February 10, 2025 • 33 mins
Never Been Promoted Podcast with Thomas Helfrich
Tim Malm shares his inspiring journey of resilience, faith, and entrepreneurship. As the founder of Stronger 413, a faith-based coffee company, he discusses overcoming adversity, finding purpose, and building a brand rooted in perseverance and service.
About Tim Malm:
Tim Malm is a former rodeo champion whose life took an unexpected turn after a devastating steer roping accident in 2010. Through faith and perseverance, he rebuilt his life, launching Stronger 413, a coffee brand inspired by Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Today, Tim’s mission is to inspire others through his story, faith, and exceptional coffee blends.
In this episode, Thomas and Tim discuss:
- Overcoming Life-Changing Adversity
Tim shares the story of his accident, the immense physical and emotional recovery he endured, and how his unwavering faith carried him through the toughest times.
- The Birth of Stronger 413 Coffee
From an idea to a full-fledged business, Tim explains how he created a coffee brand that represents resilience, strength, and faith. He also shares his vision for expanding the brand and using it to help others.
- Living a Life of Purpose and Giving Back
Tim discusses his passion for helping others, the importance of using business as a force for good, and his plans to launch programs that support those in need.
Key Takeaways:
- Faith Can Be the Ultimate Source of Strength
Tim’s story proves that even in the face of immense hardship, faith can provide clarity, purpose, and resilience.
- Entrepreneurship is About More Than Just Money
Stronger 413 is not just a coffee company—it’s a mission. Tim shares how purpose-driven businesses can create real impact.
- Challenges Can Be Turned Into Opportunities
Rather than asking “Why me?” Tim has always asked “Why not me?” His mindset shift helped him turn a tragedy into a new chapter filled with inspiration and success.
“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” — Tim Malm
CONNECT WITH TIM MALM:
Website: https://stronger413.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-malm-99b367198/
Books: The Battlefield
CONNECT WITH THOMAS:
X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/thelfrich | https://twitter.com/nevbeenpromoted Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hovienko | https://www.facebook.com/neverbeenpromoted
Website: https://www.neverbeenpromoted.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/neverbeenpromoted/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@neverbeenpromoted
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomashelfrich/
Email: t@instantlyrelevant.com
Serious about LinkedIn Lead Generation? Stop Guessing what to do on LinkedIn and ignite revenue from relevance with Instantly Relevant Lead System
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Thank you, welcome to the Never Been Promoted podcast
and YouTube channel.
I'm on a mission to help youcut the tie to all the things
that are holding you back so youcan unleash your entrepreneur.
(01:37):
Hey, welcome back to Never BeenPromoted.
Hi, thomas Helfrich, your host.
We're on a mission to make somemore entrepreneurs in this
world and make them better atentrepreneurship by cutting that
tight, all the kind of crapholding you back.
And you know what it is.
It's those fears, those excusesyou make every day that didn't
work out, because I'm not goingto go watch that video to learn
(01:57):
how to do this, because you knowhow it is.
You're in the middle of that.
You got to break it and listen.
The entrepreneurs we bring onthe show have been through this.
They're going through this.
They're going through theselittle things they've figured
out along the way and they havebuilt companies and they're
still struggling with a lot ofsame stuff that maybe you are,
and the whole idea is to learnsomething from them.
So if this is your first timehere, enjoy it.
(02:18):
I hope it's the first of manyand if you've been here before,
I really do appreciate youcoming back.
Before we get going here,today's guest, alex Sheridan.
He's saying say goodbye tomarketed agencies, and so we're
going to talk about how you dothat and why you do that.
He's the founder of Impacts,and so we have a nice
conversation today.
My one shameless plug I ask isto please go to youtubecom.
(02:40):
Slash at never been promoted,do a subscribe.
We go live a lot and when Ibecome a, you know, when I grow
up, we'll actually plan ahead oftime and not make them pop-ups,
we'll actually plan them.
So but listen, let's go grabAlex, let's bring him on the
stage here.
If I can figure out how to usetechnology correctly, there it
(03:00):
is.
Hello Alex, how are you?
What's up?
Thomas Doing well, man, how areyou?
You know, you got to respect.
It's like in my feed right now,for, like TikTok is about
pickleball.
For some reason I lovepickleball, right, and so they
had this guy who's coming in.
He's kind of like all like youknow, pickleball, 3-0 walking in
and a 2-0 kind of cowers to theside, right, and then he sees
the 4-0s coming and he gets outof the way.
(03:22):
You got 46,000 followers.
I got to just kind of stepaside here and let you walk by.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I don't know about that dude.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
I appreciate it though.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Where are you joining from today?
I'm in St Charles, the suburbof Chicago.
St Charles, it's a good area.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
I like Chicago.
I think you and I, off-camera,talked about this, maybe not.
I'm not a huge baseball fan.
I just learned the World Seriesis going on right now.
Yeah, I'm the same, but I willsay I'm from St Louis originally
.
Okay, but before that I grew upin the middle of Illinois for
like 12 years, where at Justsouth of Peoria.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Okay, so I grew up in the Springfield area.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
South Central?
Is that south?
There I was in tiny little town, tiny, yeah.
Yeah, I lived in the middle ofnowhere near dream.
I think I was probably still 10miles from there, middle of
nowhere.
But my baseball order goes cubs, I'm sorry, it goes cardinals.
Yeah, then cubs, and I live in,then braves.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
So when the cubs won I was like hell, yeah, it's
about time well, I think a lotof southern, ill Illinois,
central Illinois folks didn'treally feel the connection with
Chicago because they werelistening to a different world
being down South.
So I think a lot.
And it was just easier to getto St Louis, at least from
Springfield folks.
So it's an hour and a halfdrive to St Louis and then three
and a half hours to Chicago.
So a lot of people, even thoughthey're in Illinois, they
(04:40):
became Cardinals fans.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Well, I moved there, so I had to.
You cannot live in St Louis andrealistically have a chance to
survive middle school and highschool without being a Cardinals
fan, you could be murdered.
It's okay too.
It's legal in St Louis.
I don't know if you guys knewthat it's not.
You guys don't kill anyone.
I know there's a lot of weirdpeople in the world.
Don't do it Today.
By the way, before we jump intoyour impacts, it's
(05:04):
I-M-P-A-X-Scom.
I should probably put that onthe screen, but the idea yours
is you want to say goodbye tomarketing agencies, so maybe
start with what your kind of hitthem in the face statement is
and why you say that, and thenback into your kind of creds and
your journey a little bit ofhow you.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yeah.
So our whole model and reallywhat we help companies do, is to
stop outsourcing your all ofyour content, uh, to a marketing
agency and really to startthinking about bringing it
internally and building it withyour team.
And that could be done a lot ofdifferent ways.
It doesn't mean building somesuper expensive you know, high
payroll type team.
Oftentimes it could beleveraging a couple talent you
(05:44):
know a couple talented folks inthe philipp.
It could be maybe hiringsomebody in the States.
But the bottom line is, when youlook at marketing agencies we
hear this all the time fromtalking to companies that hey,
the marketing agency is doingall the content for us.
It's slow, it doesn't performas well because it's
disconnected from the brand,from the owners, from the
subject matter experts.
Um, they're not getting theresults they want.
(06:06):
They often tell me I feel likethey just don't get us, they
just don't understand us either,and so you've got all these
problems and we've tried to domarketing outsourcing ourselves.
We did that for companies for awhile and we saw the same thing
.
It just wasn't as effective.
So eventually we just said, hey, this is a big problem with a
lot of companies.
We keep hearing the same thingover and over again.
(06:27):
We've built.
We've done a nice job buildinginternally.
We've built our own team.
Can we help other companies dothe same thing?
We tested it out.
We started doing it and startedworking tremendously well.
We brought down overall costslong-term.
The content got dramaticallymore effective almost overnight.
The brand was better positionedand everyone felt good about
(06:47):
what they were doing, and thatteam was internal now, so they
had control of the brand, andthat's what we've been doing
ever since.
So it's something I'm reallyproud of, I'm passionate about.
You know I talk a lot about hey, stop outsourcing your company,
your content, to marketingagencies and start building
internally.
So that's where I'm at.
I mean, I started.
You know, yes, how I kind ofgot here.
Long story short, I was in salesfor 10 years, started posting
(07:09):
videos on LinkedIn in 2019, hadno followers, was building a
brand new page and saw the powerof inbounds, saw the power of
putting out valuable content andhaving your customers and
prospects raise their hand andgo hey, I want to talk to you.
I saw one of your videos.
It was really impactful.
It taught me something or itinspired me to take action.
I shared it with my CEO.
Can we set up time to see if wecan work together?
So I just started doingcoaching and strategy and stuff
(07:31):
like that in the very beginning,low level stuff, work my way up
and then again did a little bitof the done for you stuff,
realize it didn't work so wellyou know, don't outsource it,
because I mean I've been usingthe same writers, probably and
you know I use ghost writers forstuff because I speak well, but
(07:52):
man making that it's adifferent skill set to write it
and I would agree with you, likeyou know, at some point you can
.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
You don't personally have to do it, but I think
people need to like at leastvoice who they are and get all
that right.
I definitely don't think AI isthe way to outsource it.
I think it's a complimentarything to you.
We can talk about that a bit.
But I do agree that yourcontent is so core to you.
It's like saying, hey, I'mgoing to have someone else pump
the blood in my heart, I'm goingto just put another heart.
I really do feel like companiesneed to own that fully or at
(08:25):
least be like like we work withcompanies to do their content,
but it's so done with you,because it's like hey, is this
your voice?
But we asked them to give usthe inputs and then we organize
it.
We just don't make up the stuffand any company, any company in
the last five years that hasasked us to do content for them
only without any input, has notworked.
They've always we've lostcustomers because it's it just
(08:49):
doesn't work long-term.
It doesn't feel right.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Well, marketing has changed dramatically in the past
10 years.
Where a marketing agency usedto be able to do a lot of
content for you because it wasdesigns, it was PDFs, it was
slicks, it was, you know,instagram picture posts, right,
no-transcript design, they weredoing some flyers the game has
changed.
It's now video first, it's nowsocial media dominant, organic
(09:18):
social content like and you gotto be good at it and that is
hard to do when you're saying,hey, do it all for me and just
send it to me and then post forme.
It's not going to happen.
It just requires more effort,more creativity, more talent,
more skill.
And so our thought processagain is just you've got to be
able to.
That's why you want to build itinternally.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
That's why you don't want to leave it up to someone
else that's going to try to sendyou stuff that hopefully it
works and it's just not going towork.
You know, uh, when you weredoing this and you were
experimenting this, how did youmeasure the, the success of it?
Did you run in parallel?
You just say, cold turkey,screw it, I'm doing it myself,
kind of set up when we ran itwith clients right.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
So I've always built my own teams right.
I've never elsewhere.
I've never like paid amarketing agency to like do
stuff for me.
It never felt right.
I wanted to learn it anyway, sofor us it always worked really
well.
When I started out helpingother companies, very first
thing I did in my business early2020, when I started winning my
first customers in the businessI was doing coaching, strategy
(10:17):
training.
I was teaching people how to doit themselves solopreneurs,
small business owners, how tobuild it internally.
It worked so freaking well.
They had to put in the work,but it worked really well.
Then we started doing.
About a year and a half, twoyears later we dabbled in hey,
let's start doing it for some ofthese bigger companies because
they don't have time, they don'thave all the excuses, right, we
(10:39):
started doing it for them.
So we had to sign a socialmedia manager, we would assign a
video editor and we would kindof run the whole program and we
just noticed it just neverperformed even close to when it
was built internally and thefounder and CEO were more
involved and not saying theyneed to spend all day creating
content.
They absolutely don't, but theyneed to have a social media
manager, a content director orsomebody there that can do some
(10:59):
filming, that can do someinterviewing, that can do this,
that can post.
You know, and they're attachedto the company they're, they're,
they know the brand, that'stheir voice, it's, they're one
of them, they can see, they canbe on a call with the customer
and you can get asked.
Or a prospect, and you can sayyeah, I was on five meetings
today.
They asked the same questionevery single meeting.
They're asking how do we tacklethis problem?
(11:21):
Hey Jay, hey Jerry, hey sally,can we film a video on this?
Yeah, I just had a prospectasking this question, a few of
them actually this week.
Let's film a quick video andget it out there, or we gotta,
you know, update an faq video.
You know, like there's just amillion different applications.
It's faster, it's moreeffective and it's I think it's
just the future of marketing ina lot of ways.
So we saw it, you know, I sawit firsthand and then I saw it
(11:42):
working with customers and itwas just so clear, man, it
wasn't even debatable, it wasjust like no question.
This is the right way to gowell, I, I would agree.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Uh, I probably have one, a couple caveats.
Where it, yeah, probably won'twork, it's when the founder this
is probably one of thesolopreneur or very small teams
where the skill set just isn'tthere and though it's going to
work better that way than itwould, but likely they've never
relied on inbound content to getbusiness at that point.
(12:13):
So if you have something youcan't write, doesn't do it well,
isn't really good at social,but they still have a company,
you're still probably in thesame spot because they're not
going to see the value, becausethey've never needed it, and so
there's probably a line whereyou could outsource it if they
have that initiative or whateverelse.
But you need to be involved andthis is not like a
(12:35):
billion-dollar company kind ofthing, because they could
benefit from outsourcing,because they could give someone
the night like here's all thedata points, write a basically
clever sales copy, but on asmaller one you don't think
there's a space where they'rejust terrible at it and you're
better at it because you atleast know the space, if you've
(12:55):
never seen that work.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Well, I think most solopreneurs are not going to be
able to afford a full-onmarketing agency, more than
likely so it's probably they'reeither going to do it themselves
or not do it until they scaleto where they can afford to hire
help.
But yeah, I mean, for contentto work, you have to be.
The content has to be good, youknow.
So it's like if you're abusiness owner and you're saying
, well, I'm not good at this,it's like it's not that you're
not inherently, naturally goodat it, you just haven't built
(13:19):
skills, you know, to your point.
You just haven't put in thereps yourself.
So you have to build thoseskill sets, whether you're going
to do it yourself or you'regoing to build a team.
If you're going to build a team, you got to understand those
skill sets right you got to knowenough yeah, you got to know
enough, right?
so I just think it's like such afundamental thing to the
(13:40):
business.
Like somebody's like I'm notgood on video, I'm not good
around.
It's like then what can you do?
You're either can write, youcan get on video, you can do
podcasts, you can do interviews.
You've got a freaking skillset.
Like there's no way.
You're just I'm suck ateverything content related.
No, you don't right.
Like, you just don't.
It's just most people haven'tdone it yet.
It's like I'm not very good onvideos.
How many videos have you done.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
We talk about the pure it.
They own the.
You know they do the selfdeprecating.
I don't know what I'm doing onvideo, but I do know about this
one topic I'm about to talkabout.
Yeah, then just make it anaudiogram.
Like you know, I'm terrible onon voice, like well, it doesn't
(14:23):
myself there, but, um, the ideais a really good voice, like the
sexy voice guy that act yeah,that's me.
So never mind, you have apretty good voice man, I am
self-promoting my sexy voice guybrand right there oh, it's not
even.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
You've never been promoted, but you are promoting
yourself.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
On this, I've never been promoted in career.
But fuck that, we're gonnapromote ourselves all day long.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
That's right man, that's freaking right I will
tell you what's interesting.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Um, we're a uh, a really good.
So, like I said, my team's beenaround for about four plus
years.
Same team.
I can give them basic and thisis where the skill sets can
happen.
Right, if you have a good, I'mgonna give you the power of what
you're saying.
I'm gonna endorse your ideathrough pure example, without
never admitting you prior todoing this interview.
(15:05):
Right, well, for a few minutes.
But we do the same thing.
But the first six months of itwere rough.
It was not my voice, it was tothis, to that you can accelerate
that now with some AI, we cantalk about how to do that.
But it was like I built acompany with the idea that I
didn't want to manage my ownsocial media or write my own
(15:25):
content.
I wanted them just to be theghost front for me.
So I didn't.
So I had more time because Isuck at operations, I know it.
So I just I hire people toexecute stuff.
I like to show up to themeeting and talk.
Yeah, um, once they got my voice, I don't think I could write
like me now.
Now, what I say and when Ispeak, I see it in the words
(15:46):
they put in, but if I try to goput it in those words, it's
terrible, and that's where thepower happens is.
I can drop a three-minute voicemessage to my writing team, and
Sundays, when my kind ofpersonal articles come out, it's
there and it's there, and it'sreally well done.
It's got a cool, fun image onit.
It's got the right headline.
(16:06):
There's very little nuance Ineed to do to it, because
they've gotten to the point andthey know how to organize the
content.
What I just described, though,is what you're saying you should
do.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Well, yeah, I mean, what you're speaking to is
someone that's worked for you.
Like you said, the first sixmonths were rough, you know, and
maybe, if you're workingsignificantly to where the first
six months aren't rough, butcertainly there's a few months
of just like feeling it outRight and understanding the
voice and the brand and thecontent To be fair, the six
months were probably merealizing.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Do I want to sound like that?
Yeah Right, am I like?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I'm kind of so what you're speaking to is exactly
what I suggest is like you'vebuilt an internal team that has
spent a lot of time with you,that knows your voice, knows the
brand, understands the company,understands the mission, what
you're trying to accomplish, andthey've put in a lot of work,
as have you, to build the skillsaround that the systems,
processes, automation, ai, right.
When you look at a marketingagency, what are they going to
(17:00):
do?
They're going to give you anaccount manager and they're
probably going to cycle throughaccount managers and they're
probably not going to be supergreat, and they're probably
going to cycle through accountmanagers and they're probably
not going to be super great, andthey're definitely not going to
spend 6 to 12 monthsunderstanding the brand and your
voice and getting so dialedinto you, thomas, and you only
no, because they have 30 othercustomers 20 other customers.
So they're like all right, doesthis sound like you?
(17:21):
I hope this is good enough,because I got to get to 10 other
posts in the next hour.
That's the problem with thatmodel is that if you're, if you
really want to do it right, youneed someone that's dedicated.
You need someone that's likethis is my job to do the copy to
do the posting, to do this, youknow, for this one company.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
When we, when we get hired by customers to do their
stuff for content, we do assigna writer to them and rotate
through the writers until they,until we find the one that
really matches with them best,and then they get tweaked from
there.
Sometimes they don't pay for afull time, but that person is
closest to their personalityvoice, and then they can tweak
from there.
Let's pivot that, though, tothe AI topic.
(17:58):
We leverage AI to help honethat in, so we almost create
their own.
Well, we just get their own GPTversion, basically, and we put
all the information in there tosay this, this, this, this, this
, this, don't.
Don't say clients always saycustomers like whatever it is
Right, yeah, and we build it,and then the tonality of the
chat becomes incredibly easy,with really good prompts to
deliver content, but you neversay create it.
(18:21):
We upload a you know SRT fileand say create this with this
compelling in this, this versionformat.
That's how we do it, some stuffto get scale and make sure it's
consistent.
So if someone doesn't have abad day or forget which account
they're working on, what's yourtake on AI?
Speaker 2 (18:39):
usage.
With this man, ai is gonnafreaking.
It's so big dude, it's soimportant, it's such a I mean,
it's gonna change the entireworld forever.
It already is right.
So it's massively importantthat people start using it and
using it every single day, notjust in marketing, not just in
content, but just in everythingday to day.
And I'm not saying youdehumanize and you don't.
You know, everything becomeschat, gpt, of course, not right.
(19:01):
It's a tool.
I always look at AI as like.
Ai is your creative assistantthat you have basically for free
.
That's just ultra smart and, Iwould argue, creative too, even
though people like it's notcreative.
Oh, we'll define creativity,then, because it can put two
different topics together andmake them into one.
It can write scripts.
It can do that.
So can it think exactly like ahuman?
(19:22):
No, but I don't need it to beright.
I don't need to do that.
I need to be my creativeassistant.
That's at my side 24 7 and atmy team's side 24 7.
You'll appreciate, like thisone of the things that we're
doing really.
That's really unique from acontent process standpoint with
ai.
I don't think anyone else isdoing this when it comes to
content and automation not yetat least we've partnered with a
(19:43):
company recently where in ourtrello boards, like in our
project management tool, as soonas I move a card from, it's
been edited right.
It goes through the process rawvideo uploads, there's
automation boom, the card getscreated, it moves and moves in G
drive.
All these automations happenOnce that that video is ready to
be moved to, ready for copy.
(20:03):
As soon as it moves, ready forcopy in the ready for copy
column, ai takes the transcriptwhich is in the card and it
automatically runs it throughthe prompt and creates AI.
It creates the copy for us andwe can prompt the AI as if it
were an agent of a copywritingagent, professionally trained,
so we can give it differenttones of voice based on customer
(20:25):
, based on style, based on whotheir customer is, what the
message, all that stuff, right.
So we just simply move the card.
Boom, automation happens, aitakes over, writes the copy.
Then of course we're going togo through and review it, make
sure it's good, we can alwaysrerun it, that kind of stuff.
Then it goes into post on deckwhere there's another automation
that happens where the thevideo gets copied and sent to an
(20:45):
archive folder and then theother copy gets sent to edited
videos ready to post with thatAI copy or with that generated
copy.
So it's just.
You know.
That's one example of many,many examples.
You know we use an email, weuse it in subject lines, youtube
.
You know just just abouteverything you can use AI in and
if, honestly, if someone's notusing AI every day in their work
(21:07):
, or at least every week, Ithink they either don't
understand how to really use itor they're naive to its full
potential.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Agreed, for example, this podcast right, when you
come on the show, as you know,you come on for the first 10
minutes.
We build the show ahead of timebecause I want this
conversation to be as fresh notpre-thought out just really a
good conversation on the topicof say goodbye to marketing
agencies, right, or whatever itends up being.
But I'll show you something wedo do downstream that you just
described.
Let me see if I can.
I'm not very, I don't typicallyshare stuff.
(21:36):
We take these interviews rightFor the people who've been on
our shows and been on there, andwe go and use the actual show
itself and this automaticallydoes it.
We, you know, take the audioimmediately, immediately dumps
in an AI.
The AI gets SRT.
I'm sorry, we go into a it'snot AI SRT, then that's
automatically put over and wehave a really cool prompt.
(21:58):
This is one of our guests.
We create that piece physicallyfor them, but then this whole
piece is super SEO for them.
For them, it's about theconversation.
It's about you know what wesaid, what I learned, and it and
the, the metrics on them, likegoing from you know having them.
I was going to share this.
This is kind of cool.
Give me a second to find it.
Okay, I think I think you'lllike this and I'm trying to show
(22:20):
people evidence that by doingstuff with AI, it doesn't always
have to be bad, we don't we?
Just we just started doing thismaybe a little while ago, like
we just started launching thelast 90 days or there.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
It's like it's.
It's like AI doesn't make badcontent.
This is that don't know how touse AI make bad content.
You know articles.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
This is where this is an unpromoted, never been
promoted as a brand new site.
This is what it did to itimmediately.
That's awesome, man, and whenyou show that like it's, you
know it's not huge numbers, butwe just launched it, right, and
we just started getting thesearticles out.
And the point being is, withoutAI, it'd take a writer a week
to go through that whole video.
Absolutely, and that's anautomated thing, and we tweak it
(23:03):
to make sure it's good, right,we add the links and do all the
other things.
But that part with AI and wedon't build on Trello board, we
use Monday and it just kind ofbecomes part of the process.
Yeah, and just because somebodymisclicks something all of a
sudden, now it's writing AI copyand pushing it and you're like
whoa, whoa, whoa, that wasn'tdone.
So we put humans in the loop,yeah, but, and you're in a,
(23:24):
you're a, you're a company, andyou're struggling with your
content, I believe, getting theright person on your team, and
you got to be prepared to givethem a chance to learn, they got
to have a good work ethic, allthe other things you're doing,
and because that nothing worksif someone is a shitty employee,
um or thing, talk about yourstyle, though, how you match a
company and what you do, maybefor them, so and not.
(23:45):
This is not shameless plug.
So shameless plug.
So much speak, but what's theuse case?
I think you've described it,but show it.
Tell me the use case.
They come to you and how do yousolve, how do you help them
with this in your company?
Speaker 2 (23:55):
So they come to us typically because they've been
struggling with a marketingagency, right, so they've been
working with a marketing agencyfor a while and they'll
typically tell us things likehey, we're, we're getting zero
results, zero leads, the branddoesn't feel like it's us, the
content's ineffective, itdoesn't really sound like us, it
doesn't feel like us, it'smissing our voice and tone.
Um, the website's misaligned,like we have no real way to
(24:16):
track inbound leads or metrics.
It.
We feel like we're notprioritized, it's slow to
produce content, that kind ofstuff.
That's typically what we hear.
And then they come to us and wetypically take them through
five phases and the the firstphase is always we look at the
brand message what is the storybrand, what is the story that
we're telling with our brand andhow does that?
Why does that matter to thecustomer?
And, of course, the customer isthe hero in the story.
(24:38):
So we look at everything fromtheir website copy videos on the
website, what I call buyerready videos, which is bottom of
the funnel people that aregetting ready to buy.
How are we creating videos forthem?
First, and then we align, youknow, all social channels to
reflect that to the newmessaging, branding things like
that.
The second thing we go throughis we develop a content strategy
.
So typically when I come intocompanies, most companies don't
(24:59):
have a content strategy.
They'll tell you something likehey, we're, we're doing
LinkedIn.
You know we're, we're postingtwo or three times on the
company page every week.
We got a blog that goes out.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
What do you mean?
That's not a strategy.
Exactly, so take that.
So when someone, someone,please hey, that's our strategy
we're going to post a couple oftimes.
Can you maybe just dive intothat onion and take a few layers
off?
Yeah, what a strategy actuallylooks like in the context.
Okay, cool, you're on LinkedIn.
Let me explain what a strategymeans for LinkedIn.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Yeah.
So I mean, it's like you know,if you look at a content
strategy, to me it's on socialand then off social.
So what is the strategy?
Basically, if you think aboutwhat a content strategy is, it's
like we have clients that wewant to attract, we have a brand
message and a story that wewant to tell.
All we're trying to do with ourcontent strategy is go,
communicate that story, attractpotential customers and bring
(25:50):
them into our ecosystem, andthen sales would take over from
there.
So what companies will do isthey'll say exactly what I just
said.
Oh, we're posting two or threetimes on LinkedIn.
Great, no-transcript.
What story are we telling?
Where is that?
Are we getting attention?
Where is it going?
Where are we trying to takepeople?
What is the overarching strategy, even outside of LinkedIn?
(26:12):
How do we reach the people thatdon't see our content on
LinkedIn?
Like there's no kind ofecosystem they have in play and
so and then the content's noteven good anyways.
So it's like they got.
Like I would consider postingon LinkedIn as a tactic that you
would do within a strategy.
That would be something you'dsay as part of our strategy.
We're going to post three timesa week on LinkedIn and here's
(26:36):
what we're going to post about.
Here's the content pillars.
Here's how we're going todesign the copy, the videos.
Here's what needs to be in hereto actually convert to leads
right To drive business.
Here's who's going to managethat.
Here's the behind it.
By the way, when we get peopleon there, we'd like to funnel
them into a newsletter or to ourpodcast or this or that, or
we'd like to send a few dms tothe people that follow.
You know, there's just like noreal thought out process, and
it's not necessarily their fault.
(26:57):
They typically either have likea social media manager that's
doesn't quite know what they'redoing.
There's like I'm just runningthe company page, I'm doing a
couple Like the team gottogether for happy hour, like
let's do a post about that.
It's like that's not, that'snot a strategy either, right, or
it's being done by a marketingcompany that's doing 30 other
clients and they're just notprioritized.
They don't really have thisthought out either.
So you know, again, we look atnot to go too far on this on
(27:22):
this tangent, but we look at.
It's important, because I too,because that's a great question.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
It's like hey, well, content matters in that strategy
.
Like so not to interrupt, butlike you know our, our ideas,
you start with what's the coreproblem, you solve.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Like yeah, bingo, that's part of the brand
strategy, right?
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Your personal brand aligns around that.
Your messaging reliance, likeyour content, relies on that.
Your live events, yournewsletter, everything around
that is around that.
One problem you solve, becausethere becomes ancillary topics
and people are like I don't know, I'm like that's right.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
So exactly, man, and that that's part of the step one
, which is the brand story,messaging that kind of stuff,
right.
So if you look at our site, Iknow you're like nice site.
It's so clear.
The one problem we solve isright on there like never
outsource your content everagain.
Say goodbye to marketingagencies.
We'll help you build yourinternal team right.
There's other things we dowithin that, but it's very clear
on the one big problem that wesolve.
So you know, look the strategy.
(28:11):
That's on social, off socialtracking systems, process system
automation.
You know all of that would bein the content strategy.
Then step three would begetting into building your
internal content team.
So, now that we know we've gotthe messaging, we're aligned,
the digital platforms are there,we know the strategy, how we're
going to execute it.
Who do we need on the team tobe able to execute this on a
(28:32):
day-to-day basis?
Now you're getting intocoaching and training.
Now you're getting intomentoring people to become great
content creators.
You could have the best contentstrategy in the world.
It's going to do absolutelynothing unless you do this one
thing, which is actually buildthe skills and either be coached
or trained or build itinternally yourself by trial and
error, however you want to goabout doing it.
(28:53):
Of course, you can shortcutyour success by having a guide
help you through that, butyou've got to be able to get
good at the content fundamentals.
You have to know how to engagean audience in the first, second
or two, because I promise you,that's all you got.
If you're going to do YouTube,you need to know thumbnails,
titles, descriptions, seos.
If you're going to do TikTok,you need to know short form
videos and how to attract evenLinkedIn.
(29:14):
Now the difference between apicture post, text post versus
the vertical LinkedIn, tiktok,video feed.
Now you need to know that.
You need to engage their salesnavigator, their social selling
tactics and strategies.
You have to know these bits andpieces that go into the
tactical aspect of the content.
But that is the second thingyou do after you have the
strategy in place first, so theyboth have to work together.
(29:35):
It's like do you have a greatstrategy?
If you do, perfect.
Now let me see the content.
It's kind of like ads.
Right, you got a great adstrategy.
You got the right buyers andthe personas Looks amazing.
This is perfect.
But dude, dude, your copy sucks.
The fucking ad is terrible.
Right, the.
The message is all over theplace.
It's not the customers don'tcare about this, right, that's
the wrong video.
We're two, three seconds in.
(29:55):
We're not even sure what thevideo is about.
So it's all those things thatgo into after once you lay out
the strategy even your side.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
As simple as it is.
I challenge you.
I think you guys could even tieto a more emotional string,
(30:29):
because I'd be like I need totalk to them, yeah our agencies
with no content results right,exactly it's.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
It's basically our you know, our target customers
are seven, eight figurebusinesses doing any, usually
anywhere from three to thirtymillion.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
So that's kind of scaled a little bit where that's
not their main piece.
Yeah, they've got a goodbusiness.
Like yeah, they're underratedrevenue.
That kind of scaled a littlebit where that's not their main
piece.
Yeah, they've got a goodbusiness.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Like yeah, they're underrated revenue, that kind of
stuff.
But they're like man.
Our marketing sucks, like ourcontent sucks If you're a
marketing director of one,effectively.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
for a lot of those, their only concern is keeping
their job Right and that of,like hey, are you feeling some
pressure from your executivesthat marketing is not working?
Are your sales leaders sayingyou can't produce a lead, like
you know?
I'd say that's probably on thesales side, but anyway.
So what you were where you'reliving, and my point of that is
(31:17):
is part of your strategy has tounderstand the desperate problem
you're solving for them.
Because if you don't peel, it'sjust meh, yeah, and we listen.
Because if you don't peel, it'sjust meh, yeah, and we listen.
I struggle with it all the timeand and I have two brands that
I have to fight with betweeninstantly relevant and you know,
or three cut the tie and neverbeen.
so I'll take you offline on howto approach that multi-brand
strategy, but I don't think wehave enough time to dive into
(31:40):
that one maybe maybe a sidestrategy and and I know we've
fallen victim to this is we haveall our handles for social
media, but I only give attentionreally to linkedin and we're
just starting to a bit more inmeta just because we're trying
to drive podcast side.
Uh, I, I even with a team Ifeel hyperly overwhelmed with
(32:03):
having so many social mediaaccounts and they they pretty
much in youtube's where our bigfocus is in linkedin.
But even then they kind of Ifeel like they're dismal on some
of the numbers and metrics.
First, what's your take on that?
On listen, just pick one solike, or you know, and and this,
this feeling that almosteverybody feels I don't even run
my marketing right, the teamdoes I still feel overwhelmed.
(32:24):
So what's your take on maybethose kind of joint topics?
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Going on multiple different platforms at the same
time.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Yeah, it's the overwhelming feeling of having
multiple platforms and they allfeel very mediocre, except maybe
the one like LinkedIn we dopretty well with, even though I
think our engagement's terriblebut we don't target engagement.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
So my advice would be if you're on multiple different
social media platforms and youfeel like all of them are kind
of mediocre and doing okay, notreally driving business, you're
not seeing the results.
You think you should, I wouldsay can.
We can do one of two things.
One we can pour more time,resources, energy, money into
making them all better at thesame time, like that can be done
, and if you don't know how todo it, you hire somebody that
(33:02):
does.
If you have the resources,right, maybe you hire an
additional person that's goingto help you really revamp
YouTube, for example, becausethat takes a whole other skill
set of the thumbnails, thetitles.
It's a different game, right,as you know.
Right, the other side was wesay, well, we don't have the
resources, we don't have theoption to bring someone in or
pay more money for this or thatGreat.
Then you say we're on fourchannels.
Now do we go to one or two anddo we get really good at those
(33:26):
one or two that we think aremost valuable for our business
and where our customers are andhopefully there's some organic
reach there, and do we justreally drill down on those one
or two and for a lot of peoplelistening right now.
B2b especially.
That's LinkedIn.
I don't want you to post onInstagram Facebook meta like
TikTok If all of them are shitty, not working and it's not good
content.
I'd rather have you just saylet's just get great at LinkedIn
(33:48):
for the next three to sixmonths.
There's hella opportunity there.
Our customers are there.
There's greater organic reach.
A lot of things with socialselling go side by side with
that.
Let's focus, let's get focused.
So to me it's like focus inscrap the noise.
(34:11):
Get rid of the one to twoplatforms that maybe you don't
need right now if you're feelingoverwhelmed, or you bring in
additional help, guidance,support people, to make all of
those better.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
If you know how to do that, yeah well, I love that
play.
And one thing I've seen and,listen, I'm debating whether to
do it too is just do one postonly on your LinkedIn or on your
social media that you don't use.
Instagram says all our contentson, fill in the blank.
Check us out here.
Listen, we, we commit to thisfully.
Thanks for finding us here.
One day we may be here, but goto LinkedIn If you need the
stuff you need, like and justlet people know where to go and
(34:36):
like.
That, honestly, might be enough, but they're legit.
They're telling me that we'renot on.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Well, the only the only challenge the challenging
part about that.
It is tough to get people offone platform and onto another
when they're in the midst ofscrolling through the feed.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Yeah, I think just in general.
In general yeah, yeah, you'rethere, but you're not like
podcast.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
You got the podcast clips.
It's like go to YouTube for thelong form or the podcast for
long form, but it is challengingto get.
So if they're in a feed like,it's really tough to get them
off that feed and then on toanother one to go visit your
profile.
But I see what you're saying.
It's like again having astrategy.
Right, where are we trying totake people?
You know it's like where's thefocus?
Where do we want to take peopledown this path?
You know they see our videohere.
What, what's next?
Speaker 1 (35:19):
right, we, uh, okay, so the last thing I'll talk
about, just high level I.
I have multiple brands.
We got about three minutes lefthere, right, and one strategy.
I'd love to hear your take onit, because this is why I have a
podcast, so I can selfishlylearn and no charge.
It's great.
One thing we're doing is onLinkedIn.
I'm trying to get all threebrands to go, but what we were
doing for a while that I find itdidn't work is like kind of
(35:39):
more like I'm more of a Facebookgroup, like I'm an entrepreneur
.
I want help, I want to learnmore and it just pushing
everyone into that one thing andthen just having the tie and
the white across all brands.
And the truth is because theidea is stay as high level as
(36:04):
you can on your thing and giveas much value on all the
channels you can and let peoplecome into you based on where
they listen.
I'm interested in that.
Do you like that strategy thatwe've moved to?
Or would you think listen no,no, no.
Be this one person on LinkedIn,be this person on meta, be this
other thing on TikTok.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
I like the strategy of you've got one personal brand
.
Let's leverage that and go deepon that.
One thing that you want to dothat expert, you know opinion,
or that thought leadership orwhatever you're going to talk
about I would say this is that,yeah, you have one personal
brand.
So your question is like, ifyou look at it like you've got
one bucket, I can max thisbucket out and fill it really
high and really make thatpersonal brand great and that
(36:44):
one to two area of expert, areasof expertise.
Or I can start taking waterfrom this one bucket and moving
it into another bucket and thenanother bucket, but what is that
going to do to the first bucket?
It's going to dilute it.
The second bucket is not goingto be as full, so the third
bucket is going to be the samething.
So to me, it's like I don'tthink there's one right or wrong
way.
I always look at, hey, what areyou trying to accomplish?
(37:07):
What are your goals and I'msure you probably do the same
thing right, what are we tryingto accomplish?
And if you're saying, well, Iwant to grow my business through
my personal brand, perfect,then you better be talking about
that stuff and the content.
Right, if you're talking aboutthis and that and this thing
that you're trying to drive likeall I do is talk about video
(37:27):
marketing and content buildingyour own content teams.
I would love to talk aboutother things, of course.
I will at some point in mycareer.
It's a timing thing, it's notright now, right and I do
occasionally touch on otherthings, don't get me wrong.
But but people, I think, try togo a million different
directions, or two or threedifferent directions, and it
ends up just confusing people.
(37:47):
And then you're not.
You're competing againstsomebody that's going a hundred
percent in on the topic andyou're going 50.
You're gonna lose right likeyou're not.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
I have absolutely experienced this.
So so my engagement on my siteand my thing is, because we've
been like, hey, are we gonnalike I really don't always want
to go 100 linkedin, ourinstantly relevant has been very
focused on how you use linkedLinkedIn and methodology.
It works really well.
It is not instant gratification, it's how LinkedIn is supposed
to be used Networking 15 minutes, let's chat, just like you and
I met.
That is the system to getsomeone on.
(38:16):
That I'm interested in.
But you wouldn't have met me ifI had Instantly Relevant up
there.
You came on and we met because,hey, cut the tie, good, podcast
, this helps me.
So we switched to this and nowour entire content, set outside
of some very small things aroundmarketing specifically, is
around just our guests.
It's around their expertise.
(38:37):
It's just promoting others soothers can learn how to become
better entrepreneurs.
That allows me to touch lots ofpeople.
That allows my brand to be easyto consume.
And then it's like, hey, whatelse does this guy do, if
anything?
And that method is puckers yourbutthole up so tight, cause
you're like Whoa, I, I'm gettingaway from more of a direct
sales.
This is what I do and can dofor you.
Yes, but you do have to haveeffort and a strategy in place
(38:59):
down the street that says hey,by the way, this is what I do
for this.
I have a triangle, you're here,we also do these two things,
and I have this thing coming andthey're oh, I actually need
help with that Awesome Causeyou've just gotten time with
someone.
But that is not an automatedprocess.
That's, you know.
There's, we can get into yourpiece.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
I know you got it.
I know you have the balancetoday.
A quick thing on that reallyquickly is like I have my own
podcast, but do I do a lot ofclips and promotions and that
kind of stuff for it?
No, because it's just a choice.
It's not a top priority for meright now.
I love doing the podcast.
I want some customers fromhaving them on the podcast, as
I'm sure you do too, right?
So it's a good BD channel.
(39:37):
It's a good outreach.
If I want to talk to somebody,get them on, I can communicate
with them.
Oh, you're in a funnel now and,exactly, I love it and I
genuinely enjoy having theseconversations, as I'm sure you
do too, I can tell.
So it's called Founder Talk.
I have other founders on theshow.
I only do in-person podcasts.
Oh, that's great.
I would love that.
Yeah, I only do that.
It's a pain because it's harderto get guests, but for me again
(40:01):
, it's just a personal thing Iwanted to do.
But you won't hear a lot aboutthat and you can say well, alex,
why aren't you promoting yourpodcast all the time?
Like, well, that's not my mainobjective or goal right now.
I mean correct it could be, buteven that just like that's a
slower funnel than me justtalking about the things that I
could talk about and have getmillions of views on LinkedIn
(40:22):
and other places.
So for me it's like what is thepriority right now?
Now I may get to a point a yearor two from now where founder
talk podcast becomes one of themain priorities and so I'm
sharing more clips from the show, I'm talking about it more, I'm
driving more people there andmaybe that's into the funnel
right, but it's just not theretoday.
So it always goes back to likewhat do you want to have happen?
And then the content should mapthat every single day.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Agreed and I'll leave you with this right.
So because we found a way togrow with through advertising on
YouTube very quickly.
I see this subscriber base.
If I can get the content right,you have a million plus
subscribers.
You find a way to give half ofthe get, half of them a million
dollars, a dollar a month forsomething, for live shows.
They want to attend stuff likethat.
Now, now I'm talking to you Iwas talking a half million.
You'll keep 300,000 a monthfrom YouTube dollar that
(41:04):
someone's giving you.
That means why I put so mucheffort into this, because
long-term I'm going to help moreentrepreneurs by reaching more
people and then also thelong-term payoff in that could
be incredible Makes sense, dude.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
I think what you're doing is smart yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
And it's a different way, and I'll tell you what.
When you make that decision toswitch just entrepreneurs,
you're going to pucker upno-transcript a few things that
do it.
So what you're doing is veryclear you help these businesses
grow by getting control of theircontent and the voice, and I
(41:39):
love that about you.
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
And, dude, I love helping entrepreneurs and I've
done a little bit of businesscoaching on the side at times
like that.
So I mean, for me that's anultra big passion of mine, but
again, it's knowing like, butthat's not the focus right now
and if I take off this, whatwe're sitting on right now, it's
going to prevent me from beingable to do that later on and
having the stories to shareabout how, what we did, you get
it right.
I do, I'd want to do this rightnow, but it's like be patient,
(42:07):
dude, build this company for thenext two years and then you can
talk all the rest of your lifeabout that stuff, if you want to
.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
I love it.
I'm going to reserve the rightto ask you to come back on,
because we have some more topicsWe'd love to man.
I'm going to do your shamelessplug for you.
It's impacts.
Now I am there, he is Probablyone of our best looking guests.
I'm going to throw that outthere too.
By the way.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
So if you guys are listening to this, you can be
like oh wow.
Okay, check out the face.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
He's shirtless.
If you're listening to this,he's shirtless.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
I am.
I got abs too.
So check it out, I have abs too.
Are they at their fullpotential?
Speaker 1 (42:47):
I would tell my wife for years under construction,
but it's coming up.
All right, that's good.
All right, I'm going to put youin the periwinkle room.
I'll be right back with you.
Thank you so much, alex, forcoming on today.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Thank you, man.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Hey guys, thank you for listening.
I really appreciate everyonewho's made it at this point.
If this was your first, gotsomething great from it.
Wherever you are in yourentrepreneurial journey, either
thinking about it, about tostart start it, or, like you
know, you're a multimillionaireand you're, like just you know,
want to learn more.
This is what it's here for it'shelp you learn something from
(43:16):
our guests what they did tobuild their companies, what they
do for the world and whatthey're thinking about the
future, which what matters.
Alex is awesome.
Check him out once again.
I'm going to give him a littleanother plug there.
Impaxscom impacts Very goodagency, very focused on what
they do for you, and that's anindicator.
Typically, that's a really goodcompany to work with when
they're focused on a singleproblem they're solving for you.
So thank you for listening.
Thanks for watching.
(43:37):
Until we meet again, get outthere and go unleash your
entrepreneur.
You.
Thank you, welcome to the Never Been Promoted podcast
and YouTube channel.
I'm on a mission to help youcut the tie to all the things
that are holding you back so youcan unleash your entrepreneur.
(01:37):
Hey, welcome back to Never BeenPromoted.
Hi, thomas Helfrich, your host.
We're on a mission to make somemore entrepreneurs in this
world and make them better atentrepreneurship by cutting that
tight, all the kind of crapholding you back.
And you know what it is.
It's those fears, those excusesyou make every day that didn't
work out, because I'm not goingto go watch that video to learn
(01:57):
how to do this, because you knowhow it is.
You're in the middle of that.
You got to break it and listen.
The entrepreneurs we bring onthe show have been through this.
They're going through this.
They're going through theselittle things they've figured
out along the way and they havebuilt companies and they're
still struggling with a lot ofsame stuff that maybe you are,
and the whole idea is to learnsomething from them.
So if this is your first timehere, enjoy it.
(02:18):
I hope it's the first of manyand if you've been here before,
I really do appreciate youcoming back.
Before we get going here,today's guest, alex Sheridan.
He's saying say goodbye tomarketed agencies, and so we're
going to talk about how you dothat and why you do that.
He's the founder of Impacts,and so we have a nice
conversation today.
My one shameless plug I ask isto please go to youtubecom.
(02:40):
Slash at never been promoted,do a subscribe.
We go live a lot and when Ibecome a, you know, when I grow
up, we'll actually plan ahead oftime and not make them pop-ups,
we'll actually plan them.
So but listen, let's go grabAlex, let's bring him on the
stage here.
If I can figure out how to usetechnology correctly, there it
(03:00):
is.
Hello Alex, how are you?
What's up?
Thomas Doing well, man, how areyou?
You know, you got to respect.
It's like in my feed right now,for, like TikTok is about
pickleball.
For some reason I lovepickleball, right, and so they
had this guy who's coming in.
He's kind of like all like youknow, pickleball, 3-0 walking in
and a 2-0 kind of cowers to theside, right, and then he sees
the 4-0s coming and he gets outof the way.
(03:22):
You got 46,000 followers.
I got to just kind of stepaside here and let you walk by.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I don't know about that dude.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
I appreciate it though.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Where are you joining from today?
I'm in St Charles, the suburbof Chicago.
St Charles, it's a good area.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
I like Chicago.
I think you and I, off-camera,talked about this, maybe not.
I'm not a huge baseball fan.
I just learned the World Seriesis going on right now.
Yeah, I'm the same, but I willsay I'm from St Louis originally
.
Okay, but before that I grew upin the middle of Illinois for
like 12 years, where at Justsouth of Peoria.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Okay, so I grew up in the Springfield area.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
South Central?
Is that south?
There I was in tiny little town, tiny, yeah.
Yeah, I lived in the middle ofnowhere near dream.
I think I was probably still 10miles from there, middle of
nowhere.
But my baseball order goes cubs, I'm sorry, it goes cardinals.
Yeah, then cubs, and I live in,then braves.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
So when the cubs won I was like hell, yeah, it's
about time well, I think a lotof southern, ill Illinois,
central Illinois folks didn'treally feel the connection with
Chicago because they werelistening to a different world
being down South.
So I think a lot.
And it was just easier to getto St Louis, at least from
Springfield folks.
So it's an hour and a halfdrive to St Louis and then three
and a half hours to Chicago.
So a lot of people, even thoughthey're in Illinois, they
(04:40):
became Cardinals fans.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Well, I moved there, so I had to.
You cannot live in St Louis andrealistically have a chance to
survive middle school and highschool without being a Cardinals
fan, you could be murdered.
It's okay too.
It's legal in St Louis.
I don't know if you guys knewthat it's not.
You guys don't kill anyone.
I know there's a lot of weirdpeople in the world.
Don't do it Today.
By the way, before we jump intoyour impacts, it's
(05:04):
I-M-P-A-X-Scom.
I should probably put that onthe screen, but the idea yours
is you want to say goodbye tomarketing agencies, so maybe
start with what your kind of hitthem in the face statement is
and why you say that, and thenback into your kind of creds and
your journey a little bit ofhow you.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yeah.
So our whole model and reallywhat we help companies do, is to
stop outsourcing your all ofyour content, uh, to a marketing
agency and really to startthinking about bringing it
internally and building it withyour team.
And that could be done a lot ofdifferent ways.
It doesn't mean building somesuper expensive you know, high
payroll type team.
Oftentimes it could beleveraging a couple talent you
(05:44):
know a couple talented folks inthe philipp.
It could be maybe hiringsomebody in the States.
But the bottom line is, when youlook at marketing agencies we
hear this all the time fromtalking to companies that hey,
the marketing agency is doingall the content for us.
It's slow, it doesn't performas well because it's
disconnected from the brand,from the owners, from the
subject matter experts.
Um, they're not getting theresults they want.
(06:06):
They often tell me I feel likethey just don't get us, they
just don't understand us either,and so you've got all these
problems and we've tried to domarketing outsourcing ourselves.
We did that for companies for awhile and we saw the same thing
.
It just wasn't as effective.
So eventually we just said, hey, this is a big problem with a
lot of companies.
We keep hearing the same thingover and over again.
(06:27):
We've built.
We've done a nice job buildinginternally.
We've built our own team.
Can we help other companies dothe same thing?
We tested it out.
We started doing it and startedworking tremendously well.
We brought down overall costslong-term.
The content got dramaticallymore effective almost overnight.
The brand was better positionedand everyone felt good about
(06:47):
what they were doing, and thatteam was internal now, so they
had control of the brand, andthat's what we've been doing
ever since.
So it's something I'm reallyproud of, I'm passionate about.
You know I talk a lot about hey, stop outsourcing your company,
your content, to marketingagencies and start building
internally.
So that's where I'm at.
I mean, I started.
You know, yes, how I kind ofgot here.
Long story short, I was in salesfor 10 years, started posting
(07:09):
videos on LinkedIn in 2019, hadno followers, was building a
brand new page and saw the powerof inbounds, saw the power of
putting out valuable content andhaving your customers and
prospects raise their hand andgo hey, I want to talk to you.
I saw one of your videos.
It was really impactful.
It taught me something or itinspired me to take action.
I shared it with my CEO.
Can we set up time to see if wecan work together?
So I just started doingcoaching and strategy and stuff
(07:31):
like that in the very beginning,low level stuff, work my way up
and then again did a little bitof the done for you stuff,
realize it didn't work so wellyou know, don't outsource it,
because I mean I've been usingthe same writers, probably and
you know I use ghost writers forstuff because I speak well, but
(07:52):
man making that it's adifferent skill set to write it
and I would agree with you, likeyou know, at some point you can
.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
You don't personally have to do it, but I think
people need to like at leastvoice who they are and get all
that right.
I definitely don't think AI isthe way to outsource it.
I think it's a complimentarything to you.
We can talk about that a bit.
But I do agree that yourcontent is so core to you.
It's like saying, hey, I'mgoing to have someone else pump
the blood in my heart, I'm goingto just put another heart.
I really do feel like companiesneed to own that fully or at
(08:25):
least be like like we work withcompanies to do their content,
but it's so done with you,because it's like hey, is this
your voice?
But we asked them to give usthe inputs and then we organize
it.
We just don't make up the stuffand any company, any company in
the last five years that hasasked us to do content for them
only without any input, has notworked.
They've always we've lostcustomers because it's it just
(08:49):
doesn't work long-term.
It doesn't feel right.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Well, marketing has changed dramatically in the past
10 years.
Where a marketing agency usedto be able to do a lot of
content for you because it wasdesigns, it was PDFs, it was
slicks, it was, you know,instagram picture posts, right,
no-transcript design, they weredoing some flyers the game has
changed.
It's now video first, it's nowsocial media dominant, organic
(09:18):
social content like and you gotto be good at it and that is
hard to do when you're saying,hey, do it all for me and just
send it to me and then post forme.
It's not going to happen.
It just requires more effort,more creativity, more talent,
more skill.
And so our thought processagain is just you've got to be
able to.
That's why you want to build itinternally.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
That's why you don't want to leave it up to someone
else that's going to try to sendyou stuff that hopefully it
works and it's just not going towork.
You know, uh, when you weredoing this and you were
experimenting this, how did youmeasure the, the success of it?
Did you run in parallel?
You just say, cold turkey,screw it, I'm doing it myself,
kind of set up when we ran itwith clients right.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
So I've always built my own teams right.
I've never elsewhere.
I've never like paid amarketing agency to like do
stuff for me.
It never felt right.
I wanted to learn it anyway, sofor us it always worked really
well.
When I started out helpingother companies, very first
thing I did in my business early2020, when I started winning my
first customers in the businessI was doing coaching, strategy
(10:17):
training.
I was teaching people how to doit themselves solopreneurs,
small business owners, how tobuild it internally.
It worked so freaking well.
They had to put in the work,but it worked really well.
Then we started doing.
About a year and a half, twoyears later we dabbled in hey,
let's start doing it for some ofthese bigger companies because
they don't have time, they don'thave all the excuses, right, we
(10:39):
started doing it for them.
So we had to sign a socialmedia manager, we would assign a
video editor and we would kindof run the whole program and we
just noticed it just neverperformed even close to when it
was built internally and thefounder and CEO were more
involved and not saying theyneed to spend all day creating
content.
They absolutely don't, but theyneed to have a social media
manager, a content director orsomebody there that can do some
(10:59):
filming, that can do someinterviewing, that can do this,
that can post.
You know, and they're attachedto the company they're, they're,
they know the brand, that'stheir voice, it's, they're one
of them, they can see, they canbe on a call with the customer
and you can get asked.
Or a prospect, and you can sayyeah, I was on five meetings
today.
They asked the same questionevery single meeting.
They're asking how do we tacklethis problem?
(11:21):
Hey Jay, hey Jerry, hey sally,can we film a video on this?
Yeah, I just had a prospectasking this question, a few of
them actually this week.
Let's film a quick video andget it out there, or we gotta,
you know, update an faq video.
You know, like there's just amillion different applications.
It's faster, it's moreeffective and it's I think it's
just the future of marketing ina lot of ways.
So we saw it, you know, I sawit firsthand and then I saw it
(11:42):
working with customers and itwas just so clear, man, it
wasn't even debatable, it wasjust like no question.
This is the right way to gowell, I, I would agree.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Uh, I probably have one, a couple caveats.
Where it, yeah, probably won'twork, it's when the founder this
is probably one of thesolopreneur or very small teams
where the skill set just isn'tthere and though it's going to
work better that way than itwould, but likely they've never
relied on inbound content to getbusiness at that point.
(12:13):
So if you have something youcan't write, doesn't do it well,
isn't really good at social,but they still have a company,
you're still probably in thesame spot because they're not
going to see the value, becausethey've never needed it, and so
there's probably a line whereyou could outsource it if they
have that initiative or whateverelse.
But you need to be involved andthis is not like a
(12:35):
billion-dollar company kind ofthing, because they could
benefit from outsourcing,because they could give someone
the night like here's all thedata points, write a basically
clever sales copy, but on asmaller one you don't think
there's a space where they'rejust terrible at it and you're
better at it because you atleast know the space, if you've
(12:55):
never seen that work.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Well, I think most solopreneurs are not going to be
able to afford a full-onmarketing agency, more than
likely so it's probably they'reeither going to do it themselves
or not do it until they scaleto where they can afford to hire
help.
But yeah, I mean, for contentto work, you have to be.
The content has to be good, youknow.
So it's like if you're abusiness owner and you're saying
, well, I'm not good at this,it's like it's not that you're
not inherently, naturally goodat it, you just haven't built
(13:19):
skills, you know, to your point.
You just haven't put in thereps yourself.
So you have to build thoseskill sets, whether you're going
to do it yourself or you'regoing to build a team.
If you're going to build a team, you got to understand those
skill sets right you got to knowenough yeah, you got to know
enough, right?
so I just think it's like such afundamental thing to the
(13:40):
business.
Like somebody's like I'm notgood on video, I'm not good
around.
It's like then what can you do?
You're either can write, youcan get on video, you can do
podcasts, you can do interviews.
You've got a freaking skillset.
Like there's no way.
You're just I'm suck ateverything content related.
No, you don't right.
Like, you just don't.
It's just most people haven'tdone it yet.
It's like I'm not very good onvideos.
How many videos have you done.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
We talk about the pure it.
They own the.
You know they do the selfdeprecating.
I don't know what I'm doing onvideo, but I do know about this
one topic I'm about to talkabout.
Yeah, then just make it anaudiogram.
Like you know, I'm terrible onon voice, like well, it doesn't
(14:23):
myself there, but, um, the ideais a really good voice, like the
sexy voice guy that act yeah,that's me.
So never mind, you have apretty good voice man, I am
self-promoting my sexy voice guybrand right there oh, it's not
even.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
You've never been promoted, but you are promoting
yourself.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
On this, I've never been promoted in career.
But fuck that, we're gonnapromote ourselves all day long.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
That's right man, that's freaking right I will
tell you what's interesting.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Um, we're a uh, a really good.
So, like I said, my team's beenaround for about four plus
years.
Same team.
I can give them basic and thisis where the skill sets can
happen.
Right, if you have a good, I'mgonna give you the power of what
you're saying.
I'm gonna endorse your ideathrough pure example, without
never admitting you prior todoing this interview.
(15:05):
Right, well, for a few minutes.
But we do the same thing.
But the first six months of itwere rough.
It was not my voice, it was tothis, to that you can accelerate
that now with some AI, we cantalk about how to do that.
But it was like I built acompany with the idea that I
didn't want to manage my ownsocial media or write my own
(15:25):
content.
I wanted them just to be theghost front for me.
So I didn't.
So I had more time because Isuck at operations, I know it.
So I just I hire people toexecute stuff.
I like to show up to themeeting and talk.
Yeah, um, once they got my voice, I don't think I could write
like me now.
Now, what I say and when Ispeak, I see it in the words
(15:46):
they put in, but if I try to goput it in those words, it's
terrible, and that's where thepower happens is.
I can drop a three-minute voicemessage to my writing team, and
Sundays, when my kind ofpersonal articles come out, it's
there and it's there, and it'sreally well done.
It's got a cool, fun image onit.
It's got the right headline.
(16:06):
There's very little nuance Ineed to do to it, because
they've gotten to the point andthey know how to organize the
content.
What I just described, though,is what you're saying you should
do.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Well, yeah, I mean, what you're speaking to is
someone that's worked for you.
Like you said, the first sixmonths were rough, you know, and
maybe, if you're workingsignificantly to where the first
six months aren't rough, butcertainly there's a few months
of just like feeling it outRight and understanding the
voice and the brand and thecontent To be fair, the six
months were probably merealizing.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Do I want to sound like that?
Yeah Right, am I like?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I'm kind of so what you're speaking to is exactly
what I suggest is like you'vebuilt an internal team that has
spent a lot of time with you,that knows your voice, knows the
brand, understands the company,understands the mission, what
you're trying to accomplish, andthey've put in a lot of work,
as have you, to build the skillsaround that the systems,
processes, automation, ai, right.
When you look at a marketingagency, what are they going to
(17:00):
do?
They're going to give you anaccount manager and they're
probably going to cycle throughaccount managers and they're
probably not going to be supergreat, and they're probably
going to cycle through accountmanagers and they're probably
not going to be super great, andthey're definitely not going to
spend 6 to 12 monthsunderstanding the brand and your
voice and getting so dialedinto you, thomas, and you only
no, because they have 30 othercustomers 20 other customers.
So they're like all right, doesthis sound like you?
(17:21):
I hope this is good enough,because I got to get to 10 other
posts in the next hour.
That's the problem with thatmodel is that if you're, if you
really want to do it right, youneed someone that's dedicated.
You need someone that's likethis is my job to do the copy to
do the posting, to do this, youknow, for this one company.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
When we, when we get hired by customers to do their
stuff for content, we do assigna writer to them and rotate
through the writers until they,until we find the one that
really matches with them best,and then they get tweaked from
there.
Sometimes they don't pay for afull time, but that person is
closest to their personalityvoice, and then they can tweak
from there.
Let's pivot that, though, tothe AI topic.
(17:58):
We leverage AI to help honethat in, so we almost create
their own.
Well, we just get their own GPTversion, basically, and we put
all the information in there tosay this, this, this, this, this
, this, don't.
Don't say clients always saycustomers like whatever it is
Right, yeah, and we build it,and then the tonality of the
chat becomes incredibly easy,with really good prompts to
deliver content, but you neversay create it.
(18:21):
We upload a you know SRT fileand say create this with this
compelling in this, this versionformat.
That's how we do it, some stuffto get scale and make sure it's
consistent.
So if someone doesn't have abad day or forget which account
they're working on, what's yourtake on AI?
Speaker 2 (18:39):
usage.
With this man, ai is gonnafreaking.
It's so big dude, it's soimportant, it's such a I mean,
it's gonna change the entireworld forever.
It already is right.
So it's massively importantthat people start using it and
using it every single day, notjust in marketing, not just in
content, but just in everythingday to day.
And I'm not saying youdehumanize and you don't.
You know, everything becomeschat, gpt, of course, not right.
(19:01):
It's a tool.
I always look at AI as like.
Ai is your creative assistantthat you have basically for free
.
That's just ultra smart and, Iwould argue, creative too, even
though people like it's notcreative.
Oh, we'll define creativity,then, because it can put two
different topics together andmake them into one.
It can write scripts.
It can do that.
So can it think exactly like ahuman?
(19:22):
No, but I don't need it to beright.
I don't need to do that.
I need to be my creativeassistant.
That's at my side 24 7 and atmy team's side 24 7.
You'll appreciate, like thisone of the things that we're
doing really.
That's really unique from acontent process standpoint with
ai.
I don't think anyone else isdoing this when it comes to
content and automation not yetat least we've partnered with a
(19:43):
company recently where in ourtrello boards, like in our
project management tool, as soonas I move a card from, it's
been edited right.
It goes through the process rawvideo uploads, there's
automation boom, the card getscreated, it moves and moves in G
drive.
All these automations happenOnce that that video is ready to
be moved to, ready for copy.
(20:03):
As soon as it moves, ready forcopy in the ready for copy
column, ai takes the transcriptwhich is in the card and it
automatically runs it throughthe prompt and creates AI.
It creates the copy for us andwe can prompt the AI as if it
were an agent of a copywritingagent, professionally trained,
so we can give it differenttones of voice based on customer
(20:25):
, based on style, based on whotheir customer is, what the
message, all that stuff, right.
So we just simply move the card.
Boom, automation happens, aitakes over, writes the copy.
Then of course we're going togo through and review it, make
sure it's good, we can alwaysrerun it, that kind of stuff.
Then it goes into post on deckwhere there's another automation
that happens where the thevideo gets copied and sent to an
(20:45):
archive folder and then theother copy gets sent to edited
videos ready to post with thatAI copy or with that generated
copy.
So it's just.
You know.
That's one example of many,many examples.
You know we use an email, weuse it in subject lines, youtube
.
You know just just abouteverything you can use AI in and
if, honestly, if someone's notusing AI every day in their work
(21:07):
, or at least every week, Ithink they either don't
understand how to really use itor they're naive to its full
potential.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Agreed, for example, this podcast right, when you
come on the show, as you know,you come on for the first 10
minutes.
We build the show ahead of timebecause I want this
conversation to be as fresh notpre-thought out just really a
good conversation on the topicof say goodbye to marketing
agencies, right, or whatever itends up being.
But I'll show you something wedo do downstream that you just
described.
Let me see if I can.
I'm not very, I don't typicallyshare stuff.
(21:36):
We take these interviews rightFor the people who've been on
our shows and been on there, andwe go and use the actual show
itself and this automaticallydoes it.
We, you know, take the audioimmediately, immediately dumps
in an AI.
The AI gets SRT.
I'm sorry, we go into a it'snot AI SRT, then that's
automatically put over and wehave a really cool prompt.
(21:58):
This is one of our guests.
We create that piece physicallyfor them, but then this whole
piece is super SEO for them.
For them, it's about theconversation.
It's about you know what wesaid, what I learned, and it and
the, the metrics on them, likegoing from you know having them.
I was going to share this.
This is kind of cool.
Give me a second to find it.
Okay, I think I think you'lllike this and I'm trying to show
(22:20):
people evidence that by doingstuff with AI, it doesn't always
have to be bad, we don't we?
Just we just started doing thismaybe a little while ago, like
we just started launching thelast 90 days or there.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
It's like it's.
It's like AI doesn't make badcontent.
This is that don't know how touse AI make bad content.
You know articles.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
This is where this is an unpromoted, never been
promoted as a brand new site.
This is what it did to itimmediately.
That's awesome, man, and whenyou show that like it's, you
know it's not huge numbers, butwe just launched it, right, and
we just started getting thesearticles out.
And the point being is, withoutAI, it'd take a writer a week
to go through that whole video.
Absolutely, and that's anautomated thing, and we tweak it
(23:03):
to make sure it's good, right,we add the links and do all the
other things.
But that part with AI and wedon't build on Trello board, we
use Monday and it just kind ofbecomes part of the process.
Yeah, and just because somebodymisclicks something all of a
sudden, now it's writing AI copyand pushing it and you're like
whoa, whoa, whoa, that wasn'tdone.
So we put humans in the loop,yeah, but, and you're in a,
(23:24):
you're a, you're a company, andyou're struggling with your
content, I believe, getting theright person on your team, and
you got to be prepared to givethem a chance to learn, they got
to have a good work ethic, allthe other things you're doing,
and because that nothing worksif someone is a shitty employee,
um or thing, talk about yourstyle, though, how you match a
company and what you do, maybefor them, so and not.
(23:45):
This is not shameless plug.
So shameless plug.
So much speak, but what's theuse case?
I think you've described it,but show it.
Tell me the use case.
They come to you and how do yousolve, how do you help them
with this in your company?
Speaker 2 (23:55):
So they come to us typically because they've been
struggling with a marketingagency, right, so they've been
working with a marketing agencyfor a while and they'll
typically tell us things likehey, we're, we're getting zero
results, zero leads, the branddoesn't feel like it's us, the
content's ineffective, itdoesn't really sound like us, it
doesn't feel like us, it'smissing our voice and tone.
Um, the website's misaligned,like we have no real way to
(24:16):
track inbound leads or metrics.
It.
We feel like we're notprioritized, it's slow to
produce content, that kind ofstuff.
That's typically what we hear.
And then they come to us and wetypically take them through
five phases and the the firstphase is always we look at the
brand message what is the storybrand, what is the story that
we're telling with our brand andhow does that?
Why does that matter to thecustomer?
And, of course, the customer isthe hero in the story.
(24:38):
So we look at everything fromtheir website copy videos on the
website, what I call buyerready videos, which is bottom of
the funnel people that aregetting ready to buy.
How are we creating videos forthem?
First, and then we align, youknow, all social channels to
reflect that to the newmessaging, branding things like
that.
The second thing we go throughis we develop a content strategy
.
So typically when I come intocompanies, most companies don't
(24:59):
have a content strategy.
They'll tell you something likehey, we're, we're doing
LinkedIn.
You know we're, we're postingtwo or three times on the
company page every week.
We got a blog that goes out.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
What do you mean?
That's not a strategy.
Exactly, so take that.
So when someone, someone,please hey, that's our strategy
we're going to post a couple oftimes.
Can you maybe just dive intothat onion and take a few layers
off?
Yeah, what a strategy actuallylooks like in the context.
Okay, cool, you're on LinkedIn.
Let me explain what a strategymeans for LinkedIn.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Yeah.
So I mean, it's like you know,if you look at a content
strategy, to me it's on socialand then off social.
So what is the strategy?
Basically, if you think aboutwhat a content strategy is, it's
like we have clients that wewant to attract, we have a brand
message and a story that wewant to tell.
All we're trying to do with ourcontent strategy is go,
communicate that story, attractpotential customers and bring
(25:50):
them into our ecosystem, andthen sales would take over from
there.
So what companies will do isthey'll say exactly what I just
said.
Oh, we're posting two or threetimes on LinkedIn.
Great, no-transcript.
What story are we telling?
Where is that?
Are we getting attention?
Where is it going?
Where are we trying to takepeople?
What is the overarching strategy, even outside of LinkedIn?
(26:12):
How do we reach the people thatdon't see our content on
LinkedIn?
Like there's no kind ofecosystem they have in play and
so and then the content's noteven good anyways.
So it's like they got.
Like I would consider postingon LinkedIn as a tactic that you
would do within a strategy.
That would be something you'dsay as part of our strategy.
We're going to post three timesa week on LinkedIn and here's
(26:36):
what we're going to post about.
Here's the content pillars.
Here's how we're going todesign the copy, the videos.
Here's what needs to be in hereto actually convert to leads
right To drive business.
Here's who's going to managethat.
Here's the behind it.
By the way, when we get peopleon there, we'd like to funnel
them into a newsletter or to ourpodcast or this or that, or
we'd like to send a few dms tothe people that follow.
You know, there's just like noreal thought out process, and
it's not necessarily their fault.
(26:57):
They typically either have likea social media manager that's
doesn't quite know what they'redoing.
There's like I'm just runningthe company page, I'm doing a
couple Like the team gottogether for happy hour, like
let's do a post about that.
It's like that's not, that'snot a strategy either, right, or
it's being done by a marketingcompany that's doing 30 other
clients and they're just notprioritized.
They don't really have thisthought out either.
So you know, again, we look atnot to go too far on this on
(27:22):
this tangent, but we look at.
It's important, because I too,because that's a great question.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
It's like hey, well, content matters in that strategy
.
Like so not to interrupt, butlike you know our, our ideas,
you start with what's the coreproblem, you solve.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Like yeah, bingo, that's part of the brand
strategy, right?
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Your personal brand aligns around that.
Your messaging reliance, likeyour content, relies on that.
Your live events, yournewsletter, everything around
that is around that.
One problem you solve, becausethere becomes ancillary topics
and people are like I don't know, I'm like that's right.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
So exactly, man, and that that's part of the step one
, which is the brand story,messaging that kind of stuff,
right.
So if you look at our site, Iknow you're like nice site.
It's so clear.
The one problem we solve isright on there like never
outsource your content everagain.
Say goodbye to marketingagencies.
We'll help you build yourinternal team right.
There's other things we dowithin that, but it's very clear
on the one big problem that wesolve.
So you know, look the strategy.
(28:11):
That's on social, off socialtracking systems, process system
automation.
You know all of that would bein the content strategy.
Then step three would begetting into building your
internal content team.
So, now that we know we've gotthe messaging, we're aligned,
the digital platforms are there,we know the strategy, how we're
going to execute it.
Who do we need on the team tobe able to execute this on a
(28:32):
day-to-day basis?
Now you're getting intocoaching and training.
Now you're getting intomentoring people to become great
content creators.
You could have the best contentstrategy in the world.
It's going to do absolutelynothing unless you do this one
thing, which is actually buildthe skills and either be coached
or trained or build itinternally yourself by trial and
error, however you want to goabout doing it.
(28:53):
Of course, you can shortcutyour success by having a guide
help you through that, butyou've got to be able to get
good at the content fundamentals.
You have to know how to engagean audience in the first, second
or two, because I promise you,that's all you got.
If you're going to do YouTube,you need to know thumbnails,
titles, descriptions, seos.
If you're going to do TikTok,you need to know short form
videos and how to attract evenLinkedIn.
(29:14):
Now the difference between apicture post, text post versus
the vertical LinkedIn, tiktok,video feed.
Now you need to know that.
You need to engage their salesnavigator, their social selling
tactics and strategies.
You have to know these bits andpieces that go into the
tactical aspect of the content.
But that is the second thingyou do after you have the
strategy in place first, so theyboth have to work together.
(29:35):
It's like do you have a greatstrategy?
If you do, perfect.
Now let me see the content.
It's kind of like ads.
Right, you got a great adstrategy.
You got the right buyers andthe personas Looks amazing.
This is perfect.
But dude, dude, your copy sucks.
The fucking ad is terrible.
Right, the.
The message is all over theplace.
It's not the customers don'tcare about this, right, that's
the wrong video.
We're two, three seconds in.
(29:55):
We're not even sure what thevideo is about.
So it's all those things thatgo into after once you lay out
the strategy even your side.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
As simple as it is.
I challenge you.
I think you guys could even tieto a more emotional string,
(30:29):
because I'd be like I need totalk to them, yeah our agencies
with no content results right,exactly it's.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
It's basically our you know, our target customers
are seven, eight figurebusinesses doing any, usually
anywhere from three to thirtymillion.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
So that's kind of scaled a little bit where that's
not their main piece.
Yeah, they've got a goodbusiness.
Like yeah, they're underratedrevenue.
That kind of scaled a littlebit where that's not their main
piece.
Yeah, they've got a goodbusiness.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Like yeah, they're underrated revenue, that kind of
stuff.
But they're like man.
Our marketing sucks, like ourcontent sucks If you're a
marketing director of one,effectively.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
for a lot of those, their only concern is keeping
their job Right and that of,like hey, are you feeling some
pressure from your executivesthat marketing is not working?
Are your sales leaders sayingyou can't produce a lead, like
you know?
I'd say that's probably on thesales side, but anyway.
So what you were where you'reliving, and my point of that is
(31:17):
is part of your strategy has tounderstand the desperate problem
you're solving for them.
Because if you don't peel, it'sjust meh, yeah, and we listen.
Because if you don't peel, it'sjust meh, yeah, and we listen.
I struggle with it all the timeand and I have two brands that
I have to fight with betweeninstantly relevant and you know,
or three cut the tie and neverbeen.
so I'll take you offline on howto approach that multi-brand
strategy, but I don't think wehave enough time to dive into
(31:40):
that one maybe maybe a sidestrategy and and I know we've
fallen victim to this is we haveall our handles for social
media, but I only give attentionreally to linkedin and we're
just starting to a bit more inmeta just because we're trying
to drive podcast side.
Uh, I, I even with a team Ifeel hyperly overwhelmed with
(32:03):
having so many social mediaaccounts and they they pretty
much in youtube's where our bigfocus is in linkedin.
But even then they kind of Ifeel like they're dismal on some
of the numbers and metrics.
First, what's your take on that?
On listen, just pick one solike, or you know, and and this,
this feeling that almosteverybody feels I don't even run
my marketing right, the teamdoes I still feel overwhelmed.
(32:24):
So what's your take on maybethose kind of joint topics?
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Going on multiple different platforms at the same
time.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Yeah, it's the overwhelming feeling of having
multiple platforms and they allfeel very mediocre, except maybe
the one like LinkedIn we dopretty well with, even though I
think our engagement's terriblebut we don't target engagement.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
So my advice would be if you're on multiple different
social media platforms and youfeel like all of them are kind
of mediocre and doing okay, notreally driving business, you're
not seeing the results.
You think you should, I wouldsay can.
We can do one of two things.
One we can pour more time,resources, energy, money into
making them all better at thesame time, like that can be done
, and if you don't know how todo it, you hire somebody that
(33:02):
does.
If you have the resources,right, maybe you hire an
additional person that's goingto help you really revamp
YouTube, for example, becausethat takes a whole other skill
set of the thumbnails, thetitles.
It's a different game, right,as you know.
Right, the other side was wesay, well, we don't have the
resources, we don't have theoption to bring someone in or
pay more money for this or thatGreat.
Then you say we're on fourchannels.
Now do we go to one or two anddo we get really good at those
(33:26):
one or two that we think aremost valuable for our business
and where our customers are andhopefully there's some organic
reach there, and do we justreally drill down on those one
or two and for a lot of peoplelistening right now.
B2b especially.
That's LinkedIn.
I don't want you to post onInstagram Facebook meta like
TikTok If all of them are shitty, not working and it's not good
content.
I'd rather have you just saylet's just get great at LinkedIn
(33:48):
for the next three to sixmonths.
There's hella opportunity there.
Our customers are there.
There's greater organic reach.
A lot of things with socialselling go side by side with
that.
Let's focus, let's get focused.
So to me it's like focus inscrap the noise.
(34:11):
Get rid of the one to twoplatforms that maybe you don't
need right now if you're feelingoverwhelmed, or you bring in
additional help, guidance,support people, to make all of
those better.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
If you know how to do that, yeah well, I love that
play.
And one thing I've seen and,listen, I'm debating whether to
do it too is just do one postonly on your LinkedIn or on your
social media that you don't use.
Instagram says all our contentson, fill in the blank.
Check us out here.
Listen, we, we commit to thisfully.
Thanks for finding us here.
One day we may be here, but goto LinkedIn If you need the
stuff you need, like and justlet people know where to go and
(34:36):
like.
That, honestly, might be enough, but they're legit.
They're telling me that we'renot on.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Well, the only the only challenge the challenging
part about that.
It is tough to get people offone platform and onto another
when they're in the midst ofscrolling through the feed.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Yeah, I think just in general.
In general yeah, yeah, you'rethere, but you're not like
podcast.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
You got the podcast clips.
It's like go to YouTube for thelong form or the podcast for
long form, but it is challengingto get.
So if they're in a feed like,it's really tough to get them
off that feed and then on toanother one to go visit your
profile.
But I see what you're saying.
It's like again having astrategy.
Right, where are we trying totake people?
You know it's like where's thefocus?
Where do we want to take peopledown this path?
You know they see our videohere.
What, what's next?
Speaker 1 (35:19):
right, we, uh, okay, so the last thing I'll talk
about, just high level I.
I have multiple brands.
We got about three minutes lefthere, right, and one strategy.
I'd love to hear your take onit, because this is why I have a
podcast, so I can selfishlylearn and no charge.
It's great.
One thing we're doing is onLinkedIn.
I'm trying to get all threebrands to go, but what we were
doing for a while that I find itdidn't work is like kind of
(35:39):
more like I'm more of a Facebookgroup, like I'm an entrepreneur
.
I want help, I want to learnmore and it just pushing
everyone into that one thing andthen just having the tie and
the white across all brands.
And the truth is because theidea is stay as high level as
(36:04):
you can on your thing and giveas much value on all the
channels you can and let peoplecome into you based on where
they listen.
I'm interested in that.
Do you like that strategy thatwe've moved to?
Or would you think listen no,no, no.
Be this one person on LinkedIn,be this person on meta, be this
other thing on TikTok.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
I like the strategy of you've got one personal brand
.
Let's leverage that and go deepon that.
One thing that you want to dothat expert, you know opinion,
or that thought leadership orwhatever you're going to talk
about I would say this is that,yeah, you have one personal
brand.
So your question is like, ifyou look at it like you've got
one bucket, I can max thisbucket out and fill it really
high and really make thatpersonal brand great and that
(36:44):
one to two area of expert, areasof expertise.
Or I can start taking waterfrom this one bucket and moving
it into another bucket and thenanother bucket, but what is that
going to do to the first bucket?
It's going to dilute it.
The second bucket is not goingto be as full, so the third
bucket is going to be the samething.
So to me, it's like I don'tthink there's one right or wrong
way.
I always look at, hey, what areyou trying to accomplish?
(37:07):
What are your goals and I'msure you probably do the same
thing right, what are we tryingto accomplish?
And if you're saying, well, Iwant to grow my business through
my personal brand, perfect,then you better be talking about
that stuff and the content.
Right, if you're talking aboutthis and that and this thing
that you're trying to drive likeall I do is talk about video
(37:27):
marketing and content buildingyour own content teams.
I would love to talk aboutother things, of course.
I will at some point in mycareer.
It's a timing thing, it's notright now, right and I do
occasionally touch on otherthings, don't get me wrong.
But but people, I think, try togo a million different
directions, or two or threedifferent directions, and it
ends up just confusing people.
(37:47):
And then you're not.
You're competing againstsomebody that's going a hundred
percent in on the topic andyou're going 50.
You're gonna lose right likeyou're not.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
I have absolutely experienced this.
So so my engagement on my siteand my thing is, because we've
been like, hey, are we gonnalike I really don't always want
to go 100 linkedin, ourinstantly relevant has been very
focused on how you use linkedLinkedIn and methodology.
It works really well.
It is not instant gratification, it's how LinkedIn is supposed
to be used Networking 15 minutes, let's chat, just like you and
I met.
That is the system to getsomeone on.
(38:16):
That I'm interested in.
But you wouldn't have met me ifI had Instantly Relevant up
there.
You came on and we met because,hey, cut the tie, good, podcast
, this helps me.
So we switched to this and nowour entire content, set outside
of some very small things aroundmarketing specifically, is
around just our guests.
It's around their expertise.
(38:37):
It's just promoting others soothers can learn how to become
better entrepreneurs.
That allows me to touch lots ofpeople.
That allows my brand to be easyto consume.
And then it's like, hey, whatelse does this guy do, if
anything?
And that method is puckers yourbutthole up so tight, cause
you're like Whoa, I, I'm gettingaway from more of a direct
sales.
This is what I do and can dofor you.
Yes, but you do have to haveeffort and a strategy in place
(38:59):
down the street that says hey,by the way, this is what I do
for this.
I have a triangle, you're here,we also do these two things,
and I have this thing coming andthey're oh, I actually need
help with that Awesome Causeyou've just gotten time with
someone.
But that is not an automatedprocess.
That's, you know.
There's, we can get into yourpiece.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
I know you got it.
I know you have the balancetoday.
A quick thing on that reallyquickly is like I have my own
podcast, but do I do a lot ofclips and promotions and that
kind of stuff for it?
No, because it's just a choice.
It's not a top priority for meright now.
I love doing the podcast.
I want some customers fromhaving them on the podcast, as
I'm sure you do too, right?
So it's a good BD channel.
(39:37):
It's a good outreach.
If I want to talk to somebody,get them on, I can communicate
with them.
Oh, you're in a funnel now and,exactly, I love it and I
genuinely enjoy having theseconversations, as I'm sure you
do too, I can tell.
So it's called Founder Talk.
I have other founders on theshow.
I only do in-person podcasts.
Oh, that's great.
I would love that.
Yeah, I only do that.
It's a pain because it's harderto get guests, but for me again
(40:01):
, it's just a personal thing Iwanted to do.
But you won't hear a lot aboutthat and you can say well, alex,
why aren't you promoting yourpodcast all the time?
Like, well, that's not my mainobjective or goal right now.
I mean correct it could be, buteven that just like that's a
slower funnel than me justtalking about the things that I
could talk about and have getmillions of views on LinkedIn
(40:22):
and other places.
So for me it's like what is thepriority right now?
Now I may get to a point a yearor two from now where founder
talk podcast becomes one of themain priorities and so I'm
sharing more clips from the show, I'm talking about it more, I'm
driving more people there andmaybe that's into the funnel
right, but it's just not theretoday.
So it always goes back to likewhat do you want to have happen?
And then the content should mapthat every single day.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Agreed and I'll leave you with this right.
So because we found a way togrow with through advertising on
YouTube very quickly.
I see this subscriber base.
If I can get the content right,you have a million plus
subscribers.
You find a way to give half ofthe get, half of them a million
dollars, a dollar a month forsomething, for live shows.
They want to attend stuff likethat.
Now, now I'm talking to you Iwas talking a half million.
You'll keep 300,000 a monthfrom YouTube dollar that
(41:04):
someone's giving you.
That means why I put so mucheffort into this, because
long-term I'm going to help moreentrepreneurs by reaching more
people and then also thelong-term payoff in that could
be incredible Makes sense, dude.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
I think what you're doing is smart yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
And it's a different way, and I'll tell you what.
When you make that decision toswitch just entrepreneurs,
you're going to pucker upno-transcript a few things that
do it.
So what you're doing is veryclear you help these businesses
grow by getting control of theircontent and the voice, and I
(41:39):
love that about you.
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
And, dude, I love helping entrepreneurs and I've
done a little bit of businesscoaching on the side at times
like that.
So I mean, for me that's anultra big passion of mine, but
again, it's knowing like, butthat's not the focus right now
and if I take off this, whatwe're sitting on right now, it's
going to prevent me from beingable to do that later on and
having the stories to shareabout how, what we did, you get
it right.
I do, I'd want to do this rightnow, but it's like be patient,
(42:07):
dude, build this company for thenext two years and then you can
talk all the rest of your lifeabout that stuff, if you want to
.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
I love it.
I'm going to reserve the rightto ask you to come back on,
because we have some more topicsWe'd love to man.
I'm going to do your shamelessplug for you.
It's impacts.
Now I am there, he is Probablyone of our best looking guests.
I'm going to throw that outthere too.
By the way.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
So if you guys are listening to this, you can be
like oh wow.
Okay, check out the face.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
He's shirtless.
If you're listening to this,he's shirtless.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
I am.
I got abs too.
So check it out, I have abs too.
Are they at their fullpotential?
Speaker 1 (42:47):
I would tell my wife for years under construction,
but it's coming up.
All right, that's good.
All right, I'm going to put youin the periwinkle room.
I'll be right back with you.
Thank you so much, alex, forcoming on today.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Thank you, man.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Hey guys, thank you for listening.
I really appreciate everyonewho's made it at this point.
If this was your first, gotsomething great from it.
Wherever you are in yourentrepreneurial journey, either
thinking about it, about tostart start it, or, like you
know, you're a multimillionaireand you're, like just you know,
want to learn more.
This is what it's here for it'shelp you learn something from
(43:16):
our guests what they did tobuild their companies, what they
do for the world and whatthey're thinking about the
future, which what matters.
Alex is awesome.
Check him out once again.
I'm going to give him a littleanother plug there.
Impaxscom impacts Very goodagency, very focused on what
they do for you, and that's anindicator.
Typically, that's a really goodcompany to work with when
they're focused on a singleproblem they're solving for you.
So thank you for listening.
Thanks for watching.
(43:37):
Until we meet again, get outthere and go unleash your
entrepreneur.
You.
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