Ep 81: What Its Takes to Make It On Television with Kristin Giese | Recap Episode
RV: (00:00) Hey, welcome to the influential personal brand recap edition. It’s your favorite married couple and personal brand strategy, Rory and AJ Vaden. Probably the only, well, I guess there’s not that many married couples that do anyways. So we’re highlighting the interview that just with Kristin Giese, which you know, shared a lot of back story about how we found her through a cold call. And we just want to give you our top three and three, the first one we both shared. So babe, I’ll let you kick off. What was your first big takeaway from Kristin? AJV: (00:34) Yeah, and it was a takeaway and an aha moment and. I’m not sure I’d ever want to be on TV at the same time, but just the importance of it’s kind of almost like entertainment over information. And I think she talked a lot about, so I don’t think RV: (00:52) The topic of the interview was how to get booked on TV if you haven’t listened to the interview. AJV: (00:59) But I think to me that the part that really stood out was it’s not really about the information as much as what do you do with the information to entertain the people who are watching. And that’s where I naturally have a conflict because it’s like, I don’t want to create drama when there doesn’t need to be so much of TV today and not saying it’s good nor bad. I’m just saying it is what it is. RV: (01:27) That’s what I heard. I heard you saying it was bad, but we’ll leave that to you. AJV: (01:32) But I, I just think that, you know, that it’s really interesting. It’s about emotion and the entertainment value of, Oh, the shock. And I can’t believe they said that or, you know, can’t believe this happened. And I’ve heard that and tie what I want in my life. So that was kind of like a really good, clear real. RV: (01:48) Yeah. And you probably don’t know unless you’ve listened to every single episode is Aja doesn’t watch crime movies. She doesn’t watch anything sad, anything with whore, anything with drama, pretty much she watches romantic comedies and animated feature films. AJV: (02:05) And I don’t even watch those are my kids really. It’s just romcoms, that’s it. If it’s not, I’m not into it. I don’t want to be scared, sad, and angry or cry. Yeah. So I think that part was just really interesting is that you’ve got to bring a lot of entertainment value to even media interviews and getting pitched. And you’ve just gotta be an entertainment value to it. So almost more important than the information in of itself. It’s how you’re delivering it. And I think that’s really important. RV: (02:36) Yeah. And, and so that was my first big takeaway. I wrote down entertainment, not enlightenment. I didn’t process it in, in such like a negative way, but more of a, of a, of an insightful going, if you want to be in TV, you gotta realize that you’re in entertainment, not enlightenment, which if you’re building a personal brand, a lot of times it’s like, you know, the essence was information marketing, not, not for everyone. That’s that’s information marketing and personal branding are not the same thing. Information marketing is a subset of some personal brands, but if you’re an author with the video course, it tends to be more about like teaching. And like you’re saying information and TV is, it’s not the goal. Isn’t to be high minded people don’t watch TV, they watch TV for an escape. They watch it to laugh. They watch it to be engaged and entertained, not necessarily to learn. RV: (03:35) And so per se, you know, there’s some, there’s some caveats to it, but yeah, anyways, so that’s that, that’s it. So that was the first one. That was for me, for me too. So that was the big one. All right. So my second one, which is kind of connected, but I actually really loved this concept. She used this phrase a couple times heightened authenticity, and I wrote it down. You should write it down because whether you’re trying to be a reality TV star, or you’re just trying to host an interesting podcast or be an author or have great videos or just, yeah, just be a great writer. It’s heightened authenticity. It’s it’s it’s. And this is an interesting balance between being real, not being fake, but creating kind of that entertainment value in. And, and it’s like in speaking, I was always told that speakers have a license to embellish. RV: (04:33) You don’t have a license to make up, but you have a license to embellish to accentuate the salient emotions of a story or of a bit. And I think that’s really important, especially if you’re on TV, but look, if you’re on YouTube, you’re on TV. You know, if you’re going to have a podcast you’re, you’re on the, you know, you’re on the radio or whatever, it’s, it’s, you’re a host. People are looking for that. And specifically, you know, what do you do with that practically? I think she said, don’t tell me who you are, make me feel who you are, make sure your delivery creates emotions, which we talk a lot about at our world-class keynote craft events, sort of the magic of how to do that. And it was just a great reminder and I had never heard that term heightened authenticity. Yeah. AJV: (05:20) Oh really? That’s really good. My second one is something she said towards the very end. But I thought, wow, that’s probably, probably, we need to like push that up to the front as a good reminder to everyone who is trying to get pitched for a media interview or even a podcast interview TV show, whatever it is, talk, show whatever. But it’s like social media is today’s resume. You don’t need to tell me all the things you talk about. I can go and find them myself and it better match up. And probably this was strike two against me because if you went to my social feeds, AKI would learn about me is I know how to make really cute kids. RV: (05:59) And she’s not hireable for that in case you’re wondering that’s, that’s not an available service, AJV: (06:05) But you know, it’s, again, it’s one of those things where, you know, how many of us have some sort of pitch deck or there’s a media kit, a speaker kit, whatever kit. And it talks about, well, here are my talking points and here’s what you did, the dah dah dah. Then you go to your social media and none of that is represented there. And she’s like, social media is your resume. It’s not about what you’ve done. It’s, you know, what are you doing? And is it current tense and two, how many people are you doing it for? And I thought that was a really good aha reminder. Cause I know so many people who are like putting together pitch decks and writing these long emails and got this kit. And it’s like, really well, they need to do is go to your social. RV: (06:45) I kind of do that. Yeah. AJV: (06:46) So is that representative of who you are, what you talk about, what your brand is about. And I would say for a lot of people, it’s probably not including myself, RV: (06:56) But you’re also clarifying, you’re not trying to sell a TV show and you’re not trying to get booked on media. So that’s okay. AJV: (07:02) No, but maybe my brand shouldn’t be more with my passion and interests, which are children. So that, you know, again, this is all those things I’m like, do you align with actually what you’re passionate about putting out there into the world? Are you putting anything out there? All those things I thought were really an aha moment. She shed something really quick. But if you take a moment to let that sink in, it’s like, Oh, let’s take a look at that. Let’s realign some things and make sure that they all match. RV: (07:32) Yeah, love that. So my third one was a simple, a simple thing. She actually didn’t say this, but it reminded me of something that I have held as a philosophy in my life for a long time that I need to be reminded of, which is that everybody is a somebody somewhere. Hmm. Everybody is a somebody somewhere. And I must’ve had that first. That thought when I was probably, or my early twenties, was that everyone that you sit next to on a plane, there are somebody somewhere. They can get you the hookup somewhere, right. Even if it’s just a place to stay at their house, when you traveled to their city or they work at some type of job where they hire speakers or they know someone who’s a podcast host or they’re friends with a big social media influencer, or they are a TV producer or they’re the assistant to a producer or, you know, they can get you free passes to the waterpark. RV: (08:28) Like every single person you meet, everybody is a somebody somewhere. And to Christine’s point, you know, because she’s not a personality, like she’s not trying to get on shows. She’s not her feed is her career kids. And if you just looked at social media, you might not realize that, Hey, by the way, this woman has booked dozens of people for Oprah. So she might someone you want to know, you want to be nice too. And the truth is everybody has connections and, and, and things that you could benefit from. So if you’re a jerk and can’t be nice to people for the sake of being nice, just remember everybody is a somebody somewhere. So that’s a reason to be nice to everybody also. AJV: (09:15) Yeah. I think that also is indicative too, of people’s like relying too much on their social feeds because you forget to realize like, these people probably do have professional lives and they have this and they have that. And without doing the necessary research, which I, I find that people don’t do today, there’s so much, they’re not sharing it’s, you’re not really sure how to connect with a great example of that. But I think all of those things really do. I think tee up something that she didn’t say so clearly here, but it’s do your research. Mike, you want to get on a certain show. What types of people do they interview? What types of content is really popular? Who is the audience? Who is that do the necessary research instead of copying and pasting the same email. And you’re saying, you know, attachment and send, all right, you’ve got to do the necessary research to see where you fit and how do you fit. And who’s the right person and what have they done. And that all takes time, time and effort. RV: (10:12) Well, and your, your, your third takeaway was started related to that general. Oh, okay. Well allow me to interrupt your transition. AJV: (10:20) So my third takeaway is it’s making it not about you, but what are you doing for the audience, right? It’s not just, Hey, I’ve got this great insight or this great perspective, or I’ve got this great plan or whatever you have. It’s what are you doing for the audience with that? So how are you making this relevant to the people who are listening or watching that they can then take it and apply it to their life, to their business, to their home and do something with it. So what are you doing for the audience? And one of the things that I think is really important for our audience is your audience in this respect are the people who are booking people that is your audience. So what are you doing for them? What did they want? And are you doing it for that audience? In addition to the actual audience that you would be doing an interview for, or podcast for, or TV show for a it’s two fold, and you’ve got kind of a primary audience, which is a person getting you on the show and then the secondary audience, which is the people who would be watching it. And that goes for podcast and all. So that was my last one. RV: (11:28) Yeah. So there you go. I mean, quick takeaways, powerful interview. If you’ve ever thought about pitching your own TV show, or getting just booked on a talk show or being a talk show, host an absolute must listen to Kristin Giese. As always, thanks for being here, we’re breaking it down. We’re trying to make it practical. We want to help you build and monetize your personal brand so that you can make more impact, make more income and just make a big difference in the world. We’ll catch you next time. Bye. Bye.
Ep 80: What Its Takes to Make It On Television with Kristin Giese
Speaker 1: (00:00) It is very, very rare that this happens. What you are about to experience, which is that we bring on a guest who is neither a client of ours, nor somebody from the industry that I know personally, but somebody who cold pitched us for our podcast. And I’ll explain why we accepted this person. You know, in our podcast power event, we talk about you being the host and we talk about pitching yourself to get on other shows. And we get pitched, I would say four to five times every single week from different PR firms. We turn almost every single person down, but there’s a couple of things that happened here that I want you to understand right up front as we dive into this. Okay? So first of all, you’re, you’re about to meet Kristin Giza who is becoming my new friend and you’re going to love her. Speaker 1: (00:53) But the reason I had her on the show is because of exactly what we talk about in podcast power. There’s, there’s two things. So first of all, what are your results, right? Like leading with the results. And here’s what Kristen has done. We’re going to talk about TV, we are going to talk about TV shows, how to get on them, how to pitch them, how does the world of TV work for personal brand specifically? And her team tailored their pitch specifically to our audience. They showed that they cared, that they knew what our audience was about and she was relevant because she speaks on something directly to y’all and you know, to why to why you’re here. So she is a talent manager and an executive producer herself. She’s worked with miss USA, the bachelor, the bachelorette, real Housewives chefs, hairstylists. So all these personal brands. She has sold shows, TV shows to NBC TLC in Bravo. She sold the talk show with Oprah. She has 79 times booked Oprah show bookings. And she has launched products that have been into target and HSN. And so this was a specific niche, a specific expertise that was relevant to our audience that their team TaylorMade and she had the results to back it up. And that is why Kristen Giza is here and I’m so excited for y’all to meet her. She’s great. So Kristen, welcome to the show. Speaker 2: (02:24) Thank you so much. You know what, I feel like hearing that intro, I feel a bit like, and when you parked too close to the car next to you at the mall and somehow you miraculously get the door open just enough to slide in and get behind the driver again. Cause it’s like you can’t, you can’t open the door wide enough and yet somehow you’re like, I’m going to fit in here. I’m going to get in this car and get out of this mall at Christmas time. I hate all these people. That’s what I feel like when you intro me that way, that some, Oh I opened it just enough to integrate in. So I appreciate it. We suck in and we slide into that door Speaker 1: (03:00) And then you get into the car and you’re so comfortable. So I want to talk about TV because one of the things that y’all, your team pitched me with, which I agree with, is that everybody wants to be on TV, but they have no idea what it actually takes and why they are not ready. So tell let, can you talk to me about that, right. Like everyone that’s listening here is a personal brand. They are somebody that is building an audience. They have an audience of some type. Why aren’t most people ready for TV and what does it, and now we’re not talking about actors, like most of our clients are not actors we’re talking about, you know, their dream is to, you know, to be like shark tank or profit or it’s reality TV of some type. Now we do have clients that have been on the bachelor and we have some reality TV shows, but, but what does it take to be on reality TV and what does a person need to know about? Like how do you get selected for that and what do you need to be if you want that to be you. Speaker 2: (04:00) Yeah, I think the interesting thing, first of all, I’d like to say right off the bat, television is not a vanity project. So people spend a lot of time ruminating on this high-minded desire of what they might like to do on television and how they’re going to change the world. By what they can bring to television and how they are so far evolved from anything that is on television. And when is the last time that you turned on television and thought this is so high minded and so such documentary dial level, like, you know, you’re watching like duck dynasty, you know, so it’s like you have to stop thinking about television as a vanity project for yourself and really think about what television means to the audience. You know, when you talk about those Oprah bookings and all those shows that I brushed up against with the Oprah Winfrey show the magic of Oprah being in Chicago was that she had an amazing crowdsourcing to what many people in the middle of America were wanting and tuning in for. Speaker 2: (05:00) And she was listening and then she was delivering upon the deal that she made. Excuse me. What the audience. Oh my goodness. And so if you’re not doing that, then you’re not going to find your way onto television. I like to say, you know, when you drive out into the desert or into the country, wherever you’re on a road trip, and they have a giant paper, Mashiach taco or dinosaur, like the one on Peewee Herman, like that big giant dinosaur that’s just in her middle of nowhere and everyone, it’s so kitschy and everyone gets in their car, especially nowadays, and they drive out there so they can take their Instagram pictures with the dinosaur and throw up their peace signs and they’re on this amazing road trip and it’s kind of tacky, but it’s kind of art. It’s kind of cool, but it’s kind of weird. Speaker 2: (05:55) That’s what television you need to think about in your brand. What is your big pink dinosaur that is out in the middle of the desert that would compel people to want to drive out and visit it? That’s what is a seed of an idea that will work for people then to tune into. And because you come up with your big giant dinosaur and it’s just tacky enough and it’s just spectical enough and it’s just interesting enough for people to engage in. That gives you permission then to have the cool town down the street that has the cool cafe and the cool art gallery and all the other elements of your brand that are a bit more of you and a bit more rooted in the core of your brand. But this is the spectacle part of your, Speaker 1: (06:44) So if I understand your metaphor there, you’re just saying like, Hey you, it’s, it’s sort of like where you have to, it’s almost like you have to play the game of what is in order to be able to have the benefits of, of, of, you know, the other ancillary benefits that would come to you. So you’re saying directly that Hey, yeah, television isn’t inherently to be high minded. It’s not to be like evolutionary, it’s not to be this like, you know, really profound level of thinking. So if it’s not that, what is it like you give us the sobering reality of like, this is what TV is specifically. I think we’re probably talking about reality TV because I think that’s what applies to our audience, right? We’re not actors, but we are, you know, Marcus Limonus like what happened with the prophet blew up his career. Speaker 1: (07:35) Mel Robbins has her talk show coming out right now. She’s somebody that a lot of us know. You’ve got you know, even though the talk show host, Oprah Winfrey would be a good example. What’s happened with the shark tanks. The people on the bachelor and some, you know, we have, we have one of the mega stars from the bachelor that’s in our roster. But then it’s also like, he’s trying to parlay that into a real sustainable career. So what is it, if it’s not high-minded, like profound thinking, what would you call it? Speaker 2: (08:06) Yeah, I mean, first of all, it’s entertainment first and foremost. And in any good entertainment, it touches us, moves us, or gives us some level of takeaway. And so of course there’s television, that timeline, they’re 60 minutes there, CBS Sunday morning, there’s documentaries on HBO. There’s all of that, and if that’s the space that you’re in, absolutely. If you are that, that next version of Anthony Bordain that somehow gets the golden ticket to sort of do something that feels really elevated, then keep striving for that. But largely television is built in ensembles. It’s normally not just a solo venture, so there’s a lot of shows where you’re going to be partnered with someone else. Most shows, with the exception of talk shows that you work on where it might be helmed by that person, which, which let’s be real. There is a very large graveyard of talk shows that fail. Speaker 2: (08:58) There are more dead bodies in that graveyard than there are success stories and it’s, it’s very, the air is very thin up there for the people that actually make it all the way down the line to get what it is to, to develop an actual talk ship where it’s solo led, like Oprah or Ellen or Ellen or something of that fact. And it normally for, for a studio you’re talking like they’re, they’re already like $40 million in when they’re trying to launch a new talk show. So the chances of someone unexpected getting a talk show, which we hear a lot in our, in our business, I’m the next Oprah and it’s like, I don’t know, I’m not so sure, but okay, if that’s true, you better recognize all the journey that it takes to get to that level. So talk shows are so challenging on so many levels, largely talking about reality. Unscripted. Speaker 1: (09:53) Yeah. So just to pause on that right now too, because it’s like, talk shows to me, it’s kind of like traditional book publishing. You go to them when you have a platform, like, like Kelly Clarkson is a new one, right? And it’s like, because she’s Kelly Clarkson, she’s already bringing the audience to the show. And even Mel Robbins, I think she would be kind of a lower level of that. But going, she built this monster social media empire. She’s not just some random person out of nowhere that’s going to show up and be the next Oprah. She spent decades building an audience that’s following her to talk TV. Right, right, right. Speaker 2: (10:31) 100%. Right. And so when you look then at scripted and at versus unscripted, which is a space that we’re talking about, a lot of unscripted television could work as scripted. You know, when you look at real Housewives, you can almost here the versions of desperate Housewives, which was on ABC that Martin Jerry created a decade ago. You can feel the nuances of character and content in an, in an ability for the audience to plug into those personality. So like anything that you’re developing in your own brand content is King, character is queen and forever shall they reign. If you have content but you don’t have the character, your personal brand on Instagram isn’t going to take off, let alone getting on television. It’s the same on television. You have to have the character and the ability to know who you are and be authentic and be heightened as well, to heighten your authenticity, to heighten your charisma, tightened your personality in these bolder ways. Speaker 2: (11:35) Just like the camera adds 10 pounds, the camera also diminishes personality unless you heighten it and ratchet it back up. Which is the large part because everything is edited down. So if you’re not high energy the whole time you’re doing it, the three things that they cut out of your and, and, and edit down, suddenly you’re like, you’re less energy because you didn’t sustain that high energy the whole time. You have to be thinking of all of those things from a character perspective and from a content perspective, just like anything you would do in your brand, you have to think about what is the audience getting in this bargain that we’re making with them? What is the takeaway? Is it just engagement? Is it or entertainment? Is there an emotional engagement? Is there an element of learning? And how then are we adding the lens of entertainment? So you have to think like a producer. I think that people think well that’s what a production company is for. They’re going to know what I should do. That never works. Just like when you want a client to pay you to put money in your pocket to hire you for your coaching or your personal chef duties. If you don’t tell them exactly what you should mean and why you should matter, they won’t know what to do with you, not even TV producers. Speaker 1: (12:59) So, okay, so that’s, that’s so good. Like the, the, the heightened authenticity. And we talk about that even with podcasting, that the, the energy transference through the microphone, there’s a drop of like 50%. So it’s like if you’re not bringing the heat on, your show’s gonna suck because it’s boring. Like and, and so the key, I want to talk about the character thing though because I love that phrase that you use heightened authenticity because it’s still authentic. Because at some point you’re going to burn out if you’re in authentic. But it’s also, it’s also amplified. How do you find that balance and how do you know what character you should be? Like you said, you said something about you have to realize the, the, what is the ability of the audience to see themselves in those characters? What does all that mean and how do you, how do you kind of go, Oh, this is the character I am like, this is, this is the character I should play. Speaker 2: (14:03) Yeah. Well, we, we fuel everything that we do through our three E’s. So every project that we touch, it needs to feel elevated. And I’m talking that that pink dinosaur in the desert can still feel elevated based on the experience that you give to people when they get there. So there needs to be an elevation to what you’re doing. The audience needs to feel empowered by what you’re doing and they need to feel emotionally connected to what you’re doing. And so even in that, I think this, to me, this applies to everything that you do. Whether you’re writing a book, whether you’re going on the today show, whether you’re going on a podcast, you are delivering on these three E’s consistently and in television you better deliver on these three E’s. You better find the way to elevate within you’re doing. So that way you can get noticed on camera. Speaker 2: (14:53) That way what you’re delivering within the exchange is important. That, that how you’re contributing to the cast feels of benefit. You know, there’s a difference between someone that can play well in a group of an ensemble and contribute in a way that furthers what’s happening. And then there are people that are just constantly trying to contribute and get in and get in and get in and they become a detractor. You’re ultimately going to get edited out because you’re just trying to get in on the goods as opposed to sort of being that really elevated heightened authenticity that you, Speaker 1: (15:26) You’re talking about like the bachelor there, like that kind of a thing of like, are you just trying to get into the camera? Right. So there’s a difference between I’m playing well with others and I’m a part of the scene and then I’m just trying to be in like I’m just trying to be famous and be in it versus someone who’s being heightened authentically. That it, it, it raises the whole, it moves the whole group forward. It moves the cast forward, it moves the show forward. Speaker 2: (15:53) Correct. And I think you can feel, I mean, one of the, one of the biggest deals I guess that we had that we should talk about is ego. And I don’t, I’ve never met a single person who has said the phrase, I think I want to be on television that does not have some level of ego invested in what that is. And so you have to find a way to harness that. So the ego, your ego isn’t what leads you into the room. Sometimes you will get casts because here you go leads you into the room. As a producer, we need people on camera whose ego is completely out of whack because that gives us drama. Speaker 1: (16:30) You need conflict. Yeah. Speaker 2: (16:33) And all of that is relevant and important and the audience needs it to further the story. You know, that is art and PS, anyone who’s been on television knows this. We’ve already identified and arc of where we think the characters will go within the episodes based on what we’re doing. So sometimes that is surprising and they go other ways and sometimes there’s mechanisms that encourage them to go certain ways. In reality television. So there’s that whole side too, depending on how you’re looking to join the game. You know, if you’re going to be cast on a show like bachelor, there’s definitely going to be mechanisms that are imposed upon you in order to create that drama. If you are going to be the next Martha Stewart and you are bringing about a heritage cooking show, it’s a different type of mechanism that you’re working with the producers to develop that, the stakes of what’s going to happen in that show. Speaker 2: (17:29) But there’s always going to be mechanisms in stakes that we’re creating as producers to bring that about. But you know, so you’re, to go back to your question, you know, you are looking at that heightened authenticity. You’re answering these things for yourself. You’re aware that you’re going to be edited in some capacity. You’re aware that you’re going to become a part of an ensemble and these other people are going to be pushing and pulling you in different that way. And so in every situation without it being obvious to the camera, because you’re still have to be present in, in it and participating, you have to find a way to, to deliver on those three E’s, to elevate and be of importance and, and to have, take up space in the best possible way. You have to find a way to emotionally connect. And that doesn’t just mean that you share something for the sh the sake of sharing it because you think this is my hook that’s going to get the audience. Speaker 2: (18:27) You are legitimately emotionally connecting to the situation. And then most important, almost everyone that you think about on television that you enjoy somehow empowers you or gives you something that you feel you’re invested in them and you’re giving yourself permission to be invested in them because of how they are changing you in some way. Oprah certainly did these three E’s exceptionally well. You know, we tuned in for that hour and there was a bargain we were going to show up as we were cooking dinner and we were going to have an experience on all these levels. And it’s the same for every show. It’s the same for bachelor. It’s just a different bargain. It’s just, we know that the exchange of currency is a bit more drama and a bit more salacious than if we’re tuning in for 60 minutes. But every show makes this bargain with the audience and it’s always about the audience. That’s the thing. Speaker 1: (19:35) Yeah. And that’s the same about speaking, which is I was my background. Like I am a, I’m a hall of fame speaker, so classically I, I am a stage performer. I know you did your first comedy set last year, which was, which was cool. I saw that. You know, I was, I was doing standup comedy in early two thousands when I was in grad school, not because I ever wanted to be a comedian, but because I wanted to be a, you know, a business speaker. And I knew I had to be funny, but that, so, so coming back to the character, you talk about Oprah, right? And just this concept of heightened authenticity, which I think is super, super powerful. How much of heightened authenticity is natural versus learned? Cause it’s not acting, but it’s a, it’s an intentional choice of like, Oh, I’m going to play this character, I’m going to play this role. Speaker 1: (20:31) Versus just like blind luck. Like, you know, like you talked about the ego person. I, you know, I’ve never been a producer of a show, but I have to think if I was going to produce the bachelor, I would be intentionally grabbing some of the most outlandish characters just because they’re completely self unaware of how insane they are because that creates the drama and the conflict for TV. Like nobody wants to watch grass grow, we need conflict like we have. And so I’m grabbing that person who’s like self unaware deliberately. So, but then you go, I don’t think, you know, like is Oprah playing a character? Is she just being herself? Like was a lot of that coached into her or was it just like that was just who she was coming out? Speaker 2: (21:13) No, I think the people, well who do, who are truly able to find to find that, well, when I say heightened authenticity, you’re tapping into that, you know where it is and you know where the on and off switches. It’s not a different room with a different light every time it’s the same room. You just know where all the switches are and you know how to temper it. So you know, you’re in charge of, of that muscle so to speak. Oprah is one of those. I mean, there is a lot of truth then don’t meet your heroes because like I could tell you stories of people that I’ve met along the way where you’re like, I am good at this or isn’t as not nice. They were so mean to that server and I loved them. And X movie, you know, and it, it just brings you to your knees. Speaker 2: (22:00) But Oprah is exactly who you need her to be, who you’ve always known her to be for you. That is who she is because she is my wife in real life. She is, she is one of those rare people that means so much. Open means to me is different than what she means to you is different than what she means to my aunt Susie. She has meant something and touched us again. And that emotional content connection and that empowerment connection, she has empowered him, fueled each one of us differently. So when we arrive in front of her, she rises up to that version of herself every single time. I’ve, I’ve rarely seen something like it and, but the thread of what that is, the talent that I’ve worked with the most that have meant the most to their audiences have always been the talent that have something special. Speaker 2: (22:55) And it’s, it’s almost unquantifiable. But when you stand before them and they look at you and they speak to you, you want to be the person that you think they see when they’re looking at you. And that’s a very powerful thing when you are speaking with someone that your belief when they’re looking at you is that they see something special in you that you feel more special because of their gaze. It’s so powerful. And Oprah has it other amazing celebrities that we all know and love. They have a way of just in their personal power to hold space with someone that’s more about the person that they’re holding space then about themselves. And that is a skill that you can actually build over time. It takes the requirement of moving your ego aside and picking up sort of an energy frequency with the people that you were with in the most powerful performers. I have ever met have the capability to do that. Speaker 1: (24:07) Yeah. And it’s, it’s like a, it’s, it’s a skill. It’s, it’s, it’s almost like developing a character trait. It’s selflessness of going like, okay I see something in units. You know, there’s a beautiful phrase, I don’t do hot yoga anymore, but I, there was a season in my life when I did Bikram yoga and they, they have this, Mmm, no, I’m a stay. Right. Which it means the highest in Macy’s, the highest in world. Correct. And that is like the essence of what we’re talking about here. Right. Which is ironic because what you’re saying about ego, there is the enemy where it’s like, I’m not trying to too, I’m not trying to be in the camera. For me, I’m trying to draw the best out of you, which is the audience is like, I’m trying to create the best experience for the audience, not for me, for the audience. Speaker 1: (24:59) Okay. Correct. So I, I love that. And I, and I, and I love that this applies, you know, you mentioned probably most of the, most of our are most of our people, our tribe, you know, we call a mission driven messengers. That’s, that’s who we serve. Most of them are probably more likely to just be a guest on a show, you know, like they have a book launch or something. And yeah, you got on Fox news or the today show or something like that. Mmm. More than just pitching a show and just cause that’s a smaller number of people. But like would you say those three ease and being that heightened authenticity, is that part of what makes you a great guest? A great pick to go? Yeah, we can have you on good morning America because you have something empowering. But we also, you also have to still keep in mind that a part of what I’m doing there is I’m entertaining people while I’m there. I’m not just let me tell you about my book. I’m entertainment. Speaker 2: (25:53) Correct. And I think that people forget that there’s a lot of publicists. And that’s, that’s where I cut my teeth. That’s the roots of where I, where I grew up in, in entertainment. And a lot of publicists will tell people right out of the gate, you gotta be working your points. You’ve got to get in that you’re there to promote your book. And as an audience member, when the first question is, so you’re here in New York and you’re a, we heard that you have new show that’s going out and tell us about it. And the person says, well, I told you all when I wrote my book that came out as an audience. You’re like, Oh, gropes you know, and as the producer, you’re like, I’m not booking this person because your goal here was to deliver upon what we’re doing here. And that is putting on this show that is about the broader engine of the show. Speaker 2: (26:43) So it requires you, if you’re going to deliver on these things, cause you’re doing it all the time, it requires to hone the skill of how to do it. You know, there’s an important state, I’m saying in a Gar, salesmen taught me this, that I don’t want to sell you a car. I want to make you want to buy a car from me. So I’m about the car. I’m telling you everything about the car and you now are invested in me and you are invested in the story. I’m telling you about the car. Now you want to buy the car that is different than me selling you the car. And if you’re going to go on, tell me and do these things. You want people to want to buy the car. You’re not trying to sell them the car. And that is such an important it’s like flipping the other side of the coin and in, you need to practice that skill of, of the coin flip in order to get it right every time. Speaker 2: (27:37) Cause it’s hard. It’s hard to be there to deliver upon what they want you to deliver upon. Instill, get your messaging in. And the thing that we is the cornerstone of, of how to do it well is that you are never, not for an instant have I ever sold products or properties. I have only only ever sold philosophy. So all the years of selling product lines into target, moving shows on to television, launching books and publishing books, I was never selling any of those things. I was only ever like the master of the ShamWow selling you, evangelizing you on the power of the words, of the philosophy, of the belief of how this will elevate, empower, and emotionally support you. And when you connect into those things, that is the Trojan horse to want to go buy the publishing, the property and the product. Speaker 2: (28:43) And if you can learn how to do that, well, there is not a single room that you can’t walk into and nail the pitch, get the property, sell the project. It’s, it’s just the cornerstone because you’re not, you’re never beginning a conversation, but it never begins with, I have this thing that I want to sell to you. It always begins and ends with, I have this thing that I want to share with you, and the selling becomes then the byproduct of that, and that’s where the power is. I think in anything that you’re going to do, whether you want a producer to buy into an editor to buy into you or whatever your mechanism is. To me that’s the power source. Speaker 1: (29:24) So yeah, I love this so much. The, the yeah, you mentioned ShamWow and I was laughing for a second. So Kevin Harrington is one of our, one of our clients who was like, [inaudible] works, Speaker 2: (29:42) You know, I’m just going to show you this thing over and over and you like me and now you like this thing and you’re debating 10 years later I’m like, maybe I should still buy that sham. Wow. You know, and I know the name that just shows you, it affects you on these different levels Speaker 1: (29:58) Now as the producer. Okay. So you’re, you’re, you’re a producer. Like I mean you’re an author, right? You, you do, you’re doing these things, you have your own personal brand and stuff, but, but your daily, your J day job right now is like you produce shows, you pitch ideas to networks and to production companies. And, and when you sell a show, a part of what your role as a producer is, is selecting the talent who comes on the show. Speaker 2: (30:25) Gosh. Oh we could, we could unpack this for another three hours. Speaker 1: (30:28) Well here’s my question. Here’s my, my big question is how do you spot it in someone and what do you look for, right? Like as the producer, cause you’re kind of like, you’re the director, you’re the orchestra, you’re like the conductor. You’re the one that’s like got to pull all the pieces together between the audience and the talent and the production company. Right? Like that’s what you’re doing. Speaker 2: (30:50) I don’t, I don’t spot it. I feel it. So every single person that calls me that wants to work with us as talent management or production and they’re telling me who they are, they better make me feel who they are. And for every time that you tell them, feel free to cut that as a tweet it that that is what it comes down to. I need to feel you in, in the way of of what it is that you are bringing into this unit versus, and I mean I’m talking you could be honey booboo and that’s okay. If I feel it, what it can be, then we’re going to the dance. If you sit in front of me and first of all, don’t come to me and try and just talk at me or tell me or or proselytize to me who you are. Listen a lot more than you speak and find the way to help navigate through what we are looking for to then tell, to encourage us to have that connection with you. Speaker 2: (31:57) So many people come and sit before us and they just start telling me all the things that they are and the whole time maybe I’m thinking I feel something else for them that could get them to the dance, but they’re so busy telling me that all they want is a talk show like Oprah. And I know that those are all on the decline and they’re so adamant about what it is that they’re want that they want, that it starts to feel a bit like an unreal hell that you’re trying to talk into doing their homework. It’s just a battle that you don’t want to have, so I find it’s sometimes much better to begin with the question, so to say, let’s talk about the things that I am bringing into the world and let’s have you tell me a bit about what does that mean for the world? Speaker 2: (32:45) Is there a place for that in the world? How does this apply to the world? There’s a conversation that we could be having that a lot of people skip right over that and go to, whether it’s their brand, whether it’s television or whatever it is, they make it a vanity project. They sit in front of you and tell you what it is exactly that they’re going to do, and that’s for your vision board. That’s for your book on your bedside table that you write down every day. I’m going to be a millionaire and I’m going to, I do it too. I’m right there with you. We can compare crib notes all day long. I got it. We’re all vision boarding. I’m in it, I’m in it deep. But there is also when you vibrate at a frequency of I am pulling people into me that are going to inform where I’m going next. You actually have to connect energetically, hear from them, learn from them, and then apply maybe. Okay, now we’re going to go down this path and people miss that beat altogether. Speaker 1: (33:41) I love that. I mean, and that, that don’t tell me who you are. Make me feel who you are. I mean that is gonna is such a such a capstone of this conversation. I love this so much. The, the, Mmm. So real quick, I know this is, this is like a little bit off topic. Like we’ve been going so deep into like the character and the role that you play. Can you just give us a broad and like, I can’t believe this has gone way over time. But this is so good and I think unique. I think you have, you have such a unique perspective of, of what, you know, I think of what people normally see Kristen of just like living in this world for your whole career. And so if you were going to pitch a show, what are like, just the mechanics of that? Speaker 1: (34:35) Like what, you know, like if you get a book, like if you want to get a traditional book deal, we have a whole, we have a whole event, we call it bestseller launch plan, which is all about like, here’s how it works. You create a book proposal, you have the book proposal, you have your plan and the book proposal. You go to a literary agent, the literary agent says yes, they shop you to a publisher, publisher signs a deal. You get a contract. You know, it’s like there’s a, there’s a process that more or less as generally fall, I followed, I feel like TV for most of us is this like mysterious black box of like, we just think of it as like this lucky break of like you’re walking in the mall and somebody goes, Hey, you’re the next Oprah. But there’s, there’s a process to all this and, and for, for people like you who’ve, like you spent your life doing it. It’s second hand nature, but just like, what’s the high level, Hey, I got an idea for a show. How does that, how does that materialize from there? First of all, Speaker 2: (35:30) There’s hardly any new ideas. So that’s the first thing. Production companies have a very hard time making money right now because it’s so hard to sell shit. There’s so many shows that don’t actually get to air. It used to be that they bought 10 episodes, now they buy eight, sometimes they buy less. I would say by one they tested, it takes a year, then it doesn’t get the ratings, so they don’t buy the rest of the show. It’s basically the smell of desperation. Fear and failure in entertainment is like be prepared. You know, I don’t know, I’ve never been in a morgue, but like get the menthol ready because it is not pretty. So be prepared for so many nos. Be prepared to be violently unrelenting in your desire to pursue it. If there’s any part of you that’s like, I’m just gonna see what happens and go from there, you are never going to make it off the ground level because it’s going to fail and fail some more and fail and fail again. Speaker 2: (36:32) That’s, that’s first rule. Second rule, you were the driver like anything in your life. Show them what you can mean already. Start collaborating with friends already start creating content on Instagram live already. Start creating. Even YouTube show you the people who make it the furthest are the ones who are already creating the content that gives the roadmap for how people would use you. So find friends to collaborate with. Start doing it. Start dreaming up. Start trying new things. Show people what you could mean on a larger scale. Become an expert at understanding what all’s happening on television and what networks are buying and what they aren’t buying, so you can actually have a conversation with producers because a lot of the shows that people come to me and say, Hey, this is a show that I want to do is actually only a seed of an idea that would be a segment on a TV show. Speaker 2: (37:23) You actually have to think about how does this sustain for one whole episode and for 10 whole episodes in a season and you don’t make any money in season one, so how’s it going to get to a season two? Where are you going to go in it? It’s all of those things that you should start thinking of so that way it can go beyond just that one small five minute. This is how I would do it on, on the Rachael ratio. It needs to actually feel expandable and like I said earlier, a lot of ideas that work that are successful in television. You can see a version of them as a documentary, like the tiger King that then can become a film that we would all watch and get invested in. That could also become a series of a show with these really great characters that could also be a reality show. It can it like any good idea, you can mold it and fit it for the different formats and platforms that exist out there. So think in those terms. If it’s something that only applies to you and only you could do it, you’re going to have such a hard time selling it. Think in terms of does this idea and contract and then write your pitch, build your deck, get a Canva account, make it look sexy. You got to do all the things to sell it. Speaker 1: (38:45) So, okay, so just real quick on that. Okay, so that was you hummed over that. So yeah, the, I mean obviously the psychology is way more important. Functionally speaking, you’re going to write a pitch, just like a book proposal or a speaking proposal or any other proposals like show me something in writing and with pictures that kind of gets, helps me understand and articulate the concept. Correct. And then who do you send that deck to? Do you send it to a producer, to a production company, to somebody else? Is it just like, I mean, I know it’s kind of like send it to Frick and everyone and anyone who will listen to you until you like find the right person, but is it, who’s the gatekeeper there? Speaker 2: (39:24) I mean there are so many gatekeepers. That’s part of the problem. So you’re building those connections and networking and having conversations. If it’s truly a seed of an idea that is stealable, which they kind of all are, you’re going to want to be careful about how you talk about the idea. You know, so that way you can kind of try and protect it. I mean, I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve been told no on a show pitch. And then a year later I see the same production company that I was pitching out there with a similar show, you know, so, and who’s to say maybe they had the idea at the same time. Again, there are no new ideas, so it’s, it’s really about how you layered in, but everything comes down to relationships in any industry and television is the same. Speaker 2: (40:09) Every connection, every business card, the number one thing that I can say, whoever decided that no one should have business cards anymore should be interrogated beyond. Because the number of times that I have said to talent that I actually am curious about like, hi, I’m Kristen do you have a car? And they’re like, you can find me on Instagram. I know that when I DM you, you probably won’t see it in DME back and now I am a lost connection to you and you never know who someone is or how they’re going to help you. And if you don’t find a way to concretely connect with them, don’t make me search for you because that is how doors don’t open. So be prepared at every turn for actually how to get ahold of someone. Speaker 1: (40:52) Totally. Well, and I, I hope you don’t take this as a slight, but like, you know, if I go look at your social media right now, I wouldn’t see millions of followers. But if I was sitting next to you on an airplane and be like, Hey, this is someone who’s booked 70 people on Oprah, it might be worth the conversation. And you just, you just don’t know. You know, on social media, everyone’s like drawn to like, you know, all the people with lots of followers. But it’s like, usually those aren’t the people who open the doors. It’s their assistant, it’s their talent manager, it’s their agent. Like those are the people who control the doors. Speaker 2: (41:26) Correct. And when you delve deeper into someone’s following, and then you start to see, Oh, that’s the head of, of this, of HSN. Oh, ahead of target. Oh, that’s ahead of that. And then you’re like, you have no idea who those people are because when you go to their feet, it’s just them with their kids. You don’t know that the people in my orbit and you’ve already discounted for whatever reason and it’s like you just lost one of your greatest leads, you need to great at such a high frequency of I am compelling these people into my orbit and then actually be smart enough to take advantage of that. You know the number of times that I’ve sat next to someone on a plane and later someone would be like, how’d you sit next to the head of development for HBO? And it’s, how’d that happen? It’s like I made that happen. I vibrated at such a high energy all the time at every turn. In order to make that happen, you have to vibrate at that level too and be smart enough to take advantage of it when it happens. Speaker 1: (42:23) So. Okay. I have one other question before we let you go. Before I do that though, where should people go if they want to connect with you, Kristen? Like if they want to like, you know, learn more and all that kind of stuff and just kind of like get plugged into what you’re doing. Speaker 2: (42:38) Yeah. All Moxy on Instagram. A. L. L. M. O. X. I. E. Speaker 1: (42:43) Okay, very cool. I think we’ll probably have you back again at some point or maybe we’ll just do a training for our members on like specifically TV pitching and stuff. But this is so, so powerful. So my last question for you is, is TV dead or dying? Like should we all be going the heck with a production company? Take your show idea and fricking make it yourself and build it on YouTube. Because that’s sort of what I’m starting to think is going by the time I would build the relationships and get to the people and make the pilot and get the first episode. And did we get the rating? It’s almost like, should we be thinking more of just like just build it, build it on your own or, or do you go now, you know, you really need to, like it’s still, it’s still TV. I think it’s a bit of both. I mean if you build it, they will come, right? So if you start doing it on, you prove that you have traction, then it will open. It speeds it up Speaker 2: (43:42) In creativity. Just again, having clever, you know, the first thing that we do with clients is say your Instagram, your social media is your resume. So show people exactly the types of cleverness, content, creativity that you have. So by the time they come to your page, now the alarm bells are going off. Now we’re connecting the dots of how to use you. That is, you know, it’s a paint by number, right? You’re over here shading in the lower corner there somewhere you don’t know. And somewhere all of a sudden you both arrived at the same spot and it all clicks. It’s like, Oh, this was the missing piece to this butterfly painting that we were making of your brand. And it comes together and you eventually, for as much as you can say like television is changing. Is it dead? Absolutely not. It’s not anywhere we, especially now we are all working from home at home, our connection to entertainment, sharing and watching television together, it’s, it’s going to get stronger again. It’s just that now we have to find more clever ways for us to bridge together and come together in the middle. So it’s a bit of both. Speaker 1: (44:50) I like it. I like it. Such a fantastic educational, stimulated conversation. My friends, I don’t know, you know, where else you would find Kristin, and that’s why she immediately jumped out to me as someone you had to meet. And I think my instincts were fully justified because of her spirit. And this has been so generous, Kristin, and so informative and honest and empowering and I think just insightful and anyways, we’ll help to stay in touch with you. We wish you the best. And thank you so much. Speaker 2: (45:22) Thank you. And forgive my moving boxes. I’m just still getting settled. It’s not normally the shabby around here, I promise. Thank you so much for having me.
Ep 79: Going Pro with Digital Marketing with Angie Lee | Recap Episode
RV: (00:00) Hey, it’s time for the influential personal brand at recap of the Angie Lee episode. And I’m going solo on this one with AJ out and wanted to share my thoughts on the interview. I did with my, my good friend, Angie Lee, and you know, first thing in terms of the recap that I hope you hear when you, when you listened to the interview is the part where she says it took two and a half to three years to really even get started. Right? So two and a half to three years to even get started, like, but before she even started to see traction, and I hope you don’t skip over that, I hope you don’t miss that because, cause this is, this is the real deal. Like no matter how many of these techniques, and there’s a couple of great ones that we’re going to talk about here that we share that we, you know, that we teach you, you know, those of you that like, if you’re one of our clients, we, you know, we teach you the best of the best that we can. RV: (01:05) And on these interviews, like we try to draw out the most that we can from our, our network and our friends and the people who are actually making stuff happen. But the reality is just, you gotta, at some point commit to just be in here. Like you got to just commit to going the distance. And if you can’t be here for five years, like if you’re not in this for five years, then just go home. Now. I mean, like if, if you’re not willing and prepared to pursue this dream for at least five years, then just stop now because it takes three years to even get going, like to even just get out of the Gates of, of just hustle and work before people even understand it. And I think, you know, our pod, this podcast, a good example, like I’ve already hosted a podcast that had millions of downloads and starting over. RV: (01:57) We’re just now getting to about 50,000 downloads. And we’ve almost been doing this for already like another year and a half. And that it’s like, that’s a slow build for someone who’s been there before, but we’re walking this journey with you. And I don’t mean that to be, you know, discouraging. I mean that, to be encouraging, to throw the gauntlet down, to help you realize that this takes time, right? So like if your first email blast, didn’t generate millions of dollars for you. Like, you know, you sometimes see on social media and people over promise, like don’t be discouraged, stay committed to your mission, to your vision, to the dream of making an impact, be focused on impact and influence and income will come. It will come. Like the stuff that we teach at brand builders, it absolutely works. Like it works, it works, it works, but it takes time. RV: (02:50) There’s not a way to do it with no time. And anyone who tells you otherwise, they’re just, they didn’t really do it. And it’s not sustainable like that. You, you, you, we bring on people who are doing it, have done. It are the real ones making it happen day in, day out. And you know, so that’s just hopefully encouragement to you. Don’t be discouraged if you know, it’s not all happening right away. Like you just came here. That message enough. So beyond that a couple takeaways for me from my my pal. So I think that was, you know, that’s, that’s a big one, but a simple nuance. The Angie didn’t say so directly, but it, it, it kind of inspired me or it was something she said that reminded me of this idea that it’s, it’s important. It’s really important to lock this in your brain. RV: (03:43) And this is an important sales, marketing strategy, technique, mindset, whatever you want to call it, don’t tell people what you do, tell people what you can do for them. Don’t tell people what you do, tell people what you can do for them. Like when people ask you, what do you do? Don’t say I’m a real estate agent say, aye, how people sell their homes, right? Like don’t, I don’t tell people I’m a personal brand strategist. I tell people I help people build and monetize their personal brand. And that is a simple and important and clear demarcation line. Don’t tell people what you do tell people what you can do for them. And that just really stuck out to me was something to remind myself of and to make sure that you just nailed home, that you, you think about that always. Cause that’s the mistake is we tell people what we do. RV: (04:53) We tell people like this, this is, this is what I spend my time doing. And they don’t really care about that. They care about what you can do for them. So make sure you make that change mentally. And, and also literally in your copy in your videos and you know, anytime you’re communicating in various forms, the next thing and I think I love this was something I really did take away from me and G in terms of, you know, selling and marketing, I think it’s like a lot of times we see people when they, they feel almost like they love putting out content, but then they have to go into like sales mode and that’s where they freak out or, you know, they love teaching. But then when it goes into like asking people to buy or something, they, they freak out because they have like this, like a gear shift, like there’s this mode where they think about, okay, I’m being myself normally. RV: (05:50) And then there’s this moment where I go into marketing. And when Angie was saying is like, don’t do that. Just, just be the same person talking passionately about what you believe in like the, the, the tools that you use, the products that you buy. And they don’t even just have to be your products. Like she, she was saying, you know, she, a lot of times she tells people about tools that she doesn’t get an affiliate fee for. She just, she just in that mode because she doesn’t delineate between like, okay, I’m in sales mode versus I’m in like teaching mode, it’s just learn to, to be genuine. And, you know, like a verbatim thing that she said, which I thought was interesting was she said, integrate your ads into what you’re doing. So, right. Like you think of ads. It’s like, okay, I’m going to create my ad. RV: (06:37) And then I, and then I have content, but in Corp, if you think about it more as incorporating your ad into your content or that your content is an ad, you know, it’s teaching, but it’s also an ad for something that’s sort of representative of this mindset shift here of, it’s not like, there’s you as a, as a mid, as a messenger. And then there’s you as a marketer, it’s like, it’s the same thing and do them together. And just talk about it that way. What really, really helped you. Or another thing that she said was, don’t think of how can I sell more, but think about how can I be more intimate and vulnerable and authentic about telling people what I believe in, Oh, I love that. I love, I love that idea. And, and, you know, I think of it as being more of like a promoter I’ve talked about this a lot is, is just, if you were going to tell your friends about a great movie you saw, or a great restaurant, you went to you, wouldn’t like put on your sales mode and become like robo salesperson. RV: (07:45) You know, you wouldn’t write out a script and be like, let me memorize the script. You would, you would just tell your friends all my gosh, like this movie is amazing. You have to see this movie or you have to listen to this song, or, you know, like you have to go to this city that I visited, the way that you promote to your friends, the things that you love and believe in is the same way that you should promote your own products. And you should have the same level of conviction in your own products that you’ve created as you do in the products that you use that are created by other people. And if you don’t, then there’s some disconnect. Like you need to work on your product. More like there’s something about your product that you’re insecure about that you don’t love it, or you don’t believe in it, or you didn’t design it in a way that it feels authentic. RV: (08:31) And, and the more you can do that, the more comfortable you’ll be the more persuasive you’ll be. And the less salesy you’ll be, because it’s, it’s like, you won’t be just, you know, regurgitating this, this, this script. So, so don’t do that, like just promote and speak and teach from the heart and be intimate and vulnerable and authentic about what you believe in. And that’s a important tip. That’s one of the things that I love about Angie. I think, you know, she’s always encouraging people to market and promote, but to like, not in ’em, you know, just, just in an honest way, like being congruent with who you are. And I love that. And she’s also telling the story, which was my point number one, about how long it really takes and the work it really takes. So those were my top two takeaways. RV: (09:17) My, my third takeaway, which is another tactical point, which has kind of come up before. But another thing you can’t hear too often is that remember, or just know in your mind that Instagram is not an SEO friendly growth platform, because social media in general is the opposite effect of, of search engine optimization. Like when you put content out on the web and, and, and, and so, so it’s almost like I think about it this way, your website, I E your blog specifically. Okay. So your blog, your YouTube channel and your podcast, those get better over time. The longer the content has been out, the more reach you have, the more traffic, the more valuable it is, the more new subscribers, like it’s like a fine wine. It gets better with age and those assets. That’s one of the reasons why those assets are so important and really, probably in many ways, the most important, I mean, yeah, your blog, your website, your YouTube channel, they get better over time. RV: (10:24) Social media is like she said, it’s better for, it’s just a nurturing platform. It’s a way to just keep in touch with people. But over time, the value of social media goes down w a piece of content on social media over time, goes down a piece of content on, you know, basically call it Google. Well, I mean, is there a podcast, your YouTube, or your website, your blog, it goes, the value of that goes up. And so they’re more SEO. They’re more SEO, friendly, and older pieces of content carry a lot of weight and they get, you know, they get more traffic and more reach over time. So you just need to understand that. Particularly if you’re someone who has a huge following on social media, but you have no email list, you have no, no blog traffic. You have no podcasts. You have no YouTube channel. RV: (11:12) It’s like, you are, you are one algorithm change away from your whole brand disappearing overnight. And all of the work that you’ve done to build an audience on social media, basically becoming worthless. So you better be migrating those over to these other platforms, YouTube podcasting, and your blog quickly, which is what, you know, we, we teach that in our relationship engine, our whole phase two is all about building your digital platform, your digital ecosystem. So make sure that you’re doing that, make sure you’re always doing those things. Social media is important. It’s a great way to get a lot of reach quickly. You know, you can go viral, you can nurture people. It’s like but it’s not the center piece of your personal brand strategy. It’s more of an, an outlet or redirect. It’s a tributary to your stream, which really should be your blog. RV: (12:08) And then, you know, you’re dropping your podcast and your videos from YouTube on there as well. All things that if you follow the brand builders group way, like if you’ve come to our phase two event, you know, if you’ve been through phase one, you come to phase two or you’re, you’re in our monthly and more, we’re teaching you the relationship engine. And you’re just, you’re building that out. We’re doing these things organically, but every time I do one of these interviews, I’d become more and more convicted of like, yeah, the process we’re teaching incorporates. So many of these things, these real, the real influencers are doing. So I hope you’re doing that and pulling that away as a tip, most of all, you just got to stay in the game. You just got to stay in the game. You just gotta keep going. You gotta keep pushing. RV: (12:48) You gotta know that every single day, there’s someone out there waiting to hear from you. And that most of this game is a matter of staying power. And it’s the person who’s committed to being here for the long term, that’s going to win. So I want to encourage you and invite you and challenge you to commit, to be here for the longterm, commit that this is your craft. This is your mission. What you’re doing with your personal brand is going to be the rest of your life. And when you do that, you’ll you’ll quickly go, right? So there’s a bunch of steps I need to take, but I got the rest of my life, you know, to work towards it. So we’ll just, we’ll just start plugging away. And that’s what we want to help encourage you to do. Whether we get a chance to call, hopefully you’ll do a free call with us. If you haven’t. At some point, we want to talk to you. Hopefully we get to see you at one of our events, or, you know, if for right now, just stay plugged into the podcast and follow me on social at Rory Vaden on Instagram and most of my other platforms and just, just stay connected so we can encourage you along your journey. Thanks for being here. We’ll catch you next time. Bye. Bye.
Ep 78: Going Pro with Digital Marketing with Angie Lee
RV: (00:00) I am so excited to introduce to you to someone who is a newer friend of mine who I really, really respect. Angie Lee is, she has millions of podcasts, downloads. She has one of the best personal develop events for female entrepreneurs. It’s called, pays to be brave. She’s releasing a book called ready as a lie. She’s built hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. And she is someone that was just told, Hey, you couldn’t do this. You shouldn’t do this. It’s not going to work. It’s a waste of time. You’re crazy. And yet here she is in her young years just crushing it. And I want, I wanted to invite her on to tell her, tell for her to tell us and tell you exactly how the heck that she does all that and give us all of her marketing secrets. So here she is, Angie Lee. AL: (00:51) I’m so excited to be here. Let’s do it. I love geeking out on all things, branding and marketing. So, RV: (00:57) Yeah. Well and I feel like you’re like one of the case studies of like, Hey, like you’re someone who’s just done it through. So, so tell us first of all, like how did you kind of get into building a personal brand and like how did all that, you know, how did you even start? And then we’ll talk about why you think it’s gone well and how to do it. AL: (01:17) Yeah. When I started this, I was 19 years old, 10 11 years ago, I didn’t know I was building a personal brand. I didn’t, I didn’t know what creating content was and I really was someone who just genuinely loved to share my life with people. I genuinely love to give tips. And at the time it was health and wellness. And so I was on campus in school and my first year of college and I hated college. I hated school. Typical entrepreneur selling lemonade on the corner since I was little and school was a cage for me, it was jail. So instead of going to class, what do you do? You start videoing yourself working out and you posted on my space and you share with your friends or you, you I was creating recipes and, and smoothie recipes and health tips and I went all in and I became obsessed with creating content. AL: (02:04) And what happened is through that I realized that there was this whole world of digital marketing and I became obsessed with how do I take this passion that I have for wellness online and get women to purchase eBooks or have ad space or do coaching programs. And so it kind of all evolved from me starting this blog. And then what started with three to four readers, one of them being my mom that eventually became women telling their friends and their friends’ friends. And I just stayed really consistent. And this is crazy to say, but I think in 10 years of creating content, I’ve maybe taken 10 to 20 days off in a sense of creating some sort of piece of content, whether that’s written, visual, auditory. I’ve just been obsessed with connecting with people every day and sharing with them. And then when I realized I could turn this into a business instead of becoming a dietician and making $20,000 a year working 80 hours a week in Buffalo, Idaho, which is what I was going to school to do, I realized that there was, there was something here, and I can still remember the day that a woman paid me $60 for a wellness ebook. AL: (03:05) And I remember thinking I was loaded. I was like, I’m rich. I have $60 I, I’ve made it mom, don’t worry about me. I’ve got it, I’m good. I got a woman paid me $60 from across the country for an ebook and then a day later this company paid me 40 bucks for ad space on the blog. And again, you know, I was 19 you’re broke, you’re broken college. A hundred dollars is like you are set for life. And so I remember being like, this is it. I’m going to make it. But I do remember that moment and I think every entrepreneur remembers their first digital sale because it’s such a beautiful moment of if I can get one stranger on the internet to find value in what I do, who lives all the way across the world or country, I can get thousands of people to do this. AL: (03:52) And once I realized that it’s been game over, and that’s what I’ve been committed to, showing up, creating content and finding all of these different ways to be, Hey, to be a coach, a teacher, an educator, influencer, and it’s evolved. You know what started as health and wellness then evolved into marketing coaching because women started to ask me, how did you turn this into a business? How have you made this a full time gig? And through that I found out, which probably isn’t one of your steps of your process, that my biggest passion really is, is marketing. I love marketing because as you know, marketing is communication. It’s the most beautiful form of communication. And I think if you understand humans and you love understanding humans, you can become a phenomenal marketer. So man was started as a blog about pushups is now this crazy career. RV: (04:36) Well, and I just, I love that idea that it’s like if you can just get one person, it’s like once you get that one person and you go, gosh, I can recreate this and I can scale this. One of the things that I love about your posts and Mmm, you know, I actually, I don’t follow a ton of people and I actually follow you a particular on Instagram is, is because you don’t sell the dream that it’s easy. You sell the dream that it’s possible and you talk about consistency and you lay out like you just did. Like it’s not the, Hey, I’m going to throw up a website and run some Facebook ads and be a millionaire overnight, which you see a lot of. And I’ve never figured out a way to do that. And none of our clients have ever figured out a way to do that. RV: (05:20) And none of my friends who are very successful, I figured out how to do that. I feel like it’s that true story of consistency. And so can you just help us understand like what was the timeline like how long from the time that you were like, ah, I’m a thrown up some weird blog. I’m just basically trying to avoid being in class in college too. When it was like, okay, I’m really going to do this seriously, and then what was the timeline between that moment and then the moment where it was like, Hey, I’m actually starting to make real money and then it’s like, Hey, this is full time and like, Hey, this is awesome and like, Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I’m being paid as much as I’m being paid do this. So like what’s that horizon look like? AL: (06:00) Yeah, I would say 19 to 2122 was, I have no idea really what I’m doing, but I’m going to keep showing up and making side money here and there and other jobs. Of course I was still in school until I dropped out because I hated college. But RV: (06:16) Years you worked. This was like a just a total like side hobby kind of a thing? AL: (06:21) Yeah, I would do it in between classes late at night instead of going to class. I remember being in chemistry tests, which are very intense. You guys are very dense answering to my blog readers because I was just obsessed. I was like, Oh my God, I need to talk to these people because they have questions and I didn’t really know yet if I could monetize it, but I won’t lie to people. I’ve always been a business woman. I’ve always seen the world through the lenses of a marketer and a business woman and I’m always thinking of ways to create something and sell something, share something. And so within about two years I started Googling what is digital marketing and sort of watching these corny videos from probably caught who was like the big digital marketer. Then I don’t remember who it was. I would watch these videos up late at night and I remember I would tell my roommate, Oh my God, look at this. AL: (07:05) You can set up a funnel and people will opt into it and then they’ll buy your shit. Like this is crazy. She’s like, okay, whatever. Just go get a job. That sounds really weird. People aren’t going to do that. Nobody’s going to pay for space on a blog. No one’s going to pay you to podcast like I don’t think you really should because this is right before social media really built. And it was almost as if I anticipated what was going to happen and this huge economic shift of the technological revolution as you call it. And so I started to get these ideas of like, no, this is how people are going to learn fitness and business and this is how people are going to buy stuff. So maybe I can position myself as someone who could teach fitness, but do it online so that I don’t have to work at a gym or go to go to a dietetics office, right. Or a hospital. And so it really became this obsession with digital marketing. But it did take probably two and a half, two, three years until I was making a part time income enough where I could actually see that this could be a real thing. Like wow, I have real steady clients. Whether it was group coaching, one on one coaching, ad space eBooks, downloads, that RV: (08:11) We were also doing it part time then as well, like it took, so it, it took you two and a half to three years to get there to a part time income. But you were also doing it part time as well. It wasn’t like you were doing it 80 hours a week and then it took three years. It was like you were kind of dabbling and doing different stuff, but like once you, once you said like, okay, so I’m going to go after this. So was that like right after basically you dropped out of school and said, okay, I’m going to do this as my job? AL: (08:42) [Inaudible] Yeah, that’s pretty much what happened. It was a burn the boat situation because I didn’t want to go work in corporate and whatever I did, I always felt like I was lost and I felt like I didn’t belong there and my ideas were too creative and I wanted to make own hours and I was getting clear signals from the universe and God that it was not meant to be an employee of a large company. And so that’s when I really doubled down. And you guys know listening when you are against the wall, that’s when you make it happen. And I think that’s what’s really beautiful about the time we’re in right now. I think when you know you have to do it, that’s when you do. And I realized, Hey, I’m a hundred thousand dollars in debt from college that I didn’t really go to. I’m passionate about digital marketing, digital marketing. I’ve made 30 to $40,000 here and there. If I can make that, I could go full blown and make this a full time business. And that’s what I became obsessed. Like I tell you with studying digital marketing and figuring out how do I take something I love and make money from it online and and I studied revenue streams and man, once you open up a business woman to digital marketing who wants to work from home and not have a boss, it’s game over. RV: (09:48) So how long did it take? So how long did it take then to go from, okay, first two or three years it’s like it’s, it’s a hobby and I’m making hobby income and then you go, okay, my back’s up against the wall. Either need to get a real job or I’m going to do this and say, okay, I’m going to do this. How long does it take to like make real money, make six figures, that kind of a thing. AL: (10:08) Yeah, I was 25 I would say when it became really real, so five years ago, so bright in the middle, five years, hardcore. That’s what I realized. Okay, six figures, multiple six figure launches really started to double down on my organic funnels, my marketing affiliate marketing. That’s when things started to get a little bit more smooth. But still ups and downs on every launch was amazing. And then 25 to 28 still flustering my ass. I mean, the whole process was busting my butt and it wasn’t actually until to answer your other question, it wasn’t until about a year and a half ago that I’ve had one of those moments of, Oh my gosh, I cannot believe that this is my job. I’m paid to speak on stages. I’m paid to host a party as you’d like to call it. I’m host to share about other people’s cool products and make multiple six figures from these launches. AL: (10:55) I mean, last year was insane to know that I was paid to be an affiliate marketer. Like it’s also really surreal to me, but it all comes back down to brand. It comes back down to that very first post I made when I was 19 years old and it was about burpees and pushups and green juice. Like that’s where it started if you think about it. But now eight, nine years later, I really feel like, Oh my gosh, I feel safe in this. I feel like I, for the rest of my life, I’ll have a personal brand and we’ll be able to play in a few different spaces. Jesus. But that was not a fun eight, nine years. A lot of it, you know, ups downs I had done in the beginning, I was confused. I didn’t have a lot of coaches. I should have hired more coaches. I kind of just Googled a lot. I Googled a lot of stuff because you know, I was nervous to invest in myself, which wasn’t always smart and now building a bigger team. And so it’s crazy that now I feel like it’s finally all in all came to fruition. RV: (11:46) Huh. So let’s talk about the digital marketing for for a second. What is, what are some of the things that you, you know now that are very clear that like you didn’t know then. So you know, you’re coming out of college and you’re kind of like, okay, I’m going to do this. And then you start Googling stuff and you go, dammit. Like, if this took me like I can think of in my life, I can think of, there’s like two or three lessons that were, they took me a few years to learn and it’s like I can teach them in five minutes, but it took me a few years. What are some of those big moments for you? It’s specifically like, I think a lot of people listening here, there’s probably less people listening that are, you know, in college going, Oh I want to do a side hustle. But a lot of people go on, Hey, I just got laid off from my job, or my income got cut, or my husband or my wife’s income got cut. Or you know, and it’s like, I need to like figure something out. And I don’t really know anything about digital marketing. So what are some of those big, big lessons do you think? AL: (12:42) Yeah, you guys are gonna love me and hate me for saying this, but there are rules, but there are no rules. And what I mean by that is AL: (12:52) Beating to my own drum is that the saying, beating my own drum, doing things a little bit different than most marketers do has actually been a benefit. And so in the beginning I tried to follow all the scripts, all the funnels, scripts, all the downloads, all the sales call scripts, and I think I was obsessed with following someone else’s blueprint and that actually hindered my authenticity. And as corny as it sounds, it’s, it’s the truth when it comes to building a personal brand. The more you are you, and maybe sometimes that’s weird, maybe that is your emails have some spelling errors. Maybe it’s you, you want to craft your email the way you want to craft it. You don’t want to follow the rules you learned in one specific webinar. I believe that that is going to shine and stand out more than anything. I think that the world right now is creating real and authentic and I wish I would’ve started being that way sooner because the moment I was authentic was the moment this brand built, this brand grew and I built super fans. AL: (13:45) Like I have fans that are not just, Oh I’ll buy from you there, I’ll buy from you for life and whatever it is. And the w the reason I was able to do that is because I woke up one day and realized I have to, I have to fully be me. And sometimes that’s imperfect and it’s weird and, and they’re noticing that when they read my emails where they consume my content, it’s a little bit different than what most girls in the space are doing and it’s one day cause I blinders on and two, it’s because I made the, I finally stopped doing what I did in the past, which was I don’t follow specific scripts. Even as an affiliate marketer, I don’t follow the copy swipes and you can, I’m not to say these things, not to say these things don’t work for some people, but I excelled as an affiliate marketer last year with a few different people in their launches and they all wanted to know what was the system, what was the strategy, what was the thing? AL: (14:28) I’m like, guys, there wasn’t a thing. The thing was I show up on video, I talked to my people like they’re my best friend. I give them value and they feel like they know me and they trust me. And that one, it wasn’t a specific email sequence. There wasn’t one swipe copy I sent and Ooh, it got them in. It’s just at the end of the day that stuff can work. But nothing can replace being a human and speaking to another human and just being real with them. And you know, as all of this is growing, consumers are becoming smarter. So they know when they see an ad, they know when they hear an ad, they know what you’re doing. So the more that you can be genuine and the more that you can integrate in your ads or your sale into what you’re doing, the better it. That’s been my saving grace. I tell women that all the time. I’m like, I, I haven’t been as scripted as most people and I think that’s actually been a benefit. So for you guys listening, follow your own damn rules. If it feels like the right thing to send or right thing to say. RV: (15:22) Oh, so that is awesome. I love that. So what you just said there is you said you know, if it feels like the right thing to send, that reminded me of something that emotionally there, you know, there’s a big fear here, particularly if there’s people who have been successful in something, but they’re newer to digital marketing and it’s like, Oh man. Or just marketing in general. And this is another thing that I really love that, cause you talk about it so much as I think some people have that psychological barrier too. I don’t want to be seen as a marketer. I don’t want to be seen as a spammer. How do you overcome some of those feelings of like, well, if I send emails to a bunch of people, doesn’t that make me a spammer? And like, you know, like the, the mindset I guess of the balance of serving the audience but also generating revenue to provide for yourself and your staff. AL: (16:21) Yeah, there’s longterm. And then there’s short term, right? And sometimes you have to do what you have to do for the short term. But I believe if you hold out a little bit in your patients and you focus on the long term of having a personal brand that can last you, I mean I’ll probably be doing this in my sixties you know, I’ll just be on those live videos, chatting with people, writing books, speaking on stages. I don’t know what I’ll be doing. I’ll be doing something fun. But I’m in this for the long haul and I’ve known that since the beginning when it started to get real as you asked, like when I really started to make money and realize this was a thing and starting to get people, we’ll say it, Oh my God, I love your work. And getting that first email back from the blog saying, Oh my gosh, I need to hear from you. When I realized it was real is when I realized that I have something valuable in front of me and if I am the asset of this company in this business, I cannot burn out and fizzle out AL: (17:09) Immediately. Or this is going to crash and burn. So I am very delicate of when do I directly sell and then when am I simply just brand, building or nurturing. So I do have a flow, I guess you could say that in the beginning it was more structured and now I organically can feel it and I feel like as a female and we’re very intuitive with a lot of the things we do in business. So I’ll feel out the push and the pole and that’s what marketing and sales is, right. Push and pull. And so I’ll feel out, okay, am I in a season of, I’m spending the next six to eight weeks of pure value of no pitch, no strings attached and just throwing value at them. And then am I or am I in a season of, okay, I’m making more asks, but when I’m delivering, so value for months on end or as a majority or for the majority of the time when I do make the ask, it’s not a big deal and they’re not weirded out by it. AL: (17:56) So I think one, it’s knowing what season are you in? And knowing their seasons of push and their seasons of pole and there needs to be that nice balance of you showing up for them with no strings attached. Like one of my best tips for people on Instagram stories is, you know, as someone who’s also an influencer and paid by ads to to do work, there’s a lot of times I’ll share a resource or content or books or podcasts that I have no affiliation to. There’s no dollar amount, I’m not connected to it. Maybe I wish I was a little bit, but I just share it to share it, to show, Hey, you guys are my friends and I’m going to share things when I’m not paid obviously. And by building that trust, then when I do make a sale, they know it’s genuine because it’s coming from a place of, listen, I’m not trying to always sell you. AL: (18:34) So I do think there is a delicate balance, but I also believe that’s again, you got, you have to be obsessed with what you’re selling. So for me, I won’t share something or create something that I don’t genuinely love from the face wash to a book, to a course, to an affiliate thing. I just, I can’t, it’s just not in me to not be genuine. And I believe that that genuineness is what leads to sales. And that genuine passion for something is what leads to sales. So I would really encourage you guys listening. You gotta love what you do. You’ve got to be obsessed with it because listen, if you’re not obsessed with the pencil, you can’t sell it to someone else. You know, I see women being like, buy this. It’s great. I’m like, you’re not excited. I’m excited. So I think it [inaudible] can go a long way, but it has to be genuine. RV: (19:17) Yeah, I think that’s awesome. And I think that’s a really cool illustrations you’re using there of like, make sure it’s not the only things you’re promoting are the things you’re getting paid to do. Like, make sure you’re promoting things that it’s like, Hey, this is what I actually use every day. I think that’s, I think that’s awesome. So I want to actually talk about Instagram cause you’re, you, you’ve, you’ve built a really wonderful Instagram following is super engaged. As I mentioned. I follow you personally. And Mmm. What do you, what do you think, what do you think creates growth on Instagram platform specifically? Mmm. And I’m also interested in what do you think creates growth on your podcast specifically and sort of like what’s the difference between kind of those two platforms in terms of like what types of content and frequency and that kind of stuff? AL: (20:07) Yeah. Whew. I’ll keep this as short as possible. So this isn’t a 10 hour webinar, but I geek out on this stuff so I could go forever. But growing, here’s the deal. You guys, Instagram is not SEO friendly growth platform. Youtube is, podcasts are a little bit more so because of keywords and search. Instagram is a nurture platform. It’s a place where you have already, yep. It’s a place where it’s a place where you’re nurturing your current people. And I’ll give you a hack on how you can grow on there. But it’s more of a place to nurture and go deep with your current people. And then places like YouTube or podcasts or more of the funnel to get to Instagram. I believe Instagram is your party. And then you know, to get to the party first have to hear about the party from YouTube, from YouTube or podcasts. AL: (20:51) So it’s really about those two places being more SEO friendly to drive the traffic then to Instagram. So when it comes to Instagram growth, shareable content is everything. And what I mean by this is a piece of content. An infographic and educational posts are really heartfelt. Post a funny video, something that someone else will read or consume and say, Oh my gosh, this is funny. Entertaining gave me some sort of value. I’m going to comment because you asked me to engage. It’s so valuable. I need to share this onto my wall. I’m going to tag three of my friends in this because this is so funny. Or this is so educational or this is so interesting. Or it’s a, it’s a belief system that I also share. So by me sharing it, I look smart because I shared the quote knowing human psychology and why people share things. AL: (21:38) It usually comes down to a few reasons. It was funny, it was interesting, it was valuable, or they have the same shared belief as you, so they felt the need to share it. So for me, I have this nice balance of what I call intimate content or storytelling. So I’ll just have a picture of me and then I’ll infuse the story. And then what I’m infusing a lot in 2020 is growth related content, which is shareable content. So today I’m doing an infographic and then another day, maybe I’ll do an IGTG ITT. These are great for growth right now because people reshare them or comments. So the best way to grow is to get someone to comment their friends in the comments or for them to share it onto their stories. And then people say, Oh my God, what’s that video? That video looks so interesting. Bob just gave the top five tips to blah, blah, blah. I should go check it out. I need to learn more about that. So that’s the only way to truly grow on Instagram as it’s a platform that doesn’t have SEO capabilities to it. Now RV: (22:28) Typically speaking there, just to, to pause on that for a second, cause you go like from a tactical standpoint, the best way to grow there is for someone to share your post to their story. They can’t share it to their feed, which is sometimes annoying, but they could share it to their story, which is going to be where their most engaged audiences. So now all of their most engaged people are going to see that. And or to actually physically get your followers to comment on your post and tag one of their friends or followers in that post. AL: (23:04) Yes, yes. So before I’ll post, I’ll know is this a nurture intimate storytelling piece of content or is this to bring in new people and it’s a growth piece of content. So I’ll do a nice 50 50 blend on there. And when I’m creating a growth piece of content, like a quote or an infographic or an interesting ID TV, I’m created with the intention of Susan commenting, Sarah and Becky. So then her friends see it and maybe they share with their friends. They share with their network marketing team and that’s how it’s grown organically. And that’s honestly how the podcast grew organically. Because I’m, I’m again a marketer, I don’t run ads. So for me I really have to focus on shareable content. What would be so good or so valuable that a girl would say, Oh my God, this is so sometimes it’s funny, I just like being weird. AL: (23:43) So I’ll say what’s so funny that she’s to tag her friend or what was so educational that she felt the need to share this with her network marketing team or her friends who are also entrepreneurs and business and small business owners. So for me it’s like education and humor. If I, if I constantly vacillate between those two, I’ve seen that my growth we’ll do really, really well. So again, it’s, it’s more about not creating always what I want to create, but what they would find interesting and then they would post. So that’s how you grow on a platform that’s not SEO friendly yet. I hope it is one day, but it’s really smart as well to have a podcast and a YouTube and mentioned Instagram in those two places. So you can then drive the traffic from those SEO friendly places back to the podcast, which is, or back to Instagram, which is your home to nurture them and really get to know people. Because as you know, stories is like such an awesome place to convert to the sales for a lot of people because it is so intimate. RV: (24:35) Yeah. So I will talk, I want to talk about stories in a second, but so I actually want to share. So this is one of my things that I struggle with. I feel cheap asking people to comment below. I so, so when I was in comedy training I was, one of the people that I was coach was a guy named Eddie Brill who was the talent Booker for the tonight show. And he used to call that pandering where comedians would be like, Hey, how’s everybody doing tonight? And it’s so weird because it was like I took this one class from this guy years and years ago and for some reason that’s like the one thing that sticks with me is like, and I feel like I’m pandering when I do that. Yet everybody that grows does this. I mean, Trent Shelton does it all the time. Jay Shetty does it all the time. Gary V does all the time. Grant Cardone, like these people, these monster followings that are not celebrities, but they’re like personal brands and they’ve kind of become celebrity personal brands. They’re always doing it. So do you, have you ever had that reluctance or like where do you, like what do you, what would you, is that just stupid? You just go, well, who cares? Like just do it anyways. Or like what, what would you coach coach me on this? AL: (25:46) Yeah, it does feel a little corny and weird because everyone’s doing it and it’s like, eh, comment below. So what I’ll do is I’ll say to myself, okay, I do need to ask them to engage because if I don’t ask them, they may not do it. So it is smart to tell you and train them, but I’ll, I’ll try to make it a more interesting question or something that I actually think is funny or, or, or quirky or weird or who would you choose? A or B or you know, make it something where it’s a little bit more interesting for me versus just comment because they’re like, what do you want me to say? I make it easier for them and say this is what you should comment. Like do you like this or that or do you, but you know what I’ve noticed if something’s good because this is how I am and I think, okay, if my girl is a lot like me on social, then she’ll do the same thing. If something is funny or interesting or educational or valuable, I will tag a friend because I want her to see it or I will or I will and or I will share it on my wall. So I actually don’t think you need to always ask them to. I think if it’s good shit it will spread. Like good shit always spread. So I think it’s really smart. You can be the signature. AL: (26:53) It just does. I’m so committed to creating such good content that Susan can’t not tell their friend, go check it out because she’s the only girl. I know. Teaching marketing like this, like that has been my commitment and my obsession. So when I create something and I’m like, I’m going to teach it in a way where this live IETV, which guys get on ITB, it’s so good for engagement right now. It’s amazing. It’s the favorite child of Instagram. I don’t even say comment in it. They’re just like, Oh my gosh, I shared this with my team. It was so good. So I think if you’re a smart content creator and if you’re someone who’s valuable and has value like you do, I think it’s easy for you to pump out things that people would say, Oh my goodness, this is good stuff. Like I needed that tip today. So guys would always go, it comes back to good quality content and giving away value or entertainment. So people want, you know, and so I do, I don’t like these super corny like, yeah, you could tell they just posted it. RV: (27:40) No, but that helps. Like Timmy, it’s to me different where it’s like tag, it’s different between just kind of going like tag a friend who needs to see this and more going like, who do you know that is struggling with this thing in your life? Shared this with that person. Like just like what would be interesting to me or, or, or to go, you know, who’s somebody, you know, that’s a leader, tag them so that they can see this like, or, or who is someone, you know, that’s really good at this versus just saying, Hey, tag a friend so that I get more, more views. Like making it more meaningful. That’s actually really helpful to me. I like that. AL: (28:14) Yeah. Being selfless with it will always pay off. You know, it might take a little bit longer, but it’s so worth it. RV: (28:20) Yeah, totally. So all right. So I do want to ask you about the stories, but before we do that, we’re running, run low on time. I knew we would go fast, which, which we have here, the where should people go if they want to learn more about Angie Lee and follow you. And also, you know, kind of who is, share a little bit about who your perfect person is so that they know they know who they’re going to, who you’re looking for. AL: (28:45) Yeah. I mostly help female small business owners, so online coaches, online network marketers, wellness coaches, life coaches, beauty coaches, fitness coaches, women who have a small DTC brand. So it’s women who essentially want to tap into the personal, the personal brand space. And you guys can check me [email protected] or listen to the Angie Lee show on iTunes and I’m hanging out a lot on IgE stories and on my podcast. RV: (29:10) Yeah, so actually, and I want to ask you about the podcast just really quickly too before stories, a top tip for growing the podcast. Just cause that’s been a monster for you. Like you have millions and millions of downloads of all your platforms. Like, if you look at web traffic, social, YouTube, blah, blah, blah, your podcast is really like the thing that feels like it’s jamming. What do you, what do you think that comes from? AL: (29:36) I love that. I don’t have like one strategic answer. So cause as you get it was intentional but not intentional. You know what I mean? And I think sometimes that’s the way it works when you really, really love it. But here’s what I’ve been good at. I’ve been good at creating hype and excitement around it. Going back to the passion or the obsession, I’ve been good at building sub-tribes in my community who cheer for me and tell their friends about me so that I don’t have to spread the word. And that’s the epitome of sub-tribes, right? Is creating your subculture in your personal brand. So your people are telling their people to go listen to you because Susan can tell her Becky’s to go listen to me better than I can tell the Becky’s because they’re two away from me. So two steps away from me. AL: (30:14) So the way that I’ve done it is one creating the sub-tribes and the excitement too. I’ve done a good job at teasing pre and post show, and I haven’t done this in the last year as much and I may start to do this again, but I treat each episode like an event. So for an example is I used to get on Facebook live and I would tease the topic and say, guys, if you want to hear the other three tips, you have to go listen to this episode. Go check it out on iTunes. And it was almost like I had a pre party or an after party to the show and then they wanted to go listen to the rest. So that has been a really awesome way for me to spread it. And then I treat it like I’m affiliate marketing in a sense where I find tribe leaders, so women who have a community or women who have a network marketing team and they share the podcast to their women. AL: (31:00) So for me it’s been interesting to see how it’s spread really through other people spreading it to their networks. Right. And as an organic marketer, literally, I don’t run ads. I’ve had to rely on almost my community being the outreach. So one, get your people to cheer you guys on more than anyone to create hype and excitement around it. Whether this is getting online or stories, pretty graphics and exciting things to get people excited to listen. And I think making sure the topic and the name is niche specific. In the beginning, you know now it’s my name, but I think in the beginning, let’s say you guys have a show on beauty or wellness. I think having it be something specific so people know what it’s going to be about and you teach on this definitely down getting focused on something, becoming the best at something. It’s like Dave Ramsey, the reason his show blows up is because people were searching for the word finances or debt. So have a searchable term, know what the problem is you solve, create a show around that and then as your brand grows, you can teach on whatever you want and have a little bit more flexibility. But I think it’s really important in the beginning to have it be a niche specific show. So then there is more searchability to it on, on iTunes. I mean it’s all good. RV: (32:01) Well sure. I mean it all. Is it all? Is that something that you do? Alright, so one last one last thing. I’m going to steal one more tip. Using IgG stories to promote. How important is it? What do you do? How do they fit in or why are they so critical to the overall like monetization strategy? AL: (32:22) Yeah, to give you guys some real life data here, I used IgE stories, which is a completely free platform and obviously I was very consistent on it. They’re on there for a few years, as soon as it came out, but I used it to sell out my last live event of 1500 women, zero paid ads. That was all I did. I a bunch of ID stories everyday just talking about how exciting it’s going to be, how amazing it’s going to be. You need to be there. We had affiliates sharing it on their ID story. So in addition to my stories, they were sharing it as well. We had a whole affiliate system of tried leaders and you guys, the power of video is irreplaceable. The way that someone can feel within 15 to 30 seconds of seeing you on video, just speaking from your heart saying, Hey, go check this out, or you need to be there. AL: (33:03) It’s irreplaceable. You know what I mean? You can have the most beautiful sales page in the world, but if people have not seen your face, your mannerisms, or heard your voice, I don’t feel like they’re as pulled to buy or to work with you cause they don’t know you yet. People need to hear you and or see you. It’s just so important for the sales process. So for me, I’m all about the intimacy game. My question isn’t how can I sell more? It’s how can I get more intimate with my people, which maybe sounds creepy, but I’m always asking myself, how could I be a little more intimate? How could I be more intimate and vulnerable and authentic? Well, how could I be more intimate, vulnerable and authentic and especially serving women. The more I focus on that, the more my business lows up, which just shows they wanted to get to know me and trust me before they made the decision to buy for me. AL: (33:42) And there’s no better way to do that than video and guys, 15 second video that keeps you engaged. There’s engagement features, there’s music, just weird stuff. I mean game over, it’s like YouTube but you don’t have to do all the crazy editing. So man, it’s my favorite thing. I think it’s the most fun and it’s a nice way where you can have this, it’s a place where you could have this beautiful blend of teacher and friend, friend, Hey this is my life. I’m farting around and being weird. This is my dog, this is my cat, whatever. And then I can also show that I’m an expert and have a level of expertise and say, Hey, this is what I also know and then here’s what I’m going to teach you. And I think that that blend does really, really well on ID stories of friend and teacher. RV: (34:20) I love it. Angie Lee, my friends, check her out, check out her podcast. We’ll put links to that in the show notes. Angie, thanks for your consistency. Thanks for your honesty. And I think it’s just inspiring to me and empowering to hear you not selling that the dream is easy, but selling that the dream is possible. So we wish you the best. AL: (34:43) Oh, I think, sorry. This is amazing.
Ep 69: Getting to Grips with the Fundamentals of SEO with Rick Steele | Recap Episode
RV: (00:08) well, um, that was amazing. Uh, that interview with Rick Steele, I’m telling you like that is, could be seen as more valuable than like an entire degree or program that you could, you could invest tens of thousands of dollars into and, and listen, right? Like when it comes to learning, uh, how to do it. RV: (00:36) Paid advertising, I’m going to go with the guy who spent $94 million, $94 million in Google paid ads, right? Like amazing. And he’s turned it into billions with a B, multiple companies doing billions of dollars. There’s something to be learned there. And it’s one of the things I have to S you know, I love about brand builders is it’s just when you come to our events, you know, whether they’re the virtual events or there are physical events, you know, our events are small. Like our events are capped at 50 people and most of them are like 25 30 people. And you’re literally sitting next to somebody like Rick Steele who is spend $94 million in ads, ran seven marathons in seven days, is built all these huge companies, you’re sitting next to these podcasters that reach millions of people or people have million social media followers. Like our community just fires me up. RV: (01:35) And so I hope you enjoyed and if you didn’t like go listen to this interview with Rick steel. He’s not like, he doesn’t teach what, like his personal brand is not about the stuff I was interviewing him. He did that as a favor to me cause he’s one of our clients and our friends [inaudible] okay. Him giving away his secrets about how to run, uh, paid ads through Google is just insane. So I’m going to give you the recap here. Um, AAJ wasn’t able to make it today. So I’m rolling so low of course this, this is this, this concept or this topic was square in the center of all things nerdy. And so it’s probably a proposed that I’m doing this recap by myself cause I just love this stuff and I want to try to simplify it and try to organize it for myself and mostly for you know, for you and for my, mostly for myself really just to like make sure I’m understanding things. RV: (02:33) That’s why we do these recaps and learn alongside of you. But here’s the first big idea I think from that interview is that intent based search. It is a huge part of the future for personal brands and that’s a big difference is understanding intent based search, which is Google. Somebody comes and they type in a term like nobody tight. When you go to Google and you type in broken water heater, you’re not typing it in just to learn about water heaters like you’re typing it in because you need that thing at that moment. And that’s the power of intent based search is it is somebody saying I need this thing at this moment versus traditional advertising. Even Facebook is more of awareness advertising. It’s, it’s, yeah. Inserting yourself in front of somebody and saying, Hey, check out this thing that I have, you should be interested. RV: (03:27) So you’re, it’s the difference between creating interest and, uh, drafting off of interest, right? Capitalizing on existing interest in which is what intent-based search is all about. And I, I want to make sure you caught what he said because he’s built huge companies and he said in the interview he said, I only have these two rules. They said, make sure there’s a big enough market for you to make a Denton. So there’s gotta be enough volume that you don’t have to be the only option that, that, that there’s room for you plus competitors. That’s really smart, right? Like it’s to go, there’s a, there’s a big enough market here that you can have at least a few, you know, really, really key players and as long as you’re one of the key players, like you can make a lot of money. So that was interesting to hear him say that. RV: (04:18) And then he said the second rules that don’t create a product that you’re going to be in competition with Amazon, which I thought was interesting. That’s more for you e-commerce people. Um, you know, selling, selling physical goods. But Mmm. You know, for personal brands, most of, most of you, most of us are selling video courses, membership sites, coaching programs, consulting, speaking, you know, like you’re selling, you’re selling more of a, a service or or knowledge, you know, information. And so I think it’s, it’s, you know, that’s a handy advantage that you have that you’re not really competing with Amazon. So, um, anyways, that was super powerful. The other kind of tip in this, in this space cause cause here’s the, you know, here’s the big idea I think in general. And, and, and by the way, so our phase three event, we have an entire event that is called high traffic strategies and it is a hundred percent dedicated to this kind of stuff. RV: (05:14) Now it’s all, it’s, we consider it more advanced because unless you have gone through phase one and captivating content and phase two and you have your funnels built and your visual identity done and your website and all of your copy is in place and all of your tracking, right? Like there’s all of these things that you need to do to build the house first. But then when you come to phase three like, um, this is where we really light it up and, and it’s doing this kind of stuff and, and you know, like the big idea here, it’s very straightforward. It’s in phase two, we’re going to teach you how to build organic traffic, right? It’s all about, you know, we teach this thing called the content diamond and there’s a 50 plus page document that we walk you through step by step, exactly what to do every single week with your social media plan and your email marketing. RV: (06:01) And it’s all organic. It’s all free organic traffic, but you’re building an audience. The difference here in phase three, which is the big idea is going find an existing audience and that the people that you want to do business with, they’re already aggregated somewhere. You just got to go find them. And that’s what the power of Google and intent based search platforms do is like literally someone is typing in a term at a specific and moment in time when they need a problem solved. And if you know what that problem is and you own and dominate that term and you’re willing to pay for it, you can force the traffic because these people already exist out there. And so I think this is something that I think personal brands are way behind on. I think, you know, personal brands in general, like there’s a lot of people doing Facebook ads. RV: (06:52) There’s not a lot of people doing YouTube and [inaudible] the Google ad network, right? Which is really Google and YouTube. Um, a lot of, a lot of you of that do personal brands, you know, like we’re using Facebook and Instagram, which is fine. That’s great. You know, that serves a PR that works too, can work. Um, and, but it’s, you know, it’s totally different. They’re two different universes. The other thing with the YouTube thing, which is, you know, as a handy little tip, if you didn’t pick this up from what he was saying was that in YouTube you don’t even get charged for the ad if somebody skips it. But you know, like if they watch less than five seconds, you don’t even get charged for the ad. So that’s like a free impression, a free show of like, yeah, you got, you got five seconds to do a free five second ad or say your name, your company name, and boom, like I get that impression out there that is super powerful. RV: (07:49) Like free advertising on the biggest ad network in the world. Mmm. Pretty incredible. So intent-based search I think is, is a big future for personal brands. We dive into it completely at our phase three event and it’s just decide all based upon the premise of that your audience has already collected, they’re already aggregated in many places. So while you’re building your own audience, go be in front of the existing audience. And that’s really important. The second thing that is more of a concept, I just want to make sure y’all understand is this concept of re retargeting and it’s important that you get this right because you know I didn’t really understand it and it it’s, it’s something you can hear and not recognize the power of of what it is. And what it means is that, you know, when somebody comes to your website, you’re probably familiar with the concept of lead capture and that’s something we teach in phase two is build a lead magnet. RV: (08:49) Yeah. Which is offer something of value for free in exchange for lead capture. You’re going to capture somebody’s name, typically their name and email at first, but what about the person who comes to your site and either you don’t have a lead capture setup or you know, they come to your site somehow they’re on there, they found their way there from something, but they don’t ever, they never fill out the lead capture. Right. They never contact you. They never say they want more information, but some they’re interested it somehow, some way they ended up there. Well that’s what retargeting does. It’s basically taking this person who would otherwise be invisible. You would have no way to track them. And it’s, it’s almost like you put a beacon on them and, and now it’s like a digital beacon that you can see wherever that person goes throughout the web and you can re target them, you can show them additional ads to try to drive them back to your website for specific products or specific offers. RV: (09:53) That is huge. That, I mean that is insanely powerful is to go imagine if in the real world you can know everyone who ever had a thought about, Hmm, your, your company or your product or service. And you could literally know everyone who had ever had that thought and then you could show an ad just to those people. That’s like what retargeting does. I mean it’s extremely powerful and they never have to give you their email. They never have to give you their phone number. All they do is show up on your site and that is how you get that. And so you know, there’s some technicality parts of that that we cover at the event in terms of how to set them up. But you know, your web person can set it up and Google, Google and YouTube and then Facebook and Instagram, you know those go together. RV: (10:38) They’ll give you what’s called the pixel, which is what you need. It’s a piece of code that you install on your site. LinkedIn also has one. So you know, if we’re managing your brand or or somebody else’s managing your brand, you just need to tell your web person like, I need you to install my Facebook pixel pixel or my Google pixel on my site and you’ll immediately start tracking that stuff. That’s part of what we do in phase two. We don’t teach people about pixels and retargeting, but we do. We do tell them you need to, you need to just do this. Like just, just listen to us and do this. We’ll teach you why later. It’s kind of wax on, wax off type of thing. But you gotta be retargeting, like at least be showing ads to people who are already saying they’re interested in what you do by virtue of them coming to your sites and to your registration pages for your funnels and to your sales pages for your products. RV: (11:30) Mmm, really, really important. And then the third big idea here I think is just optimization, optimization. You know, when he was telling this the, the, his story about, uh, you know, how, how he started his company and, and you know, they’ve done a couple, they were in the mortgage space and now they’re, now they’re in, um, you know, they’re doing blinds. But yeah, I think w when he talking about this idea of the very first ad they ran was for pho blinds and he was saying like, you start with 50 bucks and you just, you put $50 into it and you see what happens and you, you, you measure and you watch to see, do, do people click on the ad and then if they click on their ad, do they come to your site? And you can run different ads. And so even somebody who’s spending $94 million in ads, it’s starting with the $50 ad spend. RV: (12:26) Right. You know, you, you probably go, I don’t have $94 million. Well I don’t either. But you know, you could probably scrape together 50 bucks or a hundred bucks and get some data, get some testing and these tools that he mentioned, uh, I had heard of the first, I had not actually heard of the second, which I’m excited about. So these are some nerdy tools for, you know, either your digital marketing team or your tech person or you. And we’re certainly going to be, you know, getting into the details of these and introducing them to our, our team and our community when we get to phase three, um, is heat mapping. Okay. So that’s a crazy egg was the tool. There’s some other ones, but crazy egg is the one that I’ve always heard of. So heat mapping shows you, it’s, it’s kind of like, you know, when you see an ad for like an acid or Mmm, yeah, somebody is sick and they have, they show like a FA, a figure of a human body. RV: (13:20) And then there’s like flashing red where the pain is like, Ooh, heartburn. Um, that’s like what heat mapping is. It’s just, it shows your website and then it shows these flashing red areas of where people are hovering with their mouse. Right? So that’s one of the things people do is they wherever they usually point with their mouse, the mouse to where they’re reading. Okay. Or to, you know, clearly to what they’re going to click on. And so you can follow the journey that a new visitor coming to your site for the first time who doesn’t know who you are or an experienced person. Just anyone come into your site and, and you can go, you know, is my copy effective? You know, are my, are my lead magnets working? You know, are these buttons effective? And you can see like what are they passing over and what are they spending time looking at? RV: (14:13) And what are they clicking on because of the heat map. Tell you again, without even knowing who the people are, you don’t even have to have their email. It’s just the people who come to your site is tracking it. And then this is the new one, which is awesome. And this is next level. Uh, um, he said the company or the tools called full story, which I had never heard of. So I’m, I’m, I’m jacked about this full story, which is a video experience. So not just heat mapping, which kind of shows like these are the hotspots that people go to, but full story literally records the entire journey of someone on your site. So where do they down and where do they stop and, and, and how does their mouse move across the page. I mean, that is huge. Like what an unfair advantage of the digital world. RV: (15:01) And this is where it’s like, if you’re not doing this stuff, you’re, you’re, you’re behind. And if you’re not doing this stuff in five years, you’re, you’re out of business, right? Like, like right now, if you’re not doing it, you’re just behind. But if you’re not doing this in five years, you’re out of business. But here’s the problem. You don’t, you don’t start with this stuff. This is domino number 76 you got to lay the first 70 Domino’s in the right order, which is what phase one and phase two is all about. And you got to get busy and I got to get busy, right? Like I freak out here some of this stuff cause I’m like, man, somebody is going to figure this out. They’re going to come crush. They’re going to come dominate. So if you’re not doing it right now, you’re just behind. RV: (15:44) But if you’re not doing this in a couple of years, you’re out of business. So this is a big deal y’all like this is, this is happening, it’s been happening and we need to get on board and, and you perhaps need to get on board or your team needs to get on board. We need to up the sophistication here because we’re competing with people who do this, right? You’re, your website isn’t just competing with other people who do what you do. You’re competing with Amazon, you’re competing with Rick steel, you’re competing with Ninja level digital marketers and cutting edge tools and intelligence and data and tracking. And it’s like if you’re not doing any of that, it’s time to pick up your game. You better get going. Um, because there’s only probably a little window here of, you know, a couple of years where you can establish yourself as the authority in your space. RV: (16:35) And then after that it’s going to be hard to come and dethrone the King. I mean, think about if you were launching a store right now that was like, okay, home Depot and if you were going to try to build a brand and to go, you know what, I have an idea for a hardware store and you would be competing against Lowe’s and home Depot and ACE hardware and true value and, and, and Menards and then, yeah, and be like, yeah, I’m going to start a new one. Think of how hard that would be to dethrone these huge national brands with millions and millions of dollars. It would be difficult to do it. It’s not that it couldn’t be done, but it would be difficult. There would have to be something very disruptive. Well, that’s how it’s going to be in the personal branding space. RV: (17:23) I think in five years there’s going to be people who own the verticals. They’re already are right there already are these giants in the space, like, you know, you already have Tony Robbins than you, you’ve got Mmm. Yeah. You know, like Rachel Hall is, you’ve got Mel Robbins, you’ve, you’ve got Brendon Burchard, you have Marie Forleo, you’ve got, uh, you know, Lewis house. So some of our clients have these huge spaces that they own and, and there’s a little gold rush going on, right? And if you’re not in the game, you’re in trouble. Like, you gotta get going now, like move this is, this is it, you’re, you’re living in a time where you have an opportunity to change the world with your message, but there’s a closing window of, of how much opportunity there is there. And, and you know, talking to somebody like Rick in this interview just makes me go, Holy moly. Like I, I’m, I need to pick up my game and I consider myself, you know, towards the leading edge of, of, of thinkers and leaders and teachers and people in this space. But knowing that Rick steel’s out there, whew. Like it’s a new level and it’s a new day, but also massive, massive opportunity. So it’s exciting and it’s fun. And I’m so glad you’re here because you’re learning it now and you’re not learning it before it’s too late. So thank you for being here and we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 68: Getting to Grips with the Fundamentals of SEO with Rick Steele
RV: (00:00) Okay. So you are about to meet one of the, the world’s most interesting men. Okay. So Rick Steele I want to let you know upfront, he’s a little bit different from the kind of people that we would normally have on this who are sort of like personal brand experts. You know, they’ve built a personal brand. Here’s what Rick has done. He’s the founder of multiple, multiple billion with a B billion dollar businesses. He’s a celebrated philanthropist. He’s a bestselling author, but he’s really an ambassador of effective altruist. So he has been twice featured on the inc 500, not 5,000, inc 500 list. He was named humanitarian of the year by Harvard business school. He’s been listed among fast company’s, most innovative companies and he has been helping growth minded entrepreneurs create more social impact. And that whole movement has gotten him featured in the Washington post, Forbes entrepreneur, ESPN HuffPo and Fox news. RV: (01:05) And right now he is kind of, you know, he is, he is the founder of select blinds, which we will talk about. That is like his current main business that he is, is operating. And but you know, like he, he really is organizing a movement of high net worth business leaders to bring them together to solve immediate humanitarian and environmental concerns by not only lending their talents, but contributing a significant part of their estate to kind of nonprofit causes. So he is sitting in his garage right now, his, his car dirt with his car collection. And if you’re watching this on video, he also has his gym upstairs. And that is because he has also a 13 time iron man. And the reason we are what we’re talking about on this, cause he’s done a lot, but we’re going to be talking about paid traffic acquisition, search engine optimization, pay-per-click strategies, which is what he, he’s also one of our brand builders group clients. RV: (02:06) And so we’ve had the opportunity to get to know him and he has this ridiculous level of expertise that nobody has. And we’re going to talk about that. But he also just completed in his spare time something that he called the world marathon challenge. He did not kidding. Listen to this. Seven marathons in seven consecutive days in on seven different continents, seven marathons in seven consecutive days on seven continents. And when we started working with him yeah, he was actually one of our private clients. He came to Vaden Villa. He worked with us at the house and he was planning this. And I was like, bro, this seems like a little bit of a logistical challenge, like even, and so we haven’t really talked, so I need to hear just like for a minute, how in the hell did you do seven marathons on seven continents in seven days? That’s insane. RS: (03:07) Well, you, you know, you first have a really really good travel person and the guy that put this together for us, a guy by the name of Richard Donovan done this a few times for small groups. I think you can only do it with a small group because it was chaos, you know, getting, you know, we still had to go through security and had to go through customs at every continent and, you know, make planes and all that stuff. But you know, it, it, it’s a logistical nightmare. Yes. But it’s a, the idea of, you know, picking up and training in the training for it was, was really, I think, harder than the marathons itself. Once we got on, you know, you’re thrust into this group of, there was 35 of us, you’re thrusting this group of people that like 34 of your friends now are not going to let you not do this. RS: (03:54) Right. So you are doing this. And the first one is, Aaron has got a big smile on their face and by the third or fourth, you know, everybody has blisters and shaping and hurting somewhere and you know, so you, but you have, you know, you can go far by yourself. You know, you’ve heard this before, but you can go a lot further with the team. And you know, we had a team of people we didn’t know the minute before we met him and it was a brotherhood, sisterhood. I mean, it was, it was amazing. A group of people that just helped everybody get through this thing. We started in Cape town, we went to Antarctica, almost died in Antarctica. I mean, we literally were in a hundred mile an hour winds in Antarctica. We got delayed there and it came back and went to Australia, Dubai, Madrid for, to Liza Brazil and in Miami where we were met by all of our family members friends or a few hundred people there. It was just, it was amazing, RV: (04:47) Man, bro. Like, we’re going to have to do a separate podcast for, for my, like our leadership podcast of just the mindset and the mentality of training for that, because that is just, well, congratulations like ed to the whole crew. I mean, you’re also depending that nobody in the 35 gets seriously injured and sick and you know, like, RS: (05:10) Yeah, that it was incredible. You know, Kobe had just started in China and in fact there were six members that couldn’t make the trip because they were flying from Beijing and all the flights have been shut down. So they couldn’t participate in it because we had, you know, this was just the beginning. You know, time where the world started shutting down and really China shut down at this point. When we got back, we were about two weeks away from, you know, what we’re going through now, which is kind of a U S shutdown starting in Washington. And you know, it was I believe it was just incredible that we were able to pull it off. It was just the timing of doing it. You know, had we been a few weeks later, it wouldn’t have happened, which would have been okay too. You know, we live in a different world today, so we just have to and get used to what’s happening. RV: (05:59) Yeah. Well I think that gives good backdrop for people a little bit, just kind of about your mindset and your mentality. Mmm. You’re also a nine figure entrepreneur. You’ve built companies that do over a hundred million dollars in revenue a year. Mmm. And you know, there’s just so many amazing things that you have done that has been inspired me. But you and I started geeking out about some stuff and I was like, wow, Rick really knows this stuff. So can you just tell everybody a little bit about select blinds specifically and what you do and how you and your team, I know you have an amazing team. How have you guys built it and kind of what makes select blinds different, you know, from like most blind shops, so to speak. RS: (06:51) Yeah. You know, w we started blinds in Oh three, you know, before that I was doing mortgage, how had an internet mortgage company that we exited and blinds was a, you know, I didn’t want to create something so new, I had to go create an audience for it. So the idea of going into blinds was what can we sell differentiate ourselves a little bit from the market. But w you, you know, basically sell online in a marketplace that already has traffic. The traffic’s there, there’s already intent based buyers typing searches in. All we have to do is find a better way and sell them a better product. And it was easy for us to do back in 2003, you know, this whole I was reading an article the other day, talked about, you know, Warby Parker, you know, kind of pioneered this space of DTC in 2010 and I was like, wait a minute. No, no, me and my buddies, we were all doing this in 2003 it but it’s a RV: (07:48) In DTC, just clarify DTC, RS: (07:51) See direct to consumer, meaning that you are selling only your brand, right? And you are sending it right to the consumer. There’s no store, there’s no middleman, there’s no wholesale. It is drop ship right from you to the consumer. Which allows you to have an intimate relationship conversation, narrative with the customer. It’s so hard to do when you add one component in there. When you start adding that component in, now you’re forcing a sales person, distributor, somebody to share your message with the consumer. So DTC just means I have a direct line right to the customer. They get to know exactly what I’m about. So we had done that mortgage. We’d had that relationship. So we, we didn’t, you know, we weren’t no Nostradamus Domus or anything, but we did kind of see that there was some silly stuff going on in mortgage. RS: (08:37) Pretty much everybody could get approved for a loan. We decided to say, listen, let’s insulate ourselves from, you know, we didn’t know anything about mortgage backed securities or what was going to happen, but we just knew that the fact that home values continue to go up, everybody could get approved for a loan that wasn’t right. So we wanted to insulate ourselves, our team, our company from that impending crash. So the idea was what could we sell? Like what is something we can do that’s fundamentally different than taking a lead online and that was sell a product. And if we sell a product direct to consumer, we can have a little bit more of the control. So that was 2003 we started that thing in our bedroom. And you know, really started building the site, not knowing exactly what products we were going to sell and not knowing all the details about how we were going to sell it but just with enough passion to go out and figure it out over the course of like the next 30 days. RV: (09:28) And this is, this is select blinds that you’re talking about. So, but, but in some ways this is insane. Like you chose blinds to sell on the internet. Like there couldn’t be a more necessary like come into your home, measure it and if anyone’s ever installed blinds, like it’s a, there’s a lot to it. It’s not the, the, the simplest process and there’s lots of different tastes and styles. But to me the, the probably the first major lesson that you’ve already shared here is you went and saw intent-based traffic. Like you made a decision, a business decision based upon there is an existing audience who is looking for something and rather than, rather than starting and saying, I have something and I want to sell it, you said, what is there a market for? How do you do, like how would you do that today? Or like how does somebody determine that, what, what the, the appetite is or what intent there is out there in the market? RS: (10:39) I mean, it’s real simple in Google ad words. I mean, you can go set up a Google ad words account, put no money on it and Google gives you a keyword tool that lets you basically go in and in any region S only worldwide, you know, somewhere in between start inputting keywords. And for instance, if I wanted to start a blinds company today, I would go tell Google, show me how many people are Googling the word blinds. And Google will show me how many words how many keywords there are, what the cost per click would be if I were in the number one position. But then also start recommending a lot of other words that are also pretty accurate. You know, this wasn’t the case five years ago, but today, but man, they have nailed it with the AI. I mean, they know what I’m bidding on, they know what my competitors are bidding on. RS: (11:22) So therefore when somebody new comes in and says, Hey, show me blinds, they can pretty much tell you what the bucket of keywords are to about 99% accuracy from there. You know, really, you just, you gotta become a mathematician, you gotta start working the numbers. You’ve got to start making some assumptions on what the average order value would be. You know, you can get pretty close to that. What’s your expected click through rate would be and what your conversion rate would be. And when you can figure those things out, you can very quickly come up with, it’s a little bit of a guesstimate, but you can come up with what your average cost per order would be to actually close the sale, close an order. So much of that though gets refined when you get into the battle. A lot of it is just, it’s inspiration enough to know. RS: (12:07) For me it would be to say, listen, there’s a market here, and I don’t know exactly how big, but I know it’s a big market. It’s a mantra market. There’s a million words a month for the word blinds. I’m just making stuff up here. There’s a million intentions every month. Somebody type in the word blinds in, I’m going to go figure this out. And then it’s just get on the battlefield and figure it out. Right. Start taking people’s guns, start figuring out where to fire, you know, start figuring out where you need to hide. When your competitors have launched missile attacks at you start, you know, when those missiles miss and you know, they don’t blow up, you go pick one up and keep it for yourself. I mean, it is truly a battle that you have to figure out. But you know, for me, I’ve got so many friends in this in this space where they go out and create audiences like on Facebook and they create new demand for them. RV: (12:59) Yes. And I want to talk about that. Like, can you, can you, can you delineate here like what is the biggest difference between Facebook ads and let’s just say Google. I mean, you really, it’s, it’s really Facebook and Instagram and then it’s really Google and YouTube. So what’s the, what is the thing that separates those two categories? RS: (13:21) I think when somebody comes to Google, they have said inherently when they’re searching for a product, and that’s what we’ll, we’ll, we’ll relate this to when they’re searching for a product. They are saying, I am ready to buy for product based. You know, sometimes that is, I’m ready to just do some window shopping and research, but most of the times it’s, I’m ready to buy on Facebook as an example with running ad campaigns and setting demographics, you know, not talking about retargeting, but in Facebook it’s more I’m going to go put an advertisement in front of somebody that is likely to buy this product. They’re not right now in the market for blinds, but you know, I know them to be a homeowner. They just bought a new home. You know, there’s a lot of different, you know, kind of triggers I can put in Facebook ads that would say get me in front of an audience that is ripe for, for new blinds. Google is these people type the word blinds in. I mean it is somebody literally just walked through the threshold of a store and stood there and said, you know, I’m here to buy. Sure, put me in the right direction. RV: (14:23) Nobody is searching blinds for fun. They are searching, RS: (14:27) They don’t want to see pictures of blinds. Right. I mean say there’s a small small piece that would, you know, be looking for some inspiration because I think they can do it themselves or whatever it is. But dying, you know somebody types in guns and roses t-shirt like their, their intent right now is to buy a guns and roses T shirt right now. RV: (14:47) And that is what we so so the phrase you dropped it in earlier and I don’t think is aware of it would be intent based search. Right. And that’s kind of the, that’s kind of the technical term is they’re typing in something because they are hot, ready to buy or ready to look. You know, they’re seriously interested. And that is the power of what happens with Google. What would you call it on Facebook? Is that just like an awareness campaign? Is that like, is there a term you would use for the, that kind of, RS: (15:18) It would be awareness. I mean we, we run the retargeting and we run retargeting campaigns on Facebook, meaning somebody, RV: (15:24) So hold on on retargeting, let’s talk, let’s, I don’t want to get, I don’t want to get everybody lost on the retargeting just yet. But, but not counting retargeting. Facebook is just like, it’s just kind of like a general marketing campaign. Like if it’s like just kind of a broadcast campaign of awareness, the difference is that you’re able to really narrow down the who versus just buying a billboard on the interstate. You’re able to say, I’m going to show it to certain types of people. RS: (15:54) Correct. And, and, and even with a billboard on the interstate, there’s, there’s some targeting, right? Cause you’re choosing where you want to put your ad on what, but Facebook is a is a is it, it’s a, an exploded view of that. So let’s, you be very specific about who you want that ad to go in front of. I don’t, I have friends have such success with this. I don’t know how they get it to work. It feels like so much effort to me. I’d rather I’d rather work backwards and say, you know, put me where there’s a bunch of intent, a bunch of people looking to buy a bunch of things already saying it and then let me figure out the product. Let me figure out how to improve the experience, improve the product and and be a better company for the customers that on that landscape today. RV: (16:41) And I think, and that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on is because I think that the personal brand influencer market has just, you know, completely crushed Facebook ads. And it’s not that they don’t work, they do work, but I think that the intent based search for the most part in the personal brand world, nobody is doing it. And they, they, they, they don’t know how, and they don’t understand it because they don’t, people use Facebook as a user. The average person has never used ad words or done keyword research. And I think there’s a huge frontier here, particularly with Google and YouTube that I think personal brands are sort of missing, missing the boat on. So so you’ve got intent-based search happening. I want to back up a little bit. You threw out some terms about the, the average order value you threw out, like click through rate, cost per order. These are important terms that somebody, somebody needs to understand. So how do you, how do you make a prediction, like RS: (17:50) You’re saying effectively you look for, there’s a lot of demand here and then you’re going to use these kind of key terms to go, how do I make a prediction, an estimated guess of what I think I could, how I could turn that search into money and how much it would be worth it to me. So can you kind of like slow walk us through that, that, that thinking, let’s use, let’s use like the guns and roses t-shirt as an example of that. Let me do some simple math, right? So let’s say it’s a $50, and this is a, this will be a millennial hipster guns and roses t-shirt, right? Probably the guy wearing it doesn’t even know who guns and roses is, right? RS: (18:30) I love giving millennials shit. But they, so it’s a $50 t-shirt. It’s a Mmm. And you understand that you can buy that t-shirt for 25 bucks. So I own the tee shirt for 25. I’m selling it for 50. I’ve got 25 bucks in margin. That’s what I’m going to make, right? And we’re going to start talking about shipping or I’m going to make $25. So now I get to go to Google and say, how many people are typing in guns and roses t-shirts? They’re going to give me a number. And that number comes with a couple of figures. They’re going to say 300,000 people per month. Type this term in, in the average number one position is a dollar 40, which means you would need to spend a dollar 40 to get someone to your site. If you wanted to own the first spot in Google, Google estimates this, but it’s pretty close. RS: (19:17) You would pay less if you want to own the second, third, fourth spot, right? So let’s talk about the number one spot. I want to own it and it costs me a dollar 40 so when I get somebody to the site at a dollar 40 I’ve got two I estimate some conversion rate. I’ve got to be able to know that I have to close. Well, let’s see if I close 5% that’s one in 20 that would cost me $28 it would cost me, so for 20 clicks it would cost me $28 that’s 5% closing, right? Okay. So you’re saying a dollar 40 a click dollar 40 a click, 20 clicks are going to cost me $28 now I need to close more than one per 20 clicks. Right? 5% to get that as those numbers to work out just mathematically based on what the, you know what the profit margin is on the tee shirt I’m selling. RS: (20:09) So let’s let’s say 10 let’s say 10% and that’s, that’s a high conversion rate, but it’s not unheard of with really good skew based products that are quick to buy. You can get in and out of the cart quickly. So let’s say 10% conversion rate at a dollar 40 meaning that it costs me $14 to get 10 people to the site. Once I had the 10 people, there are one person purchased, so I made $25 so my costs per click was was $14 for the 10 people. One person purchased, I made 25 bucks, my profit margin was $9 right on my $50 products. Let me just make sure I got it. So there’s a, RV: (20:47) There is a $50 t-shirt sale, you got $25 wrapped up in your cost of goods to buy the tee shirt that or make the tee shirt that you’re selling to the person and then you just paid an additional $14 to get 10 clicks on that term of which one of those people bought. So you got, you’ve got $25 in the cost of the shirt, $14 in the advertising cost to get the customer and so that leaves you a net profit on a $50 sale of nine bucks. RS: (21:19) Sure. And then you’ve got some fixed costs, you know, your rent, your employees. Like of course you know you have all that stuff you have to fig, you have to factor in. And that’s why it’s good to just kind of get a spreadsheet out and start factoring this in. These numbers start becoming pretty easy to figure out if you’ve got a big enough market to go after. So if I, if I went to, if I typed in Joe Jones yet, right? Let’s say I only wanted to sell Joan Jett merchandise, well I need to first understand is there a market, like is there a big enough market for me to start my own Joan jet website? Right. Very quickly. If I go to Google and Google tells me there are 580 searches every month for Joan Jett t-shirts, I can pretty quickly say that’s not a big enough market for me to start a company on this, but let me look at starting a rock concert t-shirt or you know, picking the top 20 whatever RV: (22:07) Broaden. So basically like if there’s not enough search volume on it on a narrow term, you’d have to broaden it in order to accomplish the same thing. RS: (22:15) Correct. You know, I have two rules. You got to make sure there’s a big enough market and understand that there’s a big enough market for you to make a dent in where you can you can have success whether there’s competition or not. Meaning that if there’s six or seven competitors, you’re just going to make each other better. It’s gotta to be big enough that you can have that success. The second thing I think is just as important, maybe more important, but it’s definitely just as important is you cannot be a product that you’re competing with if you just can’t compete with Amazon. Like, if you are trying to sell something that Amazon is shipping to customers in 20 of their warehouses, same day, good luck. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s almost impossible. I don’t like to tell people you can’t do that or it’s impossible because I don’t believe really anything’s impossible. But RV: (23:06) You also have been kind of the guy who ran seven marathons in seven, seven days. You have to know what you’re up to, RS: (23:11) Right? So it would, you know, it would be silly to go out and try to build a model on competing, and I’ve done this before. We own mean we own a company called betting.com we sold sheets, comforters, blankets. We owned the number one domain name in that space. So how could it not work? I mean, how could we not crush it? And we failed because we started selling products that we were drop shipping. We own an inventory, but we were drop shipping from the vendors and they were getting there. You know, we would have to tell people three to five days, sometimes seven days shipping in Amazon. Zappos, a lot of our competitors have these products in stock. They were shipping same day. Amazon had some of the products they were shipping two hour delivery. So it’s like, how do you compete with that? So you’ve got to, you know, you gotta know what you’re up against and you also got to no, that if you are on a level playing field on shipping, how do you differentiate yourself? How do you make, how do you create a better product RV: (24:07) Now? And, and, and this is part of what I wanted. And just for those of you listening, like most of our audience is not in true e-commerce where it is products and logistics and drop shipping and vendors. Most of our, most of our product base you know, personal brands are selling informational type of products, membership sites, video courses, these things that don’t have the costs. But [inaudible] you need to apply the same type of rigor and thinking it’s all the same concepts that would apply here is to still go figure out what are people searching for. What is there a market for that I’m well suited to serve? I mean, would you agree with that? The same rigor could apply here RS: (24:50) A hundred percent and I think also, you know, when I, when I saw your company out Rory, I didn’t Google Rory Vaden, I Googled a term, I’m trying to remember what it would have been, but I’m pretty sure I was searching for the number one, like who would I work with when I want to work with, with my personal brand that’s going to crush it for me, that’s going to help me crush it. So my search term was probably, you know personal branding, a mastermind or something, right. There was some search, and I don’t know if you know, I found you guys via a paid ad, but I would say what you can do, no matter what you’re selling, even if it’s just informational and you’re using Facebook ads, you know, what is w what are the physical products that you that somebody could search on Google that are somewhat relevant to what you’re also selling in your informational business coaching, whatever it may be that are relatable to, you know, to, to that product. Because then if you can buy those clicks and you can sell a product cheap, you know, that’s a, that’s an easy and cheap way to list build too, right? So you can then sell them a product you make a little money on. Maybe it’s a loss leader. RV: (25:58) Well, that’s what a lot of people do with the book. That’s what the free plus, the free plus shipping model is with the book. But you know, so here’s what’s interesting. We are number one for the term personal branding, but it’s not our website. It was, I was interviewed on social media examiner, which is a monster website, but they did an interview with me and that it, the interview did so well. Plus their audience is so big in general and there’s such a high authority site that when you search personal branding, at least at the time of this interview that comes up. And so I think that’s probably what happened. Cause I know you found like you, you listen to that podcast with Michael Stelzner and then, and then we meet you. But, but okay. Yeah. So, so, so basically you’re going to make a prediction here, right? RV: (26:48) You’re going to, you’re going to have some forecast, you’re gonna throw out some numbers. You’re going to look at go, where’s the demand? How much is it going to cost for the click? That’s a good tidbit. I didn’t realize that the number that Google publishes is the number is the number one position for the click. So what about, so at that point then, basically you just start putting some money into the machine. You’re driving people to a website and you start monitoring how many people visit that page versus how many buy is that basically it, RS: (27:20) Yes. I mean you, you know, you want to make sure you’re setting yourself up for success and having, you know, when somebody lands the page has got to be good, right? You got a good product that’s got an easy way to check out. You know, I’ll equate this to, you know, our first product, full wood blinds there, which are fake wood, you know, they’re like a poly blind. We had this product live the very first day we turned it on to pay-per-click. I mean we probably put 50 bucks in there or something. And we said at an immature, it was like a dollar per click that at that time, you know, bring people to this page for full wood blinds. And we just, we watched it, you know, we sat there, this is before Google analytics, but Google and there was a, there was a competing product before Google analytics where we’ve been watching the traffic. We would see what they were doing. W how much time and RV: (28:11) Okay, so, so what, let me just make sure, so you’re saying that when you first started that it was like a page for pho blinds and you just basically threw 50 bucks in there to sort of test it. Like is that basically what you were doing was to watch to see what happened? RS: (28:26) Sure. You know, we said let’s put 50 bucks on and that’ll give us 50 people to the site. Let’s see if anybody buys. And if somebody does, it’s going to be amazing. We’re all going to jump up and down and cheers that we actually have something that will, you know, that works. And they did. We actually sold to a couple of customers, I’ll never forget it because it was a it was this moment where it was just like this. We knew it was going to work, but we didn’t, we didn’t know conversion rates. We didn’t know, you know, how much it was going to take. We didn’t know what we would need to adjust pricing to be, you know, because you know, you, you could only, you know, if we sold one out of 50 people and that’s a 2% conversion rate. If we sell two out of 50 people, it’s a 4% conversion rate. So we’re able to make better economics at 4% conversion rate of course. But a lot of it was just, you know, today the capabilities are just, I mean, I can’t even imagine having these capabilities 15 year, 18 years ago, whatever it’s been in looking at Google analytics and watching customers come to a page, see how they interact. How long do they stay? What buttons are they clicking, where are they hung up? I mean, you can physically see their mouse scrolls and you can see, you know, kind of RV: (29:36) Google analytics show you hate map. Does it show you heat mapping? RS: (29:40) They don’t. They’re, they’re heat mapping tools RV: (29:42) That you can add in, which is, which we have in and there’s several of them out there right now, like crazy egg. And we use a company called FullStory. Fullstory. Just watch, let’s you literally watch via like a video recording session, the customer’s journey. So you can see like if they’re on their phone, they’re scrolling, pinching and zooming where they pick up on something. It’s so you can really understand their interactions beyond a click or beyond a patient. Wow. That is incredible. I’ve never heard of that RS: (30:14) In this. I liken this to if, if you were a store, like best buy and you had a bunch of people come through the front door and then a lot of people go to, let’s say the TV aisle and then everybody just stood there and looked at this one TV but then walked away and didn’t buy. You would want to know specifically what’s wrong with this one TV and why they didn’t buy. So you can start asking questions. You could start, you know, really looking at that page and saying, what’s wrong with this? And almost always you will find an error on the page. You’ll, it’s priced too high. It’s like, you know, you’re saying something that doesn’t really give them the information they need. So, you know, these tools are truly just unfair competition to like traditional retail. I mean traditional retail really, unless we live in, in like this minority report world where you see where Tom cruise walks in and they start, you know, doing the eyeball tracking and identifying stuff. We are like dozens of years away from that. This is the world we get to live in, in e-commerce when using tools like Google analytics and crazy egg and full story to see a customer’s intentions and behaviors. RV: (31:20) Wow. So, so then basically, I mean, at a high level you’re going to do a little research to figure out what is their intent for. Then you’re going to look at some numbers, you’re going to make some hypotheses about how much it’s going to cost. Then you’re going to build a page and you know, a product and you’re going to put a little money into the machine and then you’re going to watch how it performs. And then after that, it’s basically just this perpetual tweaking and updating and optimizing. I guess would be would be the word. And and then is that, is that more or less what it is just and it’s just that over and over again. RS: (31:57) It is. I mean, and then in one day, you know, you find yourself spending a hundred thousand dollars a day on Google and managing tens of thousands of keywords and you know a lot of time a lot of growth. But that’s it’s, it’s exactly what it is. I mean it is, you know, the direct to consumer brand with millions of customers. Like we are had to start with a couple of people in one sale and then you know, evolve to a dozen sales and then hundreds of sales. RV: (32:22) Can you share how much you’ve spent on Google or like give us like any sort of idea of like how like just how much has your, have you spent on like pumped money into the app? The Google ad machine, me and my, RS: (32:34) Me and my Google, I spoke, I spoke at Google about this a couple of years ago and it’s funny, they asked me to talk about, you know, why we, how we have such good conversion rates and what are we doing? Like what is the thing that gets us to, to move the needle. And I kind of put a joke on my PowerPoint, which was the formula. It’s a three step formula. Formula one is I give Google my credit card, step two is Google charges my credit card. And then step three is I find a way to make all that work as a marker. But my rep and I, every now and then we will w well I will do a screenshot on the account and I think the last time we screenshotted it between our two accounts were just under a hundred million. Right now, $9 million in spend. RS: (33:13) Yeah, $94 million. $4 million. But it is, I mean, every single dollar has been worth it because they have all, you know, it has all been intent-based traffic. I mean, so it is a, I mean, it feels unfair, but I mean, this is where, when you look at Google, I mean these, this multiple, almost trillion dollar company gets almost all of its revenue, right? So just let that sink in for a second. All of its revenue from pay-per-click ads and those pay-per-click ads are dominantly intent-based. You know, customers, I’m looking for this right now. Sell this to me. So it is a you know, it doesn’t have to be blind. I mean, it could be duct tape, it could be a variant of a new product that’s out there. You know, Shopify, some of these platforms give you the ability to spin up a site and have tools that are really even greater than what we architect with. RS: (34:14) I’m so much greater than what, how, what we built in the early days from day one for like 30 bucks a month. It’s, it’s truly insane. The platforms that are out there and that’ll let you spin up a, a really good eCommerce platform. And so does this also, is everything that we’re talking about with Google, does this also apply to YouTube? It does. You know, we do, we do some advertising on YouTube with video ads that are both intent based video ads and then also, you know, retargeting video ads as well. So we have a, a couple of really good high production videos we’ve done that are commercial quality where somebody, when they come into our site, they leave. I mean the best use of YouTube is, is a being there in a retargeting narrative that shares a little different message than what you were sharing on the front end. RS: (35:04) So, you know, if somebody came to your site and they left and didn’t buy your, your ads probably didn’t work. I mean, that’s kind of what the assumption should be is my ad was wrong. So I need to deliver a different narrative, different story on the on the back end. And so it’s the retargeting on YouTube. We get the opportunity to do that in those, you know, if you’ve seen the ads that are, you know, they make you play for five seconds and then skip. Yep. There’s, there’s ways to gain that. Just make sure you get verbally your name and audibly audible, your name and digitally your name in the first five seconds so they hear your brand’s name and, and see your logo in the first five seconds. And if somebody does skip, you actually get that brand impression for free because Google doesn’t charge you for it. So and a lot of people skip, a lot of people get through these and it is, again, it feels like cheating the system, but it’s, it’s best practices with what we get to do. And I’m delivering an impression to somebody that’s not watching the full 32nd ad. RV: (36:00) Yeah. And you’re saying you only pay if they watch more than five seconds? RS: (36:04) Yeah, I think we, we start paying, there’s some level that we start paying at. But, and they don’t have to watch the whole video, but if they skip at the five second Mark, we don’t pay. RV: (36:14) Yeah. And so then you’re literally telling people about what you do for free. Like the Google machine is pushing you out there. RS: (36:24) I mean the first five seconds of our ads has select blinds verbally in it. I mean our logos in the bottom right of the screen, it is you, you will have known what that commercial was about if you skip it. RV: (36:36) Yeah. Well I mean this is so fun. Like we didn’t even get into retargeting like there’s so much here. And it just for everyone to know transparently, I, when I was polishing up our, we have our, you know, we have our, our nine different events. When I was working on our phase three high traffic strategies event, I called Rick because I was like, Hey, I want to bounce a couple ideas off you, make sure I got this right. Like and it’s just, you know, like you were someone that I tapped personally to go help me try to get my mind wrapped around this. And it’s in some ways it’s really complex, but mostly it’s very logical. It’s very systematic. I do have one more question for you, but before that, where, where should people go? You know, Rick, if, if they, if they want to, they want to connect with you and follow you. RV: (37:27) I know your, your personal brand and just so everyone knows, like Rick is not in the business of teaching people this, his personal brand is really about effective altruism. He’s, he’s really driven by making a dent in the world in a positive way. And you know, building a, a network of you know, more or less high net worth individuals who, who have a real desire for humanitarian and environmental concern and help. So if you’re one of those people, I’m sure he’d love to connect with you, but just in general, people want to like follow up and know who you are. Like, where would you direct them? RS: (38:02) Yeah, I would say, you know, best channel is Instagram and that’s a Rick Steele official on Instagram. You know, you’re going to see you know, a brand there that if you hold my Instagram up to select blinds, you’re going to say, wow, this guy’s crushing it and blinds. Where’s this guy going with this personal brand? What’s a personal brand? Right, exactly. I feel, you know, the game of building a personal brand. That’s why we need really great leaders like you and helping us out with this because this is, for me, it feels very hard. I mean, it feels very hard. The, the game of e-commerce direct to consumer, it feels easy, right? Maybe it’s because I’ve been doing that longer and I’ve been immersed in that game for some time, but yeah, Rick still official will be the place to go see, you know, just a guy that I think is, you know, I’m living a hard charging life, trying to be a good dad, good husband, good business guy and and good athlete all at the same time. RV: (38:58) Yeah. And you’ve got a very entertaining, you’ve got tens of thousands of followers, a hundred, hundred over a hundred thousand followers. So you got, you got some good stuff going. And you’re just like, yeah. And like most interesting man in the world, maybe it’s the most interesting man in the digital world. Like it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s pretty incredible. So here’s our last little question for you. Where do you think the future is going as it relates to paid traffic acquisition into and intent based search? RS: (39:32) Listen, if you would have asked me four weeks ago, I would’ve, I would’ve given you the same answer, but with maybe a little bit less enthusiasm. You know, I feel very lucky to be in this game of direct to consumer where somebody orders online. Listen, I don’t know about you Rory, but I’m doing stuff around my house now that I didn’t think I would ever do. Like again, maybe which is, you know, landscaping my entire house. Not that I’m bored, but I just like, you know, I’ve got some extra time. I’m doing some stuff around the house. I would say if you’ve thought about building a DTC direct to consumer e-commerce, this is the time is now, you know, this, this Corona virus coven 19 has, I believe is going to leave a generational Dennis and, and I think it’s gonna be positive. RS: (40:21) I do, but I believe that we are going to be more grateful when we do get to spend time with people that is going to be more quality time. But I also believe on the flip side of that, people are going to be doing more of their own stuff, buying and securing, procuring their things. We’ve already seen this as an immediate pop in direct to consumer and just online search in general across everything. I’ve got friends in different, you know, spaces online. All their searches are up. I think people, this, this has given people the ability to have a little bit of empowerment and say, Hey, maybe this is something I can do myself now and, or, or by myself and have shipped to me. So, yeah, I don’t, you know, I’m a, I’m a small business too, so I still, for me, I want to support small business as much as possible, but I also believe that we’re living in we’re going to come out of this with a little bit different behavioral change then when we came into it with, and a lot of that is do I need to walk into a store? RS: (41:21) Do I need to have a sales person in my home? I mean, there’s just a, it’s a, it’s a real interesting time we’re living in now. So I think the you know, with enthusiasm for me and, and the type of business that ran, love it, but it’s still yet to be seen. I believe the behavioral changes is going to be here to last. I don’t believe this is a, you know, something that we forget very soon. So, RV: (41:44) Yeah. Well, RS: (41:45) If we ever get out of quarantine, if we ever get, I’m in my garage right now. I mean, this is where I’m doing all my stuff is in my garage, so, but I like it. RV: (41:55) I love it. I love it. Well doing business from home, it’s it’s, it’s I think it’s a trend that, you know, clearly was a trend that was happening. I think this has accelerated it. It’s only accelerated it. And given that that’s the case, the insight and the wisdom and the experience that you have just so generously shared with us is, is truly priceless. I think that understanding these basic concepts can literally be worth millions of dollars. They have been to us just understanding intent based search and you know, where is demand and getting in front of it and hypothesizing with some basic ratios and then testing and optimizing like this is, it’s, it’s interesting to see at your scale that, that that’s how you get there. It’s this, it’s the same process. So brother just thank you so much and we wish you the best. I know, you know, some, some of us will get a chance to meet you at one of our brand builders group events in person when we resume our in person events, maybe virtually for the time being. So all the best man. RS: (43:02) Yeah. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Thanks.
Ep 59: Selling to the Government with Jack Siney and GovSpent | Special Edition | Recap Episode
RV: (00:06) Hey, brand builder, welcome to this special recap edition of this special episode on recession proofing your business and recession-proof revenue. Talking about government sales. This was not on our radar. AJ made it on our radar. And what, what, what did, what did you think this was? This was your call to push our friend Jack up in the queue. AJV: (00:30) I did while I was on the, I was on a call, a client call, he’s one of our clients last week. And when I was going through all these data statistics that he had provided around the importance of [inaudible] gaining government contracts and your business, I just said, yeah, but that’s not really for everyone. And he goes, it most absolutely is. And as soon as he said that, a trigger went off in my mind of how many people are in our audience out there, you who were sitting there going, well, I could never sell to the government. Yeah. And I said, probably all of them, RV: (01:05) Including us. Yah. AJV: (01:07) So we need to have Jack on to demystify this concept that, ah, the government doesn’t buy what I do. I can’t be of service to the government or it takes too long or it’s too complicated and he totally De-mythed, all of that with some really simple resources. I think it’s very timely and it’s, it’s I think just really important because one of the two things that wasn’t necessarily a part of the interview today, but I think that are really pertinent is that in the midst of what the media shares, which is typically always negative there is also [inaudible] a counteracting of positive and good things that are happening that just aren’t as newsworthy. They aren’t as popular or trend worthy for whatever reason. And I think Jack was such a great example of, in the midst, over the last three weeks where so many people are like, WTF am I gonna make payroll? Is my business gonna make it? There are other businesses that are booming. They are exploding. They’re experiencing double, triple 10 times growth in the last three weeks. RV: (02:11) Yeah, well we’re, we’re, we’re having, we’ve had parts of our business struggle and then we’ve had parts of ours literally, boom. AJV: (02:19) So I think, I think one, it’s just that reminder that there is an opportunity in any market to be successful. Bill Gates has this long quote that I keep talking about over the last few days. When he talks about in a time like this, how you view the market is exactly what will happen to your business. If you view it as an opportunity, you’re going to find a way to be opportunistic and gain market share. If you view it as woe is me, I’m, I’m out of business, that’s probably what’s going to happen. And I think Jack’s take on how are you adjusting your skill sets, adjusting your services AJV: (03:00) To be applicable to what one of the biggest vendors out there is looking for either government, RV: (03:06) No, the biggest, the biggest, the biggest, the biggest spender. AJV: (03:10) At least a minimum of $2 trillion out there for spending. What are, what are you doing to give some effect? Like that is why I wanted to have Jacqueline. Yeah, I think that was huge. RV: (03:22) And I mean even just that idea alone, like forget about covid, forget about economy, recession. Just go look, the number one spender in the world is spending a bunch of money. Are you aware of who it is and what they’re doing and what they’re spending the money on? And for the answer, most of us is no, which is insane. Like in any other normal private business usually like you would know who’s spending money and you and you would go there. So I think that that was one of my big takeaways was that there’s always people spending money. RV: (03:53) You’ve got to figure out who and in this case, yeah, Jack is bringing to this some great resources and things around the government. I mean that that website is like literally people trying to spend money and they’re just posting it on the site. AJV: (04:07) I think too. And it’s just knowing what to do and I love that his website govspend literally gives you who the person is, what their title is, what their phone number is, what their email is and their purchase history. Yeah. Everything they’ve bought ever before. RV: (04:24) And you can search, you can search it by those terms, which is super, super powerful. And then one of the things I actually that you said in the interview with Jack as you know, AJ doesn’t do all the interviews. This was one if you didn’t listen to what goes into it because we did the interview together. [inaudible] RV: (04:42) Was how you need to be Abel, you know, particularly if you’re struggling, right? You need to be willing to adapt and modify and pivot a little bit. And we’ve been talking about with our, with our members in our monthly membership, we’ve been talking about getting in the media and one of the things we say is you need to tailor your expertise to what is happening in the news cycle. And that’s how you get in the media is connect what you do to what is happening. Yeah. Well this was really similar. This is like not just for media attention but for survival. Connect your skillsets to what is needed, like to what people desperately need and, and be willing to pivot because there’s, there’s opportunity. So that was, that was my second big takeaway was just watching you kind of process that. Like in that way, I think for anyone who’s out there listening, and that would be our team included, it’s a, we all possess a certain set of skill sets that you may not offer in your business. That doesn’t mean you don’t have those skillsets. Like I know zoom up down all around, been using it for eight, nine years. I mean, it’s a, it’s a crucial part of our daily life and our daily business. There’s no reason I couldn’t start offering a zoom training service if you needed to, RV: (05:55) if you needed to. AJV: (05:58) So like what are all of the Skillsets that you just naturally present has asked that you take for granted now that the whole world is gone, virtual, gone online to do business. And in addition to that, it seemed, I saw a story about these New York city dressmakers that have turned their sewing skills into sewing masks. RV: (06:18) Ah, AJV: (06:18) And there’s just so many great examples. Yeah. Like even here in Nashville, CycleBar apply it to what is needed or just get really creative. And I think that the story that I love here in Nashville where we live is CycleBar is one of the cycle studios in town. Clearly no one is going to class right now or shouldn’t be so here’s what they’ve done. Yeah. They are letting you rent their bikes that usually sit in their studio to deliver them to your house. You rent them, then they’re doing live virtual classes and you’re paying more to rent the bikes then you would for your monthly subscription to come to the studio. So just like there’s so many opportunities to innovate. Maybe they’ll never go back from that. Like this could be their new business, maybe not. But I’m just saying there’s just so much opportunity if we choose to get a little creative. RV: (07:12) Well, and for us, like we, we have done all of our live in person events have gone virtual and, and they are awesome. The feedback has been incredible. AJV: (07:22) We think so! RV: (07:22) Well, our clients think so too because they, they, they’re riding in the feedback and we do think it’s incredible, but it’s like people are saving money on travel and they’re having, you know, a very similar, comparable experience and they’re not having to do the risk. And there’s some, some really amazing things that come out of that. But I think, you know, and the two big thing questions at a high level that you should be asking yourself as one, you know, how can I be digital? Like whatever business you’re in, how can I be more digital? And you know, like this is the time for video courses and video funnels and webinar funnels and blogging and social and like all the things that we talk about on a normal basis to be accelerating because that’s how can I go digital? RV: (08:03) The second question I would be asking is going, how can I deliver service to people in their home? Okay. So like the CycleBar example is, yeah. Is a great example. There’s other examples of people you’re doing home-based kind of delivery services, right? Like Amazon announced 100,000 jobs or something that they need. Why? Because everybody needs stuff delivered to their house, which, and, and, and if this goes on for awhile, like eventually people are gonna need haircuts from their house. They’re going to want Manny Pedis from their house. They’re going to need, like everything is going to be who can deliver, get the service delivered to the home, you know? So in a safe way. AJV: (08:43) And if it’s not in the home, it’s just how are you uniquely transforming your business? You know, I read some stories the other day about a high end restaurants, that our now I’m doing a family meal prep. They would have never done take like these are not takeout places you don’t get take out and you don’t get to go orders from these five star four star restaurants, but now they’re making family style meals where you can come and pick them up curbside. So they’re quickly pivoting to save jobs, to save their businesses at like, clearly no one’s coming in here. That doesn’t mean we can’t pivot what we do still comparable, right? We’re still a food hospitality business. We’re just now doing it and family meal style planning for you to come pick it up. So even if it’s not in the home, it’s [inaudible] coven related, right. What are the things that are necessities of our current time and how are you adjusting your business now and for the future, which is one of the points that we had talked about in the interview, which is RV: (09:43) That would be my final, my final point. Right. I think to me a big part of this interview was just sort of like the creativity and the pivot and the awareness that like for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. So for every challenge there’s an equal and opposite opportunity somewhere. And to bring Jack in as a real life example of someone that’s, you know, one of our clients who’s just all of a sudden like [inaudible] loaded that is out there everywhere. But then practically to directly what he was saying, I mean this was an eyeopener for me about selling to the government, that if you want to create recession-proof revenue, everybody should at least take a look at this, not just for the short term, I mean whatever that website, right. Whatever the website he gave, I think short term, you know, gov, quote dot U S it’s like, go look at that for short term money. Like yeah, money is flying out and available, but longterm is going, the number one spender of all is out. They are. And in down economies they spend more money. It’s like you should have a piece of your business and a piece of your mind, or at least being aware AJV: (10:52) Is somewhat recession proof. RV: (10:54) Yeah. AJV: (10:55) And yeah. Yeah. And it’s like, and perhaps today you don’t really have a segment of your business that applies and perhaps that’s where your creativity needs to come in and play. Mmm. Because that leaves needs to be a consideration. And RV: (11:10) Even if you don’t offer, you know, like that website of all the stuff they’re asking for. Right. You may not offer something, but that’s going to tell you what they need right now. And you go, Oh, I could [inaudible] AJV: (11:20) I could pull that. Yeah. Like another story. I’ve got so many stories. I’ve been, RV: (11:23) You’ve been reading the positive [inaudible] positive pandemic stories. Welcome to the positive pandemic news with Paula. Amanda Johns Faden reporting to you live on all of the most amazing creative businesses. Yes. AJV: (11:38) But I just thought this GM, right, I saw this [inaudible] the other day and yeah, so an African his name. But anyways, I saw it and I was just like, that’s amazing how they were calling all us manufacturers to do what the government can’t do. Yeah. And so RV: (11:54) At GM has all this manufacturing equipment, they’re going to start manufacturing respirators. Oh wow. AJV: (12:00) And so it’s like, yeah, I mean, they’ve got all the equipment that’s not a product that they’ve been doing, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be doing that. They have the tools, they have the people, they have all of the manufacturing materials. They just have to reconfigure how they’re doing and what they’re providing. So again, there’s just so many things like that that are out there, that are happening, causing people to rethink, readjust, innovate, and create in a time that [inaudible] going to push us all to our limits. RV: (12:31) Yeah. And you, but you can do it. We’re doing it with you, right? Like our live keynote business when indefinitely postponed our live event business, which is like a core part of our business, suddenly became [inaudible] all real time in person events and they’ve been incredible. And you know, I’m sure there’s more curve balls coming our way and there’s going to be curve balls coming your way, but you can do it. There are opportunities out there. You have to just know that for every challenge there is an equal and opposite opportunity. So thank you babe for inviting Jack. And thank you for tuning in. We want to be that source of encouragement and inspiration for you. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 58: Selling to the Government with Jack Siney and GovSpent | Special Edition
RV: (00:06) Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with. This is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that@brandbuildersgroupdotcomslashsummitcallbrandbuildersgroup.com slash summit call. Hope to talk to you soon on with the show. RV: (01:03) Hey friend, I am so glad to have you with us. We were talking about this is a special edition, a special episode here of the influential personal brand podcast. This was content that we were not planning on releasing. And we have a good friend who you’re about to meet named Jack Sinai. Now Jack is the nation’s leading expert on selling to the government completing over one point $5 billion in government sales. And he is the co founder of a company called gov spend, which maintains the only database purchase order records for federal, state, and local agencies. The reason this matters right now is because obviously the economy has been spiraling in a variety of different ways and the government is one of the only groups that we’ll be spending more money than they, they would in normal times. So Jack has been featured in entrepreneur, MSNBC, Forbes. RV: (02:02) He has multiple degrees including an MBA from UCLA and a master’s in legislative affairs from George Washington university. He’s got 25 years experience working in the public sector. He is also one of our brand builders group clients. And so that’s why we knew about him and we were having some conversations and you know, we’ve been looking for creative ideas and creative ways for you to be building and growing your business and your personal brand in the economy that we are facing right now. And so that is why Jack is here. So Jack, welcome to the show. JS: (02:35) Hey, great. Thank you so much for having me. I would, I tell your audience that long intro is not worthy, that brand builders helped build it. So bring all those, my 50 years of life crunched into those senses. So thanks for the intro. Yeah, and I would just say to everyone who’s listening, I was on a unexpected and random call with Jack last week and was definitely not planning on this Steve and pop up. And as I was reading through all the stuff that is happening with his company and all the people that they’re able to help, I was like, we have to have you on our podcast and we need to release it ASAP. Hence you being here today. And I told worry, I was like, this is, this is timely, it’s urgent. RV: (03:20) And when mama says this is how it’s going down, this is how it’s going down. So tell us Jack, like what, what is going on? What does government sales mean? What does gov spend do like your company. But like why is this all matter? Just like give us the context. Cause I think for most entrepreneurs, like at least the ones that we know and we hang out with a bunch, the idea of selling to the government, it’s like [inaudible], JS: (03:47) Right? We’ve already lost half your audience, right? RV: (03:50) So walk us through like high level. What does that mean? JS: (03:53) Sure. So I would tell if anybody, you’re just listening don’t hang up or don’t click off or whatever it is. So just hopefully we’ll simplify it. So obviously we’ve all heard the stereotypes of selling to the government. It can be long and complex and challenging and red tape and it’s, it can, you know, historically can be a challenging to go win some of that government business. So about 10 years ago we took on this challenge of Hey, how can we make that process simpler for companies that are trying to sell the government? If your audience does not know that the government combined, there’s 90,000 government agencies, they spend over $7 trillion a year, they’re by far the largest prospect in the entire world. It’s a ton of money. And, and the current events, we’ve all seen that the government just actually approved another $2 trillion in government spending. JS: (04:38) So there is a ton of money in the system. And one of the things why it’s so important from our conversation the other day with AJ is that now sometimes when the U S market slows, then folks go internationally. Well now with the pandemic, there really is very few opportunities internationally. And really the main opportunity for most companies over the next two quarters is going to be selling to the government. And so that’s really been our messaging over the last week or two. It’s our businesses exploded as folks realize this can be the saving grace for probably most middle to small businesses across the country. Across the world. RV: (05:13) So who can, who can sell to the government like that? It’s such a nameless, faceless, massive entity. JS: (05:21) Sure, sure. JS: (05:22) Plus, it’s like per our conversation, there’s over 90,000 government agencies that you can sell to. Like what are these and how do you know as an entrepreneur, a small business owner? RV: (05:33) Like does my stuff apply to them? JS: (05:36) Yeah. First off, the government buys everything, literally everything. So if you make it, the government buys it. And so I would just encourage folks, even now, folks here, we hear a lot about this medical stuff. The government’s also buying a ton of nonmedical stuffs to support all of this infrastructure that’s needed for the COBIT 19 effort. There’s a ton of nonmedical stuff being purchased. Okay. So the second part is folks are like, Hey, how can I go sell to the government? How do I, how can I win some of this business? Well, once that we always give to folks is 80% of government spending does not go through the bid. An RFP process, 80% so that’s 7 trillion. And this $2 trillion they’re going to put out 80% of it doesn’t go through the bidding or RFP process. So there’s about 10 ways that the government will buy that expedites the entire process. JS: (06:20) So here’s one. So there’s a platform called Gulf quote. Where literally government agencies will go out, they’ll put things they need on Gulf quotes. It’s a release, an RFQ [inaudible]. They will literally award business in just a day or two once they get a sufficient number of quotes. So that’s happening real time right now. So agencies go to Gulf quote, we’ll say, Hey, we need and 95 masks. We need a laptop computers, because we’re going to be e-learning. We need hotspots for some of the stuff we’re doing. We need infrastructure for these test stations. Literally, once they get three, four, or five quotes, they will award that contract. Sometimes just a couple of hours. It is amazing. We have folks, government agencies, to list that RFQ in the morning and then awarded later the day or the next day. So the one thing that everybody on this podcasts can do, you can go to Gulf quote.us, register your company, you’ll see the RFQ that are coming out. It’s free, it takes 15 minutes and you can see a flow of government contracts that are happening right now live. It’s amazing how quickly it’s happening. RV: (07:21) This is services too. Does that include like educational, educational services and training and all different eyes? JS: (07:29) The government buys everything from a commodity, a phone to a laptop to services, construction, engineering, you name it. Like in New York, you know, they’ve built all of these now offsite hospitals, they need engineers to lay out the room engineering of Hey what’s all the facilities? It has to be, you know, say for all the patients. So there is an array, an array array of services and products mean the purchase right now, and I used my pitchers to behave. Government sales used to take six to nine months and now it’s down to weeks or days. So our company has been told, Hey, you can win a government contract and weeks and days. We’ve been saying that for a long time and then the last three weeks I’ll just say we’ve now gone to hours. We literally, you can win a government contract in just a few hours. It can literally save your business and just a few hours. We had a tool, one store to AGA the other day. We had a, we had a Midwest public university had an RFP, RFQ out for 174 laptops. They needed because their student body went off campus, right? Like all of the schools, they released that on Thursday morning. They awarded on Friday morning. So in 48 work hours, 48 business hours, they awarded $150,000 contract that fast on the Gulf quotes site. JS: (08:41) It’s happening super fast. It’s amazing cause everyone’s in this hyperspeed try to accommodate them. AJV: (08:48) Now tell us, do they need personal brands? That’s what we need to know. I do government aid. JS: (08:56) Well listen, you know what’s, you know what’s really interesting is that I think this time is, I think everyone looks back, you know, we were talking about just before we kick this off, that having a personal brand and having folks that are aware of you and this digital only age is, can be so important that government does everything. Like there’s no doubt government agencies that have a higher social media following and have spent some time building followers are no doubt more prepared for this crisis because they can outreach to their community, their constituents much faster than someone tried to put that together. You know, if you’ve been doing this kind of digital thing and communicating with your community virtually, this is a much easier process than if you’re trying to start that thing from scratch. So there’s no doubt even for the services that brand builders offers, there’s definitely a need for communities to outreach and inform their constituents. That’s a real, real [inaudible]. AJV: (09:44) Yeah. So there’s, that’s really fascinating. So a ton of our audience are people who are consultants, trainers, speakers. What, what, what would you recommend to them to do two access? Some of this opportunity? Like what w what would be the easiest, fastest thing to do? JS: (10:04) Yeah, so I think again for everybody, I would just go to GovQuote.com, Register your company. Just cause it’s, it’s free and it’s simple. It takes 15 minutes. It’s there. It’s an autopilot that have you. Then I think your, the organization, whatever organization of the person has fear like, Hey, where potentially is the best fit for me? Right? What, not every, everything is for everybody, right? Am I, I would, I would just encourage folks to always start. If you’ve never done anything with the government, start state and local, start local. When you go to the federal, it gets very complicated. There are bigger contracts at the federal level, no doubt. But if you’ve never done any government business, the easiest business is closer to you. Just like a regular mom and pop business, right? It’s, it’s easier to reach out, communicate, have great affinity towards your local agencies because you can talk the talk of your area, your state. JS: (10:48) So I would encourage folks, Hey, where would I potentially best fit my services? What I offer? I’d encourage you to start state local. And then once they do, there’s really, we’d say there’s two options if you’ve never sold to the government. Like you want to learn some of that, right? Because like all things having the intricacies of it can be important. And so there’s some of that, there’s govsalesuniversity.com you can go on and learn how to sell to the government. So it’s just like all these online classes, a chance for folks to go. What are some of the nuances of songs to the government? AJV: (11:16) And that’s govsalesuniversity. JS: (11:18) It’s called sales, sorry, it’s gov sales university.com so anybody can go on there. It’s a one line on demand set of classes. They can learn how to sell. The government’s a couple hundred bucks for some free ones on there now. So it’s just chance for you to get your feet wet on how does it really work? Right. Okay. Then. And then once you do the selling to the government part is really like selling to a an enterprise. It’s like, Hey, who do I contact and how can I reach out and send them my value proposition because again, everything that private industry goes through, the government goes through. So for the consultants and the folks that are in development and there is no doubt that this crisis is going to create an array of needs for staffing infrastructure. How do I use these online platforms? How do we connect with our community? JS: (12:03) I have like all the things probably that most high tech executives and I assume most of the folks you’re dealing with take for granted. I’ll just tell you the folks in the government, some of them are like, how do I do a zoom meeting? How do they all connect? How do I get it on? How do I, the stuff we have room for this call. How do we get infrastructurally and how do I get all my stuff set up? How do I reach out? All of those things. So maybe it’s not in the wheelhouse of what you’ve historically done, but looking at the community and saying, Hey, how do I help my government agency interact with the community? If everybody’s at home for the next 90 days, like how it’s going to be new ways to reach the community, inform them, when are we back to work? JS: (12:41) Where are we going? How is my website? How can I communicate? How can I creatively? If you watch governor Cuomo, he’s done an amazing job, right? He’s turned his press briefing, kind of. Have you seen any of them kind of into this kind of almost inspirational message every day, right? He mixes in the update. It also sends a message of, Hey, here’s what’s happening in the community. Here’s how you can stay calm. He talks about his communication with his daughter and all those things. It’s been really amazing to watch. And so I would say that all the folks that are in the brand builders network, there’s a chance for you to take your skill set, probably most of the things you take for granted and offer them to your state and local agency to help them deal with the communication struggles and the all the connections they’re going to need to make over the next 60, 96, you know, 180 days. So that would be my encouragement. AJV: (13:26) You said something there that I think is really, really important and I want to draw people’s attention to, it may not be what you’ve always done, but it’s a skill set that you already possess. How are you utilizing that in these unique times? And you know, I was just, I was dying laughing inside because, you know, there’s that viral video going on of poor Jessica who was on the zoom meeting who didn’t realize that they could see her going to the restroom for Jessica. But to that point it’s like even using brand olders in example, that, you know, we don’t offer online training skillsets as a service of ours. Yeah. But we know exactly how to set up all of the online infrastructure, what you need and what you need to do to be a good host. How do you have good sound quality quality? How do you make sure everyone knows what they’re doing? How do you host an interact and online meeting or an online training? Those are service skill sets that we don’t currently offer, but those are also skill sets that we already possessed that we could be offering to innovate and create during this interesting time. RV: (14:37) Yeah. This is just a whole opportunity if you are struggling, like if you’re in, where can you go and you want to follow the money, right? Like there’s, there are people, there’s always people spending money. It’s just where are they getting money. Yeah. JS: (14:52) Yeah. I wouldn’t, I, I’ve seen you guys like you moved, some of, you’ve had a lot of onsite moving online, but, and I encourage it in the sales world. I would just say this, I’m very biased. I think we’re all indebted now with Hey virtual this and virtual conference and have a tell them, you know, all these LinkedIn line. But I would just say most of it is very pithy. I think a lot of folks, this took them by shock. And so they’re like, Oh, let me just get online and get my face in front of people and let me talk about feel, felt, found and Hey, be empathetic. And you know, and I think a lot of it is to me a little empty to be quite honest. And so if you can find a way to inject yourself into the process with some facts and some data and some hardcore information to help people get through it, huge, huge, huge opportunity. JS: (15:33) Like one, I was talking to one of my friends of mine who’s is in ministry and you know, we hear so much about work from home, right? But what we don’t hear I, I’ve seen no training or feedback on the family dynamic of work from home. Hey, get me set up for work from home. But now what happens to your family with your kids are home and how do you balance all your days and the meals and also trying to teach them and education. It’s like I haven’t seen one thing yet where it’s like, Hey, how do I now immerse work from home with my family and you know, almost homeschooling. Like, so there are so many opportunities to like help people in this dynamic. And so I’d encourage just be the brand builders group or what are concrete hard deliverable as you can give folks because the world said, Oh, I’ve got to go online, let me do some pithy things. And so the more meaty, the more data, the more concrete it can be, I think the more valuable folks will find it. And we’ve certainly found out at our company because we were blessed to have the shoot dataset and it’s been invaluable to companies here over the last several weeks. RV: (16:32) So, Jack, the, to clarify one thing, so you know, you said go to gov, gov, quote dot U S right. And that is, that’s basically agent government agencies that are looking to spend money actively, potentially within hours where they need something done. So those would be kind of low hanging fruits. But then you’re saying additionally [inaudible] [inaudible] in parallel with that, you could just reach out to your local government agencies and try to con just like you would just like you would reach out to any new customer and offer whatever you know, market, whatever your services are. So that’s kinda, is that what you were saying? There’s like two different ways to kind of go about it. JS: (17:14) Yeah, the, the government buys in a variety of ways. So just for the, just to kind of level set a little, the Gulf quote thing is happening live. It’s exploded because of COBIT 19 the traditional way folks always hear about, it’s kind of this big new RFP thing, like go out and get a bid, an RFP. So government agencies will still put out bids and RFPs and during this time it’s somewhat hard to reach government people. So one of the things we’re going to do is actually make all the coven 19 type efforts. We’re going to make them free online and we can talk about that again. So it’ll be available to folks. The key three shouts at agencies is going to be the contacts. Like, Hey, how do I reach people? How do I get ahold of them? So one of the additional things we’re going to be doing is if you reach out to gov, spend.com we actually within our database, not only did we have all this historical spending and we have the bids and RFPs, we keep this whole set of contacts for folks to reach out to because we’ll, we’ll give you actually their name, title, phone number and email. JS: (18:07) So it can, in the sales world can be super beneficial because not everyone’s on site when they go to emergency, state of emergency, it’s only site. Essential personnel is how they define it. So not everyone will be around. So it’ll take a couple cycles. But I would encourage the listeners to start reaching out because we all know this in sales and marketing, you have to hear from you seven to nine times, right? And if you wait, so this thing settled. So if I have a lot of folks that work with schools and they’re like, well, the schools are gone, the schools are out, the schools are closed. Well listen, it’s a great time to start marketing to the schools, reaching out to the schools because you know, they’ll start to get your stuff. They’ll see your name the first time you write. They may be like, I don’t want to hear it, but they’re going to fire that thing back up. JS: (18:48) And when they do, if you’re not one of the names, they think about if you haven’t done some marketing and some selling and some ranting for yourself, when they go to fire the schools back up, they’re just going to go back to their old vendors. Right. They’re going to, I know, I know Bob. I know Susie. I know Mike. I’m going to go back to them, but if you can find some time now to start marketing to them and have them know your brand, know your logo, they’re your service when it comes back because it is going to come back. You were then you’re way down the road of your seven to nine times, right? Folks who have seen your own, Hey, I saw that company, they were around here, they offered us some free services, they did this for us. Let’s give them a try. So strongly encouraged folks, even if the short term deal flow does not work, start planting seeds in the government world that could pay off 10 X 20 X down the road because we all know the normal stats of sales and marketing that applies to government agencies to letting them see your brand. Now in a time where it’s much more quiet and they’re not inundated with opera, they’re not inundated operationally could be a huge, huge win, you know, later this year. RV: (19:47) And so just just to be clear, Jack, so, that’s what govspend is. So your company is actually a data, you’re basically a database you keep and people pay for access to this database and they can say, you know, whatever, I need this zip code. Like what agencies are close by to me. And then you, you providing that most UpToDate information like of, of who they would reach out to. JS: (20:09) Yeah. So for your audience, just to clarify, so gov fan. Really what we do is 10 years ago we started to go to agencies because we watched them. You’ve watched some of the government contracts and they don’t make sense, right? You’re like, wow, why did I do that? That doesn’t really make sense. We started to gather purchase orders from government agencies across the country, federal, state and locals. We gathered their purchase orders. We put in this online database and in this database it looks, it works like Google. You could put in any product and you could see every government agency that’s buying that product, who they bought it from and what they pay it is, it almost feels like corporate espionage. It is. It’s very, very informative. It’s 250 times bigger than Wikipedia. And so what, what happens with that database? Like all things in life, if you just follow the money, then the transaction makes sense. JS: (20:54) So for instance, when a government agency pays 20% more for a product that you bid, maybe as a company, you’re like, why don’t they do that? We were low cost. What happened? Well, when you go into our database, you see they’ve worked with that company nine straight years. You’re not unseating that company that RSP was on the street that it was on the street as a formality, right? They love that company. But if you find out as a company, Ooh, I have a been RFP that’s open, and that agency has used a different vendor every other year, you have a much better shot at that deal, right? That’s a deal. You can actually win because they are looking for the best provider overall. But again, if you go look at it, a purchase of an agency and they’ve had the same vendor for nine or 10 years, the chance of you winning that business is so small. So that’s what our database does. It allows you to really go in, find the product or service that you sell, find out the agencies that are buying it, and then you can make a subset. These are our deal target, this price point. This set of agencies work great for us. It’s a huge, huge win at that point. It’s kind of like shooting fish in a barrel on the sales side. JS: (21:51) Yeah. I think too though, it’s just helping you have the necessary sales data to know where should I spend my time and invest my time versus where’s my best chances of winning versus, Hey, I’m, I’m putting in all of these proposals and there’s no chance of me ever winning these because they use the same vendor for the last decade. This gives you the insight to know where my best chances. JS: (22:14) Definitely. It’s, it’s, it’s this database is amazing because we as sales reps, we have this thing like we kinda like, you use our gut feel, you know, we’ll see it. We’ll see, Oh, Google posts, we’ll see our press release and we kinda like follow our intuition. But always say, just see if you’re dealing with the government, imagine this. If you’re a salesperson trying to target a government agency and you sell iOS, right? So you spend three or four months, you’re trying to get into the city of Miami, you spend three or four months trying to get this meeting set up, you get it set up. You’re so excited, your best suit, your best stuff. You walk in there and the first 10 minutes you start talking about what you do and they go, Oh, we’re totally on the windows platform. Literally that whole meeting, that months and months of effort is wasted at that point because now that product is done on Iran, but they’re not going to change their entire infrastructure for your product. JS: (22:55) So being able to look at the legacy purchases and know exactly which agencies are the best fit for you and what you’re selling. When you guys mentioned earlier, not every agency wants to blow out their social media. They don’t. They don’t want to necessarily communicate the way, communicate that way. But I promise you there are a bunch of agencies of the 90,000 that do. So you guys can go in and check, Hey, what are all the agencies looking for? Additional social media connections and using your firm that would be a great fit versus trying to target all 90,000, which could be very challenging. RV: (23:25) Yeah. Well, and I think, you know, [inaudible] and for our clients, right? Like brand builders group, we’ve had a, fortunately for us, we’ve had a very, very strong, like we’ve got, I think we’re sort of counter market what’s going on right now because people are going, I need to make money online. But I’m thinking about like, you know, somebody who teaches leadership who sitting at home or a JS: (23:45) Web designer or photographers or you know, people, fitness instructors, home designers, all of JS: (23:55) It’s all, it’s all happening. If you guys watch on Fox has it was interesting. One of the shows on Fox at every intro and outro break. There’s a photographer that’s taken shots of empty in New York city. I don’t know if anyone’s seen that and that’s how he goes into break and out of break every single race. It’s amazing. So there are opportunities. It’s creative. No one would, no one had thought about, there’s a videographer that goes around New York city and he tapes what would be the subway, you know, normally populated nine 11 Memorial areas and he put some music background to it and he shows how empty it is and it’s so compelling. It is super compelling, which again, is an innovative way to take your skillset and apply it to what’s needed today because folks are in dire need of, JS: (24:38) Yeah. The big idea is what are you doing differently to innovate during this time period and government selling is one of those things specifically right now. Yeah. They’re prime to spend more money than ever over the next two to four months. So how are you going to capture some of that market? JS: (24:59) Yeah, my heart, my heart, my heart for all of your folks who are listening are please, please, please, if you, if you’ve kind of dismissed, the government thought it was annoying. Are government buys very, very quickly. There’s 10 ways they can buy. Now is the time. Don’t wait until Q three when your business is upside down and you’re at the break, now’s the time. The U S government, the federal state, local is going to be spending more money the next two quarters in anybody’s ever spent ever. And so they are spending a quicker, it’s more like private industry. You must, must, must take a run at it because a lot of other things are going to get locked up and if you wait, so it’s, you know, a couple of months it could be too late for your business. So I can’t encourage folks enough. Please, please, you don’t have to come to golf, spend or do anything we’re doing. Please go out. Look at the government marketplace. It’s a ton of money. They need a ton of services, products, medical and nonmedical. Super critical for most companies in the United States for the next couple of quarters. JS: (25:50) Yeah, and I just have one last thing because I think so many of the people out there are inundated with media and news. Talking about how business or businesses are suffering. And the prediction is that tens of thousands of businesses are going to go out of business over the next six months. And there’s so much talk around that there’s not a lot of talk around [inaudible]. At the same time, there are businesses that are succeeding or businesses that are winning. There are opportunities to be had invented, businesses are being invented. And you know, I love this post I saw from Lewis house between 2008 and 2010 the, see that was Uber, Airbnb, Venmo. There was a whole list of, other ones were in, were, were invented, but golf spend is one of the companies right now, but you’re not just maintaining your tripling sales and revenues right now in this unique time period. So I want just to, I think it’s important for people to get the counterbalance of, yeah, there’s a lot of people hurting and struggling right now and a lot of businesses, but there is also an opportunity to innovate and change and win during this time period. So can you give us just a quick highlight of how gov spin is winning right now? Is it, RV: (27:10) And also give us, just like as we’re wrapping up Jack, make sure we’ll, we’ll put a link to, to what you talked about gov quote.us, but then also where should people go if they want to connect with you? JS: (27:21) Sure. So I would encourage folks to kind of stay in touch what’s happening in the government. If you go to my LinkedIn account, which is Jack [inaudible], S I N E Y is probably the best way to follow because we’re constantly putting a, every day we’re putting out government opportunities for free. Oh, on my LinkedIn site. And that’s where you get all the connections. Probably the easiest way. And as Aja mentioned, we’ve been really less humbly, I’ll just say during this time, you know, we’ve been in this market niche and it’s kind of funny previously when we’ve done PR and other things, we’ve kind of been on the back burner and folks don’t want to talk about government procurement. And they’re like, Hey, I don’t know how to, I don’t know how to weave this into, you know, some marketing cycle, some newspaper article. And then in the last three week has been just the opposite. JS: (27:59) We have been inundated, spun, crazy spokesman, reaching out all the time. Hey, how can I win government business? How do folks settle the government? How do I find some of this $2 trillion previously, the $60 billion, all this money? How do we, how do we access it? How can we find it? And so, yeah, our business has exploded. I’ll take that, you know, just the grace of God. We’re so thankful for that. And, and so it’s been amazing. So I encourage all your listeners, if you go to my LinkedIn, it’s Jack [inaudible], S. I. N. E. Y. You’ll find all the links and everything. We put out several things a day. We’re going to, we’re having a live link, we’re having a LinkedIn live coming up. We’re kind of a couple different other free services we’re going to be offering. So it’s probably the easiest way to follow what we’re doing. RV: (28:39) Awesome. Well, Jack, thanks so much for the energy and the insight and the perspective, and then, you know, thanks for being one of our customers and, and being willing to contribute to the whole community here. It’s very, very timely. JS: (28:51) I bless, they say, thank you all so much. Speaker 1: (28:54) Thanks so much.
Ep 51: Mindset Shifts That Up Your Media Game with Susie Moore | Recap Episode
RV: (00:06)
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with. This is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit call brand builders group.com/summit call to talk to you soon on with the show.
RV: (01:02)
It is a happy day for you because you are going to meet one of the coolest people ever. Her name is Susie Moore. We met Susie at an event we were at with Michael Hyatt, who of course is a good friend of ours and Susie is one of these people that the more we’ve gotten to know about her, the more that we have fallen in love and ha and I know her and her husband Heath pretty well. We’ve gotten to meet him face to face a couple of times. And she is somebody who used to be a sales director in Silicon Valley and she left that to become a life coach and an advice column. This, but her real expert, one of her real expertise is understanding media. All right. So she helps people develop confidence and you know, does a lot of coaching around that.
RV: (01:47)
But tactically she knows a ton about the media. She’s been on the today show herself. She’d been on Oprah, she’s been in all the big outlets. She’s been in media over 300 times, I think if I saw that right, it’s 300 different outlets. There you go. And she’s just a master at it. So she’s the author. She’s an author, you know, her first book was called what, what if it does work out and she lives in Miami with a Heath and they’re just awesome. So I felt like you had to meet Susie to talk a little bit about media and PR. So Susie, welcome to the show, my friend. I just love much. Yeah. So I think of, you know, I remember when when we did our first book launch, you know, we hired a publicist and we did like, you know, a tour bus and we ran out of the country and like we did all this like formal media and it was in my mind, it was just like this one time event and, and yet you have, you help people like stay in the news all the time and and just kind of like get a understanding how did use media to drive their business.
RV: (03:02)
So I, I guess my first question is just sort of like, what do you think are the misconceptions that people have about PR in media in general? And specifically I’m talking about, you know, for our audience is mostly like either authors or speakers or executives who are trying to promote a cause or a book or a movement or some type.
SM: (03:24)
Yes. I mean I think the misconceptions, a couple of the real big ones, all that you have to have, you know, fancy [inaudible] the connections that you have to have some type of training or you know, foot in the door with somebody or something, but you need a publicist that this isn’t something that you can do yourself. I think the media can be a little bit intimidating. We don’t know where to, again, sometimes you think you have to be a real expert Xbox, you know, and certainly as authors, entrepreneurs, you already are experts in all fields, but sometimes I think it can be a bit intimidating. You think that you still need to kind of wait or you need somebody to help you do it and that it’s just not accessible. And really the opposite is true and it just does need content. Like you will be generous when you all pitching yourself. A couple of my editors need new 15 pieces like holiday on that website that, I mean they pay a lot of content, fresh content daily, so they also want to hear from you the talent. I mean there’s certainly a place to publicist because doing DIY media isn’t for everybody, especially at a business level, but I know having a lot of medicines as friends now that they will do hear from the talent, which is just regular people like you and meet with a regular stories
RV: (04:34)
And you’re saying when you’re saying hear from him, you’re saying it’s not a, it’s not a hit to your credibility to reach out yourself versus having someone on your behalf do it.
SM: (04:46)
It’s the opposite, right? It’s actually having a real, a real human, bright, real possible person about some of the human story and the reaching out directly wanting to connect directly and wanting to just kind of speak from the heart. I mean the best stories, the best media messages, all just these real stories, right? Human beings. Like what is that? We have to say what we’ve experienced, what it is that we’ve love to share hearing from this source is preferred in Mercedes.
RV: (05:11)
Yeah. I think that that is I think so that is a misconception for sure. Is like I gotta have a publicist just even to be credible now. And so I, I hear you saying, so it’s not that, where do you find these people? Cause, cause you go, okay, let’s say you are going to DIY and, and you know, some of our clients have pretty big operations and they, you know, they’re probably going to have someone, but a lot of our clients are newer and they’re just getting started and they need, they need a few media appearances to like build some of that credibility. But I don’t think they, I think you’re right. They, it seems daunting. It feels overwhelming. It’s like why would anybody reach out, listen to me and, and I don’t, I don’t even know where to start. So like where do you go find these people?
SM: (05:55)
I mean, it’s an interesting question, right? Because the, the daunting facts, it just puts people off in the beginning, right? It’s like I just went for the right, you know, I do need some help with it. Whereas people are just, they’re accessible everywhere. Like what do you think about, how do you find anybody’s info anyway, right. Twitter is still then as a right to stop home. If you can take any like large media outlet as often a contact with us page and even look at any magazine. Next. Last name, last name is listed, finding contact information. I mean, well I was speaking to an editor recently and I’m like, he’s like in a couple of my friends email address and she’s like, if they have five seconds in a Google account, like they could find it. Like edit does want to be available to, they will want to be found by people.
SM: (06:35)
Like again, just like even me and I even have a couple of edits and friends who are, who say, you know, if I get publishes emails I just delete them. Bet against you in some cases because if somebody found her information and they craft a pitch that’s, that’s relevant and suitable, then you’ve really gone up and an editor’s estimation immediately. They already can see it was a really promising source. So finding information, I mean you just, I use a couple of different email sites for specific, you know, if it’s Conde Nast or Haas for example, or NBC if you’re looking to pitch television. But I mean the intonation’s everywhere, it just takes you five minutes of home up to say, you know, I was a puzzle.
RV: (07:17)
So you’re basically, but the editor is who you’re going for. Is that who you’re looking for?
SM: (07:22)
Yes. The editors or producers? Yeah, it, depending on all the podcasts, Booker, if you will. And often it’s just reaching out to a host directly on Instagram. It can be as simple as it’s real again, right rule, just human beings. We love stories that really, you know, it’s what makes the world go around and people want to receive pitches, content. And if you, if you have something relevant for that audience and you’re being of service to them,
RV: (07:45)
I love it. Okay. So number one, don’t necessarily need a publicist. Number two, you can find the people they want to be found. Number three number three.
SM: (07:57)
So you’re just saying like race.
RV: (07:59)
Yeah. So then the, and then the third thing I think is that they need you probably more than you need them. So those are, those are big things. So now let’s talk about the pitch itself. All right. So you know, when you say pitch, that’s like an email or a DM or something, right? As typically that’s going to be how it happens. What do I need to know to like get their interest and make it worth their time, you know, reach out. Like how does their mind work and how, what do I need to know about how their mind works so that I can craft what I’m trying to say in a way that they go? Sure. Done. Let’s have, let’s have you [inaudible].
SM: (08:41)
Yes, it’s a great question. So a pitch essentially is you in an email and no more than three paragraphs saying why, you know, why. Well, you’re a perfect fit for this editor at this time. And then looking for just a couple of very things. So looking for relevance, right? So if you’re a travel website, no one wants to know about your newborn baby unless it’s about traveling with a newborn baby. Right? So it’s surprising how few people do the research on specifically what type of content editors want and what you have to do. Again, it’s five minutes like you’re going to travel and leisure.com going to Marie-Claire, going to SPI, going to whatever website it is and just seeing what type of content is being created. So you one of the relevant and then natural good thing. Well that audience what it is you have to say.
SM: (09:23)
And then also just being succinct. And how did you present your information? So a lot of mistakes. Icy, probably the most common mistake is a lot of rambling and a lot of lists. Why you like I’m this author, this many books and I’ve you know, been here and there, you know it’s great to include a couple of clips. Like your bio is like one sentence. Say why you right. So who has your hip has some white. So I’m worry and I do this for a living. And then you say your picture is simply what your idea is and then a couple of sentences about what you’ll say in your articles. So this is for guest post specifically or even for a segment, what it is exactly that you’re going to say about that topic. And then just having to, you know, assess, I mean ideally even those in peg it to something happening in the media. So if I mean thinking about anything that’s in the news.
RV: (10:10)
Okay. So, so hold on on that part. Cause that’s, that’s I want to come back. I want to come back and hit that. But, but so you’re saying too much rambling. So it’s just like an unclear like what the heck are you, what, what is the idea that you’re trying to present and too much of like the me monster, like here’s my 15 page bio.
SM: (10:32)
Yeah.
RV: (10:33)
And what all they really care about is what is the value you’re going to provide to their audience? Like what are you actually going to say? What is the segment and how is that useful to their audience?
SM: (10:43)
Yes. What am I, a friend says, you know, who cares? So what, why you right. And it’s as simple as that that you guys said walk, why you, and it’s like, yeah, so it puts simply who you want. We don’t need to know much. Right. And some people just really go into detail that isn’t necessary. What is it that you want? Just chef evaluates your Rita’s OPO is, and then how he finished it. Like what’s your idea? You know, he was a little bit of context and for context for this conversation where he’s, some editors get a hundred pitches in a day. So it’s just simply a time thing, you know, scrolling, scrolling. You don’t really want someone to scroll like you want me to just, Oh that, Oh, the meat there. And that’s it. I mean JetLine did a timely pitch. Ikea, keep it really simple. I think some people, again, Oh the complicate all of this, I swear, where we like life and business can be easier. The other ones who make it harder. We are the ones who created these like new roadblocks and this illusion of, you know, something has to be really challenging. It’s not, again, editors are just humans just like us. They want to get good ideas. You’re being generous when you’re sharing them and they just want to hit them struggling or simple way like we all
RV: (11:45)
Right. Yeah. And I think that was a big shift for me, which is, it’s just, you know, so much of fear is always like self-centered. Like, you know, am I good enough? Are they going to want me? And so you spew all this stuff about you and it’s like they don’t care about you. Not in a mean way. It’s what they care about is their audience. And it’s like if you can show that you, you know what their audience needs and you know what they put out to their audience and you can just sort of share, Hey, here’s something I could do for your audience. Then they’re going to be like, okay, great. I’ll take a look like this. This could be legit.
SM: (12:20)
Yes, absolutely. And if you want a couple of protips or brownie points.
RV: (12:24)
Yeah, yeah, brownie points.
SM: (12:28)
Because we want, I mean, we all want to get a yes, right? Rejection is very natural. I know certainly the pop machine process, but you know, a couple of things that you can do that kind of really go a long way. Again, because editors and producers are human, just like us, if you know to do a bit of often editing, she was staff writers and they do interviews or they write their own pieces. So if you can say, you know, I love the piece that you wrote on maybe music or you know, tumeric lattes, like with Android, either pieces based on where they are, wherever you can change to share the right. That was as a human, we all want to be acknowledged, right? If somebody liked how welcoming they connected with it, just, you know, Hey, I loved your piece on one sentence.
RV: (13:06)
Huh. Butter, butter them up. And if you have a British accent, it helps. It helps because if you’re, if you have a, if you have an accent, they like that too. If you’re talking to them on the phone. That’s so true. I mean that, it boggles my mind when people will reach out to me for my podcast and they’re like, you know, we can come talk about customer service or, or something crazy. And it’s like I’m, I’m dealing with authors and speakers. It’s like clearly you haven’t even, you haven’t, you haven’t listened to the opening 30 seconds of one episode ever. Like, it’s very obvious who our audience is. If you literally take like a second to know now I have other, you know, I’ve done other podcasts in the past and stuff for, it’s like, okay, yeah, this would be a fit for that, but not for this. And I, I think that does go a long way. It’s not even, it’s not even buttering up. It’s just showing them like you care enough to take a second to figure out what they’re about.
SM: (14:06)
Yes, exactly. And you know, I always say, I think I already said it, but if that’s repeating like a couple of minutes, if I’m lucky they call it [inaudible]. Let me just not being received as like, well I mean what, what like 30 minutes of research should be done in order to send like 10, 15 pitches. I mean it doesn’t, didn’t take much for me. Right. But the this thing does go a long way is research. And then the second piece, the second thing you can do for brownie points and you know, you’ll be fumbled likely to get a yes is to to, you know, pick a pitch to anything. Just really timely. Anything already kind of trending on this site. So maybe you have a different point of view. Maybe you don’t have an extension of information. If you start a piece on the right public speakers do this.
SM: (14:47)
Wow. Is there something missing? Do you disagree with that? Like, so it just shows that you’re kind of engaged, being annual aware of what’s hot. And then also, I mean, we’re all just, you know, SEO, you know, addicts here and we want, if something’s happening in the news, do you want to have an opinion? And so if you even have, I mean all of my content is evergreen, but I’ll pitch it to some things in the news whenever I can, which is actually again, pretty simple to do. I mean, one success story we had was when there’s a woman who, and I’m prepared as breath work, so like calming breathing, she doesn’t break you and other things, but she was like, my pages aren’t being accepted and then we’ll have fast pitch was accepted because instead of, you know, how to breathe through a lapse, you know, simple technique. It was how Megan Malko should breathe on the way to the chapel is Mary and Harry, like how should she eat everything? And it was all of the day of, or the day of the wedding were they also, so you can just see how it’s the same content, but can kind of pick it to something that just makes it really timely and relevant.
RV: (15:47)
Yeah, I mean it’s, it’s just like, and that’s, that is also the work, you know, like the work that people don’t want to do is they don’t want to research, they don’t want to understand anything about the medium and then the work is going, how do I apply my expertise to something happening in the news? It’s the same five tips you’ve taught your entire career. It’s just connecting it to something that’s going on in the news that makes it worthy of dropping it into their, their news cycle. I didn’t, I think that’s, that’s so powerful and it’s, it’s so, so important and it’s, it’s, you’re just dressing up. It’s like lipstick on a pig kind of thing too. You readdress, you’re just, it’s a, it’s just a new wrapper. It’s the same candy bar. It’s a new rapper basically.
SM: (16:35)
I think they’re very exciting map, but it’s exactly the same. Me add a couple of veggies into a one sentence intro that’s different and a couple of kind of like bridging sentences in a piece to connect it to the timely relevant thing. The way that I’ve kind of explained it is just say, okay, I’m in a long, long trip and you’re driving like a junkie. Right. And you know, it’s like we get used to it and you’re like, I’ll just keep grabbing my jacket. If you just pulled up an Apple and like took a little break and just go on a plane, which involves just doing something different, you’re then just arrive at your destination very, very quickly. But most people just stay there and he called you a janky pitches and they confuse as to why they’re not getting any way quickly. So it takes a bit of a change, but it’s so worth it. I mean, it’s, it’s true. It’s pretty amazing how it can just transform your success.
RV: (17:18)
Yeah. So okay. The, the last little part I want to talk to you about is the money. Okay. So like how does this, because this takes a lot of time. I mean even if it’s a few minutes, but if you’re doing, you know, several things a week and then you’re going back and forth, even if you get accepted, it’s like, Hey, you need to edit it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There’s, there’s a lot of, there can be a lot of time here. Does this convert to money? Like, or how do you make it convert to money? Like cause I’ve had, you know, I’ve been on TV shows where we’ll see a it’ll sell a thousand books like that. I’ve been on other TV shows where there’s like, no, no, nothing has it, you know, it doesn’t apparently move the needle at all. So are there, are there certain outlets that you like more than others? Are there certain, you know, ways to do this, to actually make it move your business forward?
SM: (18:07)
Yeah, it’s a great question. Not only he is created equal, I mean absolutely not. And surprising what gets results over what you might see in buses actually, what, you know, what will drive immediate feature to actually make put money in the bank. And this is why I love guest posting specifically as a tool because it’s the most frictionless way for a Rita or to then purchase, right to have, if you had to base a piece of content. But simply that and I can share a free writing and write guest posts too. But if you have a piece of content where you get your advice regime tips, for example, you share a personal story, you then have what’s called a shut tale at the ultimate battle multiple, which is a two sentence bio. Again, really simple with a link or someone can have LUN.
SM: (18:52)
So for example, just say, you know, you’re, I know the sleep X-Box and you give advice on maybe business travel, you know, sleeping. If you have a child, be a newborn, wherever we go, peace, you know, it’ll be placed wherever it’s suitable. And then if someone’s like [inaudible], so who helps new moms get eight hours up to three months after your baby reaches the three month Mark and then you download this. How am I see my quick free training? It’s amazing when you, when you can see the, how many eyeballs will receive that piece say right? Or parents don’t come. Then the people who read it will then click through and to them, Oh definitely sacral you all parenting magazine, your trust factor is pretty like massively established, which really shows your sales cycle and then you already go directly to a landing page or even to a purchase stage.
SM: (19:40)
So that is, I mean it really the magic of of course, and then you get all the other crap, right? So media of course is a huge credibility market. That’s why I’m doing it as when I was side hustling as a life coach because I wanted to get people to discover me, to find me and I wanted to get through the credit, the immediate red, but only started realizing how you can just monetize these eyeballs. But I just didn’t. Giving them a flavor view with multiple and then an opportunity to work more deeply with you, which you just make completely visible and available and it just, they don’t care what happens. They just want them to like the piece and to share it and to comment. But that’s specifically why I like to guest posting. And then
RV: (20:18)
You’re saying because the, the, the, the idea is like if you watch a TV segment, you might be in your kitchen or whatever, but if you’re reading, yeah, like you’ve got to remember their name or a URL or something. But if I’m, if I’m reading a blog or an article and then it just says, you know, learn more about Rory or learn more about Suzy, you just click right there and they’re off and they’re into your, you know, relationship engine as we call it.
SM: (20:46)
That’s right. And another golden point here is you can, instead of even making it about me, you can say where we helps new moms. Oh this helps. And then you say about who is it you saw? And that often just be like, is that me? And then it’s pretty awesome how like how many just views, clicks and new subscribers purchases. I mean, depending on how your back is set up, it certainly leaves money in the bank. It still goes for me, the old pieces like that just out there in the ether and speculation. So that’s direct money in the bank, right? You see an immediate payoff once a piece goes live. But then there are also indirect, right? You can get speaking opportunities. I’ve got with my book deals from articles, you know, being discovered that way you can get brand deals. I mean there’s just, there’s so many, once you put yourself out there, I’m confidently more visible. It’s like you could almost say, I’m here. Right? Come, come and get me. Kind of take that step and then you’ll, I mean out there and then people, it’s how they discover you.
RV: (21:43)
Love it, love it, love it. This is, it’s, these are so many big mind shifts of just how all of this works. It’s where did, where should be, where should people go? Okay. All right, so give me Susie. I want, I want your, what did you call it? A short tail
SM: (22:03)
Shuts tail because it looks like,
RV: (22:04)
Oh, it’s a shirt tail. That’s, that’s, that’s an inappropriate American interpret interpretation. It’s a shirt tail or like a byline or you know, it’s like a micro bio or whatever. It’s just so, so anyways, so where should are our fans and followers who are wanting to get, you know, more media, where should they go to to learn more about you?
SM: (22:30)
I have a free training where I kind of break this down and she has specific hacks for writing a really great guest posts specifically to get rockstar on.com.
RV: (22:38)
Yeah, get rockstar PR. Yeah, that’s what I want. I want rock star PR. I don’t, I don’t want no like cover tunes in the back of a dive bar. PR arena, rock star PR.
SM: (22:57)
I just pulled overnight rockstar because it’s, I mean, one thing that I love about media to worry is unlike, you know, building this takes time, right? Building brands take time, but you can have a quick ring. I mean it’s something that you can turn around but even a week old. So I think we can allow our lives to be a little easier and allow some wins. Like, you know, have some of the fun with this and other people getting all the media like the slice.
RV: (23:22)
I love that. I love that concept of allow some wins in that. Maybe that’ll be your next book. I think that’s such a cool thing. I’m just like, life doesn’t have to be so hard. Like let, let things come to you. Keep it simple, be clear. And and I love that and I think that’s it’s so you’re so encouraging and you guys are so delightful and wonderful and also think you’ve really helped us feel empowered that this is, this is doable. They need you more than you need them. And so let’s just allow some wins.
SM: (23:56)
Yeah. And if I could just ask one more thing, cause I think that it’s kind of important because we all have our moments, right? Where we think, gosh, am I ready? Is this going to be, will they accept? Let me, I have no qualifications for work. I have a high school education. And so to be, have these kinds of expert stages, which you can you claim cause power can ever be gave. And she had to go and get it. New claim claimants yours. I, I’ve done this with like zero kind of formal qualifications. So wherever you’re at, you’re already have you have is enough.
RV: (24:25)
I love it. I love it. All right, Susie Moore, ladies and gentlemen, get rockstar pr.com. Thanks for your tips, Susie. We wish you well. Wish you the best, and we’ll talk again soon.
SM: (24:35)
Thank you so much Rory.
Ep 50: Mindset Shifts That Up Your Media Game with Susie Moore
RV: (00:06)
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with. This is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit call brand builders group.com/summit call to talk to you soon on with the show.
RV: (01:02)
It is a happy day for you because you are going to meet one of the coolest people ever. Her name is Susie Moore. We met Susie at an event we were at with Michael Hyatt, who of course is a good friend of ours and Susie is one of these people that the more we’ve gotten to know about her, the more that we have fallen in love and ha and I know her and her husband Heath pretty well. We’ve gotten to meet him face to face a couple of times. And she is somebody who used to be a sales director in Silicon Valley and she left that to become a life coach and an advice column. This, but her real expert, one of her real expertise is understanding media. All right. So she helps people develop confidence and you know, does a lot of coaching around that.
RV: (01:47)
But tactically she knows a ton about the media. She’s been on the today show herself. She’d been on Oprah, she’s been in all the big outlets. She’s been in media over 300 times, I think if I saw that right, it’s 300 different outlets. There you go. And she’s just a master at it. So she’s the author. She’s an author, you know, her first book was called what, what if it does work out and she lives in Miami with a Heath and they’re just awesome. So I felt like you had to meet Susie to talk a little bit about media and PR. So Susie, welcome to the show, my friend. I just love much. Yeah. So I think of, you know, I remember when when we did our first book launch, you know, we hired a publicist and we did like, you know, a tour bus and we ran out of the country and like we did all this like formal media and it was in my mind, it was just like this one time event and, and yet you have, you help people like stay in the news all the time and and just kind of like get a understanding how did use media to drive their business.
RV: (03:02)
So I, I guess my first question is just sort of like, what do you think are the misconceptions that people have about PR in media in general? And specifically I’m talking about, you know, for our audience is mostly like either authors or speakers or executives who are trying to promote a cause or a book or a movement or some type.
SM: (03:24)
Yes. I mean I think the misconceptions, a couple of the real big ones, all that you have to have, you know, fancy [inaudible] the connections that you have to have some type of training or you know, foot in the door with somebody or something, but you need a publicist that this isn’t something that you can do yourself. I think the media can be a little bit intimidating. We don’t know where to, again, sometimes you think you have to be a real expert Xbox, you know, and certainly as authors, entrepreneurs, you already are experts in all fields, but sometimes I think it can be a bit intimidating. You think that you still need to kind of wait or you need somebody to help you do it and that it’s just not accessible. And really the opposite is true and it just does need content. Like you will be generous when you all pitching yourself. A couple of my editors need new 15 pieces like holiday on that website that, I mean they pay a lot of content, fresh content daily, so they also want to hear from you the talent. I mean there’s certainly a place to publicist because doing DIY media isn’t for everybody, especially at a business level, but I know having a lot of medicines as friends now that they will do hear from the talent, which is just regular people like you and meet with a regular stories
RV: (04:34)
And you’re saying when you’re saying hear from him, you’re saying it’s not a, it’s not a hit to your credibility to reach out yourself versus having someone on your behalf do it.
SM: (04:46)
It’s the opposite, right? It’s actually having a real, a real human, bright, real possible person about some of the human story and the reaching out directly wanting to connect directly and wanting to just kind of speak from the heart. I mean the best stories, the best media messages, all just these real stories, right? Human beings. Like what is that? We have to say what we’ve experienced, what it is that we’ve love to share hearing from this source is preferred in Mercedes.
RV: (05:11)
Yeah. I think that that is I think so that is a misconception for sure. Is like I gotta have a publicist just even to be credible now. And so I, I hear you saying, so it’s not that, where do you find these people? Cause, cause you go, okay, let’s say you are going to DIY and, and you know, some of our clients have pretty big operations and they, you know, they’re probably going to have someone, but a lot of our clients are newer and they’re just getting started and they need, they need a few media appearances to like build some of that credibility. But I don’t think they, I think you’re right. They, it seems daunting. It feels overwhelming. It’s like why would anybody reach out, listen to me and, and I don’t, I don’t even know where to start. So like where do you go find these people?
SM: (05:55)
I mean, it’s an interesting question, right? Because the, the daunting facts, it just puts people off in the beginning, right? It’s like I just went for the right, you know, I do need some help with it. Whereas people are just, they’re accessible everywhere. Like what do you think about, how do you find anybody’s info anyway, right. Twitter is still then as a right to stop home. If you can take any like large media outlet as often a contact with us page and even look at any magazine. Next. Last name, last name is listed, finding contact information. I mean, well I was speaking to an editor recently and I’m like, he’s like in a couple of my friends email address and she’s like, if they have five seconds in a Google account, like they could find it. Like edit does want to be available to, they will want to be found by people.
SM: (06:35)
Like again, just like even me and I even have a couple of edits and friends who are, who say, you know, if I get publishes emails I just delete them. Bet against you in some cases because if somebody found her information and they craft a pitch that’s, that’s relevant and suitable, then you’ve really gone up and an editor’s estimation immediately. They already can see it was a really promising source. So finding information, I mean you just, I use a couple of different email sites for specific, you know, if it’s Conde Nast or Haas for example, or NBC if you’re looking to pitch television. But I mean the intonation’s everywhere, it just takes you five minutes of home up to say, you know, I was a puzzle.
RV: (07:17)
So you’re basically, but the editor is who you’re going for. Is that who you’re looking for?
SM: (07:22)
Yes. The editors or producers? Yeah, it, depending on all the podcasts, Booker, if you will. And often it’s just reaching out to a host directly on Instagram. It can be as simple as it’s real again, right rule, just human beings. We love stories that really, you know, it’s what makes the world go around and people want to receive pitches, content. And if you, if you have something relevant for that audience and you’re being of service to them,
RV: (07:45)
I love it. Okay. So number one, don’t necessarily need a publicist. Number two, you can find the people they want to be found. Number three number three.
SM: (07:57)
So you’re just saying like race.
RV: (07:59)
Yeah. So then the, and then the third thing I think is that they need you probably more than you need them. So those are, those are big things. So now let’s talk about the pitch itself. All right. So you know, when you say pitch, that’s like an email or a DM or something, right? As typically that’s going to be how it happens. What do I need to know to like get their interest and make it worth their time, you know, reach out. Like how does their mind work and how, what do I need to know about how their mind works so that I can craft what I’m trying to say in a way that they go? Sure. Done. Let’s have, let’s have you [inaudible].
SM: (08:41)
Yes, it’s a great question. So a pitch essentially is you in an email and no more than three paragraphs saying why, you know, why. Well, you’re a perfect fit for this editor at this time. And then looking for just a couple of very things. So looking for relevance, right? So if you’re a travel website, no one wants to know about your newborn baby unless it’s about traveling with a newborn baby. Right? So it’s surprising how few people do the research on specifically what type of content editors want and what you have to do. Again, it’s five minutes like you’re going to travel and leisure.com going to Marie-Claire, going to SPI, going to whatever website it is and just seeing what type of content is being created. So you one of the relevant and then natural good thing. Well that audience what it is you have to say.
SM: (09:23)
And then also just being succinct. And how did you present your information? So a lot of mistakes. Icy, probably the most common mistake is a lot of rambling and a lot of lists. Why you like I’m this author, this many books and I’ve you know, been here and there, you know it’s great to include a couple of clips. Like your bio is like one sentence. Say why you right. So who has your hip has some white. So I’m worry and I do this for a living. And then you say your picture is simply what your idea is and then a couple of sentences about what you’ll say in your articles. So this is for guest post specifically or even for a segment, what it is exactly that you’re going to say about that topic. And then just having to, you know, assess, I mean ideally even those in peg it to something happening in the media. So if I mean thinking about anything that’s in the news.
RV: (10:10)
Okay. So, so hold on on that part. Cause that’s, that’s I want to come back. I want to come back and hit that. But, but so you’re saying too much rambling. So it’s just like an unclear like what the heck are you, what, what is the idea that you’re trying to present and too much of like the me monster, like here’s my 15 page bio.
SM: (10:32)
Yeah.
RV: (10:33)
And what all they really care about is what is the value you’re going to provide to their audience? Like what are you actually going to say? What is the segment and how is that useful to their audience?
SM: (10:43)
Yes. What am I, a friend says, you know, who cares? So what, why you right. And it’s as simple as that that you guys said walk, why you, and it’s like, yeah, so it puts simply who you want. We don’t need to know much. Right. And some people just really go into detail that isn’t necessary. What is it that you want? Just chef evaluates your Rita’s OPO is, and then how he finished it. Like what’s your idea? You know, he was a little bit of context and for context for this conversation where he’s, some editors get a hundred pitches in a day. So it’s just simply a time thing, you know, scrolling, scrolling. You don’t really want someone to scroll like you want me to just, Oh that, Oh, the meat there. And that’s it. I mean JetLine did a timely pitch. Ikea, keep it really simple. I think some people, again, Oh the complicate all of this, I swear, where we like life and business can be easier. The other ones who make it harder. We are the ones who created these like new roadblocks and this illusion of, you know, something has to be really challenging. It’s not, again, editors are just humans just like us. They want to get good ideas. You’re being generous when you’re sharing them and they just want to hit them struggling or simple way like we all
RV: (11:45)
Right. Yeah. And I think that was a big shift for me, which is, it’s just, you know, so much of fear is always like self-centered. Like, you know, am I good enough? Are they going to want me? And so you spew all this stuff about you and it’s like they don’t care about you. Not in a mean way. It’s what they care about is their audience. And it’s like if you can show that you, you know what their audience needs and you know what they put out to their audience and you can just sort of share, Hey, here’s something I could do for your audience. Then they’re going to be like, okay, great. I’ll take a look like this. This could be legit.
SM: (12:20)
Yes, absolutely. And if you want a couple of protips or brownie points.
RV: (12:24)
Yeah, yeah, brownie points.
SM: (12:28)
Because we want, I mean, we all want to get a yes, right? Rejection is very natural. I know certainly the pop machine process, but you know, a couple of things that you can do that kind of really go a long way. Again, because editors and producers are human, just like us, if you know to do a bit of often editing, she was staff writers and they do interviews or they write their own pieces. So if you can say, you know, I love the piece that you wrote on maybe music or you know, tumeric lattes, like with Android, either pieces based on where they are, wherever you can change to share the right. That was as a human, we all want to be acknowledged, right? If somebody liked how welcoming they connected with it, just, you know, Hey, I loved your piece on one sentence.
RV: (13:06)
Huh. Butter, butter them up. And if you have a British accent, it helps. It helps because if you’re, if you have a, if you have an accent, they like that too. If you’re talking to them on the phone. That’s so true. I mean that, it boggles my mind when people will reach out to me for my podcast and they’re like, you know, we can come talk about customer service or, or something crazy. And it’s like I’m, I’m dealing with authors and speakers. It’s like clearly you haven’t even, you haven’t, you haven’t listened to the opening 30 seconds of one episode ever. Like, it’s very obvious who our audience is. If you literally take like a second to know now I have other, you know, I’ve done other podcasts in the past and stuff for, it’s like, okay, yeah, this would be a fit for that, but not for this. And I, I think that does go a long way. It’s not even, it’s not even buttering up. It’s just showing them like you care enough to take a second to figure out what they’re about.
SM: (14:06)
Yes, exactly. And you know, I always say, I think I already said it, but if that’s repeating like a couple of minutes, if I’m lucky they call it [inaudible]. Let me just not being received as like, well I mean what, what like 30 minutes of research should be done in order to send like 10, 15 pitches. I mean it doesn’t, didn’t take much for me. Right. But the this thing does go a long way is research. And then the second piece, the second thing you can do for brownie points and you know, you’ll be fumbled likely to get a yes is to to, you know, pick a pitch to anything. Just really timely. Anything already kind of trending on this site. So maybe you have a different point of view. Maybe you don’t have an extension of information. If you start a piece on the right public speakers do this.
SM: (14:47)
Wow. Is there something missing? Do you disagree with that? Like, so it just shows that you’re kind of engaged, being annual aware of what’s hot. And then also, I mean, we’re all just, you know, SEO, you know, addicts here and we want, if something’s happening in the news, do you want to have an opinion? And so if you even have, I mean all of my content is evergreen, but I’ll pitch it to some things in the news whenever I can, which is actually again, pretty simple to do. I mean, one success story we had was when there’s a woman who, and I’m prepared as breath work, so like calming breathing, she doesn’t break you and other things, but she was like, my pages aren’t being accepted and then we’ll have fast pitch was accepted because instead of, you know, how to breathe through a lapse, you know, simple technique. It was how Megan Malko should breathe on the way to the chapel is Mary and Harry, like how should she eat everything? And it was all of the day of, or the day of the wedding were they also, so you can just see how it’s the same content, but can kind of pick it to something that just makes it really timely and relevant.
RV: (15:47)
Yeah, I mean it’s, it’s just like, and that’s, that is also the work, you know, like the work that people don’t want to do is they don’t want to research, they don’t want to understand anything about the medium and then the work is going, how do I apply my expertise to something happening in the news? It’s the same five tips you’ve taught your entire career. It’s just connecting it to something that’s going on in the news that makes it worthy of dropping it into their, their news cycle. I didn’t, I think that’s, that’s so powerful and it’s, it’s so, so important and it’s, it’s, you’re just dressing up. It’s like lipstick on a pig kind of thing too. You readdress, you’re just, it’s a, it’s just a new wrapper. It’s the same candy bar. It’s a new rapper basically.
SM: (16:35)
I think they’re very exciting map, but it’s exactly the same. Me add a couple of veggies into a one sentence intro that’s different and a couple of kind of like bridging sentences in a piece to connect it to the timely relevant thing. The way that I’ve kind of explained it is just say, okay, I’m in a long, long trip and you’re driving like a junkie. Right. And you know, it’s like we get used to it and you’re like, I’ll just keep grabbing my jacket. If you just pulled up an Apple and like took a little break and just go on a plane, which involves just doing something different, you’re then just arrive at your destination very, very quickly. But most people just stay there and he called you a janky pitches and they confuse as to why they’re not getting any way quickly. So it takes a bit of a change, but it’s so worth it. I mean, it’s, it’s true. It’s pretty amazing how it can just transform your success.
RV: (17:18)
Yeah. So okay. The, the last little part I want to talk to you about is the money. Okay. So like how does this, because this takes a lot of time. I mean even if it’s a few minutes, but if you’re doing, you know, several things a week and then you’re going back and forth, even if you get accepted, it’s like, Hey, you need to edit it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There’s, there’s a lot of, there can be a lot of time here. Does this convert to money? Like, or how do you make it convert to money? Like cause I’ve had, you know, I’ve been on TV shows where we’ll see a it’ll sell a thousand books like that. I’ve been on other TV shows where there’s like, no, no, nothing has it, you know, it doesn’t apparently move the needle at all. So are there, are there certain outlets that you like more than others? Are there certain, you know, ways to do this, to actually make it move your business forward?
SM: (18:07)
Yeah, it’s a great question. Not only he is created equal, I mean absolutely not. And surprising what gets results over what you might see in buses actually, what, you know, what will drive immediate feature to actually make put money in the bank. And this is why I love guest posting specifically as a tool because it’s the most frictionless way for a Rita or to then purchase, right to have, if you had to base a piece of content. But simply that and I can share a free writing and write guest posts too. But if you have a piece of content where you get your advice regime tips, for example, you share a personal story, you then have what’s called a shut tale at the ultimate battle multiple, which is a two sentence bio. Again, really simple with a link or someone can have LUN.
SM: (18:52)
So for example, just say, you know, you’re, I know the sleep X-Box and you give advice on maybe business travel, you know, sleeping. If you have a child, be a newborn, wherever we go, peace, you know, it’ll be placed wherever it’s suitable. And then if someone’s like [inaudible], so who helps new moms get eight hours up to three months after your baby reaches the three month Mark and then you download this. How am I see my quick free training? It’s amazing when you, when you can see the, how many eyeballs will receive that piece say right? Or parents don’t come. Then the people who read it will then click through and to them, Oh definitely sacral you all parenting magazine, your trust factor is pretty like massively established, which really shows your sales cycle and then you already go directly to a landing page or even to a purchase stage.
SM: (19:40)
So that is, I mean it really the magic of of course, and then you get all the other crap, right? So media of course is a huge credibility market. That’s why I’m doing it as when I was side hustling as a life coach because I wanted to get people to discover me, to find me and I wanted to get through the credit, the immediate red, but only started realizing how you can just monetize these eyeballs. But I just didn’t. Giving them a flavor view with multiple and then an opportunity to work more deeply with you, which you just make completely visible and available and it just, they don’t care what happens. They just want them to like the piece and to share it and to comment. But that’s specifically why I like to guest posting. And then
RV: (20:18)
You’re saying because the, the, the, the idea is like if you watch a TV segment, you might be in your kitchen or whatever, but if you’re reading, yeah, like you’ve got to remember their name or a URL or something. But if I’m, if I’m reading a blog or an article and then it just says, you know, learn more about Rory or learn more about Suzy, you just click right there and they’re off and they’re into your, you know, relationship engine as we call it.
SM: (20:46)
That’s right. And another golden point here is you can, instead of even making it about me, you can say where we helps new moms. Oh this helps. And then you say about who is it you saw? And that often just be like, is that me? And then it’s pretty awesome how like how many just views, clicks and new subscribers purchases. I mean, depending on how your back is set up, it certainly leaves money in the bank. It still goes for me, the old pieces like that just out there in the ether and speculation. So that’s direct money in the bank, right? You see an immediate payoff once a piece goes live. But then there are also indirect, right? You can get speaking opportunities. I’ve got with my book deals from articles, you know, being discovered that way you can get brand deals. I mean there’s just, there’s so many, once you put yourself out there, I’m confidently more visible. It’s like you could almost say, I’m here. Right? Come, come and get me. Kind of take that step and then you’ll, I mean out there and then people, it’s how they discover you.
RV: (21:43)
Love it, love it, love it. This is, it’s, these are so many big mind shifts of just how all of this works. It’s where did, where should be, where should people go? Okay. All right, so give me Susie. I want, I want your, what did you call it? A short tail
SM: (22:03)
Shuts tail because it looks like,
RV: (22:04)
Oh, it’s a shirt tail. That’s, that’s, that’s an inappropriate American interpret interpretation. It’s a shirt tail or like a byline or you know, it’s like a micro bio or whatever. It’s just so, so anyways, so where should are our fans and followers who are wanting to get, you know, more media, where should they go to to learn more about you?
SM: (22:30)
I have a free training where I kind of break this down and she has specific hacks for writing a really great guest posts specifically to get rockstar on.com.
RV: (22:38)
Yeah, get rockstar PR. Yeah, that’s what I want. I want rock star PR. I don’t, I don’t want no like cover tunes in the back of a dive bar. PR arena, rock star PR.
SM: (22:57)
I just pulled overnight rockstar because it’s, I mean, one thing that I love about media to worry is unlike, you know, building this takes time, right? Building brands take time, but you can have a quick ring. I mean it’s something that you can turn around but even a week old. So I think we can allow our lives to be a little easier and allow some wins. Like, you know, have some of the fun with this and other people getting all the media like the slice.
RV: (23:22)
I love that. I love that concept of allow some wins in that. Maybe that’ll be your next book. I think that’s such a cool thing. I’m just like, life doesn’t have to be so hard. Like let, let things come to you. Keep it simple, be clear. And and I love that and I think that’s it’s so you’re so encouraging and you guys are so delightful and wonderful and also think you’ve really helped us feel empowered that this is, this is doable. They need you more than you need them. And so let’s just allow some wins.
SM: (23:56)
Yeah. And if I could just ask one more thing, cause I think that it’s kind of important because we all have our moments, right? Where we think, gosh, am I ready? Is this going to be, will they accept? Let me, I have no qualifications for work. I have a high school education. And so to be, have these kinds of expert stages, which you can you claim cause power can ever be gave. And she had to go and get it. New claim claimants yours. I, I’ve done this with like zero kind of formal qualifications. So wherever you’re at, you’re already have you have is enough.
RV: (24:25)
I love it. I love it. All right, Susie Moore, ladies and gentlemen, get rockstar pr.com. Thanks for your tips, Susie. We wish you well. Wish you the best, and we’ll talk again soon.
SM: (24:35)
Thank you so much Rory.