Latest / The Breakfast Club / Black Tech Green Money: Marketing Strategist Mahdi Woodard on Growing Your Socials, Making Money with Instagram, and Knowing What To Post
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Afrotech Conference is back, bringing together over twenty thousand tech enthusiasts, founders, investors,
- 0:05Speaker 1: and more for another unforgettable year. For years, afro Tech
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- 0:38Speaker 1: your spoted afro Tech Conference twenty twenty four today visit
- 0:42Speaker 1: Afrotech Conference dot counter Buy your ticket now. I'm Will
- 0:46Speaker 1: Lucas and this is Black Tech, Green Money Marketing Strategists.
- 0:51Speaker 1: Maddy Woodard is an innovative thinking with broad business acumen
- 0:55Speaker 1: and in depth marketing and branding experience. He serves as
- 0:59Speaker 1: a marketing consultant Chief marketing Officer. It was previously a marketing,
- 1:02Speaker 1: brand analyst and associated brand manager at Mars PetCare, which
- 1:06Speaker 1: is home to Ims, Pedigree and more, and he was
- 1:09Speaker 1: brand manager at new brands home the Rubber May, Great
- 1:12Speaker 1: Co and Paper May.
- 1:14Speaker 2: His social media profiles teach.
- 1:15Speaker 1: Others how to grow online and monetize their content and insights.
- 1:21Speaker 2: So I am.
- 1:23Speaker 3: Super curious about social strategy and I have a question
- 1:28Speaker 3: that's kind of selfish, but I know a lot of
- 1:30Speaker 3: people have the same thing. Why am I stuck out
- 1:33Speaker 3: of seventeen thousand followers on Instagram?
- 1:36Speaker 2: Stuck?
- 1:36Speaker 3: Like I just got to I was at like sixteen
- 1:38Speaker 3: point nine that I went to invest fast and I
- 1:40Speaker 3: got to seventeen but then but I've been at sixteen forever. Yep,
- 1:46Speaker 3: Why am I stuck?
- 1:47Speaker 4: So man, beautiful question, and I'll try to give the
- 1:51Speaker 4: short version of the answer. What we know of Instagram
- 1:56Speaker 4: has changed dramatically, and I would say this CEO has
- 2:00Speaker 4: been dropping the nuggets of it. But I'll try to
- 2:03Speaker 4: tie it all together. The first thing is we got
- 2:06Speaker 4: to remember how did we used to grow? So there's
- 2:08Speaker 4: pretty much organic growth, which would come through the form
- 2:11Speaker 4: of people sharing your content primarily to their group of friends.
- 2:16Speaker 4: And in the second part, I'm not talking about paid, right,
- 2:18Speaker 4: But the second part is what I would call algorithmic.
- 2:21Speaker 4: So this is usually hashtags, keywords, or different things that
- 2:25Speaker 4: will get you on the search tab or the explore
- 2:28Speaker 4: tab at this point, a lot of us if we
- 2:31Speaker 4: don't play the second part of the game, right, if
- 2:34Speaker 4: we're only counting on our core audience to distribute us,
- 2:37Speaker 4: we end up in sort of a loop of the
- 2:39Speaker 4: same people seeing the same things, sharing it to the
- 2:41Speaker 4: same people, and they've already made a decision on whether
- 2:44Speaker 4: they're going to follow us or not. So your follower
- 2:47Speaker 4: base might be seventeen thousand, your awareness base may be
- 2:50Speaker 4: ten x that, right, So there may be easily enough
- 2:53Speaker 4: people that's like, oh, I've seen brother's face, I'm familiar
- 2:55Speaker 4: with him, but it isn't worth a follow, right. So
- 2:59Speaker 4: the question because how do we play the algorithmic game
- 3:02Speaker 4: so that we can disproportionately grow At this current stage
- 3:06Speaker 4: we're in late twenty twenty four, what the Instagram has
- 3:08Speaker 4: said is we're maximizing, we're prioritizing reach over everything. What
- 3:13Speaker 4: I hear that to mean is some of our more
- 3:15Speaker 4: niche based content or some of our more brand based content.
- 3:19Speaker 5: It's dead on a rifle. If you don't play to the.
- 3:23Speaker 4: Mass audience, you're going to have a hard time getting
- 3:27Speaker 4: people to stop long enough to follow you. So now
- 3:30Speaker 4: let's look at a couple of triggers that get you
- 3:32Speaker 4: to the masses. One is music. So if you can
- 3:35Speaker 4: catch a trend or start a trend at the right time,
- 3:39Speaker 4: what does that mean. I've seen that. Typically if you
- 3:41Speaker 4: can see a song or audio that's growing, but it's
- 3:44Speaker 4: under ten thousand plays, but it appears to be growing,
- 3:47Speaker 4: I try to catch that wave and ride it to
- 3:49Speaker 4: twenty thirty hundred thousand, or if you have the ability
- 3:52Speaker 4: to start something. So you're probably tired of this, but
- 3:55Speaker 4: we're a couple of weeks away from very demure, very mindful.
- 3:59Speaker 5: Right.
- 4:00Speaker 4: If you can be the person at the forefront of
- 4:02Speaker 4: something like that, then every time a person goes to
- 4:05Speaker 4: search for the origin of the history of this, they
- 4:07Speaker 4: got a different portionate amount of chance of landing back
- 4:10Speaker 4: in front of you. So it gets a little lengthy,
- 4:13Speaker 4: But for most of us, we're making too broad I'm sorry,
- 4:16Speaker 4: too tight up content. We're talking to a certain group
- 4:19Speaker 4: of people, we're talking to them in a more familiar
- 4:21Speaker 4: term when we need to be talking more to the
- 4:23Speaker 4: masses in a more general language.
- 4:26Speaker 3: So I follow up to that I think will bless
- 4:29Speaker 3: some people. So there's two questions there for me. There's one, Yeah,
- 4:33Speaker 3: I want to be seen by more people. I want
- 4:34Speaker 3: more people to know who I am just for general
- 4:36Speaker 3: awareness purposes. Yes, factual, I would love to be at
- 4:40Speaker 3: twenty thirty forty thousand plus followers. I'm not seventeen today.
- 4:43Speaker 3: I can't complain about that. But the other thing is
- 4:46Speaker 3: also not to be so focused on those numbers, because
- 4:50Speaker 3: sometimes the right people following you, even if you don't
- 4:53Speaker 3: have a whole bunch of people following you, also matters.
- 4:56Speaker 3: I've gotten opportunities with my smaller amount of followers just
- 4:59Speaker 3: because the right people are following. So as an entrepreneur
- 5:03Speaker 3: or somebody who's using this for business objectives, and I'm
- 5:06Speaker 3: not trying to be flute out, you know, why does
- 5:08Speaker 3: this matter?
- 5:10Speaker 5: Man? Beautiful?
- 5:11Speaker 4: And I'll go to our origin. You were one of
- 5:14Speaker 4: the people of influence that caught me at the budding phase, right,
- 5:19Speaker 4: so I had looked at and try notes.
- 5:21Speaker 5: You first reached out to me in twenty nineteen. Oh wow. Yeah,
- 5:25Speaker 5: So apologies for the.
- 5:26Speaker 4: Five year lad, But I say that to say you
- 5:29Speaker 4: were one of those people in my world that were
- 5:31Speaker 4: the right people following me before I became Instagram famous.
- 5:35Speaker 4: And when you're in that space, these people have already
- 5:37Speaker 4: built platforms that you can stand on, and.
- 5:40Speaker 5: These people already have.
- 5:42Speaker 4: Sort of voices and megaphones that amplify whatever it is
- 5:46Speaker 4: that you're communicating. So to anyone that's in both of
- 5:48Speaker 4: those spaces, if you're feeling like, dang, I'm still struggling
- 5:51Speaker 4: to grow and I don't know.
- 5:53Speaker 5: If I got the right mix of people following.
- 5:55Speaker 4: This is where asking something, and I don't mean call
- 5:58Speaker 4: to action in the genera, but I mean in in
- 6:01Speaker 4: a genuine form, ask something and see what you get back.
- 6:05Speaker 4: Ask for the share, ask for the introduction, ask for
- 6:09Speaker 4: the opportunity to collaborate, and.
- 6:11Speaker 5: See what that sort of conversation starts to prove.
- 6:14Speaker 4: And then the last part of it is, and this
- 6:17Speaker 4: is sort of a compliment to what you were saying,
- 6:20Speaker 4: Will the dms are magical, bro, There's a lot of
- 6:24Speaker 4: stuff that we just can't do on platform. It's not
- 6:27Speaker 4: the right space to be an open conversation to the public,
- 6:30Speaker 4: but the right time private message with with like like
- 6:34Speaker 4: positive intent, it opens up a world of opportunities.
- 6:38Speaker 3: So how attentive should we be for what it appears Instagram,
- 6:43Speaker 3: particularly Instagram? And then we'll talk about other things. I
- 6:45Speaker 3: was talking about your story, but when Instagram is appears
- 6:49Speaker 3: to be testing things like right now, you see if
- 6:52Speaker 3: you go to your DMS, you see now a time
- 6:55Speaker 3: stories kind of in the DMS, Like you know, I
- 6:57Speaker 3: can write a note, I still don't stand what that
- 7:01Speaker 3: thing is, But how if I'm trying to grow, should
- 7:04Speaker 3: I be paying attention to those new features?
- 7:07Speaker 5: So let me add that contextual.
- 7:10Speaker 4: If we simplify the buyer's journey or most people are
- 7:13Speaker 4: called in the funnel into like three core steps. You
- 7:16Speaker 4: got to get some awareness. People can't buy what they've
- 7:18Speaker 4: never heard of. You need some level of trust, some
- 7:21Speaker 4: level of additional information consideration, and then you need the
- 7:26Speaker 4: final purchase and or subsequent purchases. What I think is
- 7:30Speaker 4: most of us overlook how many people we need in
- 7:34Speaker 4: phase one just pure awareness, right, and then when you
- 7:38Speaker 4: go to phase two what you just asked me is
- 7:40Speaker 4: a two to three sort of a phase two to
- 7:42Speaker 4: phase three strategy. At this point, I wouldn't be so
- 7:45Speaker 4: aware to any one platform that we neglect all of
- 7:49Speaker 4: the things that we should be doing to move people
- 7:51Speaker 4: down that path to purchase. And it might look like
- 7:54Speaker 4: that pop up note as a gentle reminder of staying
- 7:58Speaker 4: top of mind at a minimum. What I like about stories,
- 8:00Speaker 4: what I like about DM notes is that it brings
- 8:03Speaker 4: you back to the forefront and you're like, oh, I
- 8:05Speaker 4: do oh, will the follow up? Or I was just
- 8:07Speaker 4: adding that to my car because I don't know if
- 8:10Speaker 4: you have kids, But one of the craziest things that
- 8:12Speaker 4: we find from research is we be about to buy.
- 8:14Speaker 5: Something and then kid does something.
- 8:16Speaker 4: And we write, and the ins for something that you've
- 8:20Speaker 4: been wanting to do takes two more weeks before you
- 8:22Speaker 4: get the mental sort of focus to then click the button.
- 8:26Speaker 4: So the number one thing that I would be doing
- 8:28Speaker 4: and saying, what are the strategies that allowed me to
- 8:30Speaker 4: stay top of mind? Because people buy when they ready
- 8:33Speaker 4: to buy, not when we ready to sell.
- 8:35Speaker 3: So you have a corporate background, and so what about
- 8:39Speaker 3: social If you can tell a brief story about your
- 8:42Speaker 3: corporate background and think what piqued your interest about social
- 8:46Speaker 3: and what was that opportunity you saw that you took
- 8:49Speaker 3: advantage of to become the money where.
- 8:51Speaker 5: We are today.
- 8:53Speaker 4: So my quickest way to sum this up is, I'm
- 8:55Speaker 4: the smart dude from the hood, right. So I was
- 8:59Speaker 4: that kid that great grades, did athletics, but it was
- 9:02Speaker 4: more of a means to an end. Got to college
- 9:05Speaker 4: and was excelling, but I didn't quite have that direction.
- 9:08Speaker 4: I was between corporate finance and marketing. I met a
- 9:11Speaker 4: guy who went on to become a mentor, and he said, Man,
- 9:14Speaker 4: if you got the financial chops to do corporate finance,
- 9:17Speaker 4: investment banking, you will thrive in marketing because it's not
- 9:21Speaker 4: just the creative things. You're the person that's running the business.
- 9:24Speaker 4: You need to have that analytical rigger and that creative muscle.
- 9:28Speaker 5: Cool.
- 9:29Speaker 4: Almost ten years in corporate and I see this thing
- 9:32Speaker 4: taking off that I'll just call direct to consumer. I'm
- 9:35Speaker 4: coming from big corporate, you guys. So we're talking paper mad,
- 9:38Speaker 4: ink pins, number one ink pen brand in the world,
- 9:41Speaker 4: Pedigree dog food, number one dot food brand in the world,
- 9:45Speaker 4: great go baby product. So the car seats business. So
- 9:48Speaker 4: you're so disconnected from the people. Our customer was Walmart, Amazon,
- 9:54Speaker 4: We called the final purchaser, the consumer, you know what
- 9:57Speaker 4: I mean. But as a person who's sitting here with
- 10:00Speaker 4: both minds thinking, the employee in me is thinking about
- 10:04Speaker 4: how do I do my job? The aspiring entrepreneurs thinking
- 10:08Speaker 4: there's no more red tape, right, I don't have to
- 10:11Speaker 4: do all of this bureaucratical stuff to get a concept
- 10:14Speaker 4: from out of my brain into the market. What if
- 10:17Speaker 4: we can just put some out in front of folks
- 10:20Speaker 4: and get straight to the interaction, whether that be a
- 10:22Speaker 4: sell or follow or whatever it is that we're looking for.
- 10:25Speaker 4: So I was sort of on the front end of it,
- 10:29Speaker 4: but I didn't have a magic ball.
- 10:31Speaker 5: I did not.
- 10:32Speaker 4: Foresee it becoming this big, this fast because I started
- 10:37Speaker 4: college right at the start of Facebook, and so my
- 10:40Speaker 4: initial introduction to social media was flirting with girls. It
- 10:43Speaker 4: was never right coming up with products and services and
- 10:47Speaker 4: going direct a consumer. But once I was sort of
- 10:49Speaker 4: seasoned in business, I realized the power and I sort
- 10:52Speaker 4: of went full steam ahead in this area.
- 10:54Speaker 3: So I saw this meme today and this is this
- 10:56Speaker 3: I'm going to tell you what this question is for.
- 10:58Speaker 3: This question is an opportunity for you to talk about
- 11:00Speaker 3: how are you the truth? So I'm gonna give you that.
- 11:02Speaker 3: And so I saw this meme and it said, just
- 11:05Speaker 3: like an hour or two ago, I should have screenshoted it,
- 11:06Speaker 3: but it said, anybody that's making eighty thousand dollars a month,
- 11:10Speaker 3: it's not going to be on Instagram teaching you how
- 11:11Speaker 3: to make eighty thousand dollars a month. They're going to
- 11:14Speaker 3: be trying to sell you something that you can make
- 11:17Speaker 3: sure they can make it that eight thousand dollars a month.
- 11:19Speaker 3: And so talk about how you are actually providing value
- 11:23Speaker 3: and yeah, this might be this may be a source
- 11:25Speaker 3: of income for you, but you're actually providing value.
- 11:29Speaker 4: Yeah, So I would I would like to say I
- 11:32Speaker 4: sit at the intersection of a person who is got
- 11:38Speaker 4: a certain level of education, be a high school, college,
- 11:42Speaker 4: it could be advanced education, and then the market itself.
- 11:46Speaker 4: And you're sitting here and you're trying to figure out
- 11:48Speaker 4: do I go get a job or if I have
- 11:50Speaker 4: a job, like, what do I then do with my
- 11:53Speaker 4: extra income, my extra time or these creative endeavors that
- 11:56Speaker 4: I have in my mind because I don't really know
- 11:59Speaker 4: how to get this from my brain to final thing,
- 12:01Speaker 4: you know what I mean. So understanding that dynamic like
- 12:08Speaker 4: there's a huge gap between I'll give it another way.
- 12:11Speaker 4: I say that the college took career pipeline is corroded.
- 12:15Speaker 4: It used to be almost a promise that if you
- 12:16Speaker 4: went somewhere applied yourself, it was for sure to get
- 12:19Speaker 4: your job.
- 12:20Speaker 5: Now that's not the case.
- 12:21Speaker 4: And if it does get your job, it ain't for
- 12:24Speaker 4: sure to get you the one in your major or
- 12:26Speaker 4: in your desire feel to study, or even better, you
- 12:29Speaker 4: could advance quicker going outside the organization than through the
- 12:34Speaker 4: organization in some respects because the old way things were done,
- 12:38Speaker 4: your manager had to walk you through something and you
- 12:40Speaker 4: go through training. Now I just get on YouTube university
- 12:43Speaker 4: and I don't have to wait the two weeks to
- 12:45Speaker 4: get one on one time with my line manager, you know,
- 12:49Speaker 4: the person directly above me. So what I'm doing is
- 12:52Speaker 4: taking this information, synthesizing it and saying, hey, whether you
- 12:55Speaker 4: are again working and you got extra capacity, or whether
- 12:59Speaker 4: you're right here full time entrepreneur, let's get you further
- 13:02Speaker 4: faster using all this stuff that I have learned to
- 13:04Speaker 4: aggregated over the last fifteen years. And that's sort of
- 13:07Speaker 4: the corner of the Internet that I occupy unfortunately. I
- 13:10Speaker 4: also occupy that with people who are just extremely charismatic,
- 13:14Speaker 4: really good at sales, but the thing that they've created
- 13:18Speaker 4: may not be of substance. They're just playing a marketing
- 13:20Speaker 4: psychology game. So I'm more of a market than a salesperson.
- 13:24Speaker 4: I try to study people, see what they need, create
- 13:26Speaker 4: the thing, and let you know that it's available. But
- 13:29Speaker 4: I don't have a lot of things after you saying
- 13:31Speaker 4: not right now or this isn't for me, I don't
- 13:33Speaker 4: have a bunch of creative ways to overcome those objections.
- 13:37Speaker 5: I just hope I get it right by doing my research.
- 13:40Speaker 3: So my question, my next question is like who are
- 13:44Speaker 3: you specifically speaking to? So here's my personal mission. I've
- 13:48Speaker 3: talked about on this podcast a couple of times. My
- 13:51Speaker 3: personal mission is to create content and opportunities for black people,
- 13:55Speaker 3: black entrepreneurs to help them realize entrepreneurial success beyond their
- 13:59Speaker 3: wildest dreams. So everything I do is pointed to help
- 14:03Speaker 3: black people realize entrepreneurial success beyond.
- 14:05Speaker 2: Their wildest dreams.
- 14:07Speaker 3: If I were to provide an opportunity for you to say,
- 14:09Speaker 3: what who's Mondy's speaking to and why is he speaking
- 14:12Speaker 3: to them?
- 14:13Speaker 4: What is that mission for you, and it's changed. So
- 14:16Speaker 4: I'm gonna give you the old and I'll let you
- 14:17Speaker 4: know where I'm bridging to mine. Wasn't that doubt in
- 14:21Speaker 4: on a market? It was more so, how do I
- 14:24Speaker 4: create content that runs around the internet, runs up your
- 14:27Speaker 4: bank account without.
- 14:28Speaker 5: Being online all day? Like you don't have to.
- 14:30Speaker 4: Be glued to your phone if your content and or
- 14:33Speaker 4: marketing endeavors or working on your behalf. What that led to, though,
- 14:38Speaker 4: was for most people, what ends up being burnt out?
- 14:42Speaker 4: Even with my best of intentions, it's so competitive for
- 14:45Speaker 4: attention that I'm saying post three to five times per
- 14:48Speaker 4: day not to drag you. I'm saying post three times
- 14:52Speaker 4: per three to five times per day because you have
- 14:55Speaker 4: to develop the discipline. And you may be coming from
- 14:57Speaker 4: a non communication background, like I s read in your story.
- 15:00Speaker 4: You came from radio, right, so you understand a certain
- 15:03Speaker 4: level of communication that might that rule may not be
- 15:06Speaker 4: for you. But if you've been working as a dental
- 15:08Speaker 4: hygienist who's now an aspire and fashion designer, you've never
- 15:11Speaker 4: learned how to communicate a message that aspires a person
- 15:14Speaker 4: to take an action. So I spent the first five
- 15:17Speaker 4: years of my life trying to talk to that person
- 15:19Speaker 4: who had a breakdown between how do I say this
- 15:22Speaker 4: stuff in order to get where I'm going. My next
- 15:25Speaker 4: phase is talking to the people to say, man, listen,
- 15:29Speaker 4: I went out and surveyed the land.
- 15:32Speaker 5: Some things are good, a lot of things aren't.
- 15:34Speaker 4: You need to build the life that you want first
- 15:37Speaker 4: and then build a business that's around it. So if
- 15:39Speaker 4: you say I want to spend more time with my kids,
- 15:42Speaker 4: or if you say I want to be retired by fifty.
- 15:46Speaker 5: Right, what is that life you want to live?
- 15:48Speaker 4: Now, let's get you into a box of what business
- 15:50Speaker 4: best sitsts. This situates that versus the other way around.
- 15:54Speaker 4: We never make time for life when we build a
- 15:56Speaker 4: business first. And I've done my fair share of like
- 16:00Speaker 4: pushing the grind, although well intentioned, and now I'm in
- 16:03Speaker 4: a space where I'm trying to talk to the more
- 16:05Speaker 4: holistic human and entrepreneurship is just a facet of what we.
- 16:09Speaker 3: Do for someone somebody out there him. I'm talking to me,
- 16:16Speaker 3: someone out there who you know. I put it this way,
- 16:19Speaker 3: Gary Vannachuk has this thing, you know, create document don't create,
- 16:23Speaker 3: And I appreciate that sentiment, and I'm an entrepreneur of
- 16:27Speaker 3: for businesses and have a personal brand and all these things.
- 16:31Speaker 3: The majority of my day is sitting in front of
- 16:33Speaker 3: a computer, the large majority of my day, And I'm like,
- 16:37Speaker 3: I don't know what to post, Like, sitting in front
- 16:39Speaker 3: of my computer is not interesting? And how so for
- 16:43Speaker 3: people who are like, my day is not I don't
- 16:45Speaker 3: live in New York, I don't live in LA I
- 16:46Speaker 3: don't live in Chicago. It's not always beautiful and scenic,
- 16:49Speaker 3: and I don't always have, you know, the vibe like
- 16:51Speaker 3: it's not always that way. My life doesn't look like that.
- 16:55Speaker 3: How do I know what to post when I'm constantly saying, no,
- 16:58Speaker 3: this is not interesting.
- 17:00Speaker 5: Yep, I love it.
- 17:01Speaker 4: So I think a couple of different things, and sometimes
- 17:03Speaker 4: will we just have a we know more people like
- 17:07Speaker 4: ourselves and they become the folks that were testing these
- 17:11Speaker 4: concept off, even if we never talk to them. So
- 17:13Speaker 4: you're looking through your left and your right and you're like, man,
- 17:15Speaker 4: my brother don't want to watch this. Right, my business
- 17:18Speaker 4: order don't want to watch this. But on the flip side,
- 17:21Speaker 4: to that kid, remind me of Toledo, Yeah, Toledo, Ohio.
- 17:24Speaker 4: Right to that kid in Toledo, who has no idea
- 17:27Speaker 4: how to leave Toledo and be in one metropolitan city
- 17:32Speaker 4: one day in another metropolitan city the next day. They
- 17:35Speaker 4: don't know what that looks like. How do you how
- 17:37Speaker 4: do you juggle time zones? How do you manage your calendar?
- 17:40Speaker 4: How do you review somebody's business presentation and also send
- 17:45Speaker 4: one over to somebody?
- 17:47Speaker 5: Right?
- 17:47Speaker 4: They don't know. So I think there's a literal form
- 17:50Speaker 4: of document and or capture what you're doing. But then
- 17:53Speaker 4: there's another piece that says, what if I were to
- 17:55Speaker 4: block out my schedule for the next week and say
- 17:59Speaker 4: what are the three critical things that I'm gonna get
- 18:01Speaker 4: I'm gonna get done that if a person wants to
- 18:04Speaker 4: walk a similar walk, and what are the sub steps?
- 18:06Speaker 4: So how do you get booked to speak in front
- 18:09Speaker 4: of twenty thousand people? And then what does it look
- 18:11Speaker 4: like from multiple vantage points? Camera behind you seeing what
- 18:15Speaker 4: you see, camera in front of you, seeing what they see,
- 18:18Speaker 4: and merging that story to say this is Will when
- 18:20Speaker 4: he's at investmentest or this is me when I'm interviewing
- 18:23Speaker 4: three people for my podcast. So I think, don't sell
- 18:27Speaker 4: yourself short that your peer might not want to see
- 18:30Speaker 4: it right. But the person aspiring or the person that's
- 18:33Speaker 4: saying I don't even know how I get on these platforms,
- 18:35Speaker 4: they may want to love to hear the backstory of
- 18:37Speaker 4: how they end up being able to be interviewed by you.
- 18:40Speaker 5: So I think those things are critical.
- 18:43Speaker 4: I'd also push and say for the next phase of it,
- 18:47Speaker 4: and this is we just got old.
- 18:48Speaker 5: But again, if you got kids, needces a nephew.
- 18:51Speaker 4: They been watching YouTube of kids playing games and making
- 18:54Speaker 4: slime and doing things that we didn't do growing up.
- 18:57Speaker 5: I wanted to.
- 18:58Speaker 4: Play baseball and not watch people play it right, and
- 19:01Speaker 4: so that level of voyeurism. But from a positive side,
- 19:04Speaker 4: I think that's only going to become more intensive over
- 19:08Speaker 4: the next few years. So don't sell short that it
- 19:10Speaker 4: might be helpful to just set up a streaming camera
- 19:12Speaker 4: and then come back on the editing side and show
- 19:14Speaker 4: what it looks like to put in eight hours of
- 19:16Speaker 4: focus work.
- 19:17Speaker 2: That's super good.
- 19:19Speaker 3: So I don't believe tech companies particularly love me, and
- 19:23Speaker 3: I mean just in general US US. They don't love
- 19:26Speaker 3: us to create things, to create, you know, opportunity for them.
- 19:30Speaker 3: And so here's what I mean by that. More specifically,
- 19:32Speaker 3: I remember when we opened toll House here. Toe House
- 19:35Speaker 3: is a private social club that we own that I
- 19:37Speaker 3: own myself and my wife obviously black owned because I'm black.
- 19:41Speaker 3: And I remember when we signed up for Google to
- 19:44Speaker 3: be on Google Business, I remember getting things in the
- 19:46Speaker 3: mail that said, you know, if you're black owned business,
- 19:48Speaker 3: add that to your Google profile. And I'm like, I'm
- 19:52Speaker 3: not going to do that, and so I never added
- 19:54Speaker 3: it to my Google profile. And then I remember as
- 19:57Speaker 3: time goes on the coffee house, we have a coffee house.
- 19:59Speaker 2: Here and we're the number.
- 20:02Speaker 3: So if you google Intoledo coffee houses coffee shops, we
- 20:05Speaker 3: show up first. And my conspiracy, my ten hat person,
- 20:09Speaker 3: my my Alex Jones, where it says like if I
- 20:12Speaker 3: if I had black owned on there, I wouldn't be
- 20:14Speaker 3: showing up number one. And so my question is this
- 20:18Speaker 3: is for black founders, small business owners. And I'm not
- 20:22Speaker 3: asking you to agree with that statement. That's just another
- 20:24Speaker 3: conspiracy thing that I believe is what unique challenges do
- 20:28Speaker 3: we have when we're trying to grow online?
- 20:35Speaker 4: Man, we got a lot of them, right, And so
- 20:37Speaker 4: I would say if we break it down into let's
- 20:41Speaker 4: call it the business strategy side. So getting the right idea,
- 20:46Speaker 4: getting the right business model. All those things, then if
- 20:51Speaker 4: we get into the management and scale part and then
- 20:53Speaker 4: probably pure financials, we got issues and opportunities in all three.
- 20:58Speaker 4: Number one being how do I start the right business?
- 21:02Speaker 4: A lot of us are starting businesses with load to
- 21:04Speaker 4: no barrier to entry, which in some respects is all
- 21:08Speaker 4: upside because you don't have to invest a lot to
- 21:12Speaker 4: get proof of concept. In other respects, you're literally moving
- 21:16Speaker 4: into a dead end street. Like people have went into
- 21:19Speaker 4: these industries determined that the market isn't as big or
- 21:22Speaker 4: isn't as viable, which is why it is low to
- 21:25Speaker 4: no barriers to entry and so to no thought of
- 21:28Speaker 4: your own more so ignorance. You're starting something that doesn't
- 21:32Speaker 4: make a lot of sense at scale.
- 21:34Speaker 5: Right, So that first.
- 21:35Speaker 4: Part could be covered through coaching and mentorship, assuming that
- 21:39Speaker 4: we can remove the.
- 21:43Speaker 5: Sort of like the praying of people that happens over there.
- 21:46Speaker 4: The second phase, which is how do we manage, run
- 21:49Speaker 4: and scale, and it's connected to the third phase. This
- 21:52Speaker 4: one is one of our hardest challenges because it's expensive
- 21:56Speaker 4: to go out and grab and retain top talent, but
- 22:00Speaker 4: it's even more expensive to try to run a business
- 22:03Speaker 4: without top talent, and so you end up where you
- 22:06Speaker 4: typically have very strong founders who are working way more
- 22:11Speaker 4: lateral across the business to overcompensate for the mid to
- 22:17Speaker 4: lower management that just doesn't have the chops or don't
- 22:19Speaker 4: have the resources because we don't have the money to
- 22:22Speaker 4: go out and recruit and go out and do what
- 22:24Speaker 4: some of these big companies do. And that's why I
- 22:26Speaker 4: say it's connected to the third piece. We typically see
- 22:29Speaker 4: what it's like to get starting funding, seed funding, some
- 22:32Speaker 4: of the preliminary investment money, but we don't see what
- 22:35Speaker 4: it's like to get continuous money for growth. And some
- 22:38Speaker 4: of our favorite companies they were able to run in
- 22:41Speaker 4: the red for five, seven, ten, twelve years.
- 22:44Speaker 5: Will if we came up.
- 22:45Speaker 4: With a business right now and the person saying pay
- 22:47Speaker 4: us back in ten years, I think we can figure.
- 22:48Speaker 5: It out, you know what I mean?
- 22:50Speaker 4: And who's going to give you money after you haven't
- 22:53Speaker 4: paid back the first set of people because they still
- 22:56Speaker 4: see the vision and you could be like any five
- 22:58Speaker 4: more years, you know what I mean?
- 23:01Speaker 5: Because when you do that, it's move lines it out.
- 23:03Speaker 4: It makes up for some of the innovations that don't
- 23:05Speaker 4: do well or some of the mismanagement and mishaps, or
- 23:08Speaker 4: for us, we got to turn a profit so quick,
- 23:11Speaker 4: right a person you get money from a black person,
- 23:14Speaker 4: they want to know how.
- 23:15Speaker 5: Fast do I get my money back? And God forbid.
- 23:20Speaker 4: You're working in a business that has to hold strong catch.
- 23:24Speaker 4: So if you've got high amount of plant, property, equipment,
- 23:28Speaker 4: or inventory where things where your business may be strong,
- 23:31Speaker 4: but a lot of it is just tied up in
- 23:34Speaker 4: working capital, we tend to struggle. And so then we
- 23:37Speaker 4: go back to stage one and say, can I start
- 23:39Speaker 4: a different type of business that doesn't have those downstream issues,
- 23:43Speaker 4: and then we end up ballooning where all of us
- 23:45Speaker 4: are just consultants for each other.
- 23:50Speaker 3: A lot of your content I've enjoyed because you you
- 23:54Speaker 3: spit game, you know, like nobody's business. But you also
- 23:57Speaker 3: show a little bit of your personal side. You're into,
- 23:58Speaker 3: you have different hobbies, which I enjoy it seeing that
- 24:01Speaker 3: side of you also. But at the end of the day,
- 24:04Speaker 3: I imagine you could probably have a private account if
- 24:07Speaker 3: you weren't trying to drive business, because what's the point Otherwise,
- 24:12Speaker 3: how would you recommend people who have small businesses treat
- 24:18Speaker 3: their content. Whether I'm trying to you know, sell things
- 24:23Speaker 3: or just you know, create things that get me in
- 24:26Speaker 3: the news feed that the things that I'm trying to
- 24:30Speaker 3: sell these I'm probably won't get me a new feed
- 24:32Speaker 3: probably yep yep. So I think and you I don't
- 24:37Speaker 3: even know like you, I can't explain to LA you
- 24:40Speaker 3: just threw me because it goes back to the origin
- 24:42Speaker 3: of where we started, which I'll call the new social
- 24:44Speaker 3: media versus the old and I haven't said this live
- 24:47Speaker 3: anywhere yet. We'd be better off treating all of social
- 24:52Speaker 3: media just like awareness and not trying to convert anymore
- 24:56Speaker 3: at this point, like there will be some conversions that
- 24:59Speaker 3: take place, but what if you triple your effort on awareness.
- 25:03Speaker 3: You need to also have a product or service that
- 25:06Speaker 3: isn't tied to geographic boundaries. So a lot of brick
- 25:09Speaker 3: and mortal struggle struggles because you can't control where this
- 25:12Speaker 3: content spills out once it lands and does well. So
- 25:16Speaker 3: even if you have a restaurant, you better have a
- 25:18Speaker 3: recipe book, you better have some seasonings, something that you
- 25:22Speaker 3: can port and sell because the content knows no geographic bounds. Right,
- 25:27Speaker 3: So I would say, uh, those that have a service
- 25:30Speaker 3: based business or the ability ship products they can win
- 25:34Speaker 3: a disproportionate amount of.
- 25:35Speaker 5: It from there.
- 25:36Speaker 4: Now, let's stay top of mind, top of like top
- 25:40Speaker 4: of funnel content and look at doing the traditional old
- 25:43Speaker 4: things like text message marketing, email marketing into a degree
- 25:47Speaker 4: DM marketing to get to that middleman at middle and
- 25:50Speaker 4: bottom funnel.
- 25:51Speaker 5: So I think about the.
- 25:53Speaker 4: Phases of awareness and create content around that. So a
- 25:56Speaker 4: person who is not problem aware, I mean, and they
- 26:00Speaker 4: don't even know that something's wrong all the way to
- 26:03Speaker 4: a person who is problem aware, but they're just sort
- 26:05Speaker 4: of trying to make a decision on who.
- 26:07Speaker 5: To buy from.
- 26:09Speaker 4: I tell a person who was starting today, put a
- 26:11Speaker 4: disproportion in seventy, if not eighty percent of your content
- 26:14Speaker 4: needs to be top of funnel focus. And then you
- 26:17Speaker 4: need to convert them off of social which is counter
- 26:21Speaker 4: to what I've been saying for the last five to
- 26:22Speaker 4: seven years.
- 26:23Speaker 5: And that's that is.
- 26:25Speaker 4: One hundred percent based on looking at the algorithm change.
- 26:28Speaker 4: So when I look at my most recent nine posts,
- 26:31Speaker 4: sixty sixty five percent of them are landing on strangers.
- 26:35Speaker 4: Great for reach, horrible for conversion.
- 26:39Speaker 3: For people who own businesses that aren't necessarily sexy. Let's
- 26:43Speaker 3: say I got a carpet cleaning business, or I'm a
- 26:46Speaker 3: big company. I'm We're doing hundreds of millions and we
- 26:49Speaker 3: have you know, just non sexy whatever, pick your non
- 26:52Speaker 3: sexy category. If they want to go create an Instagram,
- 26:56Speaker 3: take tire account. My thought is, okay, why would I
- 27:00Speaker 3: want to follow you? So you have a corporate background
- 27:04Speaker 3: and you're now at this company, you know, Joe's, you know,
- 27:09Speaker 3: metal Bending fact fabrication place, You're now the CMO. You're
- 27:15Speaker 3: gonna can you give him a social strategy? What is
- 27:18Speaker 3: Maty thinking in that capacity?
- 27:21Speaker 5: Yeah? I love it. I think we're seeing it happen.
- 27:26Speaker 4: Founder led stories is probably how I would attack those
- 27:29Speaker 4: type of businesses. So I'm mighty, and I'm on the
- 27:32Speaker 4: journey to build Mady's metal bending company. It's less about
- 27:36Speaker 4: here's how you fabricate metals and here's how hot the
- 27:39Speaker 4: the fire needs to get, because that ain't to your point.
- 27:43Speaker 4: I'm not following that, but the journeys of ups and downs.
- 27:46Speaker 4: A mighty doing this, And I'm going to go look
- 27:48Speaker 4: for a building and I'm putting in a bid and
- 27:49Speaker 4: I got out bed and I'm gonna stay prayer for
- 27:52Speaker 4: and I'm using my brothers wood shock to those stories.
- 27:57Speaker 4: The brand story, the story of the person and or
- 28:00Speaker 4: people building it is how I will win over the
- 28:03Speaker 4: hearts and minds of people. And I just supplement that
- 28:06Speaker 4: we actually are really, really good at what we do
- 28:09Speaker 4: in the backdrop of the story. So I would say
- 28:11Speaker 4: it's less about showing the metal or the glass cleaning
- 28:15Speaker 4: or the grass cutting, and more about the character of
- 28:18Speaker 4: the person that's doing this and taking people on those journeys. Now,
- 28:22Speaker 4: what I would for non sexy businesses, and I don't
- 28:25Speaker 4: want to leave my people who have brick and mortar isolated,
- 28:30Speaker 4: I would augment their stuff with paid because you can
- 28:33Speaker 4: get very targeted to a group of people within geographic boundaries,
- 28:38Speaker 4: and that would be a stronger way for them to
- 28:40Speaker 4: grow on social than to play the traditional organic game
- 28:43Speaker 4: to where it spills out into anybody. We can draw
- 28:46Speaker 4: a fence, a digital fence around one hundred miles around
- 28:49Speaker 4: Toledo with people who got various interests, and then we
- 28:53Speaker 4: can set up a set of rules if they've seen
- 28:54Speaker 4: this piece of content, show them that piece of content,
- 28:57Speaker 4: and subsequent sort of strategies from there.
- 29:01Speaker 3: For folks who like when we were talking about my
- 29:06Speaker 3: personal mission, which is, you know, black entrepreneurs help them
- 29:08Speaker 3: create business beyond their wides streams. You said you think
- 29:11Speaker 3: about yours your efforts differently. We're often taught you know,
- 29:15Speaker 3: you got to think about who is my niche, who
- 29:17Speaker 3: is my target audience, and focus your thing talking to
- 29:20Speaker 3: that person, build an avatar of what they look like,
- 29:22Speaker 3: what do they what do they eat for breakfast this morning?
- 29:24Speaker 3: All these things for should we be thinking the same
- 29:28Speaker 3: way about our presence on social like who am I
- 29:32Speaker 3: posting to?
- 29:32Speaker 2: Who am I talking to? Every time I post?
- 29:35Speaker 4: For sure, absolutely, I think it will help. It will
- 29:38Speaker 4: help drive that content. Now let's go back real quick,
- 29:41Speaker 4: because I got to do it for the listeners. When
- 29:43Speaker 4: we get into targeting, targeting follows segmentation. Segmentation is just
- 29:49Speaker 4: a fancy way of saying, how do I organize these
- 29:51Speaker 4: people in the meaningful groups?
- 29:53Speaker 5: And typically we have a love affair.
- 29:55Speaker 4: With demographic segmentation, age, sex, maryland status, income. We typically
- 30:01Speaker 4: inadvertently neglect behavioral and psychographic or what lifestyle and what
- 30:06Speaker 4: phase in their life may they be in. So I'm
- 30:08Speaker 4: aware that my new positioning is going to isolate a
- 30:12Speaker 4: disproportionate amount of entrepreneurs because they like Mady, I ain't
- 30:15Speaker 4: got enough money yet to be self caring. I ain't
- 30:17Speaker 4: got enough money yet to be dreaming enough my life.
- 30:20Speaker 4: I'm fighting for my life right. But as I move
- 30:23Speaker 4: into a different space of being okay with the fact
- 30:26Speaker 4: that I'm leading leaders and serving people who are already
- 30:29Speaker 4: serving people, That's where I'm evolving to and I got
- 30:33Speaker 4: to make space for the next person that can coach
- 30:35Speaker 4: you on day to day content. But I'm more so like,
- 30:37Speaker 4: how do we help We'll accelerate this mission because you
- 30:40Speaker 4: can hear a one hundred million people with the airways. Now,
- 30:43Speaker 4: let's if I help you. You get what I'm saying,
- 30:45Speaker 4: but I off the listeners. So the first part is
- 30:49Speaker 4: thinking about segmentation broadly and making sure we then prioritize
- 30:53Speaker 4: it the right way. The analogy I give in don't
- 30:55Speaker 4: let me lose the back end of the question. Will
- 30:57Speaker 4: When you go to shop, there are some people who
- 30:59Speaker 4: go Onlinelet's say you're looking for a black hoodie. Some
- 31:01Speaker 4: people go to their favorite website and just type black hoodie.
- 31:04Speaker 4: Other people follow the clicks. They go to mail, they
- 31:07Speaker 4: go black, they go hoodie, they go two x right,
- 31:11Speaker 4: So it's that same thing. You got to figure out
- 31:13Speaker 4: the best order of operations for you, and then that
- 31:16Speaker 4: informs who we're making the content for. So as you
- 31:20Speaker 4: see the next sort of twelve to eighteen months unfold
- 31:22Speaker 4: for me, as I'm talking more to the person that
- 31:25Speaker 4: wants to build their life and then the business falls it,
- 31:28Speaker 4: you'll see me showing my life that way, so part
- 31:31Speaker 4: of me showing the hobby, or you'll see me showing
- 31:34Speaker 4: the leadership team meetings. You'll see me not working, but
- 31:36Speaker 4: the business still doing well. Well, how are you doing this? Oh,
- 31:40Speaker 4: we've designed the company this way, and I want to
- 31:43Speaker 4: attract the people that are saying I desire to spend
- 31:46Speaker 4: more time doing things other than working.
- 31:48Speaker 5: It seems like it's working for you. Tell me more.
- 31:51Speaker 3: That's a perfect segue to my next thought. Here is
- 31:55Speaker 3: because you know, when I was just getting deep into
- 31:58Speaker 3: social you know, we heard a lot about and I
- 32:01Speaker 3: won't like talk about who the names are that said,
- 32:03Speaker 3: because it might have been true with the time is
- 32:04Speaker 3: you know you should be more narrowly focused because when
- 32:08Speaker 3: people click on your profile, they want to know what
- 32:09Speaker 3: are you about? But if you all over the place,
- 32:12Speaker 3: they don't know where to put you. And people and
- 32:14Speaker 3: not thinking it's deeply about you as you might think
- 32:15Speaker 3: they're thinking about you. And so what I appreciate about
- 32:19Speaker 3: a lot of your content? And now I can see
- 32:20Speaker 3: my you know, bird watching and taking photos of birds,
- 32:23Speaker 3: and who knew. The older I get, the more interested
- 32:26Speaker 3: I am in my bird feeder is full because I'm actually.
- 32:28Speaker 2: Watching it now, which is why I'm like.
- 32:32Speaker 3: Oh man, they've been out of food. I gotta go
- 32:34Speaker 3: get the loans real quick and get them some bird food.
- 32:36Speaker 3: So my question here is for somebody who has a
- 32:39Speaker 3: lot of interests, even entrepreneurial interests. I have four businesses
- 32:43Speaker 3: even so it's even if it's not just hobbies. But
- 32:45Speaker 3: if I got several businesses, or it's several hobbies and businesses,
- 32:50Speaker 3: how do I still define myself quickly to somebody who's
- 32:53Speaker 3: not spending ten minutes on my profile.
- 32:55Speaker 2: They just clicking through and said is it interesting?
- 32:57Speaker 5: Or is he not? Man?
- 32:59Speaker 4: So bro, there's a lot of sub questions inside of this.
- 33:03Speaker 4: So again I'm gonna start, and it helped me if
- 33:04Speaker 4: I drift off. The first thing is they were absolutely
- 33:08Speaker 4: spot on, and they're still spot on as it relates
- 33:11Speaker 4: to your social strategy.
- 33:13Speaker 5: And the niche.
- 33:14Speaker 4: I think if you want to maximize reach and or
- 33:18Speaker 4: let's say game the system maximize the greatest return on
- 33:22Speaker 4: social the tighter the focus, the quicker it is for
- 33:26Speaker 4: the algorithm to understand who you are, what you talk about,
- 33:29Speaker 4: and distribute it to people with similar interests. However, it
- 33:33Speaker 4: doesn't necessarily account for how we purchase. We don't just
- 33:37Speaker 4: buy linearly, and so there is this dynamic between how
- 33:42Speaker 4: do I stay tightly wound to one niche versus give
- 33:46Speaker 4: more of who I am? Right, if a person was
- 33:48Speaker 4: starting with zero followers today, I would not tell them
- 33:51Speaker 4: to do the strategy that I'm using. But if a
- 33:53Speaker 4: person is at a spot where their life or their
- 33:55Speaker 4: business has matured, then yeah, they can move into a
- 33:59Speaker 4: broader strategy. So that would be my first answer. The
- 34:02Speaker 4: second thing is, and this is the tough part, if
- 34:05Speaker 4: you have multiple interests, you can either treat your You're
- 34:09Speaker 4: probably still gonna need multiple pages, and you just decide,
- 34:13Speaker 4: am I gonna treat my main page like the river
- 34:16Speaker 4: that pours into the others? And so again, over the
- 34:19Speaker 4: next sort of year to year and a half, you'll
- 34:22Speaker 4: see me doing that. Mady, what are the person is
- 34:25Speaker 4: entirely too dynamic to be placed into one box.
- 34:29Speaker 5: But I got some feeder pages that I built.
- 34:32Speaker 4: So if you want to get really surgical on content,
- 34:34Speaker 4: what light we use, what mike, what editing technique, They'll
- 34:37Speaker 4: be a page and that's all it teaches.
- 34:39Speaker 5: Wow, if you like what is this hobby, this bird
- 34:42Speaker 5: journey talk about? You want to go talk about bay
- 34:46Speaker 5: breasted warblers?
- 34:47Speaker 4: I got you over there, And my main page will
- 34:50Speaker 4: sort of be more of a switchboard and more of
- 34:52Speaker 4: a just sort of who this person holistically, But that's
- 34:55Speaker 4: also gonna come at the expense of some of that
- 34:59Speaker 4: growth that if you were to just stay laser focused.
- 35:01Speaker 4: And I'm okay with that.
- 35:03Speaker 3: Yeah, that that last point I want to go in
- 35:05Speaker 3: there because even if it's not even if it's bifurcated
- 35:09Speaker 3: on one platform, let's say it's not bifurcated one but
- 35:13Speaker 3: let's say, now I gotta manage Instagram. Now I gotta
- 35:14Speaker 3: minuge TikTok. Now I gotta manage Facebook still, which is
- 35:17Speaker 3: still a behemoth, even though the kid still a behemoth
- 35:21Speaker 3: and all these other things. X. I don't pay a
- 35:23Speaker 3: ton of attention, you know, business wise to X or
- 35:26Speaker 3: Twitter whatever whatever we want to call it. But for
- 35:30Speaker 3: a small business owner influencer maybe not so much. But
- 35:33Speaker 3: small business owners, how do they determine where to spend
- 35:38Speaker 3: the most time and effort limited resources to put into
- 35:40Speaker 3: this time.
- 35:42Speaker 2: And money or personnel?
- 35:45Speaker 5: Yeah?
- 35:45Speaker 2: What what do I do here?
- 35:48Speaker 4: So the first part is I'm gonna say it's going
- 35:50Speaker 4: to depend on how big they want to grow the pie,
- 35:53Speaker 4: right like big? Yeah, So then we got we gotta
- 35:57Speaker 4: do it. We gotta do it in the state approach
- 36:01Speaker 4: like big companies do. And so the first part is
- 36:04Speaker 4: there's no way around those first few years of you
- 36:08Speaker 4: chasing everything that's coming left and right. But if you
- 36:12Speaker 4: are a little bit savvyer, let's say you already seasoned
- 36:15Speaker 4: in business, you need to figure out that my business
- 36:18Speaker 4: dev person, do I have the ability to grow sales
- 36:20Speaker 4: come up with ideas that work? Or my business ops
- 36:23Speaker 4: person where I fulfill the promises that this salesperson just
- 36:26Speaker 4: made the people the quicker? You know where to put
- 36:28Speaker 4: yourself the quicker? You know where do I start the
- 36:31Speaker 4: hiring process? So as I've grown, I know I'm a
- 36:34Speaker 4: business dev person, So I had to hire an operations
- 36:38Speaker 4: person to make sure all of these things get done
- 36:41Speaker 4: because I'm gonna be out here fancying up some new
- 36:44Speaker 4: concept and forget. I got to be somewhere four o'clock right,
- 36:48Speaker 4: just that that part of my brain. So I would say,
- 36:52Speaker 4: the hard me, the hard consultant would be, hey, look,
- 36:55Speaker 4: these first couple of years gonna kick your butt.
- 36:57Speaker 5: But then here's what you need to do.
- 36:59Speaker 4: You got to start to build and replace because you
- 37:02Speaker 4: can't be all things to all people. And then I'd
- 37:05Speaker 4: be remiss if I didn't say how much to impact
- 37:08Speaker 4: One of my best friends and clients, her name is
- 37:10Speaker 4: Connie as Falls. She runs an operational systems company. And
- 37:14Speaker 4: this is the policies, the processes, the procedures, how do
- 37:18Speaker 4: we do everything? So when Will does a podcast interview
- 37:21Speaker 4: at four, what is riverside, what Mike's what likes? All
- 37:26Speaker 4: that stuff need to be written down so that if
- 37:28Speaker 4: you are just walking in right at four, somebody can
- 37:30Speaker 4: do all it for you, or if you're absent and
- 37:32Speaker 4: you need a guest host, they can follow a step
- 37:35Speaker 4: by step framework in order to do exactly what you
- 37:37Speaker 4: do and get an eighty eighty five percent success rate.
- 37:40Speaker 4: The rest of it can be made up with coaching.
- 37:43Speaker 5: So I think.
- 37:46Speaker 4: We have a lot of us have personal brand businesses
- 37:49Speaker 4: and lifestyle businesses, and we don't think of them as
- 37:52Speaker 4: being a separate entity from ourselves or bigger than ourselves.
- 37:56Speaker 4: So the first challenge is you got to be thinking
- 37:58Speaker 4: about it that way. And when you started writing out,
- 38:01Speaker 4: instead of writing out what needs to be done, you
- 38:03Speaker 4: need to write out who is the best person to
- 38:05Speaker 4: do this? And then that keeps you in the process
- 38:09Speaker 4: of thinking about the business that way.
- 38:10Speaker 2: Love that. For I have three questions left and I'm
- 38:13Speaker 2: gonna give them to you a way.
- 38:15Speaker 5: Yeah.
- 38:16Speaker 2: So for if you were to distill.
- 38:18Speaker 3: This conversation into three points, we've had a good conversation
- 38:21Speaker 3: here the small business owners this, corporations listening to this,
- 38:24Speaker 3: employees listening to this. If they only remember three things
- 38:27Speaker 3: and they couldn't rewind because with their phone that that
- 38:30Speaker 3: button just don't work on their Android. Why they got Android,
- 38:33Speaker 3: I don't know, but that rewind button didn't work. You
- 38:37Speaker 3: won't let them leave with three things. What are those
- 38:39Speaker 3: three things they got to get out of this conversation.
- 38:41Speaker 4: The first thing would be social media is the most
- 38:44Speaker 4: disruptive form of innovation since the television. We read legacy
- 38:50Speaker 4: stories about people sending wires or the radio, but when
- 38:54Speaker 4: you talk to anybody and most of them are still living.
- 38:57Speaker 4: When you get into the era of the television and
- 39:00Speaker 4: and cable, etc. It disproportionately disrupted how business was done.
- 39:05Speaker 4: And the Internet is still, relatively speaking, in its infancy.
- 39:09Speaker 4: That's first, So prioritize social media because everything else you
- 39:14Speaker 4: need is here. The research, the sales, the community, the connections,
- 39:18Speaker 4: et cetera.
- 39:18Speaker 5: That would be the number one thing.
- 39:20Speaker 4: Number two thing is when you're building a business, you
- 39:25Speaker 4: have to It's fundamental that you spend more time thinking
- 39:29Speaker 4: about who are the people and what are the problems
- 39:32Speaker 4: than thinking about what product can I build. I need
- 39:36Speaker 4: to know who they are because that then leads me
- 39:39Speaker 4: to the products and the messaging. Most of us we
- 39:42Speaker 4: do it the other way around. We assume the world
- 39:44Speaker 4: is like us. We build what we want and what
- 39:46Speaker 4: we need, and then we scream from the top of
- 39:48Speaker 4: our lungs about why people should buy sad things, but
- 39:52Speaker 4: we don't. I would recommend you do it the other
- 39:53Speaker 4: way around. So understand, social media is huge, so huge
- 39:57Speaker 4: that if you find the right group of people, you
- 39:59Speaker 4: can click in the comments and you can follow some
- 40:01Speaker 4: folkts and you can start to see here are some problems.
- 40:06Speaker 4: And if I can develop a product or service, I can.
- 40:08Speaker 4: I got a business. I got a money opportunity. And
- 40:10Speaker 4: then the third thing would be situate yourself in the
- 40:13Speaker 4: right side of the business. Am I a person that
- 40:16Speaker 4: can go out and make a sell every day? Or
- 40:17Speaker 4: am a person that's going to swing the hammer and
- 40:19Speaker 4: get the job done every day? Hire for all the
- 40:22Speaker 4: other jobs that you aren't good at.
- 40:26Speaker 3: This one is and I hate to ask two part questions,
- 40:28Speaker 3: but I have to get a two part question in
- 40:30Speaker 3: it is Historically, black people, black entrepreneurs don't spend enough
- 40:34Speaker 3: money in marketing. We don't allocate enough when we're starting up.
- 40:37Speaker 3: As those are statistics. We just don't put enough money
- 40:40Speaker 3: in marketing. And you talked about consistency posting three times
- 40:44Speaker 3: a day. You said that's not always a rule, but
- 40:45Speaker 3: it is just buying large. You need to post that much. Yeah,
- 40:48Speaker 3: what does consistency look like? So if I post Tuesday
- 40:52Speaker 3: and then I may scroll on Wednesday, but then I
- 40:55Speaker 3: post again Friday morning, but then I post it again
- 40:58Speaker 3: on Sunday.
- 40:59Speaker 2: Man I posted a lot last week? Is that a
- 41:02Speaker 2: lot or it is like.
- 41:02Speaker 3: Should I be doing that noon, three pm and seven pm?
- 41:08Speaker 5: Yeah, beautiful question.
- 41:09Speaker 4: I would tell folks, even though it's not all about sales,
- 41:14Speaker 4: but this will help it make sense for folks post
- 41:17Speaker 4: every day that you want to make some money, right, Well,
- 41:20Speaker 4: you comfortable with your money coming in every once in
- 41:22Speaker 4: a while, post every once in a while, right, but
- 41:25Speaker 4: if you like, you know what, it'd be good to
- 41:26Speaker 4: make some money in the morning, and then again around lunch,
- 41:29Speaker 4: and then again before I lay down.
- 41:31Speaker 5: Right.
- 41:31Speaker 4: Then I orient my my content schedule around that because
- 41:37Speaker 4: all all things, ultimately we hope they lead to sales.
- 41:40Speaker 4: Whether I'm gaining awareness or nurturing or getting to a
- 41:42Speaker 4: hard core CTA or a conversion, we're sort of all
- 41:46Speaker 4: moving in that direction. So that would be my recommendation. There, Beautiful,
- 41:52Speaker 4: Did I cover the second part?
- 41:53Speaker 5: Was?
- 41:53Speaker 2: That was great?
- 41:54Speaker 5: That was great?
- 41:55Speaker 3: The last one is, you know, you obviously smart, You
- 41:58Speaker 3: could be doing a lot of things. Why did you
- 42:01Speaker 3: determine that you're going to spend your time doing this work?
- 42:05Speaker 5: Man?
- 42:05Speaker 4: So I read somewhere that like all businesses are birthed
- 42:11Speaker 4: out of some type of trauma, and oftentimes we're creating
- 42:15Speaker 4: what we wish existed for us at some point in
- 42:17Speaker 4: the past. So what I learned early was that I'm
- 42:21Speaker 4: really good at learning information and teaching it.
- 42:26Speaker 5: And after working.
- 42:28Speaker 4: In corporate for close to ten years and seeing the
- 42:30Speaker 4: money and getting the prestige and all of the things
- 42:33Speaker 4: that you would think light your spirit up, it came
- 42:36Speaker 4: at the expense of this other thing that's been sort
- 42:39Speaker 4: of nagging at me, And so I didn't fully know
- 42:41Speaker 4: what it looked like. I just knew that people call
- 42:44Speaker 4: me all the time and ask me what I think
- 42:46Speaker 4: about stuff, and then they'll go do exactly what I
- 42:48Speaker 4: told them to do, right, and then they'll hit me
- 42:50Speaker 4: back and be like, hey, Bruther, it's work. I didn't
- 42:52Speaker 4: know this was consultant. I thought I was just Homeme
- 42:55Speaker 4: on game.
- 42:55Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying.
- 42:57Speaker 4: So this allows me to to selfishly do what I'm
- 43:02Speaker 4: good at and feel good about. But any other way,
- 43:06Speaker 4: I fully understand where we're going as a people talking
- 43:10Speaker 4: about us, black Boat, We've always been last in education, right,
- 43:18Speaker 4: hardest to be able to get the capital displaced by
- 43:22Speaker 4: technology the first, right the fastest. So if I can
- 43:25Speaker 4: share this stuff that I don't win in and got
- 43:27Speaker 4: from these fancy universities, and if I can share this
- 43:29Speaker 4: stuff that I learned at these fancy corporations, and even
- 43:31Speaker 4: if I'm humble enough to share my entrepreneurial failures, I'll
- 43:35Speaker 4: be able to help somebody overcome some of the things
- 43:38Speaker 4: that I went through. All I gotta do is just
- 43:40Speaker 4: be willing to share it. It just so happens that
- 43:42Speaker 4: one of the byproducts is you can also make a
- 43:44Speaker 4: living from it too.
- 43:46Speaker 2: Fantasy Body ordered, So glad you spent.
- 43:49Speaker 5: This time on me. This was great. Bro.
- 43:51Speaker 4: Listen, man, I again for cut this off if you
- 43:56Speaker 4: need to, But I need people to understand what grace
- 43:59Speaker 4: looked like because you don't extending me a lot of
- 44:01Speaker 4: grace over.
- 44:02Speaker 5: The sort of evolution of our relationship we locked in.
- 44:05Speaker 4: Thank you for the platform, and thank you for the
- 44:07Speaker 4: opportunity to share with your with your with your audience.
- 44:09Speaker 3: Keep doing what you're doing, and I'm so proud of
- 44:12Speaker 3: you and I'm not having watched your growth.
- 44:14Speaker 2: And thank this guy. This guy ain't even the limit
- 44:17Speaker 2: for whatsow for you. Wow, So proud of you. Man.
- 44:21Speaker 5: Appreciate your brother, Thank you man.
- 44:23Speaker 1: Absolutely Black Tech Green Money is a production the Blavity
- 44:26Speaker 1: Afro Tech on the Black Effect podcast Networking Night Hire Media.
- 44:30Speaker 1: It's produced by Morgan Debonne and me Well Lucas, with
- 44:33Speaker 1: additional production support by Kate McDonald, s er and Jada McGee.
- 44:37Speaker 1: Special thank you to Michael Davis in Love Beach. Learn
- 44:40Speaker 1: more about my guessing other technives offers an innovator's afrotech
- 44:43Speaker 1: dot com.
- 44:44Speaker 2: The video version of this episode will.
- 44:46Speaker 1: Drop to Black Tech Green Money on YouTube, so tap in,
- 44:49Speaker 1: enjoy your Black Tech Green Money, Share this to somebody,
- 44:52Speaker 1: Go get your money.
- 44:54Speaker 2: Peace in love