoughts drive our feelings. I’m now totally reversing that and rethinking that and relearning that it’s our emotions that drive our thoughts. So when I have the emotion of fear, then my thoughts are going to all be about fear. And that drives my actions. So I’ve got to get my heart settled. And when I get my emotions in heart settled, then I can think better. And that’s, that’s that alignment. So when we’re talking about doing something that you love, these people call, they know ahead of time, they just want me to give them permission, right? Yep. Anyway, I just did with lots of questions. You’d be surprised how quick you can get to the hardest something with about the first of all, a really good question.
KC (18:12):
And then when somebody starts talking around it, see it’s my show and I’m in charge. So we’re all polite, real life. I’ll just stop and go stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. You didn’t answer my question. Let me ask it again. I’ve had people say kid. I say, what, what would you do? If, if, if money wasn’t an object and you couldn’t fail and you didn’t have to commit to the rest of your life, what would you do? I don’t know. I don’t remember the first time I did this almost threw up on my desk. It was in a moment. Okay. It was very Tony Robbins. I’ve watched Tony. I’ve studied Tony. And I remember the first time somebody said that to me and I let them right to the edge and they went, I don’t know. And in that moment I was like, okay, I can redirect, give them some advice and put them on hold and move on.
KC (18:54):
And in the moment were, I just went. That’s not true. You know, because while I was setting you up, but I’m going to do it again so that you can hear yourself one more time. I want you to see the thoughts. I asked you. If you could do something tomorrow where you knew you couldn’t fail, you absolutely loved it. And you have to commit to the rest of your life. What would you do? And I know that while I said that the second time, the same thought that you came up with the first time rolled through your head, you couldn’t help it. It popped up. And you’re not telling me because you’re scared or you’re doubtful now. No more excuses say it. And dude, I was totally terrified. I was like, if, if this person locks up on me, I don’t have a place to return to.
KC (19:36):
And would you believe it? That they said it blurted it out? Just like that. Now I’ve done that many, many times because here’s what I’ve learned. I’ve learned that when I create that vision for people, those word pictures, right? I say, what would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? What would you do if you knew you’d love it? What would you do if you didn’t, you have to commit to it. It’s just as fun work adventure, like no risk. It’s impossible for a human. Not to have some thoughts. All I’m doing is taking them on a little journey. And so you got to trust that the thoughts are there and then you gotta make them say it.
RV (20:11):
Yeah. I remember when I was getting radio Koshin they used to call that the slap where you kind of confront, you kind of can respond to the call or directly and kind of go, no, you’re not being honest. You’re like, there’s a, there’s something very powerful about that kind of moment of conflict where you, you force them to reconcile the truth that they’re like you said, they’re so afraid. They can’t even say it. That’s powerful. So let’s shift the conversation. That’s awesome, man. I love this. So I want to shift the conversation to the expert. I mean, you got to interview George Bush. Like it’s gotta be a little bit intimidating. I mean, I, I know, I mean, at this point, I know you’ve interviewed so many people, the different podcasts that you’ve hosted, the different radio shows and stuff. How do you prepare for an interview with,
KC (21:09):
You know? Yeah. All right. So I want to address the first thing. And, and when I, when I give you, I’m going to give you all my secret sauce, all right? I’m not, I can charge a lot of money for this, but I’m not intimidated. And there’s two reasons why I’m not intimidated. One is preparation and two is experience. Preparation is everything. And I’m about ready to give you the secret sauce of how I prepare an interview like this, to do it in front of thousands of people. Plus, you know, a former head of state, but I’ve said this many times, relentless preparation leads to reflexive performance. I’m going to say it again. Don’t you? Any of you steal that because I see it on social. I’m going to bust you. Relentless preparation leads to reflexive performance. The reason the great quarterbacks like Tom Brady or Bret farmer, John Elway Joe Montana, you could plug in the names, Dan Marino, we Marvel at how they can lead a team from the one yard line down to a touchdown with less than a minute, less than two minutes to go.
KC (22:08):
No time outs. We Marvel at that. Except what we fail to think about is they’ve practiced that two minute drill hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. Number one, number two, they’ve watched film. They know what the other team’s two-minute defense looks like. They know their place. They know wherever it’s supposed to go. So when they’re out there, they’re moving on instinct. Brett Farve is not this chess player out there. All of a sudden where he’s out thinking everybody know he’s instinctively reacting. He knows where his primary, secondary, third check downs. He knows he’s done it. And he knows how to get out of bounds. You know the thing. So these guys they’re relentlessly prepared so that they can reflexively perform. There’s no brain going on out there. It’s just all instinct. All right. So that’s the first thing. Secondly the experience that I’ve had, I’ve done so many interviews that at this point, while I’m honored to sit across from George W. Bush or Condoleezza rice, or Mark Burnett, or you name it. Okay. Jim Collins, Malcolm Gladwell, whatever those
RV (23:12):
It’s true. You got to interview Rory Vaden one time for like, that’s it, man,
KC (23:17):
That’s it? So the issue is, is that they’re experts in their bigger deal than me, for sure. But they’re still a human being. And in that moment, for whatever reason, they’ve submitted to a conversation with me. So I’m in charge. So I might as well act like I’m in charge because I’m in charge. Now how much charge I take is up to me. So I’ve learned that they’re just a human and they’re sitting there and most of them have never been interviewed really, really well. So if you really prepare, use the process, I’m about ready to unveil. Then you’re going to find that they’re going, this is enjoyable. This dude, this gal, they came prepared. They’re teasing me up. This is enjoyable. All right. So here’s the process. First thing I do, there are questions that I ask before I write the interview and writing the interview is the most important part of the interview.
KC (24:07):
One of the mistakes that a lot of people make is they get up there and have a general idea where they want to go, but they haven’t really thought through the process. They haven’t thought through the journey. They’re taking the audience on, because remember this isn’t about you as the interviewer, okay? Some of your clients are big brands and they become known as interviewers, big freaking deal. Okay? It’s not about you. It’s about the audience. And if you want to get praised for being an interviewer, well, you’re only going to do that when you generate and produce a great conversation. So most people get into this stuff and they’re kind of prepared and then they get nervous or they get caught up in the moment. Oh gosh, I’m talking to Georgia, a Bush and they get tongue tied. They don’t know where to go.
KC (24:48):
Or he takes them one direction. And they’re too busy looking at their next question, cause they’re not prepared. And they miss a nugget. That should be a rabbit trail that you go down. Hmm. The best part of of interviews are the parts you don’t plan. But the only way you can discover that, realize it in the moment Roy is because you’re so prepared that you can listen to the full answer. And when George Abbey gets George, w Bush gets done, you go, oh, here’s my next question. It’s right there. I’m already prepared. I glance at it. And I go, so here’s the process. First thing you do before you write the interview, you ask yourself, what does the audience want to know? That’s the first question. What does the audience want you to think about your audience? If you have a podcast or you’re at a leadership event, like I was at a leadership event, there’s 3000 leaders out there.
KC (25:38):
So what does the audience want to know? They have come to this event and what they want to know is something that will help them lead better. Right? You can just general as you want to make it. What do they want to know? Second question is, what do they need to know? Now? This is where we get more specific. So what does the audience want to know? Well, they want to know how to be a better leader, right? How to grow their company, whatever. What do they need to know? Well, now this is where you, as the interview, get a chance to shape the conversation to go. They want to be a better leader. They want to grow their company. So what do they need to be able to do that? Right? So if somebody comes in and they want to lose weight and they meet with a nutritionist and Tricia goes, okay, they want to lose weight or they want to get a, they want to lower their blood, blood cholesterol, whatever.
KC (26:24):
Well, okay. Now what do they need to know to be able to achieve the one? Okay. So that’s the, so you start writing these things down. Well, they need to know about leading in crisis. They need to know how to lead in collaboration. They need to know how to lead in conflict. Okay. Those are three separate buckets right there that I just went, oh, that’s what they need to know. Well, I’ve got a president of United States who can speak to those things. And that leads to your third question. What can my guest, through their experience and expertise? How can they meet those two needs? What they want to know and what they need to know. So what does the audience want to know? What do they need to know? And then, well, how can my guest meet those two needs? That’s where you start. And so what that starts to do is give you themes, conflict, collaboration, crisis, whatever.
KC (27:13):
So you start to get these themes and go, okay. Again, some themes. I’m just writing this stuff down on the paper. This is what I do core Rory, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I keep calling you. Corey. I just got with a marketing guy named Corey in our billing. It’s a Freudian slip. So, so I’m writing all this down, all these topics. So once I get my bank of topics, then I say, what’s the last question I want to ask. So I write the very last question first, right? First, first question I write is the last question. Why do you know why I do that? What do you think it is? What’s the reason. Hm.
RV (27:50):
I don’t know. Maybe that’s just what they’re going to remember.
KC (27:52):
Well, that’s where we’re ending. So, you know, it’s how you close a talk. So I want to know, where am I taking the audience? So this is what most interviews never do. That’s why you weren’t able to answer. I put you on the spot because I don’t know anybody that thinks this way, but it works for me because I want to know, where am I taking the audience at the end of an hour conversation with George W. Bush, where am I taking them? Where are we going to finish? So once I know where I’m going to finish, that’s the story arc. So now I go, where do I want to start? And then what’s the rest of the journey looked like that takes me here. Or else you’re just going to have this Papa shot style interview where it’s not connected. I like for the interview to start here and make sense organically as it gets to the end point where I’m leaving the audience.
KC (28:45):
This is the final word they’re going to hear from this guest. And I think that’s the way you write a good interview. So I write the last question first. Then I write the first question. Second, I’ll give you some more tips on this. I always try to ask a icebreaker, very personal question. That could be fun or a very significant to them personally, early on. The reason I like to do that is because if you really do your homework and you dig deep and you ask them a question from their past, that’s very significant to them. Number one, you unlock their heart in the first question. They’re like, oh yeah. So the first question I asked Condoleezza rice, okay. This is the most decorated woman, arguably in us history. Okay. besides vice president Harris, who’s now the first female president. So, you know, Condoleeza, rice, big time, big time.
KC (29:37):
And most people don’t realize that she was competitive ice skater when she was in her early teens. So the first question I asked her was about ice skating. Most people in the audience were like, what where’s he going with this? She lit up big smile on her face, started talking about all the hours, why she loved it. And so I introduced a different Condi rice to the audience, number one, but more importantly, I established rapport with her. Cause she’s looking at me going, all right, man, you did your homework. You showed up, you, you know something about me. You’re not asking me the general question. And so she w she leaned in, she warmed up to me. We had rapport and Mrs. Thing, I think thing I did with George W. Bush, I started the interview, will my publicist sitting here. I started off by going, Hey, before we start talking leadership tell us what you’re up to now.
KC (30:26):
I knew he was going to talk about painting. Cause he just released his third pamphlet. I knew it was going to ask him about painting his wife, Laura. Cause he’s got a hilarious story on it. And so our first five minutes was hilarious. I’m talking about learning how to paint and paint and his wife and she hated it and making sure he threw it away. And the audience was roaring with laughter and he and I are having a blast. And I haven’t even asked him a leadership question yet, but I had established rapport. So that’s, you know, that’s my process. That’s a little bit of how I get into it so that people feel like they’re eavesdropping in on a real conversation. Then it’s no longer, I can’t believe Ken Coleman’s up there talking to George W. Bush. People are largely ignoring me because I’m not hemming and hawing over my question. I’m this guy who’s having the time of his life having a conversation and you’re getting a watch me do it. You’re not even focused on me. You’re focused on the present, which is what should be a great interviewer makes the interview about the guests because they’re so smooth, so prepared and leading somebody, not just the audience, but the guests you’re leading the audience and the guests at the same time.
RV (31:40):
Love it. That is, those are that’s so great. Can like that is I really love that idea of asking, writing the last question first and just realizing no matter how this goes, that we need to end up here. And and that is so true when people share an intimate detail about their life. It, it opens, it’s just, it’s disarming, it knocks down walls and it creates the rapport. So powerful. Well, man, I, I, I knew that you would have secrets on how to do these interviews and you’ve been so generous and this is so helpful. Where do people, where do you want people to go to learn about you? And I mean, obviously you’ve got the Ken Coleman show, we’ll put links to the proximity principle book on on our blog post about this. Where else would you, would you direct people?
KC (32:30):
I’d love your audience to connect with me on Instagram at Ken Coleman. If I can ever add any value to your audience, I love what you’re doing. I love connecting with other influencers and best practices and encouraging each other. Ken coleman.com is the website where you can learn anything and get connected with anything I’m doing. And of course the Ken Coleman show, you know, if you want to learn how to dig into people’s hearts in six or seven minutes, give it a listen. It’s a daily podcast. And once you get tired of it, you don’t have to listen to it anymore, but you can steal some trade secrets and, and listen, it’s just cuts at the plate, man. You know, it’s just, it’s just being willing to suck and put yourself out there and learn how to do that. And it, over time you, you get really good at it. If you just keep showing up.
RV (33:21):
Yeah. Well for sure, I mean, you you’ve been, you’ve been doing this for a long time. It’s great to see you growing what’s what’s your favorite interview question someone has ever asked you?
KC (33:38):
Favorite interview question someone has asked me man, that’s a tough one a lot. And so I’m trying to think.
RV (33:48):
Or do you have a favorite question that you’ve asked somebody?
KC (33:57):
I, I think the favorite interview question I ever asked of somebody was with coach cave, legendary hall of fame coach for duke. Who’s one of my favorite coaches. So it was it was an unbelievable honor and I prepared that interview and I asked him my favorite question I’ve ever asked, cause it was so personal, but also I thought what he did with it was really fun. And I felt like he was going to crush it. I asked him how he, how he led different point guards. You know? So, you know, in basketball, the point guard, at least back in the day, you know, the Tommy Amaker is the, the Johnny doc is the Bobby Hurley’s and coach K was done for these great point guards. And in the question I said, you know, Tommy, Amaker very different than Bobby Hurley both led your team.
KC (34:49):
And one graduates and the other comes in, how did you lead them differently? And you get this big, old smile on his face. Like that was a freaking awesome question. And he was like, I love that. And he said, he said that that’s that’s really, really good. And, and so he told me, and so he, he began to go into how he led Tommy was much more intentional and much more structured because Tommy wanted to know which play to run in the timeout, draw it out. And Tommy was going to run it perfectly. He said, I’d draw plays, but I’d make suggestions to Bobby Hurley. Cause Bobby Hurley was an instinctive leader. He goes, and I knew that I draw play up, but if Bobby didn’t see it, he just run his own plane, make it up. And he goes, I was okay with that.
KC (35:31):
And I had to learn more control, more intentionality with one leader, less allow him freedom. That’s a fantastic, fantastic answer. So I’ll tell you that was probably my favorite question. I think people have asked me before. What’s the, I think probably most favorite question is what’s the challenge. What’s the greatest challenge of, of being a thought leader and somebody who’s been given a really large platform like Dave Ramsey placed me here. This is the real question that God and Dave Ramsey they’re the hands along with others that poured into me, but they’re the hands that have put me in this position. And I got asked that question recently. How do you handle that? And what’s the greatest challenge, cause this is fun. What you and I get to do is fun to pour into people and see their light bulbs go on every day. It’s really, that’s a juice. That’s hard to get tired of it. So that was a good question. That was a really interesting, because most people don’t associate challenge, you know, personal challenges with what we get to do. And I thought that was a really thoughtful question.
RV (36:39):
Yeah. Well I love that. And that, that, that question that you asked coach K is such a great example where, you know, it was not only led to a great insight, but you tapped into an intimate place for him in his life that he was like,
KC (36:57):
That’s the key, that’s the key. You know, when you’re interviewing somebody like Malcolm Gladwell, like don’t ask him about 10,000 hours or something he’s been interviewed on 50,000 times, you know asking him, you know, what he admires most about distance runners. Does he see himself in them? Like that’s gonna like mocking level. The guy loves runners. He runs for, for his health, but he’s also a geek out super fan of these long distance runners. Ask him about something that he’s juiced about and then it’s game on, man.
RV (37:38):
I love it. I love it. Well, Ken Coleman, one of the greatest hosts of our time sharing secrets right here, stop and in full transparent disclosure. Buddy, I’m so grateful for you. You’ve been such an encouragement to me, keep going. And we wish you all the best
KC (37:57):
I will, man. Appreciate you. You’ve always been so kind and I got to get over there to that pool. You and I need to be in big, giant rubber ducky floats.
RV (38:05):
Do it, man. See you brother.