The Power of Personal Branding, with Andy Frisella - MFCEO123
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, Andi and Andi discuss the importance of personal branding and how you can develop a personal brand that reflects who you are as a person and what you're really about. They discuss how to develop your personal brand, how to build it, and why personal branding is the most important thing you can do in your career.
Transcript
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what is up guys you're listening to the mf ceo project i'm andy i'm your host and i am the
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motherfucking ceo guys this is your first time listening welcome um we're gonna talk about some
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important practical steps today it's tuesday that's what we normally do on tuesdays on thursdays we're
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gonna punch you right in the face with some motivation um so we get two different styles
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of content every week do we do this for free the only thing i ask of you guys is if you enjoy the
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podcast if you've got content that helped you during this podcast i ask that you share with one
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of your friends as always i'm joined by my co-host vaughn the pastor of disaster what's up my man hey
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man i'm i'm excited to be rubbing elbows with the titans of industry hey hey are you gonna brag on
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yourself i don't brag man well okay pretty excited about your uh your article in ink
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yeah it's incredible yeah totally ink-tastic yeah
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it's uh you know it's cool it's it was a nice little feature um i think the content of the
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article is what's important yeah uh considering you know i think that's what we're gonna talk
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about today just because it's a good time um if you hadn't seen the article it's on ink it was on
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the home page uh for about a week um i got the link to it on my facebook page and i'll probably
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post it on instagram too but the basis of the article is this personal branding is very fucking
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important okay so many people take personal branding as if it's for other people and they think
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that it's for celebrities or it's for influencers or for people who uh are becoming something and so
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instead of like being the driver of the car they decide they're going to be a passenger and they're
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going to be an observer you know they're going to be a fan in the baseball stadium instead of a player
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but what you have to realize is that everybody's a player now it doesn't matter if you're a ceo
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if you're a famous actor if you're a famous influencer or if you're just going to be an employee
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and that's what you're going to do you still have to have a personal brand and whether you realize it
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or not you do have a personal brand and that personal brand consists of the socially uh the
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social content that you put out on various platforms the first thing i do when i go to hire someone i don't
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care what the position is is not to look at the resume that's how it's been for the last 75 80 100
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years now the very first thing myself and most companies do is they go to people's social outlets
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they go to their facebook they go to their instagram they go to twitter they go to their snapchat and they
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see what kind of person they're dealing with all right and so many people discount personal branding
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as if it's for other people when in reality it could be the very thing that gets you the job or gets you
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the raise or causes you to make that next step in your career and i think that a lot of people and
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a lot of you guys listening now you really have no fucking clue what you're doing when it comes to
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branding yourself and that's what we're going to talk about today absolutely you kind of anticipated
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my first question but guys if you listen to the podcast for any length of time you know that
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one of the things we like to do is dust off shopworn phrases and murder cliches and one of the
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typical cliches obviously in the success space and in the entrepreneurial space um is develop a
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personal brand and i know that you hate you hate it when people use phrases that they don't really
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understand right like self-awareness right right so you you already got into a little bit of my
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question but it's you know before we go much further what how do you understand personal branding you
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mentioned it's the content you put out there that reflects this is an easy way this is an easy way to
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explain it 20 years ago when there was no social media all right if somebody put a magazine article
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out and there was a picture of somebody and you really thought that was a cool picture that picture
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said a few different things to you all right and whatever that picture said to you is what you
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interpreted that person to be all right now they could be totally different they could be uh the
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exact opposite a matter of fact of what the picture said but because the picture was posed
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a certain way or taken in a certain light or or uh you know it expressed a certain tone or feel
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your interpretation of that person's brand was a certain way now fast forward the 20 30 years
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since that time when it used to be like that now there's a lot more things that develop somebody's
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interpretation of you than just a photograph all right now it's what you say on facebook now it's
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what you post on instagram now it's what you post on your snapchat okay it's not just uh you know a
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picture it's all this content that comes together to create something that people interpret you
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in in terms of what you are or what you aren't and if i'm hiring somebody it's extremely valuable tool
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and i'm telling you right now and i'm stressing this on the people who aren't actually entrepreneurs
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but they're here for the personal development side if you're not developing a brand if you're not
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careful about what you're putting out if you're not conscious about what you're putting out on a
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regular basis you're likely hurting your chances to move forward in other areas of life so i would
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say your personal brand is just a culmination of everything that you let people see about you
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in the public okay yeah so so would another way to think about that yeah how how mindless people are
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about what they put out you know they share uh you know certain content or they say certain things or
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they complain when they're emotional or they you know they do uh pity party shit or you know all kinds
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of goofy things that people do because they feel like this is a social outlet and here's what these
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people say they say well that's but i'm i'm using it for uh this well just because you decide you want
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to use a screwdriver to hammer nails doesn't mean that's the right fucking tool for that right okay
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the social media is a branding space you might think you're you might think you're uh
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somebody who's a lurker somebody who doesn't really put out much content or somebody who
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uh doesn't use it for professional but are you able to be there when the conversation is had about
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your brand to explain that you don't take your brand seriously think about that so i'm saying yeah so
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absolutely take taking control of everything out there that contributes to your overall online
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right because people are watching yeah and it's going to it's going to end up flowing down to
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your income level eventually right it might not be today it might not be your very next opportunity
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but eventually our value in terms of the marketplace is going to not be our resume our degree where we
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went to school who our fucking parents are it's going to be how influential you are on social media
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and it's already becoming that so if you're not working on this in a conscious way right now
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you're way behind the game you need to catch up right so we're going to talk about the issue of
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authenticity down the road here a little bit but right off the bat i feel like i we need to make a
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distinction if if for no other reason than the asterisk holes among us that what you are not saying
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there's two different things here there's people who want to approach it from the standpoint i'm going
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to curate this reputation and be very careful about what i what i put on social media but it's not an
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accurate representation of them it's them being fake and putting something out there that's not
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what you're saying you're saying just be really careful about putting things out there right
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because you're going to be judged by them is that what you yes you know because i don't want people
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i don't want someone to come come away saying wait okay so andy you're saying i just have to carefully
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uh construct this why would you complain in front of fucking let's say you have 500 people that look at
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you which isn't very much that's it why would you stand in front of 500 people on a stage
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and say what you're about to say on the internet would it help you or hurt you that's a good
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question yeah because that's what you're doing yeah all right yeah so stop the fucking nonsense
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you know stop with the candy crush and the fucking bullshit you know and remember now it's not just
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what you say it's what you like too right right you know you have to be conscious of it it's not
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something that people are conscious of yet they think that facebook and instagram and these all these
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tools which is what they are tools are toys and they're not toys they're tools right so before we
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get much further i'll ask a question that i already know the answer do the same rules apply in direct
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messaging yes because people could snapshot your shit and show it to everybody that's what i don't
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think people understand no they don't dude yeah um okay well let's talk a little bit about
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so it's clear from anybody you know if you read the article which guys do we'll we'll throw up a link
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to it on the inc website but we'll throw a link to it from our website on this uh on this particular
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episode page but it's clear from the article that you believe obviously personal branding is something
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we should consider essential not optional but just playing devil's advocate you know gary v has a
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personal brand as far as i know warren buffett does not have a personal brand in the sense that
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he's not out there creating the same kind of content that gary is or or using the same kind of
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platforms and yet warren buffett clearly is far more uh wealthy than gary so in what sense like
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do you really believe like literally everybody in business needs to actively create this personal
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brand and tie it into their business or do you think it is optional just depending on what let's say
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what area that you're in or what what field of of industry you're in you have to remember that
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we're in a transition phase okay you've got a guy like warren buffett who's made most of his money
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you know at least created most of his momentum before social media era to say that he doesn't
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have a personal brand is inaccurate he does have a personal brand what do you think of warren buffett
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when you think of him billionaire and what else i think of investor i think of a very smart uh meek
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but incredibly uh shrewd businessman right um i'm i'm actually blanking the name of his is it price
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waterhouse no it's berkshire hathaway yeah yeah so how about any stock market tv show yeah my point is
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is that you already he's got a personal brand right you know what it is right okay now gary is in a
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different era right gary is in an era of social media so he's maximizing the tools available to him
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so while gary you know is not as worth as much as warren buffett he's way more relevant right now
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in terms of his opinions on anything business wise right and that's where the that's where the power
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lies you know you could argue you could make some i know people argue oh warren could buy gary yeah he
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could but he's not gonna right you know right right so who's who do you see more of who do you
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recognize more who do you listen to more who's more relevant you know right now gary's more relevant
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because he's worked on his personal brand and while he may not be you know warren buffett's
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fucking 80 years old gary's 40 so we're gonna see where gary is in 40 years right that's the point
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yeah so basically your thought is if i mean you like to to uh use tires as an example so if you're
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the ceo of a multinational tire company your take on it is you better cultivate a personal brand like a
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like a actively doing what you're doing with social media followers and here's what's gonna
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happen if you don't content i'll just say this there's a lot of guys who i talk to that they say
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oh i don't want to mess with that because blah blah blah they've been in business for a number of
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years they're very successful and they don't see it as something they need to do because today they're
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making money but what they don't see is that young hungry uh you know active guy out there who's
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running a tire chain who's starting up his personal brand who's going to become the relevant
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voice an expert voice in that space who's going to have the most influential voice when he says hey
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this tire sucks and this tire's great that's what they're going to sell so he's you know because he's
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complacent now with the way that he's making money his his ability to influence people five years from
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now or compete five years from now is going to be tremendously hindered from what it is now right
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we're in a transition phase we're in a transition it's not the matter of what is actually you know
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relevant now like big ceo doesn't want to have his social brand right now could still he's still going
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to do well for a number of years but we're talking to people who we're not talking to these motherfuckers
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on us we're talking to people who are wanting to build something right right and that's how you can
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attack and and be on the offense by developing an effective personal brand over the course of time do you
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you think the people that are hesitant to do it are truly underestimating the fact that people are
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powerfully in influenced by a at least a perceived connection with somebody through social media and
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i mean do they just not see that that really is going to no it's like anything they don't think
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it's for them yeah they think it's for other people yeah you know you know running a multi-million
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dollar company is for other people i'm just you know middle management guy i don't need to have
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social media well what happens when middle management guy um who doesn't have social media
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goes up against middle management guy who has social media in the space and a voice in the space
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of management has become an expert on managing people writing a blog and manage people does
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youtube's about managing people right what happens then the guy with no supposed social because it's
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not for him because he's just a middle manager loses his fucking job to the guy who's an expert
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right so right that's and that's happening every day yeah i can tell you right now on a on a
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basic employee level our company hires people based off their social media as a as a huge aspect
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a huge aspect i don't give a fuck if you went to college i don't care if you have a master's degree
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i don't care if you're a phd i don't fucking care i care about if you're influential in our industry
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right right that makes total sense and i'm talking about 10 to 12 dollar an hour entry-level job guys
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i'm not talking about career positions that's happening now that that mentality that way of
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filtering out employees is already happening and people don't realize it you know so next time you
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post on your social media about your boyfriend you know being a jerk and this and that just remember
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people are going to see that right right so i mean if you think about it this really shouldn't
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even be an argument we're having with anybody in terms of the validity and the importance of this
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of developing the person brand i mean completely all policies politics issues aside we had two
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candidates in the last election one of them was way more active on social media than the other
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like personally not just on facebook but won the election on social media he did period which is
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what frankly is how obama won it but donald trump took it to a next level that instead of instead of
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just using the platforms he personally was engaging people directly through the use of twitter and i
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don't care what you think about donald trump it was absolutely brilliant it's brilliant for absolutely
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brilliant brilliant for anybody yeah it's brilliant for anybody um okay so we're going to go to best
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practices in a second but let's start with basic principles see here i want to say something real quick
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because back to the gary vaynerchuk warren buffett thing yeah look execution in the real world is never
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going to be replaced and this is something that people think like oh you develop personal brand
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and all this shit happens and you make lots of money no that's not how it works execution of the
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real world is never going to be replaced it can never be beat it can never be um you know defeated
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in terms of where you're going to do well and grow so you have to shake hands you have to meet people
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you have to get in with the right people you have to do the work and all the other shit that we always
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talk about but what personal branding does is it allows you to get those opportunities much more
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quickly that makes total sense okay yeah yeah it makes total sense so in terms of basic principles
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like you got let's say you got a bunch of hungry young bucks in front of you they say teach us how to
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develop a personal brand what are lay down some basic principles to get them started well first off you
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have to decide what it is you stand for okay so it takes some self-awareness it takes some it takes
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some reflective time what are you trying to do what are you trying to accomplish and what do you
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stand for what are you interested in and what are you interested in is a very very crucial question
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that because usually when you're interested in things you already know quite a few things about
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those things so you you're you're sort of an expert right most people are a lot more of an expert than
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they think they are it's just that they suffer from imposter syndrome where they think that like
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they don't know and they need somebody to come by and tell them shit right so you have to look at like
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what you're interested in what you're trying to accomplish where are your skills what content do you have to
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offer what value can you offer you know and people have a hard time saying that because they always
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feel like they're not qualified to start a brand because you know i'm not uh you know worth two or
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i'm not worth 10 million dollars or i'm not making you know this or that or i'm not credible here because
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i've never been recognized by forbes or whatever it doesn't fucking matter you're gonna establish yourself
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as an expert perception is reality and you know coming up with that brand has to i can't tell you
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like where exactly your brand's gonna fit but what i could tell you is is that it's gonna be what you're
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interested in because that's what's gonna be the easiest thing for you to become an expert on
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okay and then you want to you want to backtrack from you know where you want this brand to take you
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what do you want why are you doing this how are you trying to use this to uh to project you know
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and and get your career on the right path how and then work backwards from that you see what i'm saying
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right so so first two principles determine what you have to offer and secondly determine where you want
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to go right exactly yeah so i mean and that's different for everybody obviously yeah you know but
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there's tons and tons of people out there who have made huge amounts of i mean dude uh
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furious pete he's a competitive eater he's got a huge youtube channel yeah makes millions of dollars
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off of youtube by eating shit yeah i mean like eating like you know like kobayashi like fucking hot
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dogs fast yeah right he holds all these world records for food he's a friend of mine and like dude the
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guy makes millions of dollars by by eating okay now he's got a clothing line he's got a supplement
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line he's got all these other things that he built off his social media that he knew he had
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this little weird skill yeah that he you know what i mean yeah it was interesting yeah that's it i mean
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that's right and it's a reminder to anybody who thinks well this odd thing about me i don't know that
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i could monetize off of it yeah it's just a weird party trick yeah all of a sudden turned into a
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fucking uh you know a booster to real business right right so along with the idea of what what do i
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offer i know you know if if people go to your uh supplement superstores website and i'm sure it's
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on your first form website too but there's actually a page that says the s2 story and i love that because
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i think that's a huge part of the the personal brand is is knowing how to mine your story for the
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salient points that are going to help you connect with people and you've done that like with the story
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about the scar with the story about the pistane mattresses you do that really well like you take you
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pluck stories from your life and you're able to to apply those you know just generally to people
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here's what's funny about that is that people tell they're like oh andy you're so good at telling
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stories no i'm not i just tell my story right you're just afraid to tell yours you're good at
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telling your story that's right yeah you don't you don't think you're interesting enough you don't
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think you're smart enough you don't think you deserve to be or on that level but the thing is is
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that nobody's going to tell your story except you nobody's going to come along and pull you out
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and say we need to tell your story right it's not going to happen man it happens in the fucking
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movies so until you start until you start telling it and getting some people interested in it and
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like dude the only way people are going to be interested in your story is if it's real and it's
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from the heart if it's bullshit people will know right you know but everybody has challenges they've
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overcome everybody has things they're working on everybody has things they want to be and they're
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all too fucking scared to say what they are right right that's the problem right and guys if you're
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working on your personal brand and you're thinking of developing your story let me tell you from my
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background as a writer what makes the most compelling content is conflict is it always is conflict i mean
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think of any movie you ever watch if there's no conflict is a boring boring movie so if you're
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looking at your personal story you're looking at your background you're trying to figure out
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what are the ways that i can connect with people look for the points of conflict look for the pain just
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like you getting stabbed that's a point of conflict you you wrestling with something good there look
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for the pain yeah look for the pain that's what people don't do yeah because they they either
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don't think that their pain was great enough or they don't want to sound like a crybaby or you know
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but dude look you kind of have to think of yourself as like an entertainer you know what i mean like
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i have to like get people interested in me i have to develop personal brands so i have to like
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entertain them with with with my life absolutely you so and you have and you have to be okay with
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that yeah and like dude you're gonna have people who are gonna say weird shit to you like oh what
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are you trying to dude i get this all the time oh what are you trying to do fucking be like tony
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robbins blah blah blah no i'm actually trying to be better than him right but you know the point of
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the matter is is that like although he's still a million steps above me he used to be two million
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steps above me right you're saying absolutely get what you're saying yeah no and i think that you
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would agree that the the looking for the pain type thing is not just good about sell you know selling
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your story or or promoting your story but that's also what you do when you're selling something
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right you look for people's point of pain and how to how to bring a healing to it right solution to it
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so that's great so so uh telling people as far as developing your personal brand uh what do you
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have to offer where are you trying to go um you know do people determine the key points of your story
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and also here people want to connect with a real human all right you don't have to vomit your
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fucking story out every day but take take your story and chop it into 10 small stories right and
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put those out and then tell them and then interact with them when people say things you know the prop
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most of these people who are listening right now have small amounts of followers probably less than a
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thousand uh you know or less than five thousand for sure and they have a hard time because they put
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this work in and then they get eight likes or 10 likes they're like fuck this isn't working well
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the reason it's not working is because you're not being patient enough to let it work i started out in
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the same place you did nobody could pay attention or give a fuck about what i was doing whenever i
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started doing it you know but what i did is i stayed consistent i kept doing it i kept improving i kept
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finding out different ways to improve how i would communicate i would interact with people not only on my
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posts but on their posts because if they think that you care about them they will care back yeah
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right and you know all those things together over time is what puts it together so a lot of people
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won't do it because of how slow it is in the beginning but man once you get the hang of putting out good
00:23:30.960
content it can multiply very very fast absolutely so let's talk about that whole issue of being
00:23:36.560
yourself being authentic another overused phrase what does it mean right so i well here's what
00:23:42.620
people have to understand well dude your your true self is interesting enough for other people to
00:23:49.940
relate to whatever and i'm not talking about the self that you put out in the public because you're
00:23:54.760
afraid people are going to laugh at you i'm talking about who you really are on the inside if you didn't
00:23:58.800
care about that shit like who you are when you go to bed at night and you're thinking like oh you know
00:24:03.300
i wish i would have said this or done that well then learn to fucking say that and do that and
00:24:07.420
that's what's going to create your authentic self it's it's you know it's presenting who you are to
00:24:12.960
the world and that in itself is extremely inspiring to people when you show people like hey i really
00:24:18.260
don't care what so-and-so thinks or what so-and-so has to say i'm doing my thing and my thing is going
00:24:24.260
to build a brand out of out of me right okay and that's inspiring in itself so you have to realize that
00:24:30.260
now are you going to have people to make comments absolutely so what who fucking cares they're going
00:24:34.300
to be doing the same thing five years from now you know you have to realize that if you try to
00:24:40.060
pretend to be who you think society wants you to be you're going to be looked at as a normal human
00:24:46.720
you're not going to be exciting you're not going to be uh uh somebody who people want to follow
00:24:51.400
because you're not interesting that's not interesting being like everybody else is not
00:24:55.220
interesting being who you are without all those filters that the world puts on us
00:25:00.620
is very interesting and i have yet to meet a person in life that if i can get them to put
00:25:06.260
their filters away for a minute isn't a very interesting individual it just doesn't happen
00:25:11.000
no that's a great point yeah so you have to you have to learn how to remove all the the the filters
00:25:17.180
that you put on yourself to try to present the perfect package and just present the package for what
00:25:21.800
it is it's not perfect you're imperfect i'm imperfect we all have our flaws but you know what
00:25:26.420
we're going to talk about those two and that's that's authentic that's being the real you and
00:25:31.640
that's that's a journey man like that's not something it's hard to do for a lot of people
00:25:35.060
right it takes some onions right definitely yeah so um can i share i mean i had a massive aha moment
00:25:42.560
about two weeks ago because i downloaded that that stupid app that you know like i forget what it's
00:25:47.380
called it's like instagram analysis or something like that but it tells you like your highest post
00:25:52.540
and it tells you trends but it also tells you who unfollows you and what's really interesting is like
00:25:57.340
i noticed that for the first time and i got on and i saw man there there's a pretty decent amount
00:26:02.140
of people that unfollowed me and and at first i was like man that i must have done something wrong
00:26:08.240
i i screwed up but as i was looking over the people that unfollowed me i realized yeah this person
00:26:14.300
wouldn't want what i'm offering right this is this is not this is not the kind of person that's
00:26:18.160
going to want what i have to offer right and what was interesting to me and this was the aha moment
00:26:22.000
is that the more i got comfortable in presenting what i want to present yes i i i have started to
00:26:28.660
build a more of a following and there's people who don't want what i offer and they fall off but
00:26:33.600
that's actually a sign that i'm doing the right thing 100 i'm pruning my audience right and so i would
00:26:39.120
say to people like if you see that happening if you if you start really presenting content that
00:26:44.460
you know in your heart is authentic to you and you start having drop off there's people who are
00:26:49.300
falling off that may not be a bad sign that could be an actual good sign people identify because those
00:26:54.240
people probably identified with the one that you put the person that puts on the filters right you
00:26:58.340
know what i'm saying absolutely and i don't even by the way i don't even look at that stuff for me
00:27:02.880
like i don't look at who unfollows me or who follows me i don't care yeah you know like the less i care
00:27:07.080
the easier i find it to be true to who i am and just post the fuck i want right you know what i
00:27:11.660
mean yeah and a lot of people focus on that and it starts like manipulating their brain on how they
00:27:16.300
should post and you don't want that that's a good point yeah yeah yeah good well i'll delete the app
00:27:21.540
yeah i would no i will i i mean in fairness to myself it was more just morbid curiosity but it did
00:27:27.220
end up being a negative thing until i turned it into a positive thing um all right where were we at
00:27:32.160
so so authenticity you know sharing we you know we've talked about this before but i think i think
00:27:37.600
it's worth repeating the difference between being inappropriately vulnerable and being appropriately
00:27:43.440
transparent what to your mind give give some examples of what that looks like well i think
00:27:48.180
inappropriately vulnerable is people who who do the poor me shit on the internet right they tell a story
00:27:53.540
with the explicit uh intent of people to be like oh i'm so sorry that happened to you blah blah blah blah
00:28:00.060
like dude don't do that like don't tell a fucking sob story you know people people might say you know
00:28:07.840
oh you know i'm so sorry and then they're gonna you're gonna start getting looked at as like a
00:28:11.860
negative nancy right you know what i mean right so maybe another way to put it is is if you're sharing
00:28:16.540
a story to gain pity you're doing it wrong but if you're sharing a story to inspire people with your
00:28:21.320
with your struggle yeah then maybe that's yeah that's different you know it's real easy wrap the end
00:28:26.340
of it up with like hey i'm gonna kick ass anyway i don't fucking care right you know so right um yeah
00:28:31.740
um so let me let me raise a specific issue on this issue of uh of being authentic that that you know
00:28:38.700
i've wrestled with and i think a lot of people have wrestled with this so i you know we've worked
00:28:45.440
together for the last two years doing the mfco thing i've often thought to myself like you want to
00:28:49.760
be authentic but you also have to meet the needs of your audience and sometimes
00:28:53.440
sometimes your audience is very different from you i mean i'm a middle-aged guy who likes 80s music
00:29:00.060
and the karate kid and i'd say 95 percent of the people that listen to us are young bucks who
00:29:05.960
probably listen to drake and little wayne and whatever so in your opinion like if you were you
00:29:12.360
know give counsel to me but we'll apply it to everybody first of all how do you stay true to who
00:29:16.920
you are and your interests but also connect with because here's what you're missing when you're like them
00:29:21.980
why do they need to follow you i just said that before you know what i'm saying right you're being
00:29:27.900
you you're interesting they're like oh here's this pastor who's got a good sense of humor and he's
00:29:33.460
on the you know an mf ceo show with a dude who cusses a lot and has a lot of aggressive things to say
00:29:38.740
you know it's interesting dynamics so if you start trying to be like the young dude that listens to
00:29:43.620
fucking drake and little wayne and and abandoned they're gonna be like who the fuck is this guy
00:29:48.620
right it's gonna be disingenuous yes totally yeah so they're so so they look at and they say oh man
00:29:53.880
this guy's pretty cool you know you get what i mean right right and and that makes a lot of sense i
00:29:58.380
guess my one of my questions though is if you're if you're speaking if you're connecting if you're
00:30:02.660
trying to communicate a concept to them in your mind is it better to use a topic that i'm interested
00:30:08.440
in like oh there's a great scene in braveheart or is it better to say well you know it's like that
00:30:13.380
lyric from that drake song that you all like both you could do both you think both are effective
00:30:18.760
yeah so cool so to i mean it it is an interesting dance like being authentic but also meeting the
00:30:25.620
needs of the of whatever audience or market you happen to be giving yeah i agree but still at the
00:30:30.860
end of the day that you shouldn't be manipulating yourself to like meet those needs right because
00:30:37.220
eventually what's going to happen is the audience is going to so you talked about pruning your your
00:30:41.080
following you know when you first start doing something you have 50 of the people who are
00:30:45.880
going to fucking be like what the fuck is this guy doing right and then a year from now you had that
00:30:50.440
absolutely a year from now that's going to be only 25 because 25 of the 50 that hated you is going to
00:30:57.460
leave and it's going to be replaced by people who really like you and then it's going to eventually
00:31:02.060
get down to where it's a very very small minute percentage of people because you've pruned out all the
00:31:07.540
ones that don't really see what you are and those people following you are following me because you
00:31:11.620
are who you are right follow follow me right yeah yeah so like trying to manipulate the voice or the
00:31:18.400
message or the means of communication i'm not a believer in i know guys that do it i see guys that
00:31:24.200
do it it's very obvious when they do it and i think it's very corny when they do it i don't think it
00:31:28.940
comes across right you know you got to be who you are man right and let other people be who they are
00:31:34.740
you guys still connect right that makes sense yeah that makes sense all right so let's talk
00:31:39.480
about the the content is king right people have been saying that forever so let's let's uh let's
00:31:45.940
just start just on a broad level in terms of what kinds of content do you think people ought to be
00:31:53.780
working to to post obviously positive not poor me right that's one of your major major issues but
00:32:00.860
but in terms of you know you mentioned the other day that gary said that a lot of social media should
00:32:05.360
be documentation or something like that like documenting your life make sure you have an
00:32:09.280
interesting life or strive to be interesting but obviously there are times in your own social media
00:32:14.300
platforms where you're not documenting you're actually sharing your thoughts on a topic right so
00:32:18.160
what should be in the portfolio if somebody's trying to build a personal brand well i think the first
00:32:22.940
question is how can my content affect other people how can it teach people how can it help people how can it
00:32:29.600
make people laugh how can it entertain people because if it can't do those things it's worthless
00:32:34.880
right so am i trying to be a comedian am i trying to be uh an expert on aerospace am i trying to be an
00:32:43.600
entrepreneur what am i trying to do right and you have to make content relevant to people in that space
00:32:50.420
that's going to make like i said inform them make them laugh you know help them motivate them teach them
00:32:58.240
you know but if it doesn't do those things it's worthless right so it's always about them it's not
00:33:02.900
about you it's not about you just telling your story and people are going to like it it's about
00:33:06.940
you telling the story and then accompanying your story with the lesson you learn and how other people
00:33:12.020
can also learn from your lesson right right right so it's mixing the two together so
00:33:17.160
this is the hardest part for people is content because they don't have and they'll say this like oh i don't
00:33:24.620
have a camera guy follow me around well even if you had a camera guy follow you around would you be
00:33:28.060
very interesting that's a great question you know i mean yeah so the easiest way to be relevant on
00:33:33.720
social media and to build a good brand is to live an interesting life go do things go be things go meet
00:33:38.960
people go be a part of things and document that shit right you know if you're sitting at home on your
00:33:43.500
couch all the time and you're a big bookworm and that's all you do is read you could still develop
00:33:49.540
personal brand but you you know some of the platforms that you that we have now like snapchat
00:33:53.940
or uh you know insta stories they're not going to be really that good for you because you're not
00:33:59.400
showing anything interesting you know or you're going to get on snap and you're going to teach a
00:34:03.620
lesson that you learn or something like that right i mean there's dude there's really unlimited ways
00:34:07.220
to do it but the easiest way to do it is to be an interesting human right right um there was a great
00:34:12.780
quote post the election again i'm not trying to be political but there's a great quote post the
00:34:16.540
election people were trying to wrap their minds around like how is it possible that hillary
00:34:21.000
clinton with all of her resources lost to donald trump because politically she had this billion
00:34:26.140
dollar multi-billion dollar machine i'll tell you how yeah good i'll tell you how she spent most of
00:34:31.460
her money on fucking traditional media and that's not where decisions are being made anymore right
00:34:35.720
people are making decisions off of social media right they're making decisions off of what they buy
00:34:40.440
how they spend their money how they spend their free time what clothes they wear what style they have
00:34:45.960
all of that's based off social media now right it's not based off traditional media we don't watch tv
00:34:51.260
ads we don't listen to radio ads we don't read the newspaper and we sure as fuck don't decide what
00:34:57.500
our personal style and the decisions we make are going to come from those things we see other people
00:35:03.100
usually the most valuable opinions on social are micro influencers they're not the biggest people like
00:35:09.580
the rock or the kardashians it's the people in between us and them it's the people that might have
00:35:15.920
one or two or three million followers that are not a superstar but they're cool as fuck and we
00:35:21.320
identify with them and we're trying to like undercover kind of steal their their image and brand and mold
00:35:26.860
ours you understand what i'm saying absolutely so we're things are changing dude and that she lost
00:35:33.860
because she fucking didn't capitalize on social and she's not a marketable person well and that was what
00:35:40.040
he said listen she's she's always scowling she always comes across negative she nobody likes her
00:35:45.820
she's not likable all right like it's not like oh man i really like to hang out hillary clinton
00:35:50.340
no there's nothing about her that that with her brand that was attractive right the only thing that
00:35:57.500
was attractive was for her for herself and her brand and she even tried to ride this as a as a
00:36:02.440
competitive advantage is that she wasn't donald trump right right and that's not good enough to win
00:36:07.040
no absolutely what the guy said and i thought this this and this is to your point is he said
00:36:11.640
all all the political machinery and billions in the world will be will do you no good if you don't
00:36:18.760
have a candidate who knows how to connect with people exactly and to your point about that's what
00:36:22.640
you can have a cameraman following you yes and if you're not a good product is about social is not
00:36:27.600
just about what you post what you say it's how you connect it's how you bring people together
00:36:31.480
entrepreneurship and business is totally different than it was 30 years ago
00:36:35.200
it's not you know three-piece suits boardrooms big fancy dinners and you know conferences you know
00:36:43.320
what it is it's social influence and connecting with people helping people and bringing people
00:36:48.420
together and if you can't understand that and you're still trying to operate the old way and you
00:36:52.420
think that's what business is about you are going to get beat by somebody who understands how to
00:36:57.200
connect with people right it's just a matter of time you could be winning now you could be winning
00:37:01.600
today because you're riding the wave of something that was created for the last 30 years but that's
00:37:06.420
why you're seeing all these major corporations die because these younger people who understand how
00:37:10.680
to connect people build culture create solutions in real time are winning and beating the shit out
00:37:16.800
of the bigger corporations right right so i don't want to miss this point because i think it's huge and
00:37:21.460
it's it's sort of tucked into what we're talking about is that what andy was saying was it doesn't matter
00:37:27.640
if you have all the the machinery in the world if you're not an interesting person if you're not
00:37:31.060
living an interesting life it's going to fall flat so here's some practical tips develop yourself as
00:37:37.320
a person have hobbies read widely develop great interest meet with interesting people yeah meet
00:37:43.160
with interesting people and here's the other thing here's the other thing you better learn how to
00:37:46.840
have social skills in real life because that's going to translate over into into social media it's
00:37:52.480
amazing how many people don't realize that well that's what's that's what's interesting to me too
00:37:56.180
dude is that you know a lot of people think they could build a social media company or brand
00:38:01.040
by just posting shit and they don't understand this is where i'm very fortunate you know our
00:38:06.640
companies have built success pre-social media and our companies have built success post-social media
00:38:12.260
and i don't know any small business that's been able to do that i don't know any big business
00:38:17.480
been able to do that big businesses are starting to do that but the key to social media is using the
00:38:23.420
values that you would have learned pre-social media right on social media right like shake a hand
00:38:29.100
nice to meet you thank you so much i appreciate your business what else can i do for you right get
00:38:34.420
it right but you can't just make a post and think these people like you're fucking celebrity because
00:38:39.580
you got 10 000 instagram followers or 100 000 or a million right and think you're going to maximize
00:38:45.500
your opportunity will you get some business because you have a lot of momentum yes but that's
00:38:51.200
nowhere near what it could be if you actually put the time and understanding to to bring people
00:38:57.840
together connecting people and creating real relationships and that's very easy to do on the
00:39:01.640
internet absolutely absolutely all right so this is great content let me let me recap just one more
00:39:06.000
time so determine what you offer um know where you want to go basically pick out the salient points
00:39:12.800
of your story um basically start well developing yourself as a person right i'm not covering
00:39:20.580
everything i'm forgetting some stuff but you know uh develop interests be interesting don't rely on the
00:39:26.260
platforms you have to develop yourself as a person right but then you know interact connect
00:39:31.340
solve solutions solve solutions be involved with people's conversations not just on your page but on
00:39:36.180
their page develop social skills offline transfer them on i mean there's all kinds of things that need
00:39:41.580
to go into it it's just not and i see this in the fitness industry a lot people think that just
00:39:46.560
because they're hot they have a brand right like dude look you girls out there with the big boobs and
00:39:52.180
the fucking butts and you think that that's going to make you something dude you might be getting a
00:39:56.460
little bit of money right now for some instagram posts but what's going to happen in fucking five
00:40:00.100
years when you're ugly right you know what i'm saying yeah absolutely like you should be thinking
00:40:04.280
about this a lot of people competition a lot of people aren't seeing a lot of people aren't seeing
00:40:08.620
the next step like i see so many people with millions of followers that don't fucking utilize
00:40:13.240
their their following properly and it's like dude they have this tremendous opportunity and they're
00:40:17.680
just pissing it away right it's so it's very frustrating from my point of view right i would
00:40:21.920
kill to have millions of followers no absolutely uh by the way you should follow me yeah absolutely
00:40:26.560
well while we're on that so andy frisella at andy frisella on instagram if you guys like
00:40:31.860
if you guys aren't following me on instagram yet and you like the content of the podcast i do like
00:40:36.600
little mini podcasts every day yeah you know so there's a lot of valuable content on that side
00:40:41.860
if you're interested in the podcast at andy frisella you're at mfceo dash one can't talk today
00:40:48.560
on snapchat tyler's at my tyler m-a-i underscore t-y-l-e-r and i'm at vaughn kohler v-a-u-g-h-n-k-o-h-l-e-r
00:40:56.900
on pretty much everything instagram twitter and the like so you said something i want to go back to
00:41:03.000
just for a second you talked about how guys in spite of the changes and you know the massive
00:41:09.040
changes in in uh business and the social media execution is still all you know what it's at and
00:41:14.460
so is having a great product right i wanted to point out i sent you i don't know if you got the
00:41:17.860
opportunity to read this but i sent you a very interesting um article that basically said that
00:41:24.480
the the kardashian sisters together have more social media followers than the entire country of
00:41:30.940
mexico and yet uh i guess two of the youngest ones i don't know their names but two of the youngest
00:41:36.240
ones uh were behind like releasing a book but the book whatever the book was it was like a it was
00:41:42.140
like a story or whatever it is not what their followers wanted it apparently wasn't that great
00:41:47.300
of a book and it literally sold less than 16 000 copies now to give you guys kind of an idea
00:41:52.860
andy released his his his uh otis and charlie book last month i even posted twice we posted twice
00:42:02.200
and we're pretty close to selling that many i mean and so the point being is that having a massive
00:42:07.900
social media following is not necessarily going to translate into being able to monetize it's about
00:42:12.720
how engaged you are with the audience right and whether what you're providing is what they really
00:42:16.920
need and what so i didn't want to lose that on you know it's not just about raw followers it's very
00:42:21.960
very small part of it it's about how engaged you are and how trusted you are by the people who
00:42:27.180
follow you right you know and that's something i was going to bring up was that you know just like
00:42:32.000
you say all the time you know just as important as social media is your brand to build it it can
00:42:36.900
destroy you overnight you know a hundred times quicker we've seen it a hundred times you know
00:42:41.880
yeah very good mc salmon everyone yeah checking in with the salmons
00:42:47.220
anyway okay i've kind of lost my uh train of thought here so uh so we're talking about content
00:42:54.620
best practices are there any platforms that you're really high on right now that you you would
00:42:58.680
recommend people jump be i think instagram's king right now i mean dude they the insta stories is
00:43:04.680
dominating snapchat in my opinion i can't i find myself using snapchat less and less um snapchat's still
00:43:12.000
more fun i still think it's a better product but it's just so convenient to use insta stories and
00:43:17.000
the way instagram's going um i just think it's it's the spot you know it's the place right now
00:43:23.220
yeah absolutely they're doing live video now they're doing everything they're basically taking all the
00:43:27.840
other platforms and putting them together um i think it's where you know the millennial generation
00:43:33.040
spends most of their time um in terms of social they don't use facebook as much uh facebook is great
00:43:39.840
for like direct facebook ad uh roi direct sale type advertising you know put an ad out see how many
00:43:49.560
people buy it blah blah blah instagram's the king for branding no question right so right um i'd say
00:43:57.240
instagram and youtube are like the only two i'm on youtube is massive too for for the same reason
00:44:01.360
right and what's interesting too and you've talked about this before is facebook is starting to have a
00:44:06.280
culture problem in that people really are seeing it as the platform where people gripe about it
00:44:11.700
because that's all it is yeah and that and instagram definitely is the platform of motivation success
00:44:17.140
right you know positivity right um i don't see people bitching on facebook right i mean on instagram
00:44:22.120
right i mean dude i can look through every single post of my feed and i'll see none that are that are
00:44:27.240
complaining right but i can look through every single post post my feed on facebook and it'll be 80
00:44:31.080
90 right some sort of complaint right and it's pushing people out yeah absolutely oh i know i
00:44:36.200
remembered what i was going to ask you it was a specific practical question about content which
00:44:41.080
is obviously you and your instagram uh platform you alternate i don't know if there's any i don't
00:44:46.760
know if you're calculating it but you alternate between you know hard-hitting motivational stuff
00:44:51.440
some practical video type stuff but you also share some you know behind the scenes pictures of otis
00:44:57.600
charlie pictures of emily because i want people to understand i'm a real person right so i mean i
00:45:02.060
think people understand that that that humanizes you that and so do you have a guideline like is
00:45:07.820
there a ratio you know no no i just do what i feel man yeah you know i would say that my my little
00:45:14.100
formula on instagram is pretty reflective of of what i'm dealing with most of the time yeah you know
00:45:20.860
i mean dude i think if you get too heavy on one subject or another subject you're gonna turn people
00:45:25.600
turn people away eventually they need to see that you're not some sort of fucking motivation robot
00:45:30.260
or you know anything else you know they like a dynamic not just one thing right now now for other
00:45:38.740
things you know for like there's theme there's theme pages like you know some motivation page that's all
00:45:44.800
they post the motivation car pages all they post car shit and and so it's it depends it depends on
00:45:50.560
what you're trying to do right you know for me i do a lot of shit so i show a lot of shit
00:45:54.900
you know i don't try to be like oh every clip of mine is some sort of fucking you know motivational
00:46:00.300
clip i try to like you know i show that you know i interact with people in a real way where
00:46:06.060
you know i do that because i feel like most people out there who are quote unquote motivators
00:46:14.800
on instagram right now are not the real deal they're fucking they're regurgitating bullshit
00:46:19.460
from shit that they've heard pretending to be a millionaire when they're probably not
00:46:24.440
and trying to teach people you know so i'm like look this is what i really do this is what i really
00:46:29.180
am these are the cars i really drive to work this is my real building this is my real product these
00:46:33.320
are my real employees this is what we really fucking do right you know and it's important for people
00:46:37.720
to see that absolutely so i think when you see a lack of diversity there it's probably because
00:46:42.080
there isn't any diversity if that makes sense so yeah absolutely well we'll come back to your
00:46:47.920
final thoughts but guys a couple things first of all those of you who know if you've been listening
00:46:52.860
to us for a while andy is committed to the long game and uh he wrote a children's book otis and
00:46:59.480
charlie's hard-working tales book one has already been released it's called charlie the bulldog's
00:47:04.420
fantastic fruit stand check out otis and charlie charlie is spelled e-y o-t-i-s-a-n-d-c-h-a-r-l-e-y dot com
00:47:11.780
and uh check out the book it's been it's we've had a lot of really incredible feedback for it and
00:47:17.240
the way that little kids are getting the message that's the coolest thing it is like i see so many
00:47:22.360
emails and posts about like kids wanting to like start like a snow cone stand or a lemonade stand
00:47:26.980
but the book is a tool for you guys who want the next generation to be successful but maybe you
00:47:33.200
weren't taught those things so you're not sure how to teach those things that's why the book is designed
00:47:38.660
the way it is if you have kids and you want them to be successful i don't know of another book out
00:47:43.780
there another book series that's going to be like this and the feedback so far has been phenomenal
00:47:48.780
um and again i'd ask if you if you have bought the book tell a friend if you think it was awesome
00:47:54.300
tell a friend and leave us a review on amazon because that's a big deal for us absolutely and
00:47:58.400
the other thing i was going to tell you guys is a lot of you guys have posted pictures of your kids
00:48:02.440
reading it which is awesome um but a lot of what i've gotten sure you tag me in those yeah tag us
00:48:07.920
and then if you would be so kind i mean it's a lot easier if i have them all in one place if you guys
00:48:12.720
could go ahead and just email you can you can use the ask andy thing just use ask andy at the mfceo.com
00:48:20.180
in the subject line say pick of my kid with otis and charlie and you know write your little you know
00:48:25.700
your comments and then attach a picture of your kid and give us permission because i'd like to put some
00:48:30.280
of those pictures on our otis and charlie website um yeah just email us and like i said make a make
00:48:35.040
a note in the in the subject line the other thing i'll say is that a lot of you guys have been asking
00:48:39.040
about books that andy recommends we now have his reading list up at the mfceo.com forward slash
00:48:46.060
badass books the mfceo.com forward slash badass books and you know what there's no impaler prize this
00:48:53.300
week i'm not giving out one because i don't know i just want people to audition for it i didn't i didn't
00:48:59.200
i didn't uh had time to really see who was killing it this week real quick while we're on the subject
00:49:04.480
of social media did you see the approach that wendy's has taken to their twitter oh my god
00:49:08.240
yeah but it's great it's awesome what is it tell me well just people who troll them they're trolling
00:49:12.560
them back yeah like in a fun way hey can you locate me in the nearest mcdonald's and they post
00:49:16.220
up a picture of a trash can yeah it's funny that's great but you know in regards to developing your
00:49:22.860
personal brand guys the main thing you have to realize and there's tons of you know first of all
00:49:28.780
you should become a student of the people who are in your space and figure out what they do
00:49:33.060
different that makes them interesting not copy them but figure it out because that's going to
00:49:37.560
give you some insight as to how maybe you could become interesting but the thing that you have to
00:49:42.480
realize no matter what guys it doesn't matter if you're aspiring entrepreneur if you're a ceo right
00:49:47.160
now of you know a big company a ceo of a small company or you're just a you know a ten dollar an
00:49:53.580
employee going in to get a job social media is replacing the resume social media is replacing
00:50:00.560
the relevance of where you went to school and who you know and and all these other things that have
00:50:06.100
traditionally ruled the workplace and if you don't understand that it's becoming important
00:50:12.580
in five years you're going to be so far behind the ball that you're not going to have a chance at
00:50:16.900
fucking doing anything so you have to start now you've got to start practicing now you've got to
00:50:23.500
start developing now and you've got to start executing now so that when this totally replaces
00:50:28.480
everything marketing branding your ability to recruit the people who work for you all the things that
00:50:36.840
have to do with any sort of business which all of us are involved in business in one way or another
00:50:40.720
because we got to get fucking paid and if you don't realize that social media is becoming the
00:50:45.920
thing and going to bring direct value to your bottom line you're way way way off course
00:50:52.160
bring it in figure out what your personal brand is start building it now don't get discouraged be
00:50:58.580
patient and let things develop absolutely do you have any information for people we've got i've
00:51:03.780
gotten a handful of emails about this about the 10x conference and where they sign up for that
00:51:08.220
i believe you go to 10xcon.com is it okay all right people have been asking if we have a page on
00:51:13.680
our website we don't just go directly to grant cardone's website uh 10x well his is i think
00:51:19.580
grantcardone.com but i'm sure there'll be a a link or a page to the 10x conference so yeah cool cool guys
00:51:27.700
we appreciate you man if you found the podcast to be useful tell a friend and we'll uh we'll see you