SPEAKERS

Mark Fidelman, Russell Nohelty

Mark Fidelman  00:05

Hello everyone joining me today is Russell Nohelty. He’s gonna show us how to build an audience from scratch you know I’m a big believer in building community before you build a product. He’s got a very unique approach, and I can’t wait to learn from him so well. Russell, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. And can you give us a little bit of your background in 100 words or less

Russell Nohelty  00:30

sure I am a USA Today bestselling author I’m the publisher of one of the press and the host of the complete creative podcast and the training academy that goes with it. I’ve had five businesses, three before I turned 30 all failed because I didn’t understand audience building. And then the fourth one blew up in my face before I even got a chance to build an audience so it wasn’t until the fifth company that I started that I really understood all of these things that I’ve been able to put them into practice.

Mark Fidelman  00:58

Wonderful. So you got the wounds to show right you didn’t just hit it on the ballpark the first time then try to tell everybody else, how to replicate that because you got lucky so I like this approach I think most people can relate to. Having a few failures, and they’re looking for guidance as to, you know how to make it. Number three, number four number five number 10 work out for them. So let’s dive right into that so can you gonna give us a high level about you know what you do or recommend people do to build an audience from scratch.

Russell Nohelty  01:29

Sure. So, just really quickly so even my company want to be press. It took a long time to get the audience building right we started in 2015, and we didn’t really start scaling our company until 2017, where we went from about 2000 people on our mailing list to 20,000 all the way up to 75,000 before we kind of cut it down we remain now about like 15 to 20,000 people on our mailing list usually, and what I have learned from people is they are very. They are very into telling people to scale, but not why they should scale or the foundational reasons behind scaling or at what points you should scale and how to get to the point of scale. So, what I do, very high level is I show people how to build the foundational elements in place so that when you scale, you will be able to do it profitably. Instead of doing it. Well, frankly, how I did so I have a story about Twitter, I’ve got about 27,000 people that follow my Twitter account and they are useless to me because I did not know my audience well enough before I scale. I thought that getting a bunch of people was more important than getting the right people I think we all did, yeah. Yes, so I mean I use Twitter because I have things to promote sometimes and my friends are there but it’s a pretty useless account compared to my Facebook account which remained at about 1000 people, until the beginning of 2018. We’ve now grown that to over 14,000 people. So, just what I do on a high level is I show people, foundationally, what they need to do before they scale and then help them scale once they have all of the right pieces in place. Got it.

Mark Fidelman  03:21

So let’s start to break that down because this is such an important topic I think a lot of people need to know and understand how do you go about identifying the right people to build a product or service around.

Russell Nohelty  03:34

Alright, so I’m going to assume for the moment that you have an idea that you would like to pursue Do you think that’s fair. I think

Mark Fidelman  03:45

a lot of especially entrepreneurial types have that idea for sure.

Russell Nohelty  03:49

Yes. Okay. And you probably have some sort of yearning to make a product, it could be a creative product. It could be a bike. It could be manufacturer whatever it is but you’ve got an idea and you’re trying to find out the kinds of people who would buy that thing that you already know So first things first is, I always try to keep it in your network first, because they’re going to be the easiest people to reach out to and have real conversations with much faster than, then that groups on Facebook or making new connections and making a new network. So usually when I talk to somebody that has an idea, they’ve been posting about that idea for a while, maybe not exactly about that idea but they’re posting, I know people that write books about haunted houses and they’ve been talking about haunted houses on just on their Facebook or their Twitter or their Instagram for a long time. They’ve been doing art for a long time or they’re already in a bicycle bicycling commuter you know people that have bikes that that that that that buy bicycles, usually with most entrepreneurs. Their idea is not completely out of left field it’s something that they’ve kind of been building towards for a while. So the first thing that I tell them to do is you need to start reaching out and doing the unscalable. So, one of my favorite quotes is the only way to scale is to do the unscalable, and that means having at the beginning having real conversations with the people who are in your network already. Not just anyone in your network and I’ll explain specifically who you should reach out to in a second. But my favorite example of this is Airbnb Airbnb was a failed product that was not able to be profitable, and they went, they literally flew all around the country to their best homes and started talking to them about what they were doing, taking photos of them taking photos. Making redesigning their page with them in mind, and that is how they really got to scale because they were going to people who were hyper users of their product, and they were, they were, they were designing what they were doing based on that and the use cases that they were found. So, it is usually people are told to, you know, do a survey, or do or do a Twitter poll or something and almost never do those work because nobody wants to answer them. But they do almost always answer when you reach out to them one on one personally so the first task that you have is assuming you have an idea, you should be posting about that idea on social media and talking about it in person talking about it around because you kind of want to get a sense of whether there’s good energy there and sort of defining your idea, but once you are sort of posting about that idea and you’re going to find that certain people like your posts. And now what you’re looking for before you reach out to them are people in your social network, who are not your parents, not your girlfriend or boyfriend and not people in your immediate circle of friends. So, my best example as someone who’s almost 20 years from high school is somebody who you knew in high school but don’t haven’t hung out with in many years you may still have them on your friends’ list, but they’re not exactly. Someone that you’re talking to on a weekly or even monthly basis so but somebody that is posted that is liking and commenting that you kind of don’t know why they are liking and commenting, because you haven’t talked to them in a long time. Does that make sense?

Mark Fidelman  07:33

Yeah, that makes sense.

Russell Nohelty  07:35

And so, this is when you this is the basis of who you’re voting. This is the first mark of someone who’s in, who is going to enjoy the thing that you that you’re posting about and your take on it. And so, really easy. You just want to reach out to them,

Mark Fidelman  07:54

and most of us have those people on Facebook right you know your old high school friends that have found you or college friends that have found you and it’s pretty easy to find so is Facebook like the best place for it.

Russell Nohelty  08:06

I like Facebook, but I can’t say just Facebook because some people are much more prevalent on Instagram or Twitter or Pinterest, but it is about finding where sort of your strongest and where you have the best sort of organic network. Okay, I think that Facebook is almost always going to be the case but I know that generations.

Mark Fidelman  08:26

Yeah, my complaint about that.

Russell Nohelty  08:28

Yes, they’re gonna find somewhere else to

Mark Fidelman  08:31

Instagram it’s hard to find people, at least for me, I mean, you could do a lot of creative searching on Facebook I found.

Russell Nohelty  08:40

Yes, I agree. So I always tell people that if they have Facebook, that’s what they should use because it is where do you have the personal network that is separate from the professional network, and we’re really at the beginning here. Making I’m again making an assumption that most entrepreneurs I talked to are nervous about reaching out to random people who they don’t know. And so I’m trying to make this as easy as possible for them to like have these conversations because the One of the myths that that that I work to bust a lot is that people don’t want to be reached out to, they don’t want to be connected and you’re bugging them. And I find that if you do this with people who you’re friends with at least you have some connection with right then. It’s a little bit easier to convince an entrepreneur or somebody that has an idea to actually take the action, and it’s really the most important action that you can take is reaching out and having these real meaningful conversations with people that are in your that are going to be in the audience of the, of what you’re making. Secondarily to that. It’s really important to understand that everybody that’s in your network is not in your audience, everybody that likes you on Facebook or is friends with you on Facebook is not going to be the person who’s buying that product. So, a lot of times one of the big myths that I find is people say I have 1000 friends on Facebook, which means I’m going to have 1000 people to buy my product and that’s absolutely not true, which is why it’s important to find these people who are tangentially in your network because they are the best chance you have of crafting a product that both you and them are going to love. Does that make sense?

Yep, I’m following you all way right now. Awesome. So when you reach out. Your goal is to find out a whole bunch of information on this person you want to find out why they like you, and like why they like the product and like, what kind of stuff that they’re into, but also what kind of Facebook groups they frequent. What kind of books they read what kind of movies they like basically all sorts of stuff that can give you information about how you can take that one person and expand it out a little bit into 10 or 50 or 100 people. The biggest thing that you don’t want to do though is to make it about demographics. I. There’s nothing worse for an entrepreneur at the beginning to be like well my customer is a 35-year-old person who goes to yodeling camp every summer. What you’re really trying to do is create the essence of the attributes that makeup, buddy, love your work, or that why people love the thing that you do so, for instance, our company want to be press and my publishing company we have a mascot Melissa the wannabe and into it we poured all of our companies best traits so people that are rebellious and creative and no-nonsense and artistic and, and, and, and, like practical advice and like are like adventurous and like, and and and all of this sort of like the kind of have a snarky sarcastic attitude, the kinds of shows that they like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and, and, and Invader Zim and things like that so it all kind of pours into that person or that that that avatar, but it’s not a person, I find that we get so caught up in the app the exact person, but more likely it’s not an exact person that you’re looking for. It’s a personality that you’re looking for. I have fans that are 18, and I have fans that are 83 and but they all kind of have the same kind of anti-authority. Do it yourself, energy, about them.

Mark Fidelman  12:43

Yeah, I find with avatars I mean they’re just meant to direct people within the organization outside the organization. So here’s some. Here’s the type of person that you focus on it’s usually not one it’s three, but I do understand your point is that they’re not, they’re just it’s a fake person it’s not a real person. So what you’re saying is kind of listen to your own audience, no matter who they are. And, you know, figure out how to market to them based on some common traits, it sounds like

Russell Nohelty  13:09

absolutely now demographics becomes important when you’re doing Facebook ads and when you’re getting and finding your lowest customer acquisition cost and highest and highest lifetime value, but my favorite example of this is, there’s a book called Johnny the homicidal maniac that came out from SMG. The 2000s of his this century. Yeah, and the creator of adjoining Vasquez was very sure he was making it for 18 to 24-year-old man, however, that demographics of people who generally liked the book and responded to it, or were 11 to 17-year-old women. So, he, he, he made something that resonated but now with the people he thought it was so I just, I want people to, to not get caught up in what they think especially at the very beginning because when you’re when you reach out to that one person, you’re going to make some assumptions, but then they’re going to tell you. Other groups that they’re part of other places to look other books that they like other things that are related to that person and so you’re going to have one person, and one person assumption, and then your goal is to reach out to a couple more people who, who made that assumption and you’re going to realize that you have failed about 95% of the assumptions that you made, and but you, but it was right in about 5% of cases. And from that, and then talking to two more people and from that, talking to three more people and eventually you want to get at least 10 people that at least 10 people who are in your ideal sort of network, who sort of can amalgamate into one person that has the traits that you’re looking for that drill down below all of the overhanging information and you’re looking for three to seven traits that they these people share so personality traits that a person that likes Neil Gaiman is much different than a person that likes George RR Martin Dave there’s two different sorts of kinds of people that are going to respond to those books, there will be some overlapping, but you’re really looking for, you’re really looking for the traits that you’re going to be able to shout out to the other people that you’re about what you’re making. Can you advertise to those traits on Facebook, I suspect, Neil Gaiman fans for sure. George, I don’t know, George Martin,

Mark Fidelman  15:39

but I knew, Neil Gaiman is an amazing writer, by the way. What can you advertise those traits.

Russell Nohelty  15:45

So traits like brave and all of the like like personality traits, you’re not going to be able to advertise to, but that is more important to invite the spirit of your product than it is the, the other message.

Mark Fidelman  16:00

The message that resonate with them.

Russell Nohelty  16:02

Yeah, absolutely. And then the but the other information that they give you about, you know, what what what shows they like and what like places that they go to those aren’t going to be able to be advertised to, and the more information that you get from 10 or so people you’re going to be able to basically create a sort of advertising list that you can bring into Facebook and sort of look at at at at who is going to give you the lowest ad costs.

Mark Fidelman  16:31

Yeah. Okay, wonderful so

Russell Nohelty  16:34

the real thing you’re trying to figure out with these perfect customers is message and the kind of product that they are looking for, because they are going to tell you what is missing in the market.

Mark Fidelman  16:45

Yeah. Okay. Now, once you figure that out. And that’s it. That is a unique approach, I hadn’t thought of it that way, how then do you translate that into a product that or service that people want to buy, do yo present the product or service first to this group, or do you wait for their feedback to the side on how to you know finally shape it.

Russell Nohelty  17:10

Well there’s two different things that are important about this. The first is that they will tell you. But the second is, they will tell you out of the side of their mouth, one of the most important things I’ve learned in business, is that people will tell you what they want, but they will not necessarily tell you what they will actually pay for. Hmm. So there’s a couple of stages for this. The first is you need to figure out what they are saying they want a, so you’ll like let’s say let’s take bikes for an example, there may not be a good foldable bike that exists and that’s what they really want these are people that live in a city, they are you know they’re there, they don’t want to put their bike in the front of a bus. They just want but they want to fold it up and they want to like use it as a backpack. I know that’s just like they all kind of say the same thing kind of live in a city in densely packed areas and like this is the thing in the bike market that you think that they think is like the killer product they really, really, really want.

So, that is when you start going back and you sort of design something I don’t recommend spending No, you’re not going to be spending a lot of money at this point, because they’re wrong, almost always wrong about what they really want or what you want to do then is to design, like, come up with an idea of what separates you from the market based on what they’re telling you, and then bring it back to them, and you’re looking for. Usually, they’ll say, Oh, that’s nice, or that’s so cute, or like Wow, that’s amazing trying to save your feelings, what you’re looking for in there, in their wording, when you show it to them is buyer intent is when they go say something like, oh my god Where can I buy. Why isn’t this available now or, or I have to tell three friends about it, or things where you can tell they are visibly excited. They’re using buying language if they are not using buying. You have not actually found something that they will buy. Does that make sense? Yeah, people, people are very careful to parse their feelings out and make sure that like you’ll feel bad. Even if you’ve made something that they’re super into. So there are two pieces about this though there is also two-piece about this, you may have designed, amazing, but your audience is wrong. So you may have designed a killer product. But, but the people that you’ve been designing it for are wrong and you need to start again, using the same exact thing and making sure that like you’re building it differently now that you have an idea because there’s a couple of things that can go wrong when you’re building a business. One is that you have that product is that you have the wrong audience, and then three is you have the wrong price point. So, you have to make sure that that all of those things make sense, and by assuming you have the right audience. They are going to tell you exactly what, whether you have hit the nail on the head. There are words, not by just saying you can’t ask them, will you buy this. You have to secure it asleep, talk to them about the product and see what they say. And then one nice thing that you can do is if you have a website hopefully you have a website or five cards or some sort of card structure, you can create sort of a mock landing page to see if they will actually buy. Again, all of these things are happening at the very beginning with just your 10 person audience. Yep. And if one person buys that’s a 10% conversion rate that’s a pretty good idea that you’re on the right track. You don’t you can then refund their money or like not take the pre-order, but you’re trying to with this 10 group of pizzas this group of 10 people find a product that hopefully at least one but more like three or four of those people buy the reason is that those people are your friends already. So you’ve already done a lot of work so that they know like and trust you. Yep. And when. And so, you, you should have way more than a 10% conversion rate on the product before you can actually start scaling it. But at some point, you will have what you think through iteration and design and redesign and redesign you will have something that the people that are in that sort of test group, really resonate with or you have abandoned that test group and found a different test group, that, that, that, that you can, that you can test with but at some point you will have the product and the audience and business is nothing more than product and audience right so how do

Mark Fidelman  22:00

you how do you test to see if they will buy it, you put an offer in front of them or an ad or testing to see if they buy it.

Russell Nohelty  22:08

So once you have. Once you have sort of gotten their body once you think you’ve gotten their buy-in with the product that enough of that. 50% of them, 60% of them really like art and are super excited for it and you’re, you’re hearing that buying intention. That is when you set up a landing page and actually put the product out there and see if they will actually buy it. So you can use our cart feature like thrive card or Sam card, or Click Funnels or, or, or you can build a PayPal button onto a website that you already have, or heck you can just use PayPal and like say hey PayPal me $100 if you want to get in on this thing, and put up and give them your email address and see if they buy, but it’s something and you’re the first time, you’re probably not going to get it right. They’re probably you think you have gotten the buying intention, but they say, but they don’t buy, and that’s when you can go back to them and say, Why didn’t you buy like you know you can’t be like angry about it you just have to say, this is interesting like I’m wondering why you didn’t buy you said you were excited for it. Is it a timing issue is it because it’s too expensive, whatever it is you’re trying to figure out what’s making them not buying you’re gonna have to iterate this three-four maybe 10 times before you get 50 60% of them to buy. But, but yes you’re you’re either the easiest way is to give them your PayPal email address and or Venmo and have them just pay you. The, but you can also set up a whole bunch of other ways that are more complicated I try and keep it really simple. At the beginning with people, because I don’t want to invest my time in making a product that is even making a web page or a simple web page. Until I know that there’s buy-in from the people I’m designing this product for

Mark Fidelman  24:10

it makes perfect sense because you know why waste all those resources put stuff up ready to capture it with messaging, and none of its tested, and you’re hoping to get lucky and I’m sure after four failures you’ve learned that, hey, let’s get it all done upfront so I don’t spend a lot of money. And when I

Russell Nohelty  24:28

figure it out. I also say is, you know, let’s say you want to create a bike, maybe your first product is a bike horn, or a book on bikes, or a really cool kickstand, it’s something that you can do much more cheaply than a fully designed bike, because you’re just getting into this market and people are a lot more willing to give you, you know, 20 bucks. If you’re not tested than they are 300 or $3,000. Just one good way to test that audience is to give them just a sliver, and something that you can that that you can manufacture and deliver very easily. I

Mark Fidelman  25:10

find that, you know, you see a lot of these entrepreneurs that don’t think that’s sexy enough, but I think it’s a great strategy you know come up with some unique horn for a bike. But, you know, it’s just not sexy enough for him there’s like I’m not, you know quitting my job becoming entrepreneur, for a horn,

Russell Nohelty  25:24

but no i don’t think you should quit your job and become an entrepreneur for a horn I think you should use that horn to say yes, I now have a product that has a profit margin, and an audience that I can take the profit margin from that horn and invest it into marketing and development of the product I really want. There’s this. there’s a saying that I use and I work mostly with authors and other creative types, but I always say don’t make your dream product First, if you make your dream product first you are basically guaranteed to screw it up, because you’re not good enough, you haven’t designed enough you’re and you’re too precious of it, make something that you don’t care about nearly as much that you can do at a very high level if it’s a short story or a picture book or something that will take far less resources and allow you to iterate much more easily.

Otherwise, you’re going to have a situation like the coolest cooler. The coolest cooler is the most popular Kickstarter and at least was raised $10 million, and then five years later, it still hasn’t delivered anything or it’s delivered poorly because that person didn’t have a history of design and they didn’t have that they weren’t able to grow into that position so no I certainly don’t think you should you should bank, your, your entire career, on, on, on bike corn or a kickstand. But I do think that by, by making the coolest kickstand of all time. One that will never fall down no matter what you do, you then prove yourself to the audience for trying to create for, and it allows you to build bigger and bigger and bigger stuff and get that word of mouth a lot easier and get that buy-in a lot easier. The second and third time around.

Mark Fidelman  27:17

Yeah, I mean this is all great advice. And if you’re thinking about starting a product or you’ve already started a product, you could reverse the steps. And, you know, do it over again, and as painful as that sounds, it probably you know is the best thing that that you can do. So let’s say you’ve got product-market fit you’ve gone through your process here. You’ve got a product that’s resonating with at least half, you know, five people on a 10. How do you scale it.

Russell Nohelty  27:46

Okay, so now you are so this is really important because now you have to have a product, you have an audience and you have a product that has a profit margin, like it has to have a profit some amount of profit margin because that profit margins which we’re going to use to go back and do Facebook ads and figure out your marketing and all of those other things, it can be very small at first, but it’s going to usually start with going TO to places where your perfect customer already lives. So, those 10 people who are in your audience are going to have told you about Facebook groups and meetup groups. Well, when things get back to normal hopefully meetup in person places and, and an online places and forums and all sorts of places that the perfect person congregate So, for instance, I, we can take this podcast for a perfect example. I went to a podcast conference, and I was told about a website called spot a guest. And I joined a magpie a mastermind for business podcast because I have a business podcast called the complete creative and from being on spot as I was told about pot it, and from pod, I was told about matchmaker FM, and each of those steps brought me closer to being on this show. Because I sort of took what my audience was saying of where they were hanging out and I expanded it. I expanded it more with each time that someone told me some new information. So before you start running Facebook ads and doing all of this huge ad spend, you now have to take what you’ve learned about those 10 people, and turn those 10 people into 100 people, and you turn those 10 people into 100 people by going into the forums, by, by, by, by finding where they are and not talking about your product but actually getting to know them.

So your first hundred customers I think we’ve talked about this before in your first hundred customers the first hundred people in your fan base are the most important because they see everything that you’re going to do for the rest of your, your company’s history, pretty much. Once you have that avatar in place, and all of those things. It’s very hard to change it later on. With without destroying sort of a unique piece that makes your company what it is.

So you want to make sure that you’re going out and you’re serving them so this is when I recommend starting a blog or a podcast or some sort of free content that you can come up weekly. At least weekly. But if you can’t do that monthly but something that you can do that will service that community. So in that in the bike example, you can you can have a blog about, about, about like new bikes, the best kind of bikes, new technology and bikes, the best hiking trails the best biking trails, the best races. There’s all sorts of stuff that you can give them that, that, that don’t involve you selling them.

The thing that you’re making because they’re not ready to be sold at the thing yet, a big mistake that people make is thinking that because the 10 people who’ve known them for a decade are willing to buy. That means that everyone they meet is going to want to buy from them immediately. So, this could be conducting webinars as well about some part of bicycles or bicycle safety or it can be all sorts of stuff. But your goal now is to take the places that the people hang out, go to there and sort of plant start planting your flag in these forums and other places to try and draw people to you from, from where they are. This is not saying that you’re going to that that they’re going to stop living there. You just want them to start living there, and also hanging out with you. That makes sense.

Mark Fidelman  31:40

Yeah. And so you’re taking what you learned from the first pen, and you’re applying it to all these other places, those 10 people might hang out. Is that what

Russell Nohelty  31:49

you’re saying. Because the messaging right now because the, the people didn’t just give you their demographic information but you’ve been talking to them a lot you kind of know how they talk how they feel like you don’t just have the terminology, but like, you’ve got their attitude down. Some people are a lot more like down to earth gritty, sort of like a biker bar, kind of person and some people are Country Club the kind of person much more elegant and, and you want to know what kind of person you’re trying to attract and who you’re going to attract naturally. I love like literary fiction books and like ones where like the people use very elegant prose, but I can never write like that that is not my style that is not who I attract, if I went and I tried to be a very elegant like proper put together person. I would be attracting the wrong kind of my books. So, and into the training academy that I have as well, so I try and keep things on a much more practical tactical. A hands hands dirty level. And because that is sort of the brand that I’ve built. When I go out into these places, an artist shows, or have my own sho

w or whatever is I’m talking, not just in the manner that they that those places are, but I’m looking for people that seem to share my mentality that like, sort of like have that like punk rocky mentality to like sort of try and get those people to come and hang out with me, because I think they would like what I have to say,

Mark Fidelman  33:26

yeah. Okay, so that’s a good place to kind of, you know, look at how you scale at a one to one level, and I don’t mean one to one, but you’re one of these communities, you’re posting stuff there. Is there an advertising strategy then that you can deploy or is there something that they can go after once that starts resonating.

Russell Nohelty  33:48

So here’s the next part that you need to know you need to create a system. Probably an autoresponder friends that will cut all of that will turn somebody from not knowing you into a rabid fan. So, from there, I know everyone talks about a funnel right but for me, a funnel is four parts, a funnel is a certain amount of people that know you will like you will trust you trust you will buy from you and then people that have bought from you will buy again and those are the rabid fans, the ones who like love your stuff are the ones who are going to buy a second time.

And so, your autoresponder sequence needs to be using all of the messaging that you have, or your sales funnel or whatever you’re doing to get people into your into your network needs to use the messaging that you’ve learned from these first 10 these first hundred people to be able to put a bunch of people into the top of your funnel and be able to drill them down into finding the rabid fans.

So I like to say that this is like a. We all have that uncle that we know but don’t like that cousin we like but don’t trust that friend that we trust but like he just doesn’t have the same taste as us, you know, he goes and always gets anchovy pizza and I really like pepperoni, but then we all have those friends. We also have those best friends, the ones that have you give them $20. They are going to, like, come back with something that you absolutely love. And that is what we’re trying to find in this process. What kinds of stuff do you have to say what objections Do you have to break apart before those people move from one part of your funnel to the next part of your funnel, and this is absolutely essential because if you do not have this as in a profitable way.

And it doesn’t produce results at the bottom, no amount of advertising that you do is going to work. Once you have this system in place where you can get somebody to break all of their objections to two and find the best way to do that this may be an autoresponder sequence, it might be in a sales funnel, it might be in a webinar, but whatever that system is, it has to be repeatable.

The minute that you get that repeatable that system that funnel repeatable so you can put what $2, or you can put $1 at the top and, and pull out $2 at the bottom. The minute, then, then, once you have that everything is greenlight go, so you.

That is when you can start running Facebook ads, that’s when you can start running at Amazon or whatever ads that you’re going to run because you know for a fact that the funnel is working. And so you can see most people talk about this scale part being the like the first thing that you’re thinking about but we’re now at the third stage and what I usually what I trained people to do, and we’re just now talking about actually scaling this thing.

And, because if any part of that is broken, you want to find it before you’re pouring thousands of dollars into your funnel, or worse, building getting the wrong kind of person at the bottom, because that is equally miserable if you’re finding someone who will pay $2, but then they’ll never buy again, then the base of your business never grows.

So you want to find the person get the person at the bottom, who has the lowest customer acquisition cost and the highest lifetime value. And then once you’re once you found. Once you had that system working then it becomes pretty easy because you’re now pretty engrossed in the community, you’ll know like what websites you should be buying ads from what places you should be targeting on your phone on Facebook and then it’s a lot of testing, you’re going to take all of these things that you’ve learned and you’re going to test a lot of low cost ads to see which ones are the not low cost but low dollar amounts so $5 a day $10 a day to find out which ones are really the most profitable, because then you might be able to put in $1 and get $10 out. Right. Um, and then then you’re already engrossed in the community and the best part about using a system like this is. If you know your audience well enough, you literally never have to ask the question, what should I make for them.

What should I do for them, where should I be for them, and almost every entrepreneur that I’ve ever met, has a problem with knowing their audience well enough. It’s very rare that I meet someone who runs a company. Especially not a non-successful company that that has that doesn’t have a problem with their audience tons of successful companies that are problem figuring out what to make for their audience, because they also have an audience problem but I really think that the differentiating factor between a successful entrepreneur and an unsuccessful. One is that they don’t know their audience well enough. I have never. I’ve had to look around and and find products for people and not like knowing what to make for them. Next, but when that product emerges I 100% know that it is going to work with my audience, every single time, or I at least know that

I’m going to have to work really hard to win them over. For instance, my company mostly has made comics historically they mostly make made comics, and I have been trying desperately to get people to try our books, and novels, which I think are as good or better than our comics, but I knew that it will be a losing proposition for a while, as I tried to win them over because that is not what they historically have they have fought from they’ve got

Mark Fidelman  39:50

shorter and shorter attention spans and they like visuals probably right.

Russell Nohelty  39:54

That’s part of it but also it’s just, I have made a company based on one thing and people want to put you in one bucket. So I knew that when I started doing these novels that a I had to do them in a certain way and be I had to do them for a certain length of time before I would ever before I would get the return that I wanted. and I’m willing to, I was willing to commit to doing that, knowing that it would be less profitable than doing something else because I really believed in it, but I knew it would be a problem going in. So it’s not like you will, you have to only make the products that your audience will love.

If you know that you that your audience will like this thing if they just try it. You then just have to know that it’s going to be a struggle, so you’ll know your core products, your premium products, you know your like your ancillary products that you could move people into. But all of these things will become crystal clear to you if you spend an enormous amount of time getting to know your audience and this never changes. Even now, I try to reach out to two or three people from our audience at least manipulate and talk to them and prod them and make sure that like fair that like they’re still on board, if they haven’t bought our last couple of products I try and like figure out what I could do to win them back and all of these things all, come from my insatiable and a sort of a rabid need to know the customer as well as I possibly can so that I can then make sure I’m making a product that is profitable enough that I can pull some part of it out and use that for marketing so I can find more people like them.

Mark Fidelman  41:41

Okay. Well, this has been a very good education on how you build an audience, is there anything, any milestones that Once reached. You know, you need to do something different like if you reach your first 10,000 that are real community members that are active. Is there anything along this journey from a hundred to 10,000 or 100,000 that you’ve got to pivot or do something different.

Russell Nohelty  42:09

I think that before you scale. I like really scale with ads you should probably have 1000 people on your mailing list like good people on your mailing list and like you’ve met and found, and that’s not saying you can’t have a profitable business with like 1000 people which are the first three years of our business, we you know we weren’t doing like six figures but we were doing a well enough to like survive and get by and have profit to like do the next thing and it was. It wasn’t until 2017 that we really had our first two hit products. But even with those two hit products we only had 2000 people on our mailing list for the vast majority of those two launches. So it’s, it’s not like you can have a good well established product what I will say is, you might need to have a higher end like a service based product so something that you can get reoccurring revenue from a coaching or something, while you’re trying to build their audience and coaching is a great way to basically get paid to get to know your audience better.

So they’re paying you to basically get data from them about what they’re struggling with. So all of these sort of one on one strategies can be monetized as well to help you get a good foundation. I’m not saying that you. I mean I’ve seen people do great launches with 100 200 people on their mailing list, but if you’re looking for a, a, like a good barometer. I think that 1000 people on your mailing list or 100 paying customers is a good way to know that too but you have is working. You’ll also know, once you have customers are actually profitable for you which ones are annoying are our high, high energy customers, which ones are like your favorite customers and you can move your way in there.

So it’s really a process of of testing and thinking about the long term, I would say it would take at least a year to know all of these steps because you don’t want to scale, before you, you know, which clients you want because the first step is, you’re finding lines and then you’re getting the clients and then you. You have to know where you should like there’s going to be a bell curve, and some of them are some of the clients should definitely fire, and some of them you should definitely, and you don’t actually know which ones which until you start actually making products for them and and servicing them. Does that make sense.

Yeah,, it’s very fast, but you can scale at any point, I’ve had people scale with, I definitely wouldn’t recommend scaling with less than 100 people on a mailing list at least. But I’ve, I’ve had people scale-like much, much smaller than my recommendations and I’ve had people wait a lot longer than my recommendations. Then, the best, the best barometer is the minute that you can know for a fact what your audience will like Without you have to like, pull them. That is the time that it is that that that you can scale. Really, with confidence, because you now know your audience well enough to be able to know what to make for them. And now it’s just about finding more people, more and more people like them. Yeah. Okay. Well,

Mark Fidelman  45:42

I mean, I know, we can go on and on beyond this, but my promise was for you to kind of learn how to build an audience from scratch and you’ve more than delivered, Russell I’ve learned a lot and I’m gonna apply some of these to the to a course I’m creating. And I think it’s an excellent suggestion I’ve done some of these already I’ve kind of tested out the concept, a lot of people want to see it especially now with, you know, the quarantine because it’s kind of a quarantine related product not intentionally, it just ended up being so. So I’ve got two final questions that I asked everybody. And the first is, what is the hottest digital marketing technology that you are using or want to use. And I know you’re not big, you’re more old school. But I think you know you’ve got an answer to this.

Russell Nohelty  46:30

Yeah, so I will tell you the one I’m really excited to use in the near future is thrive cart. I, I’ve been looking at in most of my sales are still have still been hand handled like like literally hand sales like I would be selling to a person at a show or on Kickstarter. I haven’t really had to think of like the digital workflow. But I have noticed, as we were trying to transition online that our shopping carts are very janky comparatively to what I would like them to be. So I am excited to hopefully in the next month. Try start trying thrive cart and getting our shopping carts to a place where I think they need to be.

Mark Fidelman  47:17

Okay, and thrive does what that’s different than any other shop shopping cart technology.

Russell Nohelty  47:22

I mean I don’t know like I looked at Sam cart and click funnel and all of those ones and they’re quite expensive thrive cart right now has an option, where you for $690 or $500 you can buy a lifetime access which is less than one year of using any of the other cart features. I’ve tried, I’ve tried the ones that are a lot cheaper than thrive cart as well and they don’t seem to have the functionality that I need, I would like something called a bump offer, which is, you, you. When you’re paying you can add a little checkmark that says like yes I want to get this other thing for 50 more dollars like on the end that is only available on a lot of the more expensive cart options. And so, thrive cart seems to be the cheapest one with the most functionality that has all I need and I don’t like having subscriptions to things I like being able to own them outright. Yeah. So, it can be there’s a lot of them that you know, like I said, Sam cart, and there’s a few other ones that are like bigger names in the industry that I’m that I plan to that that you can look at. I just seemed like from what I needed thrive cart was like designed to get to to be seamless. Another one that I use right now is teachable. And I host all of my courses on teachable and teachable as well.

Mark Fidelman  48:52

Okay. The second question Thanks for answering I’m gonna check out thrive cart, by the way. Who are you learning from in sales or marketing today. Who’s influenced you the most.

Russell Nohelty  49:04

Seth Godin Kimbo, I don’t know if you listen to the akimbo podcast know one of the most brilliant podcasts,

Mark Fidelman  49:11

why breaks down, it just seems so high level to me. Not that I have anything against him I think he’s brilliant. She seems so high level to me What do you like about.

Russell Nohelty  49:18

I like that he is talking about marketing strategies that have worked for the last hundred years, and I, one thing that I’m very conscious of is to not follow any fad, that might change in three months or two months or a month, and is highball more active. I follow Russell Brunson. So Russell Brunson is more like I think you have to have sort of both sides of it, you want somebody that can give you the overall view of like what marketing means and push you in a direction, you know, every time I think, Seth, Seth Godin always talks about you know the minimum viable audience, and he talks very slowly and like methodically and he helps me think about things, methodically, and, and, and whether the thing that I’m doing is necessary. He.

There’s another one, James Wedmore is also really good in doing, talking about mindset of an entrepreneur and that you don’t have to hustle all the time. And so there’s stuff I pull out of all of those three people anymore. You know he Porterfield is great and and and there’s a couple of others but if I had to pick one. just because I believe that mindset is the most important for an onshore not always believe that I was, I really, but put a lot more value in sales, and innovate in the marketing but as I become more successful on for longer.

I just realized that it really is all about mindset, it’s really all about, like, how do I keep going every man. Yeah, and I believe that when I listen to Seth Godin, I find the will to keep going and. And the idea that like. It doesn’t have to be fast, it’s better to be good, than to be fast than like when you’re building something for the future. You know it takes a long time and setting the foundations is so important. And I, I always feel it maybe it’s like a coach, you know, like a baseball coach who like you know they’re always drilling the fundamentals into you. They’re always like no keep your shoulder down, you’ve heard it 1000 times but like then you get the yips and you like, you know, you have to go back to those fundamentals and I always find myself returning to those fundamentals with him.

Mark Fidelman  51:47

Excellent. Well, okay. Well, we’re gonna wrap things up but before we do, I want to let everyone know that Russell has got a free audience building webinar, it’ll be in the show notes but it’s at the complete reread of comm forward-slash audience. You can also find it in the show notes. And then how do people get ahold of you Russell

Russell Nohelty  52:13

the easiest way is if you want to email me, you can email me at Russell, that’s two SS two L’s at wannabe press calm, or at the complete creative calm has all of our epic blog posts, our, our podcast archives, or other free courses, and a whole lot more.

Mark Fidelman  52:33

All right, excellent. So, I know you guys enjoy this podcast I certainly have right review, let Russell and I know about what you felt. And if you had any questions, please send them to Russell about this. And hey, we got to have you back on in a few months just to kind of give us a second half of the story once after it’s scaling and everything else what do you do then so we’re going to do that, we’re going to put this on the calendar and then we’ll talk to you then.

Russell Nohelty  53:02

Thanks so much for having me.

HOST AND GUEST

Mark Fidelman and Owen Video

Mark Fidelman  00:03

Welcome to the digital brand builder podcast where we bring you the best growth strategies from the world’s experts to help build your business faster. And now, here’s your host, Mark Fidelman. Hello everyone today I have a very special guest. His name is Owen video. Oh, and can I reveal your real name?

00:28

Owen Video

There’s no point in revealing my real name because no one will be able to pronounce it.

Mark Fidelman  00:34

And he and I are going to talk about how to use video to build awareness. And you know, if you’ve been listening and watching me on YouTube, this is one of my favorite topics building awareness building sales videos, the way to go. There’s nothing that touches it now. It’s not easy. And that’s why I brought one on the show to tell you how he does it for his clients. So well. Welcome to the show. Oh, and can you tell us about yourself in 100 words or less Yeah.

01:00

Owen Video

I’m a YouTube strategy coach. So I help brands and I help thought leaders launch a content strategy on YouTube. And we walk you through the whole process of, you know, what videos should you be creating? How do you create them? And then how do you attach them to a business objective like growing a network generating leads, and of course, generating revenue. And so we help you with all of that from soup to nuts. And I’ve been doing this for a long time. You know, before I got into YouTube, I was working in the television and radio space, and we were creating shows there as well. And so it was a real joy for me to be able to get out of old media and jump into new media where, you know, it’s like a duck in water for me. Wonderful.

Mark Fidelman  01:39

But then, you know, I’ve always wondered this, and we’ve known each other for several years. How did you start? in video? Why did you decide, hey, wait, why did you wake up one day and say, you know, I’m going to do more on video?

01:52

Owen Video

Yeah, it’s a great question. Well, I’ll tell you, it really goes back to 1989. And I was, you know, eight or nine years old. My My family was not wealthy by any means. But that year, we had two big presents under the tree. One of those presents was a brand new Nintendo with Mike Tyson’s punch out. And you know, Mario World I think was was sort of the thing. But the other big gift was one of those VHS cassette tape players, video cameras, you know how you put the whole beat VHS sort of inside the thing and your dad’s are toting these things around like the, you know, the little league games and why they record my dad would record two hours of Little League that we would never again watch, you know, but you weren’t allowed to touch the tape either like that. That tape was family videos. Well, I played with Nintendo for about 15 seconds, but I played with the video camera for the next 15 years. And so, you know, all through my life. I’ve been playing with video cameras in high school, I was part of a comedy troupe that we created called the pen tablet. And what we would do it actually comes from so I married an axe murderer which is sort of this old, you get you film but you know, we would do comedy sketches and we would record them and then we would give them to the school to play at the assemblies and stuff like this. And so, you know, I was big fan of Saturday Night Live kids in the hall, um, Second City, you know, and and so I really loved video. And when I graduated, all of a sudden, everyone had to go to college. And I was like, What? What are we supposed to do? So, I didn’t apply for anything. And so I got a job in sales. I was in sales for 10 years, got into marketing and and it wasn’t until the stock market crash of 2008 that I was like, you know what all of this is garbage. I’m gonna take my video camera and do what I love in an industry that I love. And that’s how I became own video.

Mark Fidelman  03:46

Well, you know, it’s fascinating. We fall two different paths to video. I mean, your history is much longer than mine. I’ve always I’ve always been a little shy to be on video. And so I started getting trained in presentations and it took me You know, 567 years and going out and around the country and actually some of the world and doing presentations that I got comfortable with myself on camera and started doing some video here. Yeah, but it’s interesting your past so you’re kind of, you know, born into this. So, a little bit would you say?

04:18

Yeah, I think that it’s a natural part of my DNA you know, even as a kid I remember watching commercials and then trying to mimic the facial expressions of the actors in the commercials I’ve very clear memories of doing this by the way, you know of sitting watching some of these these shows and going like, I wonder if I can look like I’m about to cry. I wonder if I can look like I’m really excited. So I remember sitting at the table you know, when I used to drive my mom nuts you know, cuz my mom’s prescription drug addict, she did not at all want to entertain the idea of anyone being successful in our family except for her. And of course, you know, that was all part of the the prescription drug delusion, you know, but I would sit there at dinner and I would be like, I would be like, Wow, this is great and It’s nutritious, too, you know, and I would start to sort of do these things I heard in commercials and it just drove the family nuts. But even from an early age, I, I knew I wanted to be presenting. And as a young kid that that sort of manifested is to commercial I grew up in LA. So it’s like, I want to be in commercials. I want to be a movie star. But there was a real you know, there was a real moment for me. I think it was right around 2122 when I recognized a lot of the the drugs the adultery and and the the sort of idol chasing stuff that happens in Hollywood, and I was like, Okay, I really like to perform, but I don’t want to be a part of that community. Yeah, and that’s a Believe it or not, that’s when I went into a couple years of darkness, drug juice, myself and alcohol addiction, because I was trying to find my place. You know, ironically, I didn’t go into Hollywood because I didn’t want to do drugs. And instead I got depressed because I wasn’t in Hollywood and started doing drugs. But that lasted just a couple years until until I got it. job at a radio station and when I was at a radio station all of a sudden you know I was producing again and I was out producing everyone else and the reason that my ads were out producing everyone else’s ads is because we were telling stories and we were taking the viewer on a journey and that’s that’s a talent that I’ve been able to apply to Facebook Live to YouTube live to video ads, and now on to YouTube channel growth which is by far the most profitable route for any personality any brand any business okay? The the organic traffic that you will get from a YouTube channel far outperforms any ad campaign. Right five grand a day. I’m not saying don’t do ads, I’m just saying you’ll you’ll you’ll get the same amount of impressions at a fraction of the cost on YouTube. So you get your lead gen but but you know what also starts to happen. Mark is you become a person of influence Tony You know that I had cancer a couple

Mark Fidelman  07:01

years ago, right?

07:03

Yep. So during cancer, chemotherapy, I would sit on my couch, and I would watch YouTube videos and infomercials and I’m sitting like trying to crack the code, you know. And what I noticed was is that I’m watching these episodes of Frasier Frasier became my favorite show when I was on chemotherapy. And I found myself like really loving Frasier and I remember telling my wife at dinner, you know, I think if Frasier met me, I think he’d liked me. And my wife says to me, you mean Kelsey Grammer. And that’s the power of YouTube right there is that I had spent so many hours watching this actor, I actually thought I knew him. And that parasocial relationship is what YouTube is all about. And so when your brand when your company goes out there with a show, not a series of advertisements, okay? And you were like, hey, today, we’re going to advertise this and say, we’re gonna advertise that that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about if you have a stroller company, then you have a stroller show. If you have a vitamin company, and you have a Vitamin show, if you sell physical therapy, then you have a physical therapy show on YouTube. And what happens is, people start to generate relationship with you, they feel like they know you, they can trust you. And because of that you become the expert to them in your topic matter. And that’s the goal of YouTube.

Mark Fidelman  08:18

You know, it’s so funny. I mean, you word for word could be, you know, I could be in unison on this. There’s one thing I do want to bring up that I just I know he believes this and, and I I also do but you know, the thing about ads, and you can do video ads, you can do any kind of ad and it’s on Facebook, it’s on Google, it’s on. You know, any platform you can imagine. But once you stop paying for those ads, all that goes away, done with YouTube videos, they live on forever.

08:47

I mean, they do they do, they’re like Mustafa and the Lion King, you know, he lives in you. But to your point, you know, ads make you a commodity. You know, ads make you a fork. Right everyone’s got forks. Some forks are better than other forks. We got some Forks Over at Walmart for a buck like a buck for three forks. But we also got forks for our anniversary. And these forks, like curved for the human hand and everything and, and it’s it’s a better fork, but still a fork, you know? Yeah. ads make you a fork, you’re just another person slang in another product and for the means of profitability and growth. They serve a purpose. I ran ads for a long time, and we did ads for a long time, we have a whole course on ads. But what I found was this is that the moment that you stop producing that ad to get in front of people, you’ve done two big things. Number one is you’ve branded yourself as a commodity. But number two, you have also trained your audience not to look for you. Okay, your audience is now used to if they see you, they’re going to see you in a newsfeed somewhere. There’s nothing in them that says I’m going to go to YouTube. And watch Mark’s new show. And that’s where we want to put our clients. We want you to be in a place where your client is going, Hey, what is ABC up to this week? I would love to check in on them and they know that it’s YouTube. Why YouTube? Well, because on YouTube, they’re going to watch you for five or 10 minutes. They’re not gonna watch you for what’s it How long does it take to double tap on Instagram? Like a second and a half? Yeah, you know, you just don’t get the view time that that you get on other platter you get so much more view time then you get another platforms and so that’s the all of those reasons are why, you know, I don’t say don’t do ads, but I would say like, you know, build organically on the side while your ads are running. And then you’re slowly like starting to like fewer and fewer ads as your organic grows fewer and fewer ads as your organic grows. And next thing you know, I’m you know, you’ve got a show on YouTube that is not only selling products, but also branding you as sort of an entertaining presence in the space. That’s a really important place to be

Mark Fidelman  10:59

totally I totally agree with your produce a show on Youtube don’t produce a series of ads, it makes perfect sense and it’s exactly what I do with my clients. So let’s move to clients. Yeah, and I’m a big proponent of using video to build a brand and you get into that and you work with brands to do just that. So what are the the I know you’ve done some content around this I’ll put links in the in the show notes what what do you tell brands? Or what do you tell corporations companies individuals on how to use video video to build their brand?

11:33

Yeah, it depends a lot on what the brands doing right now. And and that that I think is so key is what are you guys doing right now? And then how can we lay your video on top of this to one day be your primary, you know, primary source. So I’ll give you an example. We were working with an energy company out of Texas right there fortune 500 company and they’re number 200 on the s&p. So big company, no doubt and they had on the ground sales team. Okay, aka door knockers. So in in there, there’s like seven cities that they were really focusing on with door knockers, what we decided to do was to support their on the ground sales teams with an entertaining show called power, your passion. And the good thing was an energy company, right? And they came to us and like, hey, what kind of stuff can we do around like our you know about energy? And I said, Well, look, it’s not about it’s not about the energy bill or the kilowatts per hours, they kept coming at me with like kilowatts per hours. You know what I mean? But kilowatts per hour is amazing, you know, and I just get, I just can’t imagine mom pa can’t sit around a table talking about kWh, you know, so what we decided to do was we talked about not the energy price, but what the power in your house does, it powers your electric guitar, it powers your arm, your blender, it powers your computer, where you make graphics, it powers your cell phone, or you’re making tic tocs you know, energy powers, your passion and so what we decided to do was to create a show called power, your passion where we would interview thought leaders in various different industries and it would be more entertaining, brought to you by the energy company, so that when the door knockers came to your house, there would already be brand recognition with the name of the company. And that was very successful with us that client they with us for four years, because of the success of that of that campaign.

Mark Fidelman  13:27

Okay, so, when you look at step one, step two, step three, yeah. What do you what do you tell brands to do? I mean, what’s the first thing do you even need video? How are the

13:39

Yeah, every everybody needs video. And here’s why. Because the people not watching video are not going to be a large consumer group in the next 10 to 15 years. Okay, I’m a very future focused guy. I understand that. I can get business today from a certain demographic speaking a certain way making certain kinds of videos, but I’m also very aware that there’s this up and coming generation that has grown up on YouTube. And this is really important Mark because you and I, we didn’t have YouTube as kids. We didn’t barely have video games. You know, I look at the handheld video games that you can buy at the department store now and and they’re the handheld games are better than our desktop systems when we were when we were kids

Mark Fidelman  14:24

on our YouTube was the flip books that

14:29

I remember making those out of post it notes when I was a kid, you know, my dad, like, those are my post it notes, you know? Now I’m teaching my kids how to do the same thing with my dad’s post it notes so it’s the journey continues. But you know, there’s a certain way to talk to people that didn’t grow up with technology, even though we’re all immersed in it now. Okay, there’s a certain culture. We understand Seinfeld jokes, like we understand, you know, Reagan jokes, right? But there’s this whole new consumer marketplace. That doesn’t have any connection to any of that. And what I see brands doing is word is like brands are trying to hire younger people, but then forcing them to speak older language, when instead the brand needs to really embrace this younger, this younger demographic and figure out how it works. Okay, so that’s sort of a preface. First of all, I’m always thinking towards the future. Now, every brand is a little bit different because everybody monetizes a little bit differently. Sometimes you just want awareness sometimes you want exposure, direct response, sometimes you’re launching a new ancillary brand. There’s all there’s all of these different things that can happen but the very first and foremost advice that I would give is what is the core benefit or value that your product provides to people I’m not talking about a product I’m nothing about a service right? So if you’re a stroller company, and you sell 4 million strollers a year you know I’m not it’s not about you know, the the durable two ply plastic with with unbreakable, unfavorable upvc plastics, right? It’s not About that, it’s about the convenience of being able to take your kids to SeaWorld. Right. And so we would build a show around the benefits of what it is that your your product is selling, and create a show around that. Now, that would be sort of our platform content on the back end, we want to see okay, now, are there some product tutorials that we could be making here? Are there some, you know, website tutorials that we can be making to help your customers better, you know, be better customers, you know, a down the way and, and if that’s confusing, let me break it down into one quick little little sentence here. It really helps to have more than one type of content that you’re uploading to YouTube. We call this silo strategy. And what that means is this is, you know, if your business is a table top, then your YouTube videos are the legs that that keep that tabletop afloat. And so maybe you have you know, one video a month you uploaded sort of a show it man. It’s like a talk show about strollers. But then maybe you have two videos a month that are actually tutorials on how to open and close the stroller, you know for daily routine activities. So those videos again, they’re not those are not going to be explosive, they’re not going to be huge, but those are videos that are available to your customers, they can be embedded into your website, they can be downloaded and re uploaded onto Facebook and onto Instagram if if necessary. But you’re now building this multifaceted sort of YouTube channel that dry brings people in in a couple of different ways. We call those the we call that the p3 content strategy. So it’s you know, pull content, which is bringing people into the channel push content, which is where you’re you’re kind of pushing out content that they need to know and then there’s power content and power would be sort of your you know, your your your live stream Q and A’s or maybe you have like a special guest speaker the CEO is going to come on and Doing a dress POW is your sort of like once in a blue moon, big, you know type of content that that you’re going to invite your list to and everybody to come into. But a good YouTube channel should have a mix of those three things.

Mark Fidelman  18:11

Okay? A great intro to, you know what their brand should or how a brand gets started and working in specifically on YouTube. I do want to ask you, though, about other channels, and I’m a big believer as you are and my experience is exactly the same YouTube is the place where you should build the foundation careful, because you know, YouTube has been changing the rules and who knows what’s gonna happen with them in the future. You got to be careful. But what are some of the other channels that you use? You know, video on for me, it’s LinkedIn. I don’t even waste my time on Facebook because it’s the reached unless I’m doing an agreed.

18:49

Yeah, agreed. You know, I might upload something to Facebook. If for an event, I might do like a live q&a and we do live workshops on Wednesdays and we do okay. on our YouTube and our Facebook, which I normally don’t recommend, but because of the nature of the of the event, our goal is just to engage our audience wherever they might be. Yeah, okay. But that’s the only time we do a cast, right? Normally, it’s like we’re either one or the other. Because why would somebody come to YouTube to watch you, they can just watch you on Facebook, right? So there’s something to be said about that. So we we sort of Avoid Facebook, unless we’re running a campaign on Instagram is where we repurpose our YouTube videos. And it’s also where we engage daily with people from the YouTube channel. So I believe that YouTube and Instagram go hand in hand because it is so consumer heavy and because, you know, Facebook is the marketplace. It’s nonspecific, it’s everything. It’s 2d, fruity. It’s everything is on Instagram is like video and high quality pictures. Plus, you can’t post links, and that’s really that’s really positive, naturally, believe it or not, because it doesn’t become spammy. Right? And so what we do is we’ll post the video on YouTube and then two weeks later, we’ll post a And edited version like a three minute version on Instagram

Mark Fidelman  20:03

one enough the whole thing

20:06

why not the whole thing?

Mark Fidelman  20:07

Yeah, why not put the whole YouTube video on Instagram to be

20:11

number one watch times do you remember the last time you watched a 10 minute video on Instagram? No. Yeah, you know Me neither time. Okay, yeah, and you know that it’s called TRT, right, the total runtime, you know, three minutes when I, we actually shoot for under three minutes. So it’s like it would be like two, two minutes and 54 seconds. Yeah, and and that having that two in front sends a very clear message to the viewer. It’s like, Hey, you don’t have to invest much time here. You know, and and that gets them to watch 30 seconds of the video, right? I look at a 10 minute video. I’m not even watching the first 10 seconds because like, I don’t have time for this. So, to answer the question, why not the whole thing is that, you know, platform, people purpose. These are some of my guiding friends. Suppose on a platform, you upload content that’s appropriate for the platform, YouTube 10 minutes is appropriate on Instagram not appropriate, it’s gonna be more like a one minute two or three minute thing. So that’s what we do. Furthermore, if they can get it on Instagram,

21:18

then why would they come over to my YouTube channel?

21:22

And the YouTube channel has to be unique. We have a very YouTube first presentation, right where it’s start on YouTube and repurpose from there where I see a lot of brands specifically and bigger companies using YouTube as their trash dump. Right? Hey, I’m gonna I’m gonna put content on Instagram. I’m gonna put content on Facebook and then I’m gonna dump it all on YouTube. I feel it’s very disrespectful for the YouTube viewer. Because think about this. I’m going to go on Instagram as an example, to see what’s up, right? I don’t like see what’s going on. I usually check Instagram for my memes you know and check check what’s wrong. Plenty in the space. But I know that I’m going to spend about five to 10 seconds on a on a meme and then move on to the next one. Agreed? Yeah, we’ll see where I’m coming from. Right. So on YouTube, it’s different, cuz there’s only one thing you can do on YouTube. And that’s watch videos. So whenever anyone opens up their YouTube app or clicks on a video from Google, there’s a mental thing that says, I’m going to watch this for two minutes, maybe 10 minutes. And that’s the psychology that you want to tap into. Right? You don’t necessarily want to be a part of this. Maybe I’ll watch this if I’m interested culture. You want to be a part of this. Hey, when you’re ready to get fed real content, come over to YouTube and check us out. Huh?

Mark Fidelman  22:46

Okay. I think I like that philosophy. I’ve just been posting the entire video on on Instagram and I don’t have the data to show how long they’re watching. But I think you’re right. I mean, they more more often than They’re going to stay. And I think the data back backs us up on YouTube than they will on instagram instagram there for fleeting second. Yeah. And they might watch your video if you stay very, very interesting.

23:11

And everybody’s on Instagram, right? Like, not everybody is on YouTube and that that’s why I think it’s such a great it’s such a great opportunity. I

Mark Fidelman  23:17

think YouTube people are going there because they discovered you on a search result too. Yeah, whereas Instagram you’re not really searching for a specific answer to your problem and I’m speaking as a marketer

23:28

Yeah. So I think you’re right you know, there’s there’s all of those things that you have to consider before sort of just developing your plan I would rather that you you know, any brand focus their real energy on YouTube and then sort of use the the other platforms like Instagram like Facebook as support platforms, right. those platforms are designed for customer service for maybe ads like Facebook, we are this great place for ads. That’s what it is. And and Instagram is Great place I think for relationship building. Right? Now you want to talk about, you know, creating impact. You might want to throw Tick Tock in the mix because man, I’m gonna get to that. I have never seen what I’m seeing happening on Tick Tock. Anyway, that’s that’s exciting. I wanted to move first to LinkedIn, because that is suppose Yeah, Lauren.

Mark Fidelman  24:21

Yeah, and I’m trying to figure it out. So far, I’ve had one or two videos that have done really well because they had you know, kind of these controversial subjects in them. Or I did something funny that I also did on tik tok. So what is it that we can learn from people like Shay robot them and others that have been successful with LinkedIn video? Yeah,

24:42

you know, I’m not anti LinkedIn video. But I’ve been playing with LinkedIn video for quite some time and you know all upload a six second video of me over at the new station, right? I do this weekly recurring or this monthly recurring section on the news, and that video will get 2000 views. But then I’ll post a video With like an in depth analysis of the YouTube algorithm, and I’ll get 17 views on it. And so I, here’s the challenge that I posed with LinkedIn video is that do business people really care about your LinkedIn video? Because what I’m seeing is, is the same video that’s successful on LinkedIn is the same video that’s successful, sort of in the viral community, right? It’s going to be pretty girls. It’s going to be girls wearing costumes. And yes, people are doing this on LinkedIn. Why? Because it works on Instagram stories. So they’re doing it here. And and and people are following them. How much revenue is coming from that? You know, I just don’t really I don’t really know. And and my question is like, is that the brand you’re trying to build? And that’s where I challenged the LinkedIn video scenario. Because on LinkedIn, you can only go as far as your peoples people, right your networks network. That’s as far as You can go whereas the moment you upload that same video on YouTube that goes out to the whole world it’s available to the whole world has viral potential and so you’re you’re you’re capping how far you can go on on LinkedIn by focusing on LinkedIn solely now I say this because people like Shay robot them who’s doing fantastic work on LinkedIn video right? She’s getting you know 23,000 100,000 views you know, per video, but my question is, would it would you um, the the bearded overweight you know, 4555 year old male be as successful as Shea row bottom, the cute perky, you know, 30 something millennial? My, my guess is No, you won’t be and that that may be hurts, right? Because we’re supposed to live in this place where nobody has it. We’re all vanilla and there’s no such thing as boy and girl and that’s garbage. Right? Like it matters how you present the most successful people that I know on LinkedIn are doing Things that the average business wouldn’t do on LinkedIn. And so you have to really think about like, Is that is that a place that’s worth it for you Now on the flip side, you take a guy like Beryl Solomon not sure if you’re following his work I really enjoy his work 11,000 views on a video in like an hour or two and it’s all business all business. Okay, really, really strong. I don’t know how much business he’s actually getting from the video. I’m not aware of that. I would assume it’s some, but I saw his video yesterday and I go, why aren’t you doing this on YouTube?

Mark Fidelman  27:33

How do you know he’s not? Did you check?

27:35

No, well, he reached out to me, but I don’t want to I’d like to do far into that. But no, we we I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn looking at LinkedIn Video Creators I follow their hashtags and and and looking at who would be a good fit for for YouTube and it’s not everybody if I stay somebody you know, sort of dancing prancy on on LinkedIn video and do kind of Hey, look at me, look at me stuff like that. That’s not it. You Someone I want to take on to YouTube. But when I see someone like barrel Solomon who’s got this like really strong message and he really stands his ground, the guy wears a yarmulke he talks to He’s like, I will not be available for Shabbat. You know, he’s, he like takes the same not afraid to live the space. Like that’s the type of thing that will do well on YouTube, not because it’s faith based and not because it’s it’s aggressive, but because he’s himself, right. And if as a brand, you can create a video strategy that really like communicates the value of your brand without being so we love every money, and then there’s nobody that can be a good fit for our product, like you’re going to do very well. On on YouTube. Yeah. So LinkedIn, I think is a good breathing place for tomorrow’s on YouTube leaders. But I was telling you before this call, like, we’re actually trying to step back from our LinkedIn presence because here’s the thing. Let me tell you guys this, it does not help to talk about YouTube on LinkedIn. So instead of we’ve tried this right, we’re Hey YouTube tips, YouTube tips, YouTube tips, people on LinkedIn. aren’t interested in YouTube tips. So instead what we’re doing is we’re changing the conversation to lead generation. Right? more business growth. Yeah. And then in the video we’re leading them towards towards YouTube. Right. So I think a lot of it has to do with your, your your framing, like the argument that you’re framing for LinkedIn video. And then of course, you know, how good is the video?

Mark Fidelman  29:23

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, very well said. I mean, that’s a good tip for LinkedIn. Don’t talk about YouTube because people don’t care. They are interested on LinkedIn, in learning how to grow their business.

29:34

Well, yeah. And and a bigger thing, like don’t talk about strollers either. And again, this is also again, I’m not a LinkedIn expert, but this is what our data has shown us that the conversation on LinkedIn has to be business related. So if you’ve got if you’ve got a stroller company, you know the conversation is not about like how to find a better stroller. The conversation is on is is how to bring your family I how to run a Better family business. You know, and then bringing the stroller into that conversation. Are you with me on that?

Mark Fidelman  30:09

Yeah, yeah, it makes total sense. And that’s why we’re on LinkedIn.

30:13

I think LinkedIn, you really got to find your angle but but going on LinkedIn, and talking about SEO, some of my good friends are SEO magistrates in this country. Like if I said their names, everybody would know who they are, if they’re an SEO, but I see their posts on LinkedIn, like six, six likes, right to comments. And the comments are from staff members, you know, so on LinkedIn, you really have to you’re really limited in how you can present your case. And I think that that’s a good strategy, but it’s like now you’re talking about like one strategy for YouTube. Another strategy for LinkedIn or like Instagram thing can be overwhelming. And my good friend, Brian G. Johnson, who’s an amazing YouTube artist said, he said, Oh, and you put all of your energy into all of these videos and He says I make one good video. My one good video on YouTube will get more views and watch time then all of these little Instagram clips, LinkedIn clips and all this other stuff. And he’s absolutely right. And that’s why you take a you put your energy into YouTube. And then you filter that down through all of your other platforms. And that’s that’s how you you win because even on the other platforms, they know you’ve got a YouTube show, and that’s where you want them going back to.

Mark Fidelman  31:28

Yep. Yep, very well said. Well, let’s move on to LinkedIn. I know we could do, we could do a whole episode just on LinkedIn. So sure, maybe another day, once I get. I’m just trying to unlock this and I’m studying people like you are. And maybe we’ll have you back on for just just about LinkedIn. Let’s go to tick tock now. I’ve been watching some of your personal tic tocs. I mean, the funny, they’re great. I just don’t know how you’re going to tie this to business and maybe you don’t give a crap about business but for me, I’m always looking out for the marketer, looking out for myself. I’ve produced one video that was pretty funny caught a little bit of a tailwind. It was basically me pretending to go back to restaurants. And yeah, I had a little Roomba Deliver me my meal. I did all my

32:17

things I love about you is that you’re you’re you’re an intellectual guy. You’re like me, right, so we like to talk about higher level things. Um, but we can also throw spaghetti at the wall. Yeah, and and have a food fight.

Mark Fidelman  32:30

Food fights on Facebook. Anyway, let’s go. Let’s go back to tick tock. What is your plan for Tick Tock?

32:37

Yeah, that’s really good. So right now I am like the Wolverines on on Tick Tock. So Wolverines obviously comes from Red Dawn, and it was that band of American students that that were going to you know, fight the the Russian army. So you know, I’m sort of in espionage on Tick tock, and the reason for that is that in 10 years, the audience on Tick Tock is going to be the The audience that we’re trying to sell to, and what I see happening right now is I see brands, you know, working very, very diligently to sell the 30 something 40 something client and and above. Okay, we know how to sell that client. Right everybody that’s that’s, I think even 30 above, maybe even you have 30 above maybe grew up without cell phones. Okay, when they were born, there was no cell phones. There was no YouTube right by 1990 Oh, yeah. So what, what? We know how to sell those. We’ve been selling to those people for decades, okay, but this big thing happened. It’s called cell phones, the mobile revolution, YouTube, all of this stuff starts coming out in the 2000s. And we have not put any effort into knowing how to those kids how those kids communicate. In fact, what I see is I see a whole bunch of whippersnapper conversation right those whippersnappers who cares. I don’t give a rat’s patootie about these kids. These kids don’t nothing, given their rights away, took our jobs. You know, all these grumpy, grumpy, grumpy grumpy, I hate that. That garbage, what I’m doing on Tick tock, first of all, it’s a comedy outlet for me, I told you earlier, I fancy myself an actor. So I’ve always want one of my good friends, David Lopez made it really, really big on YouTube with his comedy. And and I had a chance to do that with him. And I chose to be more business focused, I watched him become a multimillionaire on youtube comedy. So there is definitely an outlet for me to do some of the comedy that I didn’t get to do earlier in my career. But the big reason that I’m even focused on it is because I am trying to learn the customer of tomorrow. The customer of tomorrow can absorb an entire story in 10 seconds. And when I say story, I mean, if you can give them a 10 second version of Little Red Riding Hood belt, they’ll consume it, they’ll understand every minute of it. They talk, they they process faster than we do. They use different words than we use. They’re listening to different music like and I actually feel bad for him because I grew up like 90s alternative rock Nirvana, Foo Fighters, you know, and even we A lot of hip hop coming out in those days to POC and Bone Thugs like I grew up on a good music. Yeah, everything today seems just like so bubblegum agenda driven stuff like it’s, it’s, it’s sad but my point is they’re listening to music we’re not listening to I couldn’t even name an artist on one of their on one of their top 10 lists. But here’s the thing that I do know is I’m going to learn it and I’m going to figure it out. I’m going to I’m going to be able to welcome those people as customers as they get into their adult lives. And so I am on Tick Tock and I think that everybody should be watching Tick Tock and understanding where the marketplace is going when it comes to visual media content.

Mark Fidelman  35:38

So here’s some criticisms I have for for Tick Tock and the same with Instagram until they introduce swipe up stories. How do you as a marketer, link out of tik tok howdy in Snapchat, I still don’t recommend Snoop Dogg.

35:52

Great Again, you know, this is okay. So we’re talking to marketer conversation and for your audiences, all marketers to my audience to I love the marketing plays not not everything can you imagine like, hey, well what’s the click through on a billboard? Yeah, right what’s the click through on a TV commercial? Now, in a lot of those cases you might have, you might have a phone number attached to it or you might have a website attached to it that’s only on the Billboard or whatever, but not necessarily a direct response sort of mechanism, right? It’s more of a brand awareness thing. And, and I think that’s what that’s what Tick Tock does is it it gives you a ton of brand awareness and it puts your mind or puts you in the minds of I mean, hundreds of thousands if not millions of young people, you know, tick tock, you go you get big on Tick Tock Yeah, I’ve got a video doing half a million views on Tick Tock. I never had a video do that on on on YouTube. So those young people are familiar with my work. And so when I transitioned into, you know, oh, and video has a tick tock school well I’m pretty well positioned when you agree.

Mark Fidelman  37:02

Yeah I mean your angle makes a lot of sense and but I haven’t seen a lot of like the big brands on tik tok yet maybe I’m just not as well versus you are like the McDonald’s.

37:14

No, they’re not but McDonald’s amount of really need to be on Tick Tock You know, they’re they’re actually McDonald’s has eliminated their dollar menu and everything and so they’re actually working on on an older demographic. It makes sense to me that McDonald’s is not there. But I get your point. And let’s go to the stroller example. The reason that we’re not seeing bigger brands going to tick tock is because everyone’s obsessed with ROI, right? Yeah, and that’s good. It’s a good thing it’s a healthy thing right to be obsessed with ROI. But But that’s not what Tick Tock is yet. Now. On Tick tock, you do have a couple different avenues. brands are able to advertise on Tick Tock. And the advertisements on Tick tock, I find are some of the best advertisements on the web, because they usually feature somebody using the products Right. I mean, I have I love

Mark Fidelman  38:01

on Snapchat that act the same way and I just haven’t seen a tick off with marketers yet. And that’s what I’m trying to figure out what Tick Tock is, yes, there’s ads, but are they effective? And are they tears?

38:10

Yeah. And again, I my whole thing is like why pay for ads when you can have organic right? And I believe in that now, once again, we don’t sell we don’t run ads. It’s just that our thing is organic. And so I would actually convince the brand not to be doing ads but instead to be growing in organic tik tok sort of presence. So imagine, you know, a stroller company. You know, creating a tic tock tick tock is a lot of sort of, like you’ve got a beat and you’re dancing to it, you know, but what if you had a stroller and on the beat, you were sort of like pointing to another, you know, another feature of the stroller. So it’s like bom bom, bom, bom, bom bom. You know, you’re pointing to a different thing. And every time you point like a feature pops up, you know, it’s little things. Like that, that that make tic Tock So, so amazing. I’ve got a friend on tik tok right now. She has a show about dogs on YouTube about her Snow Dogs or Huskies. And on Tick tock, all she’s doing is saying watch how fast he comes in the house and she’ll go outside she’ll call him. He’ll run inside 30,000 views. Yeah. So imagine having a stroller and again you say everybody take a look. Take a look at this phenomenal stroller feature. Groom and the stroller you know and boom, that’s the video you show the canopy you know, come at the Margarita baby. Big Margarita holder in the in the in the stroller. You show that and then the TIC tocs over Yeah,

39:40

I so easy to do.

Mark Fidelman  39:42

If I were gonna suggest to the stroller company something to do. What I would do is I create a contest and say look $5,000 to the person that develops the best roller video using our stroller so good. I think once you get a bunch of people doing it because you know on Tick tock, everyone’s copying each other’s company. new dance routines to the same music. I mean, it’s brilliant. That way you can see variations of different. I don’t know what they call them memes, video memes or themes or something

40:08

talks on tik tok to this point because it’s very unique to the platform. Because what you do is you can they, anytime you upload a video to tik tok, like the audio of that video goes into a database and so I could actually pull audio from somebody else’s tic Tock and then lip sync to it or mouth to I think we’re seeing a lot of that happen as well. We’re seeing a lot of people reenact like friends, sequences and stuff like this, which is not my thing. Yeah. But again, that’s how you pull your strategy right on. You could you could be doing Malvin pieces of videos where people have strollers in them, you know, different movies.

Mark Fidelman  40:47

Yeah, you could be the strollers talking. So put your baby in this in this in their stroller and have them say something and there’d be a big contest. So

40:55

I got a lot of grief for going on tik tok. I was like, Hey, you know, my Tick Tock just just Did this amazing thing. Um, and it’s like, well, where’s your ROI? You know, where’s your money? I had a whole bunch of people just screaming at me on Facebook. I don’t remember this post, but but my thing was like, look right now I am not trying to capitalize on a market I know nothing about. I don’t really know much about the 14 year olds today, like news. I got a 13 year old in my house right now. I don’t understand what he’s saying half the time. Right, you know, but I’m going to learn them. I owe it to my kids to learn them and I owe it to the future of my company to learn them. Yes. So, right. I’m, I’m on tik tok right now to learn it and to figure out what’s going on. And I’ll tell you, I’ve adapted pretty well. I made about 10 videos that did nothing. And then I made one that that went half a million, and that has fed all the past ones. So I watched all my past tic tocs double in views, because of they would go to my page, and then they’d watched all the other ones that I’ve made.

Mark Fidelman  41:55

Yeah, and that’s what I like about you. You’re not afraid to jump in. I do the same exact thing. Just jump in and learn it yourself. And fail, fail, fail, fail and finally figure it out. That’s what I’m doing with LinkedIn right now. And that is the way to learn it. I would say I think a lot of a probably received a lot of skepticism on that Facebook post because I remember Gary Vaynerchuk you know, touting Snapchat, I mean, just over and over and over, and I did a video on it, why Snapchat is not a good fit for marketers. I still stand behind it. I think that’s proven out. And I think people start to see that and they’re like, I don’t understand. You know how tik tok can benefit my business yet, and I’ve seen people like Gary touting things before and it didn’t work out now, Gary, for the most part, it was just shit inside out, right? He’s He’s very, very good, but he got Snapchat wrong. And then some people are probably looking at it the same way. It’s like I get on tik tok. I see a bunch of funny videos. I don’t know how it relates to my business or how can help my business. Somebody like you that’s getting in there and exploring, I think, you know, in three to six months, you will tell us this is how you capitalize on it.

42:57

Yeah, a great point. Um, you know, It’s not all I think what happens is we love to like the new thing is the stupid thing right? I always new thing is stupid, right like that there’s kind of like that that problem in marketing today when really it’s like okay let’s see if this new thing is gonna go anywhere. You know Gary Vee obviously has is an investor into Snapchat he’s got a lot of reason to to promote it but I’ll tell you I was on Snapchat for less than a year and and I just knew it wasn’t gonna go anywhere. And from what from where I stand today. I know there’s little pockets that still use it. But from where I stand today, nobody is talking about Snapchat. Yep, any type of meaningful way. Right? And so I think that we were right on that side tic tocs a little bit different tic tocs more like vine, and Vine was huge and introducing new creators to the space and so that’s where I think Tick Tock is gonna go.

Mark Fidelman  43:47

Okay. Yeah. And I look forward to hearing more about it. Because, you know, if you get in early, like, you know, some of the brands suit on Instagram. Yeah, they made some brands. Oh, yeah, it’s just took off.

43:59

I think that should be the Goal, it really shouldn’t be. It’s like when a new platform comes out, you got to ask yourself, Is this the way is Could this be the thing? Could this be the platform that that gets us that that extra lift? I know for me, you know, I don’t want to be doing consultant work for forever. I don’t think anybody wants to do the one thing forever, right? Like we want to grow, we want to bring on coaches and coaches can start consulting and each one teach one and then we want to be in more production, we want to be in a place where we’re producing 12 YouTube shows a year, you know, that are getting millions of views. And so, you know, as as we look at these new platforms, we look at them as creative outlets to say, Okay, let’s see, can we make people laugh and like us on this platform? And then when we do that, then how can we sort of start delivering messages to them? Right, and that’s where I Excel right? I’m a message maker like I I remember watching Saved by the Bell, early, early on in my life, and there is a whole episode about subliminal messages and it that stays with me to this day. Of course, I’m not believing or advocating and subliminal message But the art of communication right before someone’s gonna buy from you, they have to like you and so I’m getting them to like us on tik tok. And through those relationships, I mean, most of the people liking me right now are ages like 10 to 14. Okay? But when those guys are 20 years old, they may not be following me on tik tok anymore. They might be following me on youtube or somewhere else, but I will have earned the right to ask for their business. And that’s what I’m trying to build now on Tick Tock. Right.

Mark Fidelman  45:27

Okay, excellent. Well, I could go on and on and on. But we’ve got to wrap things up. And we do that by asking two final questions. Number one, what is the hottest digital marketing technology that you recommend right now?

45:43

Alexa, voice control everything. My whole house is on Alexa. Not only that, my kids. My kids moral and educational upbringing is programmed into reminders in Alexa now, we could have a whole conversation about Alexa is following you everywhere. And And here’s my belief mark is that if if the government wants me they’re gonna find me. So I have Oh, and had an Alexa and he was taken away by the police. Like no one was taken away by the police because he’s a rebellion leader a lot, you know, and lit a Molotov cocktail in a liquor store or something. You know what I mean? Of course, I’d never do that. But you know, they’re gonna find you they want to find you. I love Alexa. Because you know, my kids check in with Alexa. And they go Alexa. If I say it there, she’s gonna start but I’ll say Alexa start my day. And Alexa recognizes the voice it knows it’s James. So then James will get his schedule from Alexa, which we’ve pre programmed into it. And then and then that starts his day. It’s the same with with us in our business. Our studio comes on with with Alexa a goes off with Alexa Alexa reminds me to do voice warmups. Alexa keeps our business running smoothly. I don’t even use my other servant robots. Siri, I don’t even use her anymore. But Alexa has enabled us to do so much including with the new Alexa video. You can now just like watch your competitors video. With a with a voice command. So I think that Alexa, we’re only scratching the surface of what this thing can do.

Mark Fidelman  47:05

Yeah, and I’ve talked about that. I’m gonna have somebody from Amazon on pretty soon to talk about how marketers can take advantage of it. That’s a whole new thing I haven’t even began to take a look at but I suspect the things that we can do,

47:18

I’ll tell you, Gary Vee talks about it. And I’m like, I’m a very reasonable Gary Vee guy. Like sometimes he says things I like sometimes he doesn’t like I’m not one side of the, but he talks about, you know, voice technology, and I’m recognizing it for me, like, I watch videos at video time in my day, right? But otherwise, even when I’m watching a video, it’s just kind of like on my iPhone stand, and I’m listening to it while I’m doing other things. So I really like voice technology. And what marketers need to start doing is how can you create an Alexa skill that can become a part of your customers daily routine. So Case in point, the stroller company if you’re a straight drover company you could be putting together these, you know, two to three minute sound bites on workout tips, fitness tips, child safety tips. And when a person says you know, Alexa, start my day or Alexa, you know, read me my news. Your skill can be in there and saying, you know, in your childhood Tip of the Day is is you know, make sure to do blah, blah, blah when you’re doing blah, blah, blah. This brought to you by ABC Schroer company wishing you a great day.

Mark Fidelman  48:30

Yeah, I are, you know, it’s everyone’s inside quarantine. Here’s what you can do with your child to keep them active and healthy or something like all of the above. I think

48:39

we need a stat like Alexa is a mini podcast, sort of Portal and the way that it’s set up is ideal for marketers and my advice to marketers is go get three I mean it get three of them. I have maybe like five or six Alexa’s in my house. I would get three of them so that you can see what their their combined capabilities are and and Just start playing with that and see what ideas you come up with.

Mark Fidelman  49:02

Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I’d love to see how you set that up offline or maybe another show.

49:09

Anytime I almost started a channel, my mentor told me not to I almost started a channel on on life automation, because I’m so in love with what Alexa Did you know, I was a cancer survivor. So during cancer, I had to automate everything. And I learned so much we didn’t have Alexa at that time. But I got Alexa like two years later. Yeah. And it’s like, wow, like so much stuff that we can do. So I love Alexa for that for that reason. Wonderful.

Mark Fidelman  49:32

All right, a last question. Who is the most influential who’s influencing you the most in marketing today?

49:39

I think Ilan musk? Yeah. without a shadow of a doubt. The guy is a visionary. He doesn’t give a hoot Yeah. about you or or your position. You know what I mean? He’s gonna build his thing. And I I love that. I mean, this is literally a guy building rocket ships to the moon. commercial space wires. I love what Elan Musk is doing I love his defiance on and I love the way that he got Alameda County to, you know, he said I’m going to open up my shop. I’m putting my people back to work and I don’t care what you what you guys say. And then Alameda County they go Okay, all right. Well, okay. So I love that let’s let’s all build businesses so big that it just doesn’t matter what the haters say. I really love the way that he engages with people on Twitter. I think that’s the way to build a personal brand. I love the way he regrow his hair. I don’t know the story behind that. I do know that you’ve probably seen the pictures that he was sort of balding before he became Ilan musk and then head full of hair. I love that he saw that I’m going to be a world famous visionary. So I need to look the part and he did that. I love that. I love that he has five kids. Um, I love that he named his kid What did he name like x one. It was a excel formula or something I love. I love it. I actually asked my wife, okay, this was maybe 10 years ago. I said, because we read this article just a couple days ago. And I said, Did you see what Elan musk named his child and she rolled her eyes and she goes, we’re not naming our kid a number. So when my son Jamison was born, I wanted to spell it on JM e seven o n. Hmm. And the reason I wanted to do that was to just like, recognize where we are in the world in terms of technology today. And and she said, No, if you’re not going to do that, so we didn’t do that. And so it’s awesome to see like, Elon Musk did that. And I think for very much the same reasons. And to know that we were sort of on that same wavelength is is really cool. And so you know, I think that even though he’s not a marketer, per se, I think that the way that he lives, breathes and works is something that we could all learn from.

Mark Fidelman  51:57

Yeah, especially on the branding side. I mean, the way he’s branded himself For me personally and with his companies, no question,

52:02

and he hasn’t done the whole, like, I’m too busy to talk to people thing. You know, he also hasn’t jumped on the politics train, you know, Trump gave him a a nod on on Twitter the other day, and and he said, Thank you, you know, and it wasn’t like that it was just a polite response. It wasn’t like, Oh, you know, shut off your stupid bag. And it wasn’t like, Thank you, sir. Let’s build a wall. You know, it was just thank you. And again, the two words that we could all learn from is, you know, being likable and respectable, you know, so much about the way Ilan just carries himself that I’m a fan of and I think that more thought leaders were to do this, you know, instead of being like, I’m too busy to talk to my people, be more engaging and be more human with people. And I think it’ll go a long way.

Mark Fidelman  52:52

I completely agree. I mean, and he’s a good example of how to do that. There’s several several others but just recently, just He’s handled this whole COVID crisis. I couldn’t agree more. Yeah. So just to wrap up, one thing I do want you to do if you’re listening is if you are interested in getting a free course from Owen, go to the video marketing school.com and also Oh, and how can people get a hold of you if they want to ask more questions about I think

53:22

the video marketing school comm is probably the best way to you know, enter our funnel but if you want to just reach out to me and say What’s up, use Instagram, we’d love to hear from you there and we can start a conversation I’d love to know like what about this interview was intriguing or what particularly stood out or even what you most disagreed with? One of the highlights of my day is is just engaging with people on Instagram and finding out what’s what the buzz is in the marketplace. So I would love to hear from any of our listeners that are checking this out today.

Mark Fidelman  53:52

And where does your Instagram handle

53:54

at Oh in video, you can find me everywhere on the web at AU and video for

Mark Fidelman  53:59

that. So one and we’re gonna have a follow up because there’s a couple things I can’t

54:03

wait. You know, I always enjoy our time together.

Mark Fidelman  54:06

My question