EntreLeadership - #147: Claire Diaz Ortiz—Taking Control of Your Days

Episode Date: May 16, 2016

Want to be amazed at what you can get done in a day? Business and social-media expert Claire Diaz Ortiz joins us to discuss how to design your day so you work less and achieve more. And since Claire was an early employee of Twitter, we had to get her advice on social media too. To dive deeper into social, we also talk with Branden Harvey, who helps some of the biggest brands in the world tell their stories. entreleadership.com/podcast Guide to Running Your Business Debt Free Infusionsoft's Sales Team Hiring Guide Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Coleman. We are broadcasting from the Music City, and this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Here's what we're going to focus on this episode. We're going to talk about productivity, life hacks, if you will, because that's important to all of us. And then we're going to focus on some social media.

It's a big deal. A lot of small businesses. don't win in this all-important area. Specifically, Claire Diaz Ortiz, who is a former Twitter employee way, way, way up the ladder. He's got a brand new book out called Design Your Day.

And then Brandon Harvey, who is a youngster, but a very effective storytelling expert specifically on social media. We have some fun with that, but a lot of practical information for you this episode. Of course, we're going to continue to bring you free stuff from an entree leadership team. The Entree Leaders' Guide to Running a Debt

free business and then InfusionSoft gives you free sales team hiring guide. I'll tell you more about both of those resources as we move along. Well, Claire Diaz Ortiz is a fantastic lady. I got to meet her many, many years ago at a leadership event where I interviewed her. This is when she was really moving up the ladder with Twitter and really understood the power of building a network within this platform of Twitter in the early days. She's since gone. on, and you'll hear a little bit about that in our conversation, to her own work. But she's got a great new book out called Design Your Day. Now, this is important for people like me, and I think many of you will really appreciate this.

So let's get right to it. How do you design your day? This is my conversation with Claire Diaz Ortiz. Well, Claire, this is so fun to reconnect with you. We were just talking before we started recording. I think it's been five, six years since we have seen each other face-to-face, the first time I interviewed you. and at the time you were with Twitter. And so I think it would be funny before we dive into the new book, Design Your Day.

I love Twitter. I know a lot of our audience loves Twitter. So let's go to the background there of when you first started with Twitter and what you were doing because you had some really, really unique accomplishments during your time at Twitter. Yeah, I mean, the years at Twitter were some of the best of my life for sure. I ended up there in a weird way because I was running a nonprofit out in East Africa and right about the time that Twitter became popular, I started really using it and kind of being a power user

just on the ground in this orphanage, which was a weird thing to be doing with the platform at the time. So that was really the initial how I ended up, honestly, at the company. But while I was there, you know, did a bunch of fun stuff. I think the highlight was definitely spending a year working with the Vatican and then ultimately getting Pope Benedict to get on the tweet in. And that was really spectacular. and I always joke and say, you know, at the time this was Benedict, so it was three months before

Francis came on, and I'm married to an Argentine. We live in Argentina. And my in-laws were absolutely furious that I couldn't have waited three months to get Pope Francis instead of Pope Benedict. And you just kind of glossed over that. I want to make sure you folks listening in here. Wired Magazine literally called you, quote, the woman who got the Pope on Twitter, end quote. The Washington Post called you Twitter's Pontiff Recruitment Chief. So let's not just glance over that. What was that like? Because I just can't imagine it's easy to work with all the layers around the Vatican, or maybe it is.

But give us some backstory on how that actually came to be. Sure. Well, I mean, first and foremost, obviously there was an amazing team behind me. But I think the most interesting thing to me is going into the process, I assumed the Vatican, you know, old school. this is going to be like getting approval to, you know, pick up a paper clip or something, right? But in reality, they were so fast moving and so forward thinking and so really interested in this whole idea of digital media and the Pope having more of a voice to the people. And I remember in one of my very first meetings with one of the leaders on the project on their end, and he said to me, people think it's going to be crazy for the Pope to get on Twitter. But what I always say to them is people thought the same thing 60 years ago when the Pope started getting on radio, right?

And Vatican Radio now has how many hundreds of channels or whatever it is. So it was a very interesting sort of parallel. They recognized that, yes, it was going to be this kind of leap for people, but it was ultimately going to be a really powerful thing. Now, you left on good terms a little over a year ago, moved to Argentina with your husband, but you were involved in so many great things at Twitter and bringing people into the conversation. and partnerships and so many other things. I want to ask you because I think you have a unique perspective. If our listeners are paying attention to the news, there's been all kinds of stuff out there about Twitter

and predictions of its demise and will it change and why is it not growing as fast as maybe some other social platforms. With that being the context, first question on that is what, in your opinion, made Twitter such an explosive medium when it came on the scene? Why do people like it so much? I mean, for the first time, Twitter was a way to connect with anyone technically, right? So you can actually connect with anyone. I can technically send a message to Kanye West or whatever it is,

right? And that hadn't existed before. I mean, it existed in some way that you could, you know, drive down to Hollywood and find a guy standing on a street corner with a map of celebrity houses and, you know, try to knock doors. But, I mean, that was kind of the thing. It was you are actually connected with anyone. And what that did for relationships was explosive. And I often reference sort of of the news example. You know, I've got a lot of journalists and my family. And for them, Twitter is just, it's just completely game changing. So when I think about sort of these comparisons, you know, I saw an article yesterday saying, you know, is Twitter to the new MySpace. And I just don't see it going down that path. I will say that I think the downfall of Twitter has always been the fact that it is

constantly compared to Facebook. And I think maybe when the public and the market finally figure that out, I think we'll see some sort of balancing of this is what Twitter is. This is what it's amazing for. This is what it probably won't be. But it's great for the thing that it is. So I think that's really what I believe. And obviously I might be sort of more rose tinted glasses than someone who hadn't worked there for six years. But I do think it's a really valuable tool that I don't see being subsumed into or buy something else. So it's interesting. I had the opportunity to interview Jack Dorsey at the same event that I first interviewed you

at. And he later contributed to my book. One thing I was impressed with Jack in talking with him one-on-one is that he seemed to be a guy that operated in great clarity. Again, this is a fascinating observation of leadership. He's now back in, former co-founder. Now he's back in as chairman. and he's facing all this, you know, chatter out there, even a hashtag just a rest in peace, Twitter, you know,

which I was freaking out because I love it. You know what I mean? And how does Jack, from what you know, this is a leadership question with your opinion here, how does he navigate these uncertain waters right now, certainly with the public perception of where does it go, why isn't it growing, yada, yada, yada. I think that Jack is a man of incredible discipline. And I mean, a lot of that is incredibly public in, you know, articles and interviews. He talks about how, you know, he batches his work. He gave all employees the checklist manifesto some years ago. There were stacks of them all around the office. I remember that. You know, he has that line where he says that his only beverages are red wine and water with lemon. He's incredibly disciplined. And that's how he's able to do all the work he's doing. I mean, you know, he's running. two companies right now, not one. And I think that is going to be what he is calling upon and trying to sort of turn this ship around. And I think he's also, you know, a student of leadership, which I think

is also really important. And more important when you're Jack Dorsey than when you're Mark Zuckerberg, you know, when you're when you're riding high, it's not as important that you kind of study the leaders of your to see what they have done to really succeed. And I think he, is someone who, if anyone else can do it, he can do it. So I'm hopeful, but I don't envy his position. It must be incredibly challenging. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so you really are a Twitter expert. Encourage so many people to get into the platform and use it. We have a lot of small business leaders, people who are personal growth junkies. We have a large, if you will, spectrum that are listening in here. What would you say? What would Claire recommend to listeners

if they've not used Twitter on a professional scale. And I guess let me further define that for you. If you're an individual, building your brand. If you are an organization, of course, building your brand, serving your customer. I just want you to weigh in on that on how and why people should use Twitter. Sure. So I think the big thing is you've got to see why it's different than Facebook. Facebook is about your people creating community,

sort of amongst themselves. And it's also very much about traffic and small business or online business leaders obviously care about traffic and care about people coming to see what you're doing. But I think where Twitter really, really shines for folks who are building a brand or building a business is in the way

it allows you to connect with influencers, journalists, PR people. I think that is hands down the thing that sets it apart. So one of my tips to folks who are new at Twitter is to create just a purpose. private list of some people that you'd like to be in touch with, whether they're journalists or influencers that you think can help your brand, and just kind of follow them, not in a stockery-ish way, but just follow their tweets and try to engage with them on life stuff, you know, them complaining

about the carpool this morning, whatever it is, and then trying to build a relationship that way. Because again and again, the sort of amazing stories I've heard of whether it's small businesses or online brands or nonprofits building huge platforms on Twitter. It often comes from the ability to connect with influencers in your space and the ability to, you know, connect with journalists or press or people that might be able to highlight your work. And I don't think there's another tool as good at that right now out there. Yeah, that's good. Okay, I'm super excited to talk about your latest book. The new one is Design Your Day. This is, oh, I love it, because it's such a simple challenge. yet it's not easy to do.

And you were talking about Jack, Dorsey, and his discipline, and you've developed your own disciplined approach to a day. So this is kind of fun. Why this book? Why now? So the book is all about kind of productivity and taking productivity to the next level. And it's the thing that I've become super passionate about over the last however many years. And I think one of those reasons is that working in Silicon Valley for a lot of,

long time, people think that you are working in a place that is really good at productivity and really good at efficiency and really good at making people work well. But in reality, I don't think that's the case. I think that Silicon Valley may do some things better than sort of old corporations, but so much of productivity is personal and is figuring out how you work best and then building a work life around that. And obviously it's easier for an entrepreneur, someone who works for themselves, but it's absolutely possible for employees. When I was at Twitter, I sort of developed some tools and some tricks, and ultimately the system that I've been writing about on my blog for about a year now. And I really think for me, it's kind of the thing that has changed my life most.

You know, I, for years, people have, you know, I have some weird things about me, Ken. So one of those things is I'm obsessed with reading and I set this goal every year to read 200 books, right? That's a ton of reading. Yes, that's huge. And then because I live in Argentina, I end up traveling like 150,000 miles every year to do work and to live far away and all that kind of stuff. So these are things that take up tons of time. And so I kind of, over the years, have had to figure out a way to build a successful work life around the fact that I have these sort of time-sucking activities that I love, essentially. So that's really kind of a personal note of why a system works for me. I love it. And what's interesting to me is, this is really woven throughout the book, but you laid out just an example there, some things that are very important to you. And you kind of address this at the start of the book and kind of a summary of the book for folks. You address big rocks. I love that. That's a wonderful metaphor. I want you to unpack the idea of when we get started into this process of really designing our day with huge intentionality, big rocks. What does that mean and how do we use that metaphor?

Well, so I think some of folks, you know, in high school, maybe you saw, you know, a youth pastor or a camp counselor sort of show this metaphor. But essentially, imagine getting a huge glass jar and then a bunch of big rocks and then a ton of little pebbles, right? And the idea is if you put all the little pebbles in first, it'll be really hard to fit in the big rocks. So what you've got to do, if you want to get all those big rocks in the jars, you've got to put the big rocks in first and then the little pebbles. And I think that in terms of our lives, that's what we need to do. And that's rarely what we really do. I mean, the reality is we're all on a hamster wheel of our to-do lists. And most of our to-do lists are not very interesting things that have to be done, right?

And the things we don't put on our to-do lists, like, you know, spending time with our spouse, or having quality time with our kids, or calling up our grandma twice a week, or whatever it is, those things don't make it on. because it's whatever fire you need to put out today ends up taking up your life. So the concept is really coming up with what those big rocks are for you. Those have to be prioritized. And then you can fill up the sort of the rest of your life with the smaller stuff. That's good.

Another big section of the book is Decide. And this is, again, so simple but very profound. The idea of that first step forward happens after you have great clarity. Talk about deciding. Sure. So deciding, again, you won't get where you're going if you don't know where you want to be, right? Goals have become super popular in the last few years. But I think even more than goal setting is this idea of just setting intentions. So something I started doing about five years ago was setting a word for my year. And the first year, I think it was rest because I was in a really crazy season and I need to slow down. And then over the years it's changed. This year, it's a hashtag. It's three words. It's work by design. So it's me trying to make sure that the work I do is really by design and not sort of by default. But essentially setting a word for your year is a great way to come up with one phrase or one word that really kind of brings together all the things you want to be and to feel and to live in the year to come. And then your goals can kind of fit in and underneath it. But every time you've got kind of a big decision or a little decision, you could say, hey, what was my word of the year?

Maybe it was focused. Maybe it was hustle. Whatever it was. and you can sort of think back to that and say, hey, does this decision fit in with that? So I think that's one of the biggest sort of tips within this concept of deciding how you want to live your life is really coming up with an intention for the year or the season ahead. Yeah, I love that. It is a fascinating process that really forces us to choose that highest priority at that moment. And that's why it's such a clarifying process.

Okay, second part of the book that you kind of divide the continent, organize, less is more. And you've already mentioned this do less method. But I want you to break that down for us. Sure. So do less. I love acronyms. They help me remember things. And honestly, I come up with them because, again, I can't remember all the things that I want to.

I want to make sure happen. So do less is just, you know, the D is decide. And then the O is organized. And within Organize, you've got L-E-S-S. L is limiting what you do. E is editing down the time you spend. S is streamlining your work. And the final S is stopping.

So within the organizing section, let's just break down some of these things. The L, limit what you do. This is a really important point. And, you know, many of us have heard of the 80-20 rule or Pareto's principle. The concept is that 20% of what you do will get you 80% of your results, essentially. And, you know, the converse is also true. 80% of what you do every day is only giving you 20% of your kind of results, right, of what you achieve, what you want.

So what the idea here is, is to, I'm. I encourage folks to read the book to do this exercise where you essentially write down your big wins from the last year and then you write down all your regular activities and you try to figure out what is really not something you should be doing, what something someone else could maybe be doing, whether it's, you know, a housekeeper or an assistant or maybe someone on your team at work that you could delegate more to. And then you try to figure out what you should really stop doing entirely. So, you know, I walk through how to do the exercise in the book. But essentially, the point is you're trying to limit your work to your best 20% because you are more likely to be, you know, successful in terms of purpose and in terms of passion and in terms of profit. If you are doing your 20%, the vast majority of the time. And the reality is most of us are doing our best 20% a very small number of hours each week. And that's really, really unfortunate because that's where we can get kind of the most growth and the most growth. most impact. So that's this idea of limiting what you do. E is editing down the time you spend. And I found this really fascinating when I was doing research for the book. You know, I kept coming up with these studies that basically show after 40 hours a week, your productivity just starts to plummet, right? And so this idea that all of us kind of subscribe to where we say, oh, I sleep five hours a night and I work 80

hours a week and all these sort of superlatives we use to express how hard we work is just kind of killing our society. It's just a toxic, toxic thing that's making us all want something that isn't healthy for us and more than anything isn't productive at all. We think it's cool or it's good to say you work 80 hours a week because that means you're working hard. But in reality, your productivity pretty much totally is shot after about 40 hours a week. So I really encourage folks to edit down the time you spend. And the result of this, if you do it well, is you find that you know, instead of eight hours in an office, four of those which might be real work and four of those which might be switching between tasks or chatting with coworkers or, you know, walking down the

hallway is not sure what you should do next will actually end up being four hours of really, really concentrated work and then you can, you know, get out and go rest or whatever it is. So it's all about editing down the time you spend and being much more focused with those smaller amounts of time that you're working. The S for streamlining just suggests a bunch of kind of great strategies that I've used to kind of change my productivity and give me more time in my life for fun and less for work. And the final S in this do less method is stop, which is something I am so, so passionate about. I'm really into this idea of digital detoxes, whether they're, you know, a weekly thing. You might, you know, some people call it a digital Sabbath. They take one day a week off.

Or whether it's, you know, an annual thing, you unplug for seven days or for 10 days. And I think that These detoxes are an incredible way to kind of rewire your work brain. I encourage them to anyone I meet on street corners right and left. Well, that's good. I want to ask you this as we wrap our conversation because I think a lot of people that are listening in right now certainly feel like maybe they're on the hamster wheel, they're about to overheat. And they hear what you're saying. They know that they need to make a change.

but it's hard sometimes to simply stop. You know, they're sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I think when you get there, then you're ready. Yet I think some people are overwhelmed by the idea of how do I even step out of this craziness and reboot, if you will. And I'd just love for you to encourage them. You know, we've talked about a lot of tactics. But what would you say to them about that psychological state to where they know they've got to make the decision, yet they may be a bit overwhelmed.

I mean, this is where I have been many times in my life, and I think it is the hardest place to be because you know you need something, but you can't figure out how to do it. And oftentimes, you know you need to make a change, but honestly, the cost of change and the effort you have to put into the change doesn't feel worth the effort, right?

Doesn't feel worth the work. So I think that the one thing I would say to folks is the best thing you can do if you think you want to make a change in terms of the way you work, is to try to find time out for yourself, you know, this week, this month, whatever it is, this quarter, and just spend time sort of thinking about this. So, you know, for me, this might be a day somewhere. It might be three hours and a Starbucks. Whatever it is, taking time out where you're not on the hamster wheel is the essential thing you need

to do to sort of think about if a reboot is what you need. You know, for some folks, this might be a vacation, but for others, as I say, it might be just a couple hours in a coffee shop, but this is really what you need. And, you know, this book is one tool, but there are also many others out there that can, you know, help you to really think about, hey, am I living the way I want to be living? What kind of changes can I make? And how can I really do that? It's so funny, the idea of baby steps, I'm absolutely, you know, baby steps in all areas of my life is just essential. But I also think on top of baby steps, sometimes you need a clean break. And I think a clean break. And I think a clean break can be developed or can be cultivated from just a few hours or a day by yourself somewhere. So I would

just encourage folks to try to find that space that can kind of be, you know, your new day zero, essentially. The book is entitled, Design Your Day, Claire, tell folks where they can go to learn more about the book, the book website. I'm sure you have some other tools. Share some of those that can help folks get started into this conversation. Yeah, the best place to find out about this book is just on my website at Claire Diaz Ortiz.com. I'm also always hanging out on the Twitters at Claire, C-L-A-I-R-E. And yeah, I think that's that. You know, I've got to confess some jealousy that before I let you go, that I've always been

jealous that you have the one-word Twitter handle. I just think that's fantastic. I know. I would be jealous of myself. That's really a difficult thing. You're just at Claire. Always out there, always encouraging. And thank you so much.

I know that you're back and forth all the time from Argentina, around the world and back to the states. And thanks for carving out some time for us while you're in Sunny, California, to talk to our audience. We're better for it, and we appreciate you so much. Thank you. I love, love being here. Hey, I hope you enjoyed hearing from Claire. And this is a little bit of a bonus if you'd like to dive in deeper on the conversation with her. For the next 10 days, this episode airing May the 16th, for the next 10 days, Claire's doing an online summit. It's absolutely free.

It's called Work by Design. Work by Design Summit. So if you want to check that out, Claire Diaz-Ortiz.com. Claire Diaz-Rourtees.com. All right, folks, you know we've been talking about this all month, the Entree Leaders Guide to Running a Debt Free Business. This is our free resource that we're giving to you.

It's a PDF download, and it features so many things, but specifically I want to highlight two case studies of real businesses who got out of debt. Then we focus on three myths about small business debt. Do you need debt? to get going, to win in small business. We blow that out of the water.

And then, of course, an article on motivating your sales team to win and how turning down big deals can save your business. That's just a snapshot of what we are giving you in, the Entree Leader's Guide to Running a Debt Free Business. Two ways to get it. You can text this phrase as one word. Be debt free. Be debt free is the phrase to text in 33444 is the number.

text be debt free to 33444. Or of course, you can go to entreleadership.com slash podcast. Click on this episode. We have a link in there for you to download this PDF. Well, Eric, the producer and one of our other team members, George Camel, were talking to me about this young man, Brandon Harvey, and how he works for so many big brands. You'll hear some of those brands in our conversation, 23 years old. And he really gets this whole Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, social media phenomenon. So how to you, the small businessman and woman, actually get better telling your brand's story on social media?

We dive into this. Some really practical stuff here. So here is my conversation with Brandon. Well, Brandon, it's great to have you in studio. And let's get right into this thing. And we've told the audience who you are, but I want them to hear from your words. What is it that you do for these organizations, big, small, like, what is it that you do with them within social media? How do you help them?

So when I'm with a brand, I'm focused specifically on telling stories. They come to me and they say, Brandon, can you use your abilities to shoot photos, to tell stories, to use social media to amplify our message, to get that out in front of people who actually want to see it. And somewhere at some point, I started transitioning into not just being a photographer, but being a storyteller. So I started using photography as just one of my tools and then started incorporating writing and social media. And inside of social media, there's Instagram and Snapchat and Twitter. Twitter and all these things. And so I'd say I've been really working with brands in the world of social media for the last three years. List off some of the big boys. I've been working with Disney, Hilton. I just did a campaign with Lyft. I did a campaign with Square yesterday. And I just did a

really fun thing with Skype over Valentine's Day. All right. So when they come to you, when you look at their unique audience, what are you trying to connect with? We're looking at who are the people who are following this. So with Square, we have small business owners. How can we encourage other small business owners by sharing the stories of people who are doing the same thing that they are, who are going through struggles, who are trying to kind of follow their dreams that they've been wanting to create? And it's basically people looking at square and going, oh, you are an expert on small businesses. Like, you understand me really well. And when they feel that connection, when they feel that relationship, then they're going to trust them enough to buy their products. All right.

So you mentioned a couple platforms. I found it interesting. But you mentioned Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram. you didn't mention Facebook. Was that Freudian or is that on purpose because you're 23 years old and quite frankly, you don't even know what it is. You know, I mean, I have Facebook.

I don't necessarily use it a ton. Why? It's just not where my audience lives. And your audience is? My audience is probably mostly millennials. Okay, so it is safe to say 23-year-olds and younger are largely not on Facebook.

I wouldn't say that they're not on Facebook. It's just that Facebook is more of a utility. Facebook is email. I don't think Facebook's going anywhere. I think Facebook is just something that we all have, but we don't love. And we are choosing to spend our time on places like Instagram and Snapchat and still Twitter, but maybe not as much as Instagram and Snapchat. Okay, this is fascinating stuff. So we're going to break this down. Yeah.

In the context of our audience, who are small businessmen and women, they're entrepreneurs, and everybody from 23 to 63, maybe even older. If you're older than 63, listen to this, this must be fascinating. Every platform is different. That's where I want to start. The days of I post on Instagram and then I share it to Twitter or to Facebook and expect the same interaction, that's not happening, correct?

Absolutely, yeah. I really don't repeat content across platforms. If I share a photo on Instagram, if I share it on Twitter, it's at least in a different context. Personally, I have different communities on each place. I don't even have the same audience following me on all these places.

It's really interesting. Okay, so this is really good. I want to stay right here. Yeah. But again, I'm assuming you would advise organizations, businesses to do the same. Let's break that down specifically. What kind of stuff should they be posting on Twitter versus Instagram or Facebook? Well, let's start with Instagram. Instagram is the platform that has the most over-indexing on the attention graph.

Like, people are actually paying attention more than anything else. And so... Why? So if we compare this to Facebook, which was really the king for the longest time, Instagram is more curated than Facebook. Facebook, you know, you accept as many friends as ad you really. You know, I've got 1,500 friends on there maybe. That's way more people than I actually care about.

Instagram, I follow maybe 700. And I'm on the higher end of people. So at least when I go on Instagram, I am following less people. I actually care about these things. But then also, people are sharing one photo a day, maybe. Maybe two, maybe zero. And so I know that I'm actually seeing the best content of people's lives. So it's actually interesting to go on there and spend time because people are being intentional with what they share

compared to Facebook where you've got grandma who's sharing 10 articles a day and a whole album of photos where you didn't even take out the ones where your thumbs covering it. It's really the curation. So true. This is very interesting. And I'm going to ask this question out of a personal experience that I think transfers well to our audience. I've been getting my haircut by the same lady for about, like, 11, 12 years come back, she's still cutting my hair. We're always talking about her business.

And the other day, she said, you know, we don't know what to do with social media. So I just asked a bunch of questions. I'm the social media expert. So let's look at this thing from her context. What should she be doing as a hair salon? Okay. High end area here. This is a wealthy area.

Nice shop. What should she be using Instagram for and how should she be selective, if you will? Okay. When somebody goes to get a haircut there, what are they looking for? Expertise. maybe on Instagram to match that, she can basically be sharing styling tips and helpful things

to basically add value to you. You're like, okay, she's an expert. She knows what she's doing with my hair. What if I were to like open up Instagram every day and she had one thing, one thought about hair, like, hey, this product helps you do this thing differently or if use this kind of comb, it actually does this or if you change your part every six months, it does this.

Interesting things like that. To a point where somebody might follow her who hasn't gotten her haircut, and they go, oh, I want to get a haircut now. What about pictures of products? So next time you're in getting your cut, if you buy from us, you beat the other competitors where you're showing products

so people can go, okay, I can get hair product while I'm there. Figure out a way to add value with that. Maybe this product helps you do this thing in particular. So all of a sudden I go, oh, you know what? I want that now because I know more about it. If it's just a picture of a product, I am not any more likely to buy that there

than if I see it just sitting on the shelf there. I see. So a little bit of value add with the offer. You're trying to build a relationship through social media. It's social media. And so share things that are like, don't just try to sell things, try to connect. Yeah, I love that. And then so let's talk about how a business begins to let their clientele know,

hey, we're on Instagram. Like, is there a little bit of fear and shame with the idea of you're behind the curveball? And then is there also a hurdle in telling your client base? Hey, we're on Instagram. Like us, you know, follow us. Yeah. I would say, and this is the biggest mistake that I see people making, is don't invite people to follow your Instagram account until you have, I'm going to just throw out an arbitrary number, 25 photos. Okay, 25 photos.

I like that. If I follow an Instagram account and it has three photos, I have no idea what to expect. I don't know what's going to happen next. The very first thing you do when you look at an Instagram account is you just look at that first page. It's really true. If you see three photos and the last one was two years ago, you're not going to follow that person. No, there's no way. So you want to know that there's going to be some consistency.

So post every day for three weeks maybe and then start inviting people to do stuff. I would say leverage your current channels. If you've got an email list, send out an email, say, hey guys, like we start an Instagram account. We want you to follow it, please too. But then the biggest thing is just like tell people that you're going to add value to them. It's a no-brainer. They're going to want to follow you. They're interested.

So it's not you taking from them. It's not you saying, hey, like, do this thing for me, do me a favor. You're doing them a favor by them following your account. Yeah, that's really good. How do you grow on Instagram organically? Now, I know you've got to add value, but what are some ways that you're your posts and things that you're sharing? And where I'm going with here is the hashtag. I mean, how do you jump into bigger conversations via Instagram?

Well, the big thing I would say is a lot of people make the mistake of sharing way too many hashtags that don't apply to them. Hashtag sunshine, hashtag happy, hashtag Instagram. If you're not clicking in there, then who is? So think about the things that you would actually care about. if you own an accounting firm, you can do hashtags, and people are actually looking for those things. Otherwise, don't bother.

And I would say, figure out ways to get in front of other people in unique ways. Like, say that you own a restaurant and you're trying to jump on social media, you're trying to get in front of an audience, why don't you just find a clothing store, a local brand in your town,

who has maybe the same amount of followers as you, and you guys decide to do some sort of collaboration over the course of a week. Maybe on your account's Instagram, you say, hey, if you follow both of our accounts, and you share a photo of your favorite thing, let's say that you're in Cincinnati, your favorite thing in Cincinnati,

then with this particular hashtag, then we'll give you 15% off at both of our stores. You know, something like that, where you'll be entered in to win this thing, and both accounts share that thing. And all of a sudden, you're cross-promoting followers who actually do care about it.

If you live in Cincinnati, you're interested in local businesses, that might be a good way for you to help each other out. I think that'd be really unique. No, that's good. I love that. And I don't see a lot of people doing that, too, so people would actually jump on it.

That's actually really, really great. You know, one of my favorite political phrases of all time, and I'm not getting political here, Tip O'Neill said all politics are local. And, you know, local businesses here to really leverage this idea that Brandon just threw out. I think that's really, really great because that's who you're after. And sometimes marketing campaigns, they get a little overwhelming, especially when you're thinking local. Yeah. And then if you can just leverage social media, that's huge, especially when you can, like you said,

cross-pollone. That's a really big deal. I actually have a lot of. small businesses who are like, Brandon, let's work together. And I tell them, you guys, it might be valuable. I do have a lot of followers on social media. But the truth is, most of them don't live in this city. A lot of them live all over the world. So why don't you find somebody who only has followers in the city? A restaurant in town might have a tiny fraction of the followers I have, but 100% of their followers actually live in the city. Chase after them. Yeah, that's really good. Okay,

let's move to Twitter. First of all, is the proclaimed Twitter is going to die. Is this much of ado about nothing? Is this exaggerated or is this possible? You know, I really hope not. I hope not either. Everybody that I talk to, even people, my peers, people younger than me, none of them want Twitter to die either.

So if nobody wants it to die, I don't really think it's going to die. You know, MySpace, we were all like, okay, we're ready for this to be done. Even Facebook, you know, a lot of people are just like, oh, I hate Facebook, but we use it anyway. Somehow they still have a grasp on us. But Twitter, nobody dislikes Twitter. We all kind of enjoy Twitter. So I think they're doing a good job. I think it'll be around.

It's just they need to make it a little bit more easy for people to understand. Because I think that the problem is just that people expect them to continue growing. They don't have to be the next Facebook. They can just be a valuable platform for a small community of people, which is largely leaders. It's a lot of people who are leaders. How do you describe Twitter? Okay, here's how I describe Twitter. I say Facebook is the people you went to high school with.

Twitter is the people you wish you went to high school. with. That is fascinating. How cool would it be if we all just like went to high school together? I would love that. All right. So Twitter for business. Let's let's break this down. Again, it's a very different thing so you don't want to necessarily. So are we saying you don't take that Instagram post and then share it to Twitter. Do not do that. Don't cross platforms. How do you share on Twitter for business? Totally. I would say use it to connect with people. It's fantastic for connecting with people. I think it's the far superior customer service platform out there. I do too.

It's so fun. Like I, Southwest Airlines takes care of me every single time that I forget to do something. I'm like, hey guys, like accidentally booked a flight for tomorrow, but it was supposed to be for a month from now. And they're like, oh, we'll just take care of it over DM. Like, it's amazing. I love it when a brand doesn't just share all of their own content. Like, oh, hey, check out this thing we did. Check out this thing we did.

I love it when brands share content that people who like them are going to be interested in. So what if you have an airline who, instead of sharing, like, oh we've got this deal or like come fly with us or like here's a new rule we made what if they just like linked to new york times articles that basically talk about beautiful places in the world or like what if they link to a blogger who's like hey here's like 10 travel tips i learned or Forbes is like oh here's like the top 10 people who travel for work you know i think that would be really interesting because you're following an airline you kind of want to travel you care about travel what if they're just like adding value to you without the stuff i'm basically building

trust with them. That's good. Talk about the ability to search, the ability to make Twitter local. I think a lot of small businesses, Gary V talks a lot about this, but I'd love from your vantage point to talk about how you can think about Twitter within your zip code. Yeah. You can go to search.twitr.com. You can get into all these details.

You can get really granular, basically saying, I want to talk to people who live in this town who are asking this question. So for me, as a photographer, I could go and I can. could search photography and then I could say Nashville and I can find anybody who's talking about photography and I can enter into their conversation if I want to. Which is crazy. It's nuts. I mean, on one hand it's a little creepy. On the other hand, it's fantastic. Yeah. Well, and I mean, it's getting really cheesy now, but if you show up and add value, nobody thinks it's creepy. If you're on the street and it's pouring down rain and somebody's like, hey man, do you

want an umbrella? It's not creepy that they walked up and talked to you. They're adding value to you. That's great. That's great. I love that you added that. That's really good. So again, the website, for people, search. Search.com, I think, unless they changed it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's probably it. It's really smart, and you begin to enter in the information and see what's happening in your neck of the woods.

Exactly. All right. Snapchat. Now, I say Snapchat, and I could be wrong, but I think you got a lot of people who are like, oh, boy, I may fast forward right here. Don't fast forward. Because I'm going to ask some questions here on behalf of all of you there going, what is Snapchat?

Why is Gary Vee? Now, our audience knows Gary Vee well. Okay, so Gary's in his 40s. He's Mr. Social Media. he's an early adopter, all that kind of stuff. But he's kind of moving over there. A lot of people are. And I just simply don't get it.

I don't, and what I mean is I don't understand why you'd post something and then just let it disappear. So let's do a quick review, how to Snapchat work just for those who may not know. And then we'll talk about its importance and what does that have to do with us? It really started as a communication thing. It's just an alternative to texting. The thing is that the text disappeared. And so this is kind of what the kids, you know, People who were a few years younger than me started using really as a primary communication network.

More than anything, it's just because it's fun. It's like communication art. Exactly. And so that's what it started off as. And then they basically created the opportunity to share things publicly. It's kind of like Facebook messaging versus posting on your timeline. Like that's the difference. Right.

When you share it with a friend, it disappears immediately after they see it. When you share publicly, that content lives online for 24 hours, then disappears. And when you're watching Snapchat, you're actually paying attention. You're actually engaging on this because it fills the entire screen the whole time. Okay. People actually are just sitting there fully engrossed in what you're doing. And brands are really, really interested in that because they can basically quantify people's attention by time. They say they watched this long.

They stopped watching at this point. Now, there's a bunch of people in their 40s and 50s going. Now, I got to hold my thumb down on the button every 10 seconds. How's that work? I mean, can't you just see that happening? Yeah, while you record, that's how it works. You realize I made fun as some mythical person so that I could ask the question. That's what I'm thinking.

I mean, let's be honest. Yeah. So let's translate this to, again, the business leader or the small business, the entrepreneur. What do we look and do? And again, I know value is what we're trying to do, but how is it a little bit different? Specifically because of my cynicism, which is the content that disappears. So is the content any different than maybe Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram? it's a place to authentically connect with a generation that cares about authenticity.

You can't go into Snapchat and fake authenticity. It just doesn't work. You have to show up and you have to be willing to be real and show some imperfection. And so with that said, I don't think it's for every business. There's a lot of businesses where that just doesn't work. But if you have a personal business, if you've got something that's unique and personal, and I think it's something that people should jump into. That's really good.

All right, Brandon, tell folks where they can connect with you and find you with your work and this is great advice. I'd love for people to know that they want to connect with you. They certainly can. All of those are at at Brandon Harvey, B-R-A-N-D-E-N-H-R-V-E-Y. I also just launched a podcast

is called Sounds Good with Brandon Harvey, and I basically sit down and have conversations with the happiest people on the internet. People who are telling stories, making a difference in the world. I'm having a fun time doing that. I love that.

Sounds good. That's a great name, by the way. Well, congratulations on the new podcast. Thank you for being with us. I know that you've made us think and you've helped us with some very practical stuff. as it relates to social media. He is Brandon Harvey.

Great having you with us, Brandon. It was a lot of fun. Thank you so much, Ken. Now a little follow-up to this. George Campbell on our team, social media guru, here on our Ramsey Solutions team. He's been giving me a hard time about Snapchat. He listened in the interview I did with Brandon.

And so now I actually signed up a username. I'm not going to tell you people yet because I haven't done anything with it. But I'm really trying to understand it. And I think that's good for all of us. So that's the context here and the challenge. When you hear the conversation like that with Brandon, and you're going,

I just don't know. Instagram, why Facebook, why Twitter. You know what? Those things do make you a little bit uncomfortable when you don't understand everything about them and how to use them. That's where I'm at with Snapchat. So I'm waiting in here. See if I can take some of the medicine that we're helping give you.

And we'll see how it goes. I'll keep you updated if I actually do anything on it. But right now, I'm just trying to understand it. Hey, Infusion Soft, it's got a great tool for you this episode. We've been giving away to you. And we remind you again. It's called Sales Team Hiring Guide. seven things to look for in a quality resume.

Five questions to ask in a phone screen interview. Five questions to ask references. Go to infusionsoft.com slash sales guide for much, much more than I just shared. But those are three great highlights in this free resource from Infusionsoft. Go to infusionsoft.com slash sales guide and check out that great resource. Free sales team hiring guide. Well, we're one week out from our second Entree Leadership Summit. Going to be so much fun, May 22 through 25 in Dallas.

It is a phenomenal lineup. If you'd like to learn more, go to Entreelearship.com slash summit. Big thanks to Claire and Brandon for being our guest on this episode. Coming up next week, Nancy Duarte is a communication guru. She really gets this stuff. This was a fantastic conversation that's going to really help you. you don't want to miss that. Don't forget, if you'd like to get our free resource this month, the Entre Leaders Guide to Running to Debt Free Business, text the word be debt-free, 3-4-4-4-4.

On behalf of our producer, Eric Anthony and the entire Entree leadership team, thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.