Whoa. My first thought on that interview is Whoa. It’s Rory Vaden. Welcome to the influential personal brand recap edition and breaking down this conversation that I had with Natasha Takahashi on chatbot automation and conversational marketing. What like this was crazy there were some really great takeaways for me, but like, of all the, of all the interviews that we have done of all the guests that we’ve had on this show, that one was probably the most unfamiliar to me. In other words, it was like a whole new world opened up that like, we’re not doing, we’ve never done. I I’ve been aware of, but not you know, that’s why I wanted to have her on. I thought she did a great job, really excited about her. And I think we’re going to be working together on, on some different things. And so I want to give you, the, my top three takeaways, but, but you know, the first thing I want to say, just make sure this is out there is that if you’re a beginner, this conversation, this topic to me is not where I would start. This is like, if you, if, if, if you are, you know, baking a cake, this to me, chat bot automation is like the last it’s like one of the last things you do. It’s the sprinkles on the cake. It’s like, even after the frosting and the decorating and, and it’s certainly like long after the cake is baked. And, and I think that sometimes there’s this, this excitement over, how do I say nifty or advanced or fancy, or like cool, cool emerging spaces and technologies like this that people get really drawn to. Cause they’re exciting and they’re fun. And it’s like, Whoa, what is this? And, and yet I would go, yeah, this to me, these, aren’t the things that you do to make or break your career, right? You make your break, your career based on substance and uniqueness and positioning and expertise and a series of systems that are always working to grow your community and advance your message of which to me, I think this one is a great one and there’s a big opportunity, and this is an exciting one and an emerging one. But you know, if this has happened to be the first episode you’re listening to, I would say that most episodes are not so much this, this tactical and technical, and this would be very advanced strategy. In fact, we would dump this into phase three, it brand builders. We, we take our clients through something called the brand builder journey, which is that we have one curriculum that is divided into four phases and each phase has three separate courses. And so we take people from like the very beginning of finding their uniqueness and their differentiation, their positioning and their business model strategy, all the way to growing an eight figure personal brand. This one would sit in phase three for us, which are our more of the like sophisticated tactics, tactical, technical, like really advanced technical things. But I love that stuff. Like I love to nerd out on this stuff. And like I said, this was a new area for me. So conversational marketing anyways, I just want to give that one little disclaimer to you. And then, you know, just to dive into my top three takeaways, I think the, the, the first one was as much of a realization for me through Natasha’s coaching, which is that I have a bit of reluctance of moving into this, this automated, conversational marketing. I think conversational marketing is a really interesting term because like conversational selling, you know, in many ways is what selling is. Although not one to many, but one to one it’s very conversational. And so the idea of conversational marketing is, is fascinating because it’s kind of a new thing, but it’s really, you know, just human conversation. But anyways, perhaps you like me, or at least speaking for myself here, I’m resistant to the idea of trying to automate a conversation. And I think what she helped me realize is that going well, it’s not really any different than watching a pre-recorded video of you, right? It’s it’s not it’s still me. It’s my brain. It’s my thoughts. It’s what I would be saying to the person. If I were there live very similar to how a video is, right? Like if somebody watches a video, I may have recorded the video months earlier. But if somebody were to ask me that question, I would say the same thing as I did then. And so a lot of times that’s what we do actually is people will write in and they’ll ask questions and they will take those questions and we’ll turn them into videos. And then it’s like, well, now we’ve answered it for everybody. Well, so I think if you’ve got a little bit of that, that roadblock, that’s at least how I’m thinking about this and going, okay, well, as long as I’m really writing this in my voice, and this is the process that I would take somebody through, if I were there, then it, it feels, it feels okay to me, like this is how I would actually engage in conversation where I think it could get risky is if I outsourced a script to somebody else and, and particularly didn’t have close oversight over it, because in that regard, I’m outsourcing my personality, right? I’m, I’m trying to have someone else like completely peg this, this very difficult when you know, conversations are, are very personalized and they’re very much, you know, integrated with who you are. And so the idea of, you know, it’s even harder than like a ghost writer who you would hire to just write something, but then you would edit it. And it’s a one way form of communication. Whereas this conversational marketing is a two way. So you’re really like, you know, even outsourcing your personality in your brain, so to speak. So I think that’s where it would get risky. I think that’s where I would, I would send up a yellow flag of like, you know, Hey, some take some serious caution here is that you don’t, you don’t want to compromise longterm reputation for short-term revenue. That’s one of our values at brand builders group. It’s in our mantra that we read at all of our team meetings is you don’t want to compromise longterm reputation for short-term revenue. And this is a place where I could see that people would, you know, kind of go down the slippery slope of doing that, but you can do both. And I think you can do them both right. And I’ve been able to rep many ways. That’s what I’ve been wrestling with and part of how I’ve been able to wrap my mind around going, yeah, I think we could deploy this. I think we could use this because we already do a lot of this. I mean, a lot of the scripts that we use, a lot of the content that we teach, even at our events are, you know, things that are being said by other people who were once said by someone else that we just scripted out and then operationalized it. And so, you know, this is like a step, a step further down the path. But I would encourage you map it out, right? Like map out, or maybe do a couple conversations live, like actually do some live chats. See what the questions people are asking, write your own talk tracks, and then build it into a system. So that was the first thing, the second big takeaway. And this is a highlight that I just, you know, edified for me is much as any, anything and hope fully. You know, this is that the dollars are in the DMS, the dollars are in the DMS. Like when you think about how to monetize social media, people’s brain goes towards like, Ooh, I’m going to get famous, have millions of followers and get a brand deal, like a sponsorship deal, or someone’s going to pay me, do promotional posts. Cause we see that a lot, right. Or we go, Ooh, I’m going to have lots of followers and I’m going to drive these followers to a webinar and then they’re going to buy on the webinar. And because they see that a lot, both of those are great things. We, we, we have clients that do both of those really, really well. We do a lot of that too, but I think when you’re first starting out, when you go, how do I monetize social media? How do I actually make money from any of this social media stuff? When, especially when you’re first starting out or if you’re servicing a niche and you just, you’re just not, you’re not playing content to the main stream where you’re going to have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of followers where you go, how do you actually monetize social media? You do it in the DMS. The dollars are in the DMS. The way you make money is by in human conversations with the people who are engaging with you, specifically comments and DMS. Now, the reasons why I would say the dollars are in the DMS is because the goal here, not the goal, but, but I would say I’m not going to have a sales conversation typically in the comments section. So if somebody comments, I’ll probably comment back and then say, Hey, check your DMS. Or I just sent you a DM because now we can have private conversation, which I think has got to lend itself more naturally to a sales process. We actually have a process that we teach for this at pressure-free persuasion. It’s called the four F’s about how do you convert these comments into customers? Well, the very first thing we’re going to do it was moved that conversation out of the comments, into the DM. So it can be private so they can share with you, you know, private information that you probably need in order to, you know, to persuade them to, to ethically persuade them and help them and serve them. So but, but what’s wild is people, especially newer people, ironically will spend some amount of time and energy trying to put together stuff for social media, which is like, it is a lot, right? It’s, it’s a lot of work to do it, especially if you’re running the content diamond and you know, the processes that we teach, that it’s a lot of work. And then it’s like, well, you’re not getting millions of views when you start out. Yeah. But you don’t need millions of views. You only need a couple of comments. And what you want to do is pay attention to the people who are commenting and move it into your DMS, pay attention to the people who are sending you DMS. And people say, well, I already don’t have time for social media. I definitely don’t have time to deal with DMS too. It’s I would kind of say, well, then don’t expect to monetize your social media. Like if that’s what it’s about, maybe you shouldn’t do it at all. I mean, I think long-term there’s reasons to do it still, but it’s like, don’t complain about not monetizing your social media early. If you want to monetize your social media early, the fastest, best, most economical way to turn social media and followers into real money and dollars in your bank account is through DMS one-on-one conversation. So door not too busy for DMS. That’s like saying I’m too busy to stop and pick up a $20 bill that’s on the sidewalk. Like I don’t care if you’re bill Gates, you still probably would stop and pick up a $20 bill. So that, that is how it is. And it’s a mindset thing. And for me, I used to always go, I’m just too busy for this. Like I don’t have time to like deal with all the social media stuff and comment on everything. Well, what you’re doing is you’re building a relationship and that’s what selling is. It is a relationship it’s based on trust. It’s based on service. So you’re going okay. If I’m going to convert this into dollars, it’s probably going to happen privately. And it’s, and, and especially if you have a high dollar offer, right? Like if you sell anything North of a thousand bucks in your new to social media, you don’t have a huge following or you don’t have a lot of trust or credibility online. It doesn’t mean you can’t make money doing it. It means it’s going to happen privately. It’s not going to happen. Like, you know, here’s a link, everyone click and go to my store and buy, and I’m going a millionaire. It’s going to happen through human communication, which is how it has always happened. Social media is just a new Avenue. So the dollars are in the DMS. You’re not too busy for one-on-one conversations with people who are interested in you. Like if you’re too busy for one-on-one conversations with people, we’re interested in you, like, what are you doing like that, that they’re raising their hand. When somebody comments, when somebody engages, when somebody DMS they’re going, I like you. I’m interested in you. I think you’re cool. Like, I think you can help me. You you’re putting something here that is of enough interest and value to me that I’m not only willing to consume it. I’m willing to engage with you. Hello. That is like a flashing bright light, like sales opportunity, referral partner opportunity like this, this is someone pay attention to. So, so, so I think this is really powerful because this conversational marketing is going okay. Maybe we can automate some of that. Particularly for those of you that do have large followings. Right. And I know some of you do have hundreds of thousands, millions of followers, and you’re going, okay. It really is a full-time job to keep up with this and go, okay, can we, can we, can we write some decision trees? And can we create some decision trees? Because I think that’s super powerful. So I think that’s one of the reasons why this episode is important is it helps you realize the dollars in the DMS. It gives you a way to do it manageably, but also a main, this helps you integrate with marketing automation. You know, so you can, you can use chats to encourage people at based on where they’re at in your funnel. That’s amazing. Like talk about a hyper customized experience. We do something very similar with email, but it’s really cool to be chatting. The other thing, which was huge was this idea about being able to communicate across platforms, multiple platforms, even websites, and in the future, probably SMS to where you’re like centralizing one conversation with the person to where it’s not just like, if I send you emails, those are emails. If I send you Facebook messages or Facebook messages, if I engage with you on WhatsApp, that’s on WhatsApp. But like, if I forget, or I don’t have a good way of staying organized, or if multiple people are interfacing with you and we don’t all have context of what conversation is happening on the other platform, that’s really risky. You can damage trust, right? That’s happened to me before, like we’ve created some automated responses and then, you know, this happened to me recently and I just feel terrible. Like one of our clients, we have a client who’s been a client for two years, but we weren’t connected personally on LinkedIn. And we had some automated LinkedIn messages going out. And so this person fit a search criteria that we were targeting. And I, anyways, they get into it, end up getting into what is more or less as an automated search with an automated conversation with me. And it’s like, they’ve been a customer for two years. That’s not good. That’s terrible. Right? Like, that’s the last thing I want to do. So but the cool thing is if you were able to have all the platforms, you know, this, this cross platform communication was super-duper powerful. And so I think, you know, adding AI on top of this, it’s going to be a part of the future, the data that you can collect, connect from this and just the, you know, the cross platform communication, these are reasons why it matters. It matters. And there’s some risks, there’s some risks, but I think, you know, this is, this is really solid. And then my third takeaway, which Natasha said directly, which I think is so useful, is it, it can be very easy to get overwhelmed with the power of something like this. This happens very similarly when we teach marketing automation in general and you go, well, how granular do you want to be? You can get super, super granular and just go, just choose one use case to get started. Go. We’re just going to use this for customer service or just for marketing or, or just to talk to people who are already active in our sales pipeline or sales process. And so try not to get overwhelmed, just choose one specific use case and go, let me try to master this one thing, get my feet wet, see how it goes, you know, try it out, watch the data, optimize, manage, optimize, and then go from there. But this is, this is pushing you, right? And it’s pushing me and this is pushing the future. And I think that’s one thing we want this podcast and everything we do at brand builders group to be is just to always be evolving and keeping up with the trends and not just going, Hey, this, this worked 20 years ago. It’s a balance of both principles, which are time tested, but also modern day practices, which sometimes are evolving. And so we’re honored that this is one of your sources of, of educating for those and, and vetting those two things out. And we’re just glad you’re here. So thank you for being here. That’s a little bit on automation, chat, bot automation and conversational marketing. One of the emerging areas for personal brands. Keep coming back. We’ll keep pushing the envelope. You keep showing up. We’ll keep delivering the goods. Thanks for being here. We’ll see you next time. Bye-Bye.