The Black Effect Presents... Black Tech Green Money!
Marketing Strategist Mahdi Woodard is an innovative thinker with broad business acumen and in-depth marketing and branding experience. He serves as a marketing Consultant and Chief Marketing Officer, and was previously a Marketing Brand Analyst and Associate Brand Manager at Mars Petcare which is home to Iams, Pedigree and more, and he was Brand Manager at Newell Brands, home to Rubbermaid, Graco, and Paper Mate.
His social media profiles teach others how to grow online and monetize their content.
Follow Will Lucas on Instagram at @willlucas
Learn more at AfroTech.com https://instagram.com/afro.tech
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Afrotech Conference is back, bringing together over twenty thousand tech enthusiasts, founders, investors,
and more for another unforgettable year. For years, afro Tech
has been the go to event for black innovators in
tech with the brightest mind share the latest developments and insights,
and this year we're bringing the experience to Houston, Texas
from November thirteenth through the sixteenth. Join us to learn
(00:20):
from the innovators and leaders who are shaping the future
of tech. From insightful panels to curated meetups and expansive recruiting,
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Don't miss your chance to be part of it. Secure
your spoted afro Tech Conference twenty twenty four today visit
(00:42):
Afrotech Conference dot counter Buy your ticket now. I'm Will
Lucas and this is Black Tech, Green Money Marketing Strategists.
Maddy Woodard is an innovative thinking with broad business acumen
and in depth marketing and branding experience. He serves as
a marketing consultant Chief marketing Officer. It was previously a marketing,
(01:02):
brand analyst and associated brand manager at Mars PetCare, which
is home to Ims, Pedigree and more, and he was
brand manager at new brands home the Rubber May, Great
Co and Paper May.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
His social media profiles teach.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Others how to grow online and monetize their content and insights.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
So I am.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Super curious about social strategy and I have a question
that's kind of selfish, but I know a lot of
people have the same thing. Why am I stuck out
of seventeen thousand followers on Instagram?
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Stuck?
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Like I just got to I was at like sixteen
point nine that I went to invest fast and I
got to seventeen but then but I've been at sixteen forever. Yep,
Why am I stuck?
Speaker 4 (01:47):
So man, beautiful question, and I'll try to give the
short version of the answer. What we know of Instagram
has changed dramatically, and I would say this CEO has
been dropping the nuggets of it. But I'll try to
tie it all together. The first thing is we got
to remember how did we used to grow? So there's
(02:08):
pretty much organic growth, which would come through the form
of people sharing your content primarily to their group of friends.
And in the second part, I'm not talking about paid, right,
But the second part is what I would call algorithmic.
So this is usually hashtags, keywords, or different things that
will get you on the search tab or the explore
tab at this point, a lot of us if we
(02:31):
don't play the second part of the game, right, if
we're only counting on our core audience to distribute us,
we end up in sort of a loop of the
same people seeing the same things, sharing it to the
same people, and they've already made a decision on whether
they're going to follow us or not. So your follower
base might be seventeen thousand, your awareness base may be
ten x that, right, So there may be easily enough
(02:53):
people that's like, oh, I've seen brother's face, I'm familiar
with him, but it isn't worth a follow, right. So
the question because how do we play the algorithmic game
so that we can disproportionately grow At this current stage
we're in late twenty twenty four, what the Instagram has
said is we're maximizing, we're prioritizing reach over everything. What
I hear that to mean is some of our more
(03:15):
niche based content or some of our more brand based content.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
It's dead on a rifle. If you don't play to the.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
Mass audience, you're going to have a hard time getting
people to stop long enough to follow you. So now
let's look at a couple of triggers that get you
to the masses. One is music. So if you can
catch a trend or start a trend at the right time,
what does that mean. I've seen that. Typically if you
can see a song or audio that's growing, but it's
(03:44):
under ten thousand plays, but it appears to be growing,
I try to catch that wave and ride it to
twenty thirty hundred thousand, or if you have the ability
to start something. So you're probably tired of this, but
we're a couple of weeks away from very demure, very mindful.
Speaker 5 (03:59):
Right.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
If you can be the person at the forefront of
something like that, then every time a person goes to
search for the origin of the history of this, they
got a different portionate amount of chance of landing back
in front of you. So it gets a little lengthy,
But for most of us, we're making too broad I'm sorry,
too tight up content. We're talking to a certain group
of people, we're talking to them in a more familiar
(04:21):
term when we need to be talking more to the
masses in a more general language.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
So I follow up to that I think will bless
some people. So there's two questions there for me. There's one, Yeah,
I want to be seen by more people. I want
more people to know who I am just for general
awareness purposes. Yes, factual, I would love to be at
twenty thirty forty thousand plus followers. I'm not seventeen today.
I can't complain about that. But the other thing is
(04:46):
also not to be so focused on those numbers, because
sometimes the right people following you, even if you don't
have a whole bunch of people following you, also matters.
I've gotten opportunities with my smaller amount of followers just
because the right people are following. So as an entrepreneur
or somebody who's using this for business objectives, and I'm
not trying to be flute out, you know, why does
(05:08):
this matter?
Speaker 5 (05:10):
Man? Beautiful?
Speaker 4 (05:11):
And I'll go to our origin. You were one of
the people of influence that caught me at the budding phase, right,
so I had looked at and try notes.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
You first reached out to me in twenty nineteen. Oh wow. Yeah,
So apologies for the.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
Five year lad, But I say that to say you
were one of those people in my world that were
the right people following me before I became Instagram famous.
And when you're in that space, these people have already
built platforms that you can stand on, and.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
These people already have.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
Sort of voices and megaphones that amplify whatever it is
that you're communicating. So to anyone that's in both of
those spaces, if you're feeling like, dang, I'm still struggling
to grow and I don't know.
Speaker 5 (05:53):
If I got the right mix of people following.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
This is where asking something, and I don't mean call
to action in the genera, but I mean in in
a genuine form, ask something and see what you get back.
Ask for the share, ask for the introduction, ask for
the opportunity to collaborate, and.
Speaker 5 (06:11):
See what that sort of conversation starts to prove.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
And then the last part of it is, and this
is sort of a compliment to what you were saying,
Will the dms are magical, bro, There's a lot of
stuff that we just can't do on platform. It's not
the right space to be an open conversation to the public,
but the right time private message with with like like
positive intent, it opens up a world of opportunities.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
So how attentive should we be for what it appears Instagram,
particularly Instagram? And then we'll talk about other things. I
was talking about your story, but when Instagram is appears
to be testing things like right now, you see if
you go to your DMS, you see now a time
stories kind of in the DMS, Like you know, I
can write a note, I still don't stand what that
(07:01):
thing is, But how if I'm trying to grow, should
I be paying attention to those new features?
Speaker 5 (07:07):
So let me add that contextual.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
If we simplify the buyer's journey or most people are
called in the funnel into like three core steps. You
got to get some awareness. People can't buy what they've
never heard of. You need some level of trust, some
level of additional information consideration, and then you need the
final purchase and or subsequent purchases. What I think is
(07:30):
most of us overlook how many people we need in
phase one just pure awareness, right, and then when you
go to phase two what you just asked me is
a two to three sort of a phase two to
phase three strategy. At this point, I wouldn't be so
aware to any one platform that we neglect all of
the things that we should be doing to move people
(07:51):
down that path to purchase. And it might look like
that pop up note as a gentle reminder of staying
top of mind at a minimum. What I like about stories,
what I like about DM notes is that it brings
you back to the forefront and you're like, oh, I
do oh, will the follow up? Or I was just
adding that to my car because I don't know if
you have kids, But one of the craziest things that
(08:12):
we find from research is we be about to buy.
Speaker 5 (08:14):
Something and then kid does something.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
And we write, and the ins for something that you've
been wanting to do takes two more weeks before you
get the mental sort of focus to then click the button.
So the number one thing that I would be doing
and saying, what are the strategies that allowed me to
stay top of mind? Because people buy when they ready
to buy, not when we ready to sell.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
So you have a corporate background, and so what about
social If you can tell a brief story about your
corporate background and think what piqued your interest about social
and what was that opportunity you saw that you took
advantage of to become the money where.
Speaker 5 (08:51):
We are today.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
So my quickest way to sum this up is, I'm
the smart dude from the hood, right. So I was
that kid that great grades, did athletics, but it was
more of a means to an end. Got to college
and was excelling, but I didn't quite have that direction.
I was between corporate finance and marketing. I met a
guy who went on to become a mentor, and he said, Man,
(09:14):
if you got the financial chops to do corporate finance,
investment banking, you will thrive in marketing because it's not
just the creative things. You're the person that's running the business.
You need to have that analytical rigger and that creative muscle.
Speaker 5 (09:28):
Cool.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Almost ten years in corporate and I see this thing
taking off that I'll just call direct to consumer. I'm
coming from big corporate, you guys. So we're talking paper mad,
ink pins, number one ink pen brand in the world,
Pedigree dog food, number one dot food brand in the world,
great go baby product. So the car seats business. So
you're so disconnected from the people. Our customer was Walmart, Amazon,
(09:54):
We called the final purchaser, the consumer, you know what
I mean. But as a person who's sitting here with
both minds thinking, the employee in me is thinking about
how do I do my job? The aspiring entrepreneurs thinking
there's no more red tape, right, I don't have to
do all of this bureaucratical stuff to get a concept
(10:14):
from out of my brain into the market. What if
we can just put some out in front of folks
and get straight to the interaction, whether that be a
sell or follow or whatever it is that we're looking for.
So I was sort of on the front end of it,
but I didn't have a magic ball.
Speaker 5 (10:31):
I did not.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
Foresee it becoming this big, this fast because I started
college right at the start of Facebook, and so my
initial introduction to social media was flirting with girls. It
was never right coming up with products and services and
going direct a consumer. But once I was sort of
seasoned in business, I realized the power and I sort
of went full steam ahead in this area.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
So I saw this meme today and this is this
I'm going to tell you what this question is for.
This question is an opportunity for you to talk about
how are you the truth? So I'm gonna give you that.
And so I saw this meme and it said, just
like an hour or two ago, I should have screenshoted it,
but it said, anybody that's making eighty thousand dollars a month,
it's not going to be on Instagram teaching you how
to make eighty thousand dollars a month. They're going to
(11:14):
be trying to sell you something that you can make
sure they can make it that eight thousand dollars a month.
And so talk about how you are actually providing value
and yeah, this might be this may be a source
of income for you, but you're actually providing value.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
Yeah, So I would I would like to say I
sit at the intersection of a person who is got
a certain level of education, be a high school, college,
it could be advanced education, and then the market itself.
And you're sitting here and you're trying to figure out
do I go get a job or if I have
(11:50):
a job, like, what do I then do with my
extra income, my extra time or these creative endeavors that
I have in my mind because I don't really know
how to get this from my brain to final thing,
you know what I mean. So understanding that dynamic like
there's a huge gap between I'll give it another way.
(12:11):
I say that the college took career pipeline is corroded.
It used to be almost a promise that if you
went somewhere applied yourself, it was for sure to get
your job.
Speaker 5 (12:20):
Now that's not the case.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
And if it does get your job, it ain't for
sure to get you the one in your major or
in your desire feel to study, or even better, you
could advance quicker going outside the organization than through the
organization in some respects because the old way things were done,
your manager had to walk you through something and you
go through training. Now I just get on YouTube university
(12:43):
and I don't have to wait the two weeks to
get one on one time with my line manager, you know,
the person directly above me. So what I'm doing is
taking this information, synthesizing it and saying, hey, whether you
are again working and you got extra capacity, or whether
you're right here full time entrepreneur, let's get you further
faster using all this stuff that I have learned to
(13:04):
aggregated over the last fifteen years. And that's sort of
the corner of the Internet that I occupy unfortunately. I
also occupy that with people who are just extremely charismatic,
really good at sales, but the thing that they've created
may not be of substance. They're just playing a marketing
psychology game. So I'm more of a market than a salesperson.
I try to study people, see what they need, create
(13:26):
the thing, and let you know that it's available. But
I don't have a lot of things after you saying
not right now or this isn't for me, I don't
have a bunch of creative ways to overcome those objections.
Speaker 5 (13:37):
I just hope I get it right by doing my research.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
So my question, my next question is like who are
you specifically speaking to? So here's my personal mission. I've
talked about on this podcast a couple of times. My
personal mission is to create content and opportunities for black people,
black entrepreneurs to help them realize entrepreneurial success beyond their
wildest dreams. So everything I do is pointed to help
(14:03):
black people realize entrepreneurial success beyond.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Their wildest dreams.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
If I were to provide an opportunity for you to say,
what who's Mondy's speaking to and why is he speaking
to them?
Speaker 4 (14:13):
What is that mission for you, and it's changed. So
I'm gonna give you the old and I'll let you
know where I'm bridging to mine. Wasn't that doubt in
on a market? It was more so, how do I
create content that runs around the internet, runs up your
bank account without.
Speaker 5 (14:28):
Being online all day? Like you don't have to.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
Be glued to your phone if your content and or
marketing endeavors or working on your behalf. What that led to, though,
was for most people, what ends up being burnt out?
Even with my best of intentions, it's so competitive for
attention that I'm saying post three to five times per
day not to drag you. I'm saying post three times
(14:52):
per three to five times per day because you have
to develop the discipline. And you may be coming from
a non communication background, like I s read in your story.
You came from radio, right, so you understand a certain
level of communication that might that rule may not be
for you. But if you've been working as a dental
hygienist who's now an aspire and fashion designer, you've never
learned how to communicate a message that aspires a person
(15:14):
to take an action. So I spent the first five
years of my life trying to talk to that person
who had a breakdown between how do I say this
stuff in order to get where I'm going. My next
phase is talking to the people to say, man, listen,
I went out and surveyed the land.
Speaker 5 (15:32):
Some things are good, a lot of things aren't.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
You need to build the life that you want first
and then build a business that's around it. So if
you say I want to spend more time with my kids,
or if you say I want to be retired by fifty.
Speaker 5 (15:46):
Right, what is that life you want to live?
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Now, let's get you into a box of what business
best sitsts. This situates that versus the other way around.
We never make time for life when we build a
business first. And I've done my fair share of like
pushing the grind, although well intentioned, and now I'm in
a space where I'm trying to talk to the more
holistic human and entrepreneurship is just a facet of what we.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Do for someone somebody out there him. I'm talking to me,
someone out there who you know. I put it this way,
Gary Vannachuk has this thing, you know, create document don't create,
And I appreciate that sentiment, and I'm an entrepreneur of
for businesses and have a personal brand and all these things.
(16:31):
The majority of my day is sitting in front of
a computer, the large majority of my day, And I'm like,
I don't know what to post, Like, sitting in front
of my computer is not interesting? And how so for
people who are like, my day is not I don't
live in New York, I don't live in LA I
don't live in Chicago. It's not always beautiful and scenic,
and I don't always have, you know, the vibe like
(16:51):
it's not always that way. My life doesn't look like that.
How do I know what to post when I'm constantly saying, no,
this is not interesting.
Speaker 5 (17:00):
Yep, I love it.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
So I think a couple of different things, and sometimes
will we just have a we know more people like
ourselves and they become the folks that were testing these
concept off, even if we never talk to them. So
you're looking through your left and your right and you're like, man,
my brother don't want to watch this. Right, my business
order don't want to watch this. But on the flip side,
to that kid, remind me of Toledo, Yeah, Toledo, Ohio.
(17:24):
Right to that kid in Toledo, who has no idea
how to leave Toledo and be in one metropolitan city
one day in another metropolitan city the next day. They
don't know what that looks like. How do you how
do you juggle time zones? How do you manage your calendar?
How do you review somebody's business presentation and also send
(17:45):
one over to somebody?
Speaker 5 (17:47):
Right?
Speaker 4 (17:47):
They don't know. So I think there's a literal form
of document and or capture what you're doing. But then
there's another piece that says, what if I were to
block out my schedule for the next week and say
what are the three critical things that I'm gonna get
I'm gonna get done that if a person wants to
walk a similar walk, and what are the sub steps?
So how do you get booked to speak in front
(18:09):
of twenty thousand people? And then what does it look
like from multiple vantage points? Camera behind you seeing what
you see, camera in front of you, seeing what they see,
and merging that story to say this is Will when
he's at investmentest or this is me when I'm interviewing
three people for my podcast. So I think, don't sell
yourself short that your peer might not want to see
(18:30):
it right. But the person aspiring or the person that's
saying I don't even know how I get on these platforms,
they may want to love to hear the backstory of
how they end up being able to be interviewed by you.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
So I think those things are critical.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
I'd also push and say for the next phase of it,
and this is we just got old.
Speaker 5 (18:48):
But again, if you got kids, needces a nephew.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
They been watching YouTube of kids playing games and making
slime and doing things that we didn't do growing up.
Speaker 5 (18:57):
I wanted to.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
Play baseball and not watch people play it right, and
so that level of voyeurism. But from a positive side,
I think that's only going to become more intensive over
the next few years. So don't sell short that it
might be helpful to just set up a streaming camera
and then come back on the editing side and show
what it looks like to put in eight hours of
focus work.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
That's super good.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
So I don't believe tech companies particularly love me, and
I mean just in general US US. They don't love
us to create things, to create, you know, opportunity for them.
And so here's what I mean by that. More specifically,
I remember when we opened toll House here. Toe House
is a private social club that we own that I
own myself and my wife obviously black owned because I'm black.
(19:41):
And I remember when we signed up for Google to
be on Google Business, I remember getting things in the
mail that said, you know, if you're black owned business,
add that to your Google profile. And I'm like, I'm
not going to do that, and so I never added
it to my Google profile. And then I remember as
time goes on the coffee house, we have a coffee house.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Here and we're the number.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
So if you google Intoledo coffee houses coffee shops, we
show up first. And my conspiracy, my ten hat person,
my my Alex Jones, where it says like if I
if I had black owned on there, I wouldn't be
showing up number one. And so my question is this
is for black founders, small business owners. And I'm not
(20:22):
asking you to agree with that statement. That's just another
conspiracy thing that I believe is what unique challenges do
we have when we're trying to grow online?
Speaker 4 (20:35):
Man, we got a lot of them, right, And so
I would say if we break it down into let's
call it the business strategy side. So getting the right idea,
getting the right business model. All those things, then if
we get into the management and scale part and then
probably pure financials, we got issues and opportunities in all three.
(20:58):
Number one being how do I start the right business?
A lot of us are starting businesses with load to
no barrier to entry, which in some respects is all
upside because you don't have to invest a lot to
get proof of concept. In other respects, you're literally moving
into a dead end street. Like people have went into
(21:19):
these industries determined that the market isn't as big or
isn't as viable, which is why it is low to
no barriers to entry and so to no thought of
your own more so ignorance. You're starting something that doesn't
make a lot of sense at scale.
Speaker 5 (21:34):
Right, So that first.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
Part could be covered through coaching and mentorship, assuming that
we can remove the.
Speaker 5 (21:43):
Sort of like the praying of people that happens over there.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
The second phase, which is how do we manage, run
and scale, and it's connected to the third phase. This
one is one of our hardest challenges because it's expensive
to go out and grab and retain top talent, but
it's even more expensive to try to run a business
without top talent, and so you end up where you
typically have very strong founders who are working way more
(22:11):
lateral across the business to overcompensate for the mid to
lower management that just doesn't have the chops or don't
have the resources because we don't have the money to
go out and recruit and go out and do what
some of these big companies do. And that's why I
say it's connected to the third piece. We typically see
what it's like to get starting funding, seed funding, some
(22:32):
of the preliminary investment money, but we don't see what
it's like to get continuous money for growth. And some
of our favorite companies they were able to run in
the red for five, seven, ten, twelve years.
Speaker 5 (22:44):
Will if we came up.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
With a business right now and the person saying pay
us back in ten years, I think we can figure.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
It out, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (22:50):
And who's going to give you money after you haven't
paid back the first set of people because they still
see the vision and you could be like any five
more years, you know what I mean?
Speaker 5 (23:01):
Because when you do that, it's move lines it out.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
It makes up for some of the innovations that don't
do well or some of the mismanagement and mishaps, or
for us, we got to turn a profit so quick,
right a person you get money from a black person,
they want to know how.
Speaker 5 (23:15):
Fast do I get my money back? And God forbid.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
You're working in a business that has to hold strong catch.
So if you've got high amount of plant, property, equipment,
or inventory where things where your business may be strong,
but a lot of it is just tied up in
working capital, we tend to struggle. And so then we
go back to stage one and say, can I start
a different type of business that doesn't have those downstream issues,
(23:43):
and then we end up ballooning where all of us
are just consultants for each other.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
A lot of your content I've enjoyed because you you
spit game, you know, like nobody's business. But you also
show a little bit of your personal side. You're into,
you have different hobbies, which I enjoy it seeing that
side of you also. But at the end of the day,
I imagine you could probably have a private account if
you weren't trying to drive business, because what's the point Otherwise,
(24:12):
how would you recommend people who have small businesses treat
their content. Whether I'm trying to you know, sell things
or just you know, create things that get me in
the news feed that the things that I'm trying to
sell these I'm probably won't get me a new feed
probably yep yep. So I think and you I don't
(24:37):
even know like you, I can't explain to LA you
just threw me because it goes back to the origin
of where we started, which I'll call the new social
media versus the old and I haven't said this live
anywhere yet. We'd be better off treating all of social
media just like awareness and not trying to convert anymore
at this point, like there will be some conversions that
(24:59):
take place, but what if you triple your effort on awareness.
You need to also have a product or service that
isn't tied to geographic boundaries. So a lot of brick
and mortal struggle struggles because you can't control where this
content spills out once it lands and does well. So
even if you have a restaurant, you better have a
recipe book, you better have some seasonings, something that you
(25:22):
can port and sell because the content knows no geographic bounds. Right,
So I would say, uh, those that have a service
based business or the ability ship products they can win
a disproportionate amount of.
Speaker 5 (25:35):
It from there.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
Now, let's stay top of mind, top of like top
of funnel content and look at doing the traditional old
things like text message marketing, email marketing into a degree
DM marketing to get to that middleman at middle and
bottom funnel.
Speaker 5 (25:51):
So I think about the.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
Phases of awareness and create content around that. So a
person who is not problem aware, I mean, and they
don't even know that something's wrong all the way to
a person who is problem aware, but they're just sort
of trying to make a decision on who.
Speaker 5 (26:07):
To buy from.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
I tell a person who was starting today, put a
disproportion in seventy, if not eighty percent of your content
needs to be top of funnel focus. And then you
need to convert them off of social which is counter
to what I've been saying for the last five to
seven years.
Speaker 5 (26:23):
And that's that is.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
One hundred percent based on looking at the algorithm change.
So when I look at my most recent nine posts,
sixty sixty five percent of them are landing on strangers.
Great for reach, horrible for conversion.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
For people who own businesses that aren't necessarily sexy. Let's
say I got a carpet cleaning business, or I'm a
big company. I'm We're doing hundreds of millions and we
have you know, just non sexy whatever, pick your non
sexy category. If they want to go create an Instagram,
take tire account. My thought is, okay, why would I
(27:00):
want to follow you? So you have a corporate background
and you're now at this company, you know, Joe's, you know,
metal Bending fact fabrication place, You're now the CMO. You're
gonna can you give him a social strategy? What is
Maty thinking in that capacity?
Speaker 5 (27:21):
Yeah? I love it. I think we're seeing it happen.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
Founder led stories is probably how I would attack those
type of businesses. So I'm mighty, and I'm on the
journey to build Mady's metal bending company. It's less about
here's how you fabricate metals and here's how hot the
the fire needs to get, because that ain't to your point.
I'm not following that, but the journeys of ups and downs.
(27:46):
A mighty doing this, And I'm going to go look
for a building and I'm putting in a bid and
I got out bed and I'm gonna stay prayer for
and I'm using my brothers wood shock to those stories.
The brand story, the story of the person and or
people building it is how I will win over the
hearts and minds of people. And I just supplement that
we actually are really, really good at what we do
(28:09):
in the backdrop of the story. So I would say
it's less about showing the metal or the glass cleaning
or the grass cutting, and more about the character of
the person that's doing this and taking people on those journeys. Now,
what I would for non sexy businesses, and I don't
want to leave my people who have brick and mortar isolated,
(28:30):
I would augment their stuff with paid because you can
get very targeted to a group of people within geographic boundaries,
and that would be a stronger way for them to
grow on social than to play the traditional organic game
to where it spills out into anybody. We can draw
a fence, a digital fence around one hundred miles around
Toledo with people who got various interests, and then we
(28:53):
can set up a set of rules if they've seen
this piece of content, show them that piece of content,
and subsequent sort of strategies from there.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
For folks who like when we were talking about my
personal mission, which is, you know, black entrepreneurs help them
create business beyond their wides streams. You said you think
about yours your efforts differently. We're often taught you know,
you got to think about who is my niche, who
is my target audience, and focus your thing talking to
that person, build an avatar of what they look like,
(29:22):
what do they what do they eat for breakfast this morning?
All these things for should we be thinking the same
way about our presence on social like who am I
posting to?
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Who am I talking to? Every time I post?
Speaker 4 (29:35):
For sure, absolutely, I think it will help. It will
help drive that content. Now let's go back real quick,
because I got to do it for the listeners. When
we get into targeting, targeting follows segmentation. Segmentation is just
a fancy way of saying, how do I organize these
people in the meaningful groups?
Speaker 5 (29:53):
And typically we have a love affair.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
With demographic segmentation, age, sex, maryland status, income. We typically
inadvertently neglect behavioral and psychographic or what lifestyle and what
phase in their life may they be in. So I'm
aware that my new positioning is going to isolate a
disproportionate amount of entrepreneurs because they like Mady, I ain't
got enough money yet to be self caring. I ain't
(30:17):
got enough money yet to be dreaming enough my life.
I'm fighting for my life right. But as I move
into a different space of being okay with the fact
that I'm leading leaders and serving people who are already
serving people, That's where I'm evolving to and I got
to make space for the next person that can coach
you on day to day content. But I'm more so like,
(30:37):
how do we help We'll accelerate this mission because you
can hear a one hundred million people with the airways. Now,
let's if I help you. You get what I'm saying,
but I off the listeners. So the first part is
thinking about segmentation broadly and making sure we then prioritize
it the right way. The analogy I give in don't
let me lose the back end of the question. Will
When you go to shop, there are some people who
(30:59):
go Onlinelet's say you're looking for a black hoodie. Some
people go to their favorite website and just type black hoodie.
Other people follow the clicks. They go to mail, they
go black, they go hoodie, they go two x right,
So it's that same thing. You got to figure out
the best order of operations for you, and then that
informs who we're making the content for. So as you
(31:20):
see the next sort of twelve to eighteen months unfold
for me, as I'm talking more to the person that
wants to build their life and then the business falls it,
you'll see me showing my life that way, so part
of me showing the hobby, or you'll see me showing
the leadership team meetings. You'll see me not working, but
the business still doing well. Well, how are you doing this? Oh,
(31:40):
we've designed the company this way, and I want to
attract the people that are saying I desire to spend
more time doing things other than working.
Speaker 5 (31:48):
It seems like it's working for you. Tell me more.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
That's a perfect segue to my next thought. Here is
because you know, when I was just getting deep into
social you know, we heard a lot about and I
won't like talk about who the names are that said,
because it might have been true with the time is
you know you should be more narrowly focused because when
people click on your profile, they want to know what
are you about? But if you all over the place,
(32:12):
they don't know where to put you. And people and
not thinking it's deeply about you as you might think
they're thinking about you. And so what I appreciate about
a lot of your content? And now I can see
my you know, bird watching and taking photos of birds,
and who knew. The older I get, the more interested
I am in my bird feeder is full because I'm actually.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Watching it now, which is why I'm like.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
Oh man, they've been out of food. I gotta go
get the loans real quick and get them some bird food.
So my question here is for somebody who has a
lot of interests, even entrepreneurial interests. I have four businesses
even so it's even if it's not just hobbies. But
if I got several businesses, or it's several hobbies and businesses,
how do I still define myself quickly to somebody who's
(32:53):
not spending ten minutes on my profile.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
They just clicking through and said is it interesting?
Speaker 5 (32:57):
Or is he not? Man?
Speaker 4 (32:59):
So bro, there's a lot of sub questions inside of this.
So again I'm gonna start, and it helped me if
I drift off. The first thing is they were absolutely
spot on, and they're still spot on as it relates
to your social strategy.
Speaker 5 (33:13):
And the niche.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
I think if you want to maximize reach and or
let's say game the system maximize the greatest return on
social the tighter the focus, the quicker it is for
the algorithm to understand who you are, what you talk about,
and distribute it to people with similar interests. However, it
doesn't necessarily account for how we purchase. We don't just
(33:37):
buy linearly, and so there is this dynamic between how
do I stay tightly wound to one niche versus give
more of who I am? Right, if a person was
starting with zero followers today, I would not tell them
to do the strategy that I'm using. But if a
person is at a spot where their life or their
business has matured, then yeah, they can move into a
(33:59):
broader strategy. So that would be my first answer. The
second thing is, and this is the tough part, if
you have multiple interests, you can either treat your You're
probably still gonna need multiple pages, and you just decide,
am I gonna treat my main page like the river
that pours into the others? And so again, over the
(34:19):
next sort of year to year and a half, you'll
see me doing that. Mady, what are the person is
entirely too dynamic to be placed into one box.
Speaker 5 (34:29):
But I got some feeder pages that I built.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
So if you want to get really surgical on content,
what light we use, what mike, what editing technique, They'll
be a page and that's all it teaches.
Speaker 5 (34:39):
Wow, if you like what is this hobby, this bird
journey talk about? You want to go talk about bay
breasted warblers?
Speaker 4 (34:47):
I got you over there, And my main page will
sort of be more of a switchboard and more of
a just sort of who this person holistically, But that's
also gonna come at the expense of some of that
growth that if you were to just stay laser focused.
And I'm okay with that.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
Yeah, that that last point I want to go in
there because even if it's not even if it's bifurcated
on one platform, let's say it's not bifurcated one but
let's say, now I gotta manage Instagram. Now I gotta
minuge TikTok. Now I gotta manage Facebook still, which is
still a behemoth, even though the kid still a behemoth
and all these other things. X. I don't pay a
(35:23):
ton of attention, you know, business wise to X or
Twitter whatever whatever we want to call it. But for
a small business owner influencer maybe not so much. But
small business owners, how do they determine where to spend
the most time and effort limited resources to put into
this time.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
And money or personnel?
Speaker 5 (35:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (35:45):
What what do I do here?
Speaker 4 (35:48):
So the first part is I'm gonna say it's going
to depend on how big they want to grow the pie,
right like big? Yeah, So then we got we gotta
do it. We gotta do it in the state approach
like big companies do. And so the first part is
there's no way around those first few years of you
(36:08):
chasing everything that's coming left and right. But if you
are a little bit savvyer, let's say you already seasoned
in business, you need to figure out that my business
dev person, do I have the ability to grow sales
come up with ideas that work? Or my business ops
person where I fulfill the promises that this salesperson just
made the people the quicker? You know where to put
(36:28):
yourself the quicker? You know where do I start the
hiring process? So as I've grown, I know I'm a
business dev person, So I had to hire an operations
person to make sure all of these things get done
because I'm gonna be out here fancying up some new
concept and forget. I got to be somewhere four o'clock right,
just that that part of my brain. So I would say,
(36:52):
the hard me, the hard consultant would be, hey, look,
these first couple of years gonna kick your butt.
Speaker 5 (36:57):
But then here's what you need to do.
Speaker 4 (36:59):
You got to start to build and replace because you
can't be all things to all people. And then I'd
be remiss if I didn't say how much to impact
One of my best friends and clients, her name is
Connie as Falls. She runs an operational systems company. And
this is the policies, the processes, the procedures, how do
we do everything? So when Will does a podcast interview
(37:21):
at four, what is riverside, what Mike's what likes? All
that stuff need to be written down so that if
you are just walking in right at four, somebody can
do all it for you, or if you're absent and
you need a guest host, they can follow a step
by step framework in order to do exactly what you
do and get an eighty eighty five percent success rate.
The rest of it can be made up with coaching.
Speaker 5 (37:43):
So I think.
Speaker 4 (37:46):
We have a lot of us have personal brand businesses
and lifestyle businesses, and we don't think of them as
being a separate entity from ourselves or bigger than ourselves.
So the first challenge is you got to be thinking
about it that way. And when you started writing out,
instead of writing out what needs to be done, you
need to write out who is the best person to
do this? And then that keeps you in the process
(38:09):
of thinking about the business that way.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Love that. For I have three questions left and I'm
gonna give them to you a way.
Speaker 5 (38:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
So for if you were to distill.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
This conversation into three points, we've had a good conversation
here the small business owners this, corporations listening to this,
employees listening to this. If they only remember three things
and they couldn't rewind because with their phone that that
button just don't work on their Android. Why they got Android,
I don't know, but that rewind button didn't work. You
won't let them leave with three things. What are those
(38:39):
three things they got to get out of this conversation.
Speaker 4 (38:41):
The first thing would be social media is the most
disruptive form of innovation since the television. We read legacy
stories about people sending wires or the radio, but when
you talk to anybody and most of them are still living.
When you get into the era of the television and
and cable, etc. It disproportionately disrupted how business was done.
(39:05):
And the Internet is still, relatively speaking, in its infancy.
That's first, So prioritize social media because everything else you
need is here. The research, the sales, the community, the connections,
et cetera.
Speaker 5 (39:18):
That would be the number one thing.
Speaker 4 (39:20):
Number two thing is when you're building a business, you
have to It's fundamental that you spend more time thinking
about who are the people and what are the problems
than thinking about what product can I build. I need
to know who they are because that then leads me
to the products and the messaging. Most of us we
(39:42):
do it the other way around. We assume the world
is like us. We build what we want and what
we need, and then we scream from the top of
our lungs about why people should buy sad things, but
we don't. I would recommend you do it the other
way around. So understand, social media is huge, so huge
that if you find the right group of people, you
can click in the comments and you can follow some
folkts and you can start to see here are some problems.
(40:06):
And if I can develop a product or service, I can.
I got a business. I got a money opportunity. And
then the third thing would be situate yourself in the
right side of the business. Am I a person that
can go out and make a sell every day? Or
am a person that's going to swing the hammer and
get the job done every day? Hire for all the
other jobs that you aren't good at.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
This one is and I hate to ask two part questions,
but I have to get a two part question in
it is Historically, black people, black entrepreneurs don't spend enough
money in marketing. We don't allocate enough when we're starting up.
As those are statistics. We just don't put enough money
in marketing. And you talked about consistency posting three times
a day. You said that's not always a rule, but
it is just buying large. You need to post that much. Yeah,
(40:48):
what does consistency look like? So if I post Tuesday
and then I may scroll on Wednesday, but then I
post again Friday morning, but then I post it again
on Sunday.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Man I posted a lot last week? Is that a
lot or it is like.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
Should I be doing that noon, three pm and seven pm?
Speaker 5 (41:08):
Yeah, beautiful question.
Speaker 4 (41:09):
I would tell folks, even though it's not all about sales,
but this will help it make sense for folks post
every day that you want to make some money, right, Well,
you comfortable with your money coming in every once in
a while, post every once in a while, right, but
if you like, you know what, it'd be good to
make some money in the morning, and then again around lunch,
and then again before I lay down.
Speaker 5 (41:31):
Right.
Speaker 4 (41:31):
Then I orient my my content schedule around that because
all all things, ultimately we hope they lead to sales.
Whether I'm gaining awareness or nurturing or getting to a
hard core CTA or a conversion, we're sort of all
moving in that direction. So that would be my recommendation. There, Beautiful,
(41:52):
Did I cover the second part?
Speaker 5 (41:53):
Was?
Speaker 2 (41:53):
That was great?
Speaker 5 (41:54):
That was great?
Speaker 3 (41:55):
The last one is, you know, you obviously smart, You
could be doing a lot of things. Why did you
determine that you're going to spend your time doing this work?
Speaker 5 (42:05):
Man?
Speaker 4 (42:05):
So I read somewhere that like all businesses are birthed
out of some type of trauma, and oftentimes we're creating
what we wish existed for us at some point in
the past. So what I learned early was that I'm
really good at learning information and teaching it.
Speaker 5 (42:26):
And after working.
Speaker 4 (42:28):
In corporate for close to ten years and seeing the
money and getting the prestige and all of the things
that you would think light your spirit up, it came
at the expense of this other thing that's been sort
of nagging at me, And so I didn't fully know
what it looked like. I just knew that people call
me all the time and ask me what I think
about stuff, and then they'll go do exactly what I
(42:48):
told them to do, right, and then they'll hit me
back and be like, hey, Bruther, it's work. I didn't
know this was consultant. I thought I was just Homeme
on game.
Speaker 5 (42:55):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (42:57):
So this allows me to to selfishly do what I'm
good at and feel good about. But any other way,
I fully understand where we're going as a people talking
about us, black Boat, We've always been last in education, right,
(43:18):
hardest to be able to get the capital displaced by
technology the first, right the fastest. So if I can
share this stuff that I don't win in and got
from these fancy universities, and if I can share this
stuff that I learned at these fancy corporations, and even
if I'm humble enough to share my entrepreneurial failures, I'll
be able to help somebody overcome some of the things
that I went through. All I gotta do is just
(43:40):
be willing to share it. It just so happens that
one of the byproducts is you can also make a
living from it too.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Fantasy Body ordered, So glad you spent.
Speaker 5 (43:49):
This time on me. This was great. Bro.
Speaker 4 (43:51):
Listen, man, I again for cut this off if you
need to, But I need people to understand what grace
looked like because you don't extending me a lot of
grace over.
Speaker 5 (44:02):
The sort of evolution of our relationship we locked in.
Speaker 4 (44:05):
Thank you for the platform, and thank you for the
opportunity to share with your with your with your audience.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
Keep doing what you're doing, and I'm so proud of
you and I'm not having watched your growth.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
And thank this guy. This guy ain't even the limit
for whatsow for you. Wow, So proud of you. Man.
Speaker 5 (44:21):
Appreciate your brother, Thank you man.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
Absolutely Black Tech Green Money is a production the Blavity
Afro Tech on the Black Effect podcast Networking Night Hire Media.
It's produced by Morgan Debonne and me Well Lucas, with
additional production support by Kate McDonald, s er and Jada McGee.
Special thank you to Michael Davis in Love Beach. Learn
more about my guessing other technives offers an innovator's afrotech
(44:43):
dot com.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
The video version of this episode will.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Drop to Black Tech Green Money on YouTube, so tap in,
enjoy your Black Tech Green Money, Share this to somebody,
Go get your money.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
Peace in love
Afrotech Conference is back, bringing together over twenty thousand tech enthusiasts, founders, investors,
and more for another unforgettable year. For years, afro Tech
has been the go to event for black innovators in
tech with the brightest mind share the latest developments and insights,
and this year we're bringing the experience to Houston, Texas
from November thirteenth through the sixteenth. Join us to learn
(00:20):
from the innovators and leaders who are shaping the future
of tech. From insightful panels to curated meetups and expansive recruiting,
you'll connect with industry trailblazers. In addition to focusing on
the latest and AI and data, this year's programming explores
the intersextions of tech with health, environment and creative design.
Don't miss your chance to be part of it. Secure
your spoted afro Tech Conference twenty twenty four today visit
(00:42):
Afrotech Conference dot counter Buy your ticket now. I'm Will
Lucas and this is Black Tech, Green Money Marketing Strategists.
Maddy Woodard is an innovative thinking with broad business acumen
and in depth marketing and branding experience. He serves as
a marketing consultant Chief marketing Officer. It was previously a marketing,
(01:02):
brand analyst and associated brand manager at Mars PetCare, which
is home to Ims, Pedigree and more, and he was
brand manager at new brands home the Rubber May, Great
Co and Paper May.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
His social media profiles teach.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Others how to grow online and monetize their content and insights.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
So I am.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Super curious about social strategy and I have a question
that's kind of selfish, but I know a lot of
people have the same thing. Why am I stuck out
of seventeen thousand followers on Instagram?
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Stuck?
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Like I just got to I was at like sixteen
point nine that I went to invest fast and I
got to seventeen but then but I've been at sixteen forever. Yep,
Why am I stuck?
Speaker 4 (01:47):
So man, beautiful question, and I'll try to give the
short version of the answer. What we know of Instagram
has changed dramatically, and I would say this CEO has
been dropping the nuggets of it. But I'll try to
tie it all together. The first thing is we got
to remember how did we used to grow? So there's
(02:08):
pretty much organic growth, which would come through the form
of people sharing your content primarily to their group of friends.
And in the second part, I'm not talking about paid, right,
But the second part is what I would call algorithmic.
So this is usually hashtags, keywords, or different things that
will get you on the search tab or the explore
tab at this point, a lot of us if we
(02:31):
don't play the second part of the game, right, if
we're only counting on our core audience to distribute us,
we end up in sort of a loop of the
same people seeing the same things, sharing it to the
same people, and they've already made a decision on whether
they're going to follow us or not. So your follower
base might be seventeen thousand, your awareness base may be
ten x that, right, So there may be easily enough
(02:53):
people that's like, oh, I've seen brother's face, I'm familiar
with him, but it isn't worth a follow, right. So
the question because how do we play the algorithmic game
so that we can disproportionately grow At this current stage
we're in late twenty twenty four, what the Instagram has
said is we're maximizing, we're prioritizing reach over everything. What
I hear that to mean is some of our more
(03:15):
niche based content or some of our more brand based content.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
It's dead on a rifle. If you don't play to the.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
Mass audience, you're going to have a hard time getting
people to stop long enough to follow you. So now
let's look at a couple of triggers that get you
to the masses. One is music. So if you can
catch a trend or start a trend at the right time,
what does that mean. I've seen that. Typically if you
can see a song or audio that's growing, but it's
(03:44):
under ten thousand plays, but it appears to be growing,
I try to catch that wave and ride it to
twenty thirty hundred thousand, or if you have the ability
to start something. So you're probably tired of this, but
we're a couple of weeks away from very demure, very mindful.
Speaker 5 (03:59):
Right.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
If you can be the person at the forefront of
something like that, then every time a person goes to
search for the origin of the history of this, they
got a different portionate amount of chance of landing back
in front of you. So it gets a little lengthy,
But for most of us, we're making too broad I'm sorry,
too tight up content. We're talking to a certain group
of people, we're talking to them in a more familiar
(04:21):
term when we need to be talking more to the
masses in a more general language.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
So I follow up to that I think will bless
some people. So there's two questions there for me. There's one, Yeah,
I want to be seen by more people. I want
more people to know who I am just for general
awareness purposes. Yes, factual, I would love to be at
twenty thirty forty thousand plus followers. I'm not seventeen today.
I can't complain about that. But the other thing is
(04:46):
also not to be so focused on those numbers, because
sometimes the right people following you, even if you don't
have a whole bunch of people following you, also matters.
I've gotten opportunities with my smaller amount of followers just
because the right people are following. So as an entrepreneur
or somebody who's using this for business objectives, and I'm
not trying to be flute out, you know, why does
(05:08):
this matter?
Speaker 5 (05:10):
Man? Beautiful?
Speaker 4 (05:11):
And I'll go to our origin. You were one of
the people of influence that caught me at the budding phase, right,
so I had looked at and try notes.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
You first reached out to me in twenty nineteen. Oh wow. Yeah,
So apologies for the.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
Five year lad, But I say that to say you
were one of those people in my world that were
the right people following me before I became Instagram famous.
And when you're in that space, these people have already
built platforms that you can stand on, and.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
These people already have.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
Sort of voices and megaphones that amplify whatever it is
that you're communicating. So to anyone that's in both of
those spaces, if you're feeling like, dang, I'm still struggling
to grow and I don't know.
Speaker 5 (05:53):
If I got the right mix of people following.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
This is where asking something, and I don't mean call
to action in the genera, but I mean in in
a genuine form, ask something and see what you get back.
Ask for the share, ask for the introduction, ask for
the opportunity to collaborate, and.
Speaker 5 (06:11):
See what that sort of conversation starts to prove.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
And then the last part of it is, and this
is sort of a compliment to what you were saying,
Will the dms are magical, bro, There's a lot of
stuff that we just can't do on platform. It's not
the right space to be an open conversation to the public,
but the right time private message with with like like
positive intent, it opens up a world of opportunities.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
So how attentive should we be for what it appears Instagram,
particularly Instagram? And then we'll talk about other things. I
was talking about your story, but when Instagram is appears
to be testing things like right now, you see if
you go to your DMS, you see now a time
stories kind of in the DMS, Like you know, I
can write a note, I still don't stand what that
(07:01):
thing is, But how if I'm trying to grow, should
I be paying attention to those new features?
Speaker 5 (07:07):
So let me add that contextual.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
If we simplify the buyer's journey or most people are
called in the funnel into like three core steps. You
got to get some awareness. People can't buy what they've
never heard of. You need some level of trust, some
level of additional information consideration, and then you need the
final purchase and or subsequent purchases. What I think is
(07:30):
most of us overlook how many people we need in
phase one just pure awareness, right, and then when you
go to phase two what you just asked me is
a two to three sort of a phase two to
phase three strategy. At this point, I wouldn't be so
aware to any one platform that we neglect all of
the things that we should be doing to move people
(07:51):
down that path to purchase. And it might look like
that pop up note as a gentle reminder of staying
top of mind at a minimum. What I like about stories,
what I like about DM notes is that it brings
you back to the forefront and you're like, oh, I
do oh, will the follow up? Or I was just
adding that to my car because I don't know if
you have kids, But one of the craziest things that
(08:12):
we find from research is we be about to buy.
Speaker 5 (08:14):
Something and then kid does something.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
And we write, and the ins for something that you've
been wanting to do takes two more weeks before you
get the mental sort of focus to then click the button.
So the number one thing that I would be doing
and saying, what are the strategies that allowed me to
stay top of mind? Because people buy when they ready
to buy, not when we ready to sell.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
So you have a corporate background, and so what about
social If you can tell a brief story about your
corporate background and think what piqued your interest about social
and what was that opportunity you saw that you took
advantage of to become the money where.
Speaker 5 (08:51):
We are today.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
So my quickest way to sum this up is, I'm
the smart dude from the hood, right. So I was
that kid that great grades, did athletics, but it was
more of a means to an end. Got to college
and was excelling, but I didn't quite have that direction.
I was between corporate finance and marketing. I met a
guy who went on to become a mentor, and he said, Man,
(09:14):
if you got the financial chops to do corporate finance,
investment banking, you will thrive in marketing because it's not
just the creative things. You're the person that's running the business.
You need to have that analytical rigger and that creative muscle.
Speaker 5 (09:28):
Cool.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Almost ten years in corporate and I see this thing
taking off that I'll just call direct to consumer. I'm
coming from big corporate, you guys. So we're talking paper mad,
ink pins, number one ink pen brand in the world,
Pedigree dog food, number one dot food brand in the world,
great go baby product. So the car seats business. So
you're so disconnected from the people. Our customer was Walmart, Amazon,
(09:54):
We called the final purchaser, the consumer, you know what
I mean. But as a person who's sitting here with
both minds thinking, the employee in me is thinking about
how do I do my job? The aspiring entrepreneurs thinking
there's no more red tape, right, I don't have to
do all of this bureaucratical stuff to get a concept
(10:14):
from out of my brain into the market. What if
we can just put some out in front of folks
and get straight to the interaction, whether that be a
sell or follow or whatever it is that we're looking for.
So I was sort of on the front end of it,
but I didn't have a magic ball.
Speaker 5 (10:31):
I did not.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
Foresee it becoming this big, this fast because I started
college right at the start of Facebook, and so my
initial introduction to social media was flirting with girls. It
was never right coming up with products and services and
going direct a consumer. But once I was sort of
seasoned in business, I realized the power and I sort
of went full steam ahead in this area.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
So I saw this meme today and this is this
I'm going to tell you what this question is for.
This question is an opportunity for you to talk about
how are you the truth? So I'm gonna give you that.
And so I saw this meme and it said, just
like an hour or two ago, I should have screenshoted it,
but it said, anybody that's making eighty thousand dollars a month,
it's not going to be on Instagram teaching you how
to make eighty thousand dollars a month. They're going to
(11:14):
be trying to sell you something that you can make
sure they can make it that eight thousand dollars a month.
And so talk about how you are actually providing value
and yeah, this might be this may be a source
of income for you, but you're actually providing value.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
Yeah, So I would I would like to say I
sit at the intersection of a person who is got
a certain level of education, be a high school, college,
it could be advanced education, and then the market itself.
And you're sitting here and you're trying to figure out
do I go get a job or if I have
(11:50):
a job, like, what do I then do with my
extra income, my extra time or these creative endeavors that
I have in my mind because I don't really know
how to get this from my brain to final thing,
you know what I mean. So understanding that dynamic like
there's a huge gap between I'll give it another way.
(12:11):
I say that the college took career pipeline is corroded.
It used to be almost a promise that if you
went somewhere applied yourself, it was for sure to get
your job.
Speaker 5 (12:20):
Now that's not the case.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
And if it does get your job, it ain't for
sure to get you the one in your major or
in your desire feel to study, or even better, you
could advance quicker going outside the organization than through the
organization in some respects because the old way things were done,
your manager had to walk you through something and you
go through training. Now I just get on YouTube university
(12:43):
and I don't have to wait the two weeks to
get one on one time with my line manager, you know,
the person directly above me. So what I'm doing is
taking this information, synthesizing it and saying, hey, whether you
are again working and you got extra capacity, or whether
you're right here full time entrepreneur, let's get you further
faster using all this stuff that I have learned to
(13:04):
aggregated over the last fifteen years. And that's sort of
the corner of the Internet that I occupy unfortunately. I
also occupy that with people who are just extremely charismatic,
really good at sales, but the thing that they've created
may not be of substance. They're just playing a marketing
psychology game. So I'm more of a market than a salesperson.
I try to study people, see what they need, create
(13:26):
the thing, and let you know that it's available. But
I don't have a lot of things after you saying
not right now or this isn't for me, I don't
have a bunch of creative ways to overcome those objections.
Speaker 5 (13:37):
I just hope I get it right by doing my research.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
So my question, my next question is like who are
you specifically speaking to? So here's my personal mission. I've
talked about on this podcast a couple of times. My
personal mission is to create content and opportunities for black people,
black entrepreneurs to help them realize entrepreneurial success beyond their
wildest dreams. So everything I do is pointed to help
(14:03):
black people realize entrepreneurial success beyond.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Their wildest dreams.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
If I were to provide an opportunity for you to say,
what who's Mondy's speaking to and why is he speaking
to them?
Speaker 4 (14:13):
What is that mission for you, and it's changed. So
I'm gonna give you the old and I'll let you
know where I'm bridging to mine. Wasn't that doubt in
on a market? It was more so, how do I
create content that runs around the internet, runs up your
bank account without.
Speaker 5 (14:28):
Being online all day? Like you don't have to.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
Be glued to your phone if your content and or
marketing endeavors or working on your behalf. What that led to, though,
was for most people, what ends up being burnt out?
Even with my best of intentions, it's so competitive for
attention that I'm saying post three to five times per
day not to drag you. I'm saying post three times
(14:52):
per three to five times per day because you have
to develop the discipline. And you may be coming from
a non communication background, like I s read in your story.
You came from radio, right, so you understand a certain
level of communication that might that rule may not be
for you. But if you've been working as a dental
hygienist who's now an aspire and fashion designer, you've never
learned how to communicate a message that aspires a person
(15:14):
to take an action. So I spent the first five
years of my life trying to talk to that person
who had a breakdown between how do I say this
stuff in order to get where I'm going. My next
phase is talking to the people to say, man, listen,
I went out and surveyed the land.
Speaker 5 (15:32):
Some things are good, a lot of things aren't.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
You need to build the life that you want first
and then build a business that's around it. So if
you say I want to spend more time with my kids,
or if you say I want to be retired by fifty.
Speaker 5 (15:46):
Right, what is that life you want to live?
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Now, let's get you into a box of what business
best sitsts. This situates that versus the other way around.
We never make time for life when we build a
business first. And I've done my fair share of like
pushing the grind, although well intentioned, and now I'm in
a space where I'm trying to talk to the more
holistic human and entrepreneurship is just a facet of what we.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Do for someone somebody out there him. I'm talking to me,
someone out there who you know. I put it this way,
Gary Vannachuk has this thing, you know, create document don't create,
And I appreciate that sentiment, and I'm an entrepreneur of
for businesses and have a personal brand and all these things.
(16:31):
The majority of my day is sitting in front of
a computer, the large majority of my day, And I'm like,
I don't know what to post, Like, sitting in front
of my computer is not interesting? And how so for
people who are like, my day is not I don't
live in New York, I don't live in LA I
don't live in Chicago. It's not always beautiful and scenic,
and I don't always have, you know, the vibe like
(16:51):
it's not always that way. My life doesn't look like that.
How do I know what to post when I'm constantly saying, no,
this is not interesting.
Speaker 5 (17:00):
Yep, I love it.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
So I think a couple of different things, and sometimes
will we just have a we know more people like
ourselves and they become the folks that were testing these
concept off, even if we never talk to them. So
you're looking through your left and your right and you're like, man,
my brother don't want to watch this. Right, my business
order don't want to watch this. But on the flip side,
to that kid, remind me of Toledo, Yeah, Toledo, Ohio.
(17:24):
Right to that kid in Toledo, who has no idea
how to leave Toledo and be in one metropolitan city
one day in another metropolitan city the next day. They
don't know what that looks like. How do you how
do you juggle time zones? How do you manage your calendar?
How do you review somebody's business presentation and also send
(17:45):
one over to somebody?
Speaker 5 (17:47):
Right?
Speaker 4 (17:47):
They don't know. So I think there's a literal form
of document and or capture what you're doing. But then
there's another piece that says, what if I were to
block out my schedule for the next week and say
what are the three critical things that I'm gonna get
I'm gonna get done that if a person wants to
walk a similar walk, and what are the sub steps?
So how do you get booked to speak in front
(18:09):
of twenty thousand people? And then what does it look
like from multiple vantage points? Camera behind you seeing what
you see, camera in front of you, seeing what they see,
and merging that story to say this is Will when
he's at investmentest or this is me when I'm interviewing
three people for my podcast. So I think, don't sell
yourself short that your peer might not want to see
(18:30):
it right. But the person aspiring or the person that's
saying I don't even know how I get on these platforms,
they may want to love to hear the backstory of
how they end up being able to be interviewed by you.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
So I think those things are critical.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
I'd also push and say for the next phase of it,
and this is we just got old.
Speaker 5 (18:48):
But again, if you got kids, needces a nephew.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
They been watching YouTube of kids playing games and making
slime and doing things that we didn't do growing up.
Speaker 5 (18:57):
I wanted to.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
Play baseball and not watch people play it right, and
so that level of voyeurism. But from a positive side,
I think that's only going to become more intensive over
the next few years. So don't sell short that it
might be helpful to just set up a streaming camera
and then come back on the editing side and show
what it looks like to put in eight hours of
focus work.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
That's super good.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
So I don't believe tech companies particularly love me, and
I mean just in general US US. They don't love
us to create things, to create, you know, opportunity for them.
And so here's what I mean by that. More specifically,
I remember when we opened toll House here. Toe House
is a private social club that we own that I
own myself and my wife obviously black owned because I'm black.
(19:41):
And I remember when we signed up for Google to
be on Google Business, I remember getting things in the
mail that said, you know, if you're black owned business,
add that to your Google profile. And I'm like, I'm
not going to do that, and so I never added
it to my Google profile. And then I remember as
time goes on the coffee house, we have a coffee house.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Here and we're the number.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
So if you google Intoledo coffee houses coffee shops, we
show up first. And my conspiracy, my ten hat person,
my my Alex Jones, where it says like if I
if I had black owned on there, I wouldn't be
showing up number one. And so my question is this
is for black founders, small business owners. And I'm not
(20:22):
asking you to agree with that statement. That's just another
conspiracy thing that I believe is what unique challenges do
we have when we're trying to grow online?
Speaker 4 (20:35):
Man, we got a lot of them, right, And so
I would say if we break it down into let's
call it the business strategy side. So getting the right idea,
getting the right business model. All those things, then if
we get into the management and scale part and then
probably pure financials, we got issues and opportunities in all three.
(20:58):
Number one being how do I start the right business?
A lot of us are starting businesses with load to
no barrier to entry, which in some respects is all
upside because you don't have to invest a lot to
get proof of concept. In other respects, you're literally moving
into a dead end street. Like people have went into
(21:19):
these industries determined that the market isn't as big or
isn't as viable, which is why it is low to
no barriers to entry and so to no thought of
your own more so ignorance. You're starting something that doesn't
make a lot of sense at scale.
Speaker 5 (21:34):
Right, So that first.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
Part could be covered through coaching and mentorship, assuming that
we can remove the.
Speaker 5 (21:43):
Sort of like the praying of people that happens over there.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
The second phase, which is how do we manage, run
and scale, and it's connected to the third phase. This
one is one of our hardest challenges because it's expensive
to go out and grab and retain top talent, but
it's even more expensive to try to run a business
without top talent, and so you end up where you
typically have very strong founders who are working way more
(22:11):
lateral across the business to overcompensate for the mid to
lower management that just doesn't have the chops or don't
have the resources because we don't have the money to
go out and recruit and go out and do what
some of these big companies do. And that's why I
say it's connected to the third piece. We typically see
what it's like to get starting funding, seed funding, some
(22:32):
of the preliminary investment money, but we don't see what
it's like to get continuous money for growth. And some
of our favorite companies they were able to run in
the red for five, seven, ten, twelve years.
Speaker 5 (22:44):
Will if we came up.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
With a business right now and the person saying pay
us back in ten years, I think we can figure.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
It out, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (22:50):
And who's going to give you money after you haven't
paid back the first set of people because they still
see the vision and you could be like any five
more years, you know what I mean?
Speaker 5 (23:01):
Because when you do that, it's move lines it out.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
It makes up for some of the innovations that don't
do well or some of the mismanagement and mishaps, or
for us, we got to turn a profit so quick,
right a person you get money from a black person,
they want to know how.
Speaker 5 (23:15):
Fast do I get my money back? And God forbid.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
You're working in a business that has to hold strong catch.
So if you've got high amount of plant, property, equipment,
or inventory where things where your business may be strong,
but a lot of it is just tied up in
working capital, we tend to struggle. And so then we
go back to stage one and say, can I start
a different type of business that doesn't have those downstream issues,
(23:43):
and then we end up ballooning where all of us
are just consultants for each other.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
A lot of your content I've enjoyed because you you
spit game, you know, like nobody's business. But you also
show a little bit of your personal side. You're into,
you have different hobbies, which I enjoy it seeing that
side of you also. But at the end of the day,
I imagine you could probably have a private account if
you weren't trying to drive business, because what's the point Otherwise,
(24:12):
how would you recommend people who have small businesses treat
their content. Whether I'm trying to you know, sell things
or just you know, create things that get me in
the news feed that the things that I'm trying to
sell these I'm probably won't get me a new feed
probably yep yep. So I think and you I don't
(24:37):
even know like you, I can't explain to LA you
just threw me because it goes back to the origin
of where we started, which I'll call the new social
media versus the old and I haven't said this live
anywhere yet. We'd be better off treating all of social
media just like awareness and not trying to convert anymore
at this point, like there will be some conversions that
(24:59):
take place, but what if you triple your effort on awareness.
You need to also have a product or service that
isn't tied to geographic boundaries. So a lot of brick
and mortal struggle struggles because you can't control where this
content spills out once it lands and does well. So
even if you have a restaurant, you better have a
recipe book, you better have some seasonings, something that you
(25:22):
can port and sell because the content knows no geographic bounds. Right,
So I would say, uh, those that have a service
based business or the ability ship products they can win
a disproportionate amount of.
Speaker 5 (25:35):
It from there.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
Now, let's stay top of mind, top of like top
of funnel content and look at doing the traditional old
things like text message marketing, email marketing into a degree
DM marketing to get to that middleman at middle and
bottom funnel.
Speaker 5 (25:51):
So I think about the.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
Phases of awareness and create content around that. So a
person who is not problem aware, I mean, and they
don't even know that something's wrong all the way to
a person who is problem aware, but they're just sort
of trying to make a decision on who.
Speaker 5 (26:07):
To buy from.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
I tell a person who was starting today, put a
disproportion in seventy, if not eighty percent of your content
needs to be top of funnel focus. And then you
need to convert them off of social which is counter
to what I've been saying for the last five to
seven years.
Speaker 5 (26:23):
And that's that is.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
One hundred percent based on looking at the algorithm change.
So when I look at my most recent nine posts,
sixty sixty five percent of them are landing on strangers.
Great for reach, horrible for conversion.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
For people who own businesses that aren't necessarily sexy. Let's
say I got a carpet cleaning business, or I'm a
big company. I'm We're doing hundreds of millions and we
have you know, just non sexy whatever, pick your non
sexy category. If they want to go create an Instagram,
take tire account. My thought is, okay, why would I
(27:00):
want to follow you? So you have a corporate background
and you're now at this company, you know, Joe's, you know,
metal Bending fact fabrication place, You're now the CMO. You're
gonna can you give him a social strategy? What is
Maty thinking in that capacity?
Speaker 5 (27:21):
Yeah? I love it. I think we're seeing it happen.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
Founder led stories is probably how I would attack those
type of businesses. So I'm mighty, and I'm on the
journey to build Mady's metal bending company. It's less about
here's how you fabricate metals and here's how hot the
the fire needs to get, because that ain't to your point.
I'm not following that, but the journeys of ups and downs.
(27:46):
A mighty doing this, And I'm going to go look
for a building and I'm putting in a bid and
I got out bed and I'm gonna stay prayer for
and I'm using my brothers wood shock to those stories.
The brand story, the story of the person and or
people building it is how I will win over the
hearts and minds of people. And I just supplement that
we actually are really, really good at what we do
(28:09):
in the backdrop of the story. So I would say
it's less about showing the metal or the glass cleaning
or the grass cutting, and more about the character of
the person that's doing this and taking people on those journeys. Now,
what I would for non sexy businesses, and I don't
want to leave my people who have brick and mortar isolated,
(28:30):
I would augment their stuff with paid because you can
get very targeted to a group of people within geographic boundaries,
and that would be a stronger way for them to
grow on social than to play the traditional organic game
to where it spills out into anybody. We can draw
a fence, a digital fence around one hundred miles around
Toledo with people who got various interests, and then we
(28:53):
can set up a set of rules if they've seen
this piece of content, show them that piece of content,
and subsequent sort of strategies from there.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
For folks who like when we were talking about my
personal mission, which is, you know, black entrepreneurs help them
create business beyond their wides streams. You said you think
about yours your efforts differently. We're often taught you know,
you got to think about who is my niche, who
is my target audience, and focus your thing talking to
that person, build an avatar of what they look like,
(29:22):
what do they what do they eat for breakfast this morning?
All these things for should we be thinking the same
way about our presence on social like who am I
posting to?
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Who am I talking to? Every time I post?
Speaker 4 (29:35):
For sure, absolutely, I think it will help. It will
help drive that content. Now let's go back real quick,
because I got to do it for the listeners. When
we get into targeting, targeting follows segmentation. Segmentation is just
a fancy way of saying, how do I organize these
people in the meaningful groups?
Speaker 5 (29:53):
And typically we have a love affair.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
With demographic segmentation, age, sex, maryland status, income. We typically
inadvertently neglect behavioral and psychographic or what lifestyle and what
phase in their life may they be in. So I'm
aware that my new positioning is going to isolate a
disproportionate amount of entrepreneurs because they like Mady, I ain't
got enough money yet to be self caring. I ain't
(30:17):
got enough money yet to be dreaming enough my life.
I'm fighting for my life right. But as I move
into a different space of being okay with the fact
that I'm leading leaders and serving people who are already
serving people, That's where I'm evolving to and I got
to make space for the next person that can coach
you on day to day content. But I'm more so like,
(30:37):
how do we help We'll accelerate this mission because you
can hear a one hundred million people with the airways. Now,
let's if I help you. You get what I'm saying,
but I off the listeners. So the first part is
thinking about segmentation broadly and making sure we then prioritize
it the right way. The analogy I give in don't
let me lose the back end of the question. Will
When you go to shop, there are some people who
(30:59):
go Onlinelet's say you're looking for a black hoodie. Some
people go to their favorite website and just type black hoodie.
Other people follow the clicks. They go to mail, they
go black, they go hoodie, they go two x right,
So it's that same thing. You got to figure out
the best order of operations for you, and then that
informs who we're making the content for. So as you
(31:20):
see the next sort of twelve to eighteen months unfold
for me, as I'm talking more to the person that
wants to build their life and then the business falls it,
you'll see me showing my life that way, so part
of me showing the hobby, or you'll see me showing
the leadership team meetings. You'll see me not working, but
the business still doing well. Well, how are you doing this? Oh,
(31:40):
we've designed the company this way, and I want to
attract the people that are saying I desire to spend
more time doing things other than working.
Speaker 5 (31:48):
It seems like it's working for you. Tell me more.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
That's a perfect segue to my next thought. Here is
because you know, when I was just getting deep into
social you know, we heard a lot about and I
won't like talk about who the names are that said,
because it might have been true with the time is
you know you should be more narrowly focused because when
people click on your profile, they want to know what
are you about? But if you all over the place,
(32:12):
they don't know where to put you. And people and
not thinking it's deeply about you as you might think
they're thinking about you. And so what I appreciate about
a lot of your content? And now I can see
my you know, bird watching and taking photos of birds,
and who knew. The older I get, the more interested
I am in my bird feeder is full because I'm actually.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Watching it now, which is why I'm like.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
Oh man, they've been out of food. I gotta go
get the loans real quick and get them some bird food.
So my question here is for somebody who has a
lot of interests, even entrepreneurial interests. I have four businesses
even so it's even if it's not just hobbies. But
if I got several businesses, or it's several hobbies and businesses,
how do I still define myself quickly to somebody who's
(32:53):
not spending ten minutes on my profile.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
They just clicking through and said is it interesting?
Speaker 5 (32:57):
Or is he not? Man?
Speaker 4 (32:59):
So bro, there's a lot of sub questions inside of this.
So again I'm gonna start, and it helped me if
I drift off. The first thing is they were absolutely
spot on, and they're still spot on as it relates
to your social strategy.
Speaker 5 (33:13):
And the niche.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
I think if you want to maximize reach and or
let's say game the system maximize the greatest return on
social the tighter the focus, the quicker it is for
the algorithm to understand who you are, what you talk about,
and distribute it to people with similar interests. However, it
doesn't necessarily account for how we purchase. We don't just
(33:37):
buy linearly, and so there is this dynamic between how
do I stay tightly wound to one niche versus give
more of who I am? Right, if a person was
starting with zero followers today, I would not tell them
to do the strategy that I'm using. But if a
person is at a spot where their life or their
business has matured, then yeah, they can move into a
(33:59):
broader strategy. So that would be my first answer. The
second thing is, and this is the tough part, if
you have multiple interests, you can either treat your You're
probably still gonna need multiple pages, and you just decide,
am I gonna treat my main page like the river
that pours into the others? And so again, over the
(34:19):
next sort of year to year and a half, you'll
see me doing that. Mady, what are the person is
entirely too dynamic to be placed into one box.
Speaker 5 (34:29):
But I got some feeder pages that I built.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
So if you want to get really surgical on content,
what light we use, what mike, what editing technique, They'll
be a page and that's all it teaches.
Speaker 5 (34:39):
Wow, if you like what is this hobby, this bird
journey talk about? You want to go talk about bay
breasted warblers?
Speaker 4 (34:47):
I got you over there, And my main page will
sort of be more of a switchboard and more of
a just sort of who this person holistically, But that's
also gonna come at the expense of some of that
growth that if you were to just stay laser focused.
And I'm okay with that.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
Yeah, that that last point I want to go in
there because even if it's not even if it's bifurcated
on one platform, let's say it's not bifurcated one but
let's say, now I gotta manage Instagram. Now I gotta
minuge TikTok. Now I gotta manage Facebook still, which is
still a behemoth, even though the kid still a behemoth
and all these other things. X. I don't pay a
(35:23):
ton of attention, you know, business wise to X or
Twitter whatever whatever we want to call it. But for
a small business owner influencer maybe not so much. But
small business owners, how do they determine where to spend
the most time and effort limited resources to put into
this time.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
And money or personnel?
Speaker 5 (35:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (35:45):
What what do I do here?
Speaker 4 (35:48):
So the first part is I'm gonna say it's going
to depend on how big they want to grow the pie,
right like big? Yeah, So then we got we gotta
do it. We gotta do it in the state approach
like big companies do. And so the first part is
there's no way around those first few years of you
(36:08):
chasing everything that's coming left and right. But if you
are a little bit savvyer, let's say you already seasoned
in business, you need to figure out that my business
dev person, do I have the ability to grow sales
come up with ideas that work? Or my business ops
person where I fulfill the promises that this salesperson just
made the people the quicker? You know where to put
(36:28):
yourself the quicker? You know where do I start the
hiring process? So as I've grown, I know I'm a
business dev person, So I had to hire an operations
person to make sure all of these things get done
because I'm gonna be out here fancying up some new
concept and forget. I got to be somewhere four o'clock right,
just that that part of my brain. So I would say,
(36:52):
the hard me, the hard consultant would be, hey, look,
these first couple of years gonna kick your butt.
Speaker 5 (36:57):
But then here's what you need to do.
Speaker 4 (36:59):
You got to start to build and replace because you
can't be all things to all people. And then I'd
be remiss if I didn't say how much to impact
One of my best friends and clients, her name is
Connie as Falls. She runs an operational systems company. And
this is the policies, the processes, the procedures, how do
we do everything? So when Will does a podcast interview
(37:21):
at four, what is riverside, what Mike's what likes? All
that stuff need to be written down so that if
you are just walking in right at four, somebody can
do all it for you, or if you're absent and
you need a guest host, they can follow a step
by step framework in order to do exactly what you
do and get an eighty eighty five percent success rate.
The rest of it can be made up with coaching.
Speaker 5 (37:43):
So I think.
Speaker 4 (37:46):
We have a lot of us have personal brand businesses
and lifestyle businesses, and we don't think of them as
being a separate entity from ourselves or bigger than ourselves.
So the first challenge is you got to be thinking
about it that way. And when you started writing out,
instead of writing out what needs to be done, you
need to write out who is the best person to
do this? And then that keeps you in the process
(38:09):
of thinking about the business that way.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Love that. For I have three questions left and I'm
gonna give them to you a way.
Speaker 5 (38:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
So for if you were to distill.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
This conversation into three points, we've had a good conversation
here the small business owners this, corporations listening to this,
employees listening to this. If they only remember three things
and they couldn't rewind because with their phone that that
button just don't work on their Android. Why they got Android,
I don't know, but that rewind button didn't work. You
won't let them leave with three things. What are those
(38:39):
three things they got to get out of this conversation.
Speaker 4 (38:41):
The first thing would be social media is the most
disruptive form of innovation since the television. We read legacy
stories about people sending wires or the radio, but when
you talk to anybody and most of them are still living.
When you get into the era of the television and
and cable, etc. It disproportionately disrupted how business was done.
(39:05):
And the Internet is still, relatively speaking, in its infancy.
That's first, So prioritize social media because everything else you
need is here. The research, the sales, the community, the connections,
et cetera.
Speaker 5 (39:18):
That would be the number one thing.
Speaker 4 (39:20):
Number two thing is when you're building a business, you
have to It's fundamental that you spend more time thinking
about who are the people and what are the problems
than thinking about what product can I build. I need
to know who they are because that then leads me
to the products and the messaging. Most of us we
(39:42):
do it the other way around. We assume the world
is like us. We build what we want and what
we need, and then we scream from the top of
our lungs about why people should buy sad things, but
we don't. I would recommend you do it the other
way around. So understand, social media is huge, so huge
that if you find the right group of people, you
can click in the comments and you can follow some
folkts and you can start to see here are some problems.
(40:06):
And if I can develop a product or service, I can.
I got a business. I got a money opportunity. And
then the third thing would be situate yourself in the
right side of the business. Am I a person that
can go out and make a sell every day? Or
am a person that's going to swing the hammer and
get the job done every day? Hire for all the
other jobs that you aren't good at.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
This one is and I hate to ask two part questions,
but I have to get a two part question in
it is Historically, black people, black entrepreneurs don't spend enough
money in marketing. We don't allocate enough when we're starting up.
As those are statistics. We just don't put enough money
in marketing. And you talked about consistency posting three times
a day. You said that's not always a rule, but
it is just buying large. You need to post that much. Yeah,
(40:48):
what does consistency look like? So if I post Tuesday
and then I may scroll on Wednesday, but then I
post again Friday morning, but then I post it again
on Sunday.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Man I posted a lot last week? Is that a
lot or it is like.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
Should I be doing that noon, three pm and seven pm?
Speaker 5 (41:08):
Yeah, beautiful question.
Speaker 4 (41:09):
I would tell folks, even though it's not all about sales,
but this will help it make sense for folks post
every day that you want to make some money, right, Well,
you comfortable with your money coming in every once in
a while, post every once in a while, right, but
if you like, you know what, it'd be good to
make some money in the morning, and then again around lunch,
and then again before I lay down.
Speaker 5 (41:31):
Right.
Speaker 4 (41:31):
Then I orient my my content schedule around that because
all all things, ultimately we hope they lead to sales.
Whether I'm gaining awareness or nurturing or getting to a
hard core CTA or a conversion, we're sort of all
moving in that direction. So that would be my recommendation. There, Beautiful,
(41:52):
Did I cover the second part?
Speaker 5 (41:53):
Was?
Speaker 2 (41:53):
That was great?
Speaker 5 (41:54):
That was great?
Speaker 3 (41:55):
The last one is, you know, you obviously smart, You
could be doing a lot of things. Why did you
determine that you're going to spend your time doing this work?
Speaker 5 (42:05):
Man?
Speaker 4 (42:05):
So I read somewhere that like all businesses are birthed
out of some type of trauma, and oftentimes we're creating
what we wish existed for us at some point in
the past. So what I learned early was that I'm
really good at learning information and teaching it.
Speaker 5 (42:26):
And after working.
Speaker 4 (42:28):
In corporate for close to ten years and seeing the
money and getting the prestige and all of the things
that you would think light your spirit up, it came
at the expense of this other thing that's been sort
of nagging at me, And so I didn't fully know
what it looked like. I just knew that people call
me all the time and ask me what I think
about stuff, and then they'll go do exactly what I
(42:48):
told them to do, right, and then they'll hit me
back and be like, hey, Bruther, it's work. I didn't
know this was consultant. I thought I was just Homeme
on game.
Speaker 5 (42:55):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (42:57):
So this allows me to to selfishly do what I'm
good at and feel good about. But any other way,
I fully understand where we're going as a people talking
about us, black Boat, We've always been last in education, right,
(43:18):
hardest to be able to get the capital displaced by
technology the first, right the fastest. So if I can
share this stuff that I don't win in and got
from these fancy universities, and if I can share this
stuff that I learned at these fancy corporations, and even
if I'm humble enough to share my entrepreneurial failures, I'll
be able to help somebody overcome some of the things
that I went through. All I gotta do is just
(43:40):
be willing to share it. It just so happens that
one of the byproducts is you can also make a
living from it too.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Fantasy Body ordered, So glad you spent.
Speaker 5 (43:49):
This time on me. This was great. Bro.
Speaker 4 (43:51):
Listen, man, I again for cut this off if you
need to, But I need people to understand what grace
looked like because you don't extending me a lot of
grace over.
Speaker 5 (44:02):
The sort of evolution of our relationship we locked in.
Speaker 4 (44:05):
Thank you for the platform, and thank you for the
opportunity to share with your with your with your audience.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
Keep doing what you're doing, and I'm so proud of
you and I'm not having watched your growth.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
And thank this guy. This guy ain't even the limit
for whatsow for you. Wow, So proud of you. Man.
Speaker 5 (44:21):
Appreciate your brother, Thank you man.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
Absolutely Black Tech Green Money is a production the Blavity
Afro Tech on the Black Effect podcast Networking Night Hire Media.
It's produced by Morgan Debonne and me Well Lucas, with
additional production support by Kate McDonald, s er and Jada McGee.
Special thank you to Michael Davis in Love Beach. Learn
more about my guessing other technives offers an innovator's afrotech
(44:43):
dot com.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
The video version of this episode will.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Drop to Black Tech Green Money on YouTube, so tap in,
enjoy your Black Tech Green Money, Share this to somebody,
Go get your money.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
Peace in love
Host
Will Lucas
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