I am Charles Schwartz Show - Building Profitable Brands

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

In this episode, Charles dives into the world of niche influence with Jon Davids, the marketing mastermind behind Influicity. Jon shares his hard-earned wisdom on building thriving communities and skyrocketing brands to unimaginable heights. Get ready to take notes as Jon unveils his secret formula for creating a movement around your brand that captivates your target audience. Uncover the power of niche influence and learn how to harness it to amplify your brand's reach and impact. Jon reveals the "rent-to-own" marketing strategy that empowers businesses to scale without sacrificing their current revenue streams. Through real-life examples and practical advice, Jon and Charles explore the intricacies of building unshakable faith among your customers and creating a loyal community that advocates for your brand. Jon's no-nonsense approach cuts through the noise and delivers actionable insights that you can immediately implement in your own marketing strategy. He shares his journey from the early days of online magazines to working with industry giants like Disney and Toyota, offering a unique perspective on the evolution of digital marketing. Whether you're an established entrepreneur or just starting your business, this episode will arm you with the tools and frameworks necessary to thrive in today's competitive digital landscape. Get ready to be inspired, challenged, and motivated to take your brand to new heights by leveraging the untapped potential of niche influence. Key Takeaways: Discover Jon's secret formula for creating a movement around your brand that captivates your target audience Learn how to harness the power of niche influence to amplify your brand's reach and impact Uncover the game-changing "rent-to-own" marketing strategy that allows businesses to scale without sacrificing current revenue Head over to https://podcast.iamcharlesschwartz.com/ to download your exclusive companion guide, designed to guide you step-by-step in implementing the strategies revealed in this episode. Key Points: 2:08 Building an Online Magazine 5:10 Growing Website Traffic 7:32 Making money with Google AdWords 10:07 Launching influencer marketing agency 13:00 Collaborating with YouTube influencer 15:15 Unfair advantage discussion 17:23 Building community vs. Identity 20:00 Importance of brand for small businesses 22:49 Building communities effectively 28:01 Importance of niche influence 30:53 Building KLT 33:21 Examples of successful movements 36:59 Twitter success story 39:08 Faith building checklist 42:38 Interview testimonial questions 45:04 Acquiring more customers 46:57 Rent to own marketing framework 50:03 Accessing marketing resources

Welcome to the I Am Charles Schwartz Show. In this episode, we dive into the world of niche influence with marketing superhero John Davids. With over two decades of experience working with big names like Disney and Toyota, John has mastered the art of building thriving communities and skyrocketing brands to new heights. He's seen it all, from the early days of online magazines to the rise of social media influencers, and has come out on top with a wealth of knowledge to share. In this conversation, John reveals his secret formula for creating a movement around your brand, harnessing the power of niche influence and building unshakable faith among your customers. He also pulls back the curtain on the rent-to-own marketing strategy that allows businesses to scale

without sacrificing revenue. John's approach is tactical, no-nonsense, and packed with actionable insights. He's not here to sell you on empty promises or quick fixes, but rather to give you the tools and frameworks you need to succeed in today's digital landscape. So if you're ready to take your brand to the next level, grab a pen and get ready to take notes. The show starts now. Welcome to the I Am Charles Schwartz Show, where we don't just discuss success, we show you how to create it. On every episode, we uncover the strategies and tactics that turn everyday entrepreneurs into unstoppable powerhouses in their businesses and their lives.

Whether your goal is to transform your life or hit that elusive seven, eight, or nine figure mark, we've got the blueprint to get you there. The show starts now. Today, we've got John Davis, who's worked with Disney and Toyota and all these other things. We'll get into it. No preamble. Hey, John, welcome to the show. Charles, it's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. You've done some things very differently. As we've already talked about, you've gone after 20,000 influencers. You've worked with them. You've worked with Disney. You've worked with all that, but I don't want to know about that yet. Let's get into what makes John, John, how did you get here? Tell me what took us from the beginning. Cause I know you weren't born

with these marketing superpowers, which by the way, I pretty sure it's your book. That's just releasing. Congratulations on becoming a bestseller. There it is. Fantastic. How did you become this? Cause no one is born with superpowers as much as we wish we were. Walk me through this. How did you get here? Yeah, we don't get bit by the radioactive spider like it happens in the movies. It's a lot more dirty and raw and real, as you could say. So how I got here, the story of my kind of origin story in entrepreneurship, it happened in college. So I was always a young hustler. I was the kid at 13 years old, shoveling driveways. And then I realized it was better to get the contracts and hire other neighborhood kids to shovel the driveway. So I was arbitraging labor at 13. But really in college is when I started my entrepreneurial journey. And that was, you know, I needed money. So like the realist of real life problems, I needed money, I couldn't school, didn't have family money. And I was always attracted to media entertainment. I was the kid that just loved reading magazines and watching the credits roll in movies. And so I thought, you know, it's the early days of the

internet. This is like 2002, three and pre Buzzfeed, pre Facebook. But I wanted to build an online magazine, which didn't exist at the time. Like I want to take a magazine and do it on the internet. And I basically had to figure out three things to make that happen. And I'll break down how I did each one because it's actually pretty cool and pretty applicable today too. I needed to figure out how to like make content. How do I actually have stuff people want to read? I needed to figure out how to get an audience. And then the third thing is, okay, once you have those two things, how do you make money? And so the first thing I did was to make content. I didn't want to be writing daily content. So I actually just went to my school's

journalism department and I asked them really nicely, hey, is there a way that I could get students in the journalism department or the English department to make content for my website. And they were like, well, we could just send an email to the listserv and we'll tell them another student has a magazine. And sure, yeah, we could send that out for you. And literally in an afternoon, I went from having no way to make content to having 100 people applying to write for my magazine, which didn't exist yet. And I hired like 10 or 11 writers that day,

hired one to be the editor. By the way, my hiring process was like, oh, can you write an article? Cool. You're hired. That was it. You're hired. Yeah, exactly. Simple and easy. Simple and easy. So that was how I actually got writers to make content for my website. The second thing I did was I needed to find a way to get an audience. And this was the hardest part of all, because again, this is pre-Facebook social media. There's no way to build an audience in 2002 because of all the gatekeepers. And so what I did was back in the early days of the internet, the three biggest sites were

msn.com, yahoo.com, and AOL. You probably are about the same age as me. You probably know those names, right? Yahoo was my homepage page which is crazy for years yahoo was my home page wild yahoo was the home page and msn.com was the biggest home page the reason is because microsoft windows uh or explorer aimwear had 92 percent market share and they just made msn their home page yep so so that was the default and so i basically realized that all these big web portals have content on their homepages, sports, pets, fashion.

And that was a lot of the same stuff that my new writers were writing about. So I started just cold calling, knocking on doors metaphorically. Hey, you know, emailing. Can you guys take my content to put on your website? I've got free content here. And literally six months of just weekly, almost daily phone calls and emails. Finally, a guy responded to me and said, you know what? I need pet content.

Can you make me like dog and cat focused content? I'll put it on MSN. And that was it, man. We went from like zero to two million readers a month because what I did was I said, I'll give you content. You give me links back to my site, related links. So like, if you like this, read this. And when you have a million people

reading articles every day on msn.com, like, yeah, a few of them will click and come back. And so that was how I actually built traffic. And then the third thing I did is once I had content and traffic, I threw up Google AdWords, which is like a four-line JavaScript put on your website, and Google will pay you basically for page views.

And that was it. I was like first year, second year college. I went from being a broke kid like everybody else to making what was ultimately $300,000 a year if you prorate it through all the years I owned that site. So were you paying the writers at that point? Once you started making money, did you hire some of them full time or how did you keep them as just OPT, other people's making money, did you hire some of them full time? Or how did you keep them as just, you know, OPT, you other people's time? How did you how did you play with that? I did not pay anybody for the first year because we didn't have any money coming in. And again, the value proposition was, you guys make content for me, and I'll give you bylines and

you've got your resume. So like they were more than happy. Once I started making, you know, the first checks I got from Google were like 6000 a month, 9000 than happy. Once I started making, you know, the first checks I got from Google were like 6,000 a month, 9,000 a month. Once I started having some money coming in, my only expense was I paid 300 bucks a month for web servers, which is these days you'd use Amazon web services. I use a different one back then that was 300 bucks a month. And then basically I had, uh, everything else was profits. I started paying $20 per article. That was our going rate. And honestly, that was the rate for years. I think at the max, I was paying like $27 an article, which again was fine for somebody

writing a couple articles a week. It's nice pocket money. It really is. How does this poor kid in college, all of a sudden he's making $300K a year, get Disney and Toyota as clients? And what was that dynamic like? Because when we're talking about scaling, we're going to get into very detailed because you have a very different opinion using marketing superpowers on how you should do that.

It's a very different conversation. So walk me through, how did you get Disney and Toyota as a client? And what was that dynamic like? So the pathway from where I started, where I told you a minute ago to getting big brands on board was I started making money running Google AdWords. And literally, you just put a line of code you $50,000, $100,000 to run banners. Back in the day, it was like banners at the top of the website, banners at the side of the website, and they would contact you and contract you directly. And so I just started in my second year, I started dialing up advertising agencies, the advertising agency that represented Toyota, Disney, Nissan, Bank of America, JP Morgan. And I just started cold calling and said, I have this lifestyle website. We've got all this traffic. And I started doing

deals one by one with them. But let me be very clear. If I rewind to the very beginning, the first meeting I had, I remember it like it was yesterday. It was embarrassing. I sat down and I was like, yeah, you can advertise on my website. Well, what's your traffic? What's your demographics, you know, page views, CTA, like all this terminology. I had no freaking idea what they were talking about, embarrassed myself. And, you know, fast forward through a, through a few dozen of those, all of a sudden you're doing deals with the big guys. I think people don't talk about that process, right? People think, oh, someone went from, hey, he's making 300K a year. And then it's just, it's easy after that. And we have so many failures. And I always tell people, you have to

fail your way to success. I remember the first time I was ever designed to do a website for someone, because you and I both have a tech background. I didn't know it was going to be for the entire board of directors for PNC Bank. I just walked in. I was like, yeah, this is how I was using like net objects. I was really embarrassing. And yeah, it's, it was, it was quite embarrassing. All right. So we go from there, you're making money. You've now part laid into a company that I am not going to try and pronounce it. Cause I've already screwed it once on this call. I've already screwed it up once. So now you own a company because you've exited and now you've owned this company. Cause I will really want to get into marketing superpowers.

I think it's going to be really important because there's some things in here that are very contradictory to what everyone else is doing. And we'll get into it. So what is the name of the company that you work with now? So my company is Influicity. And it's an agency I started in 2015. Story of that is pretty cool. I tell it in marketing superpowers.

But essentially, the thesis of Influicity was I was super early to the world of online influencers, YouTubers, Instagrammers, Snapchat, of course, TikTok, bloggers, all that universe. And I launched Influicity initially to help brands work with social media influencers. My very first client was Sony out in Los Angeles in Culver City. It was getting Sony to work with social media influencers to promote their movies. Then it was Disney. Then it was L'Oreal. And when you're that early, again, being in a startup and having the conviction in something that's new and not common knowledge yet, you've got to be willing to fall on your face a whole bunch because people don't believe the thing that you're trying to sell them is not common knowledge. So you have to really convince them. And so the first few years were like a,

really a grind in getting clients on board. Gotcha. And when you did that, I know you were talking about before, if you've done any research and you've seen John speak before, you actually found a fashion blogger. And there was a whole story about it. So walk me through what you did and how you got the fashion blogger on board. It's a nice story, but I really want to get tactical with it. So walk me through this. 100%. So this is, I believe, this is the introduction to Marketing Superpowers, my book. So the story you're talking about, Charles, is Teresa. So 2012, I had just sold my company, my blog that I was telling you about in 2009. And then fast forward to 2012, I was doing a bunch of stuff. I had an app. I had a whole bunch of entrepreneurial failures, as one does when they sell a company. They think that they can turn water into wine. And so you just try everything, nothing works. And so 2012, I'm on YouTube, and I stumbled across a YouTube channel. And this woman is sitting in front of her camera,

sharing, like, here's what I just bought at CVS. Here's what I just bought at Nordstrom. And she'd empty her bag out. And then sometimes she would do a video where she has like, she's doing makeup. And it was just like, very, very, like everyday things that you know maybe girls would talk about but every video that she was posting was getting like 30 40 50 000 views which was crazy because like that's not normal crazy you know in 2012 and i thought like is this girl a celebrity like what's going on here who is this i'm actually going to share my screen if you don't mind um let me go ahead and uh yeah let me share my screen because i want to show you i have a graphic here of her actual channel from back in the day so you could see what i was seeing at that exact moment so let me go ahead here i love how you you went

through and said 40 000 was a big deal back in 2012 it's still a big deal now so let's let's be honest about this now this is a huge deal now and love it. So for those of you who are listening to this, and we'll have this on scalelab.com. So what you'll see, there's nothing special about her background. Now everything is like, that's done up. And there's a professional studio with lighting. This is not in any way, shape or form professional

in any way, shape or form. And she's getting 26,000 views, 31,000 views. It's kind of wild. All right, So here it is. It's crazy. Yeah. So, so like, yeah, so imagine it's 2012. Okay. So super early days. And you come across a channel of someone that you've never seen before. And you're like, how is this woman getting 74,000 views, you know, West Ed mall hall? Like, what, what does it even mean? Who is this? I'm like, okay. Here's what I did.

I sent her a DM. This is all like I didn't know her. I had no standing. She's not going to know who I am. I sent her a DM. I said, hey, my name is John. I've got a question. How are you getting all these views on your videos?

She responds and says, I've been on YouTube for like eight months now, and people just seem to like what I talk about. I talk about like beauty She responds and says, I've been on YouTube for like eight months now. And people just seem to like what I talk about. I talk about like beauty and fashion and hair and I'm posting content. And that was the end. And I said, cool. Okay. I have a dumb question. What if I fly you in to my city and we have you do the same kind of makeup content that you're doing, but instead of doing it in your bedroom, why don't we do it in like an actual store that sells makeup? And let's see if we could actually sell product for that store. Kind of like an infomercial, but like in your style, I don't want to change your voice. I don't want to change anything about you, but people seem to like whatever you're doing. Your channel has a

lot of followers. And she literally responds to me in like an hour and a half and says, sure, which like maybe she was kind of crazy. I was kind of crazy for sure, but she agreed to me in like an hour and a half and says sure which like maybe she was kind of crazy i was kind of crazy for sure but she agreed to fly in and uh and and that was uh that's so literally over the course of two weeks she flew in i paid for her plane ticket she flew in stayed in a hotel i did a deal literally called up somebody i knew who was a manager at a local um store that sold makeup and cosmetics and i I said, Hey, can we film this thing before you open next Tuesday? Like, can we come in at 7am and just do like some filming for a couple hours? She said, Sure. I said, you know, I'm not going to pay you, but I'll promote your store on this YouTube thing. She had no idea what I was talking about. And literally, man, I think I

have the screenshot here. Yeah, that's a screenshot. So you can't actually see the whole thing. But check this out. 54,000 views. This screenshot I took a couple of days ago. This is from 12 years ago. This is the video that she shot and it got 54,000 views in like 36 hours. And again, 2012, no one had any idea how this worked. And so this is the knowledge. Let me just end this story with this one point. So at this point in the story, I have an unfair advantage in knowledge. There's a knowledge advantage I have now. Here's someone that I know there's going to be a lot more people like her that are able to move product on YouTube. And what is this worth to L'Oreal, to Sony, to Disney? So that's where I was. And that's what

pushed in Fluicity forward. So I want to talk about this unfair advantage. And, you know, there's, there's more stuff here as you're sharing your screen, you break down this conversation that is a little different than everyone else. You talk about why community matters more than brand, why community is the most important thing. And I agree with that, but one of the things, and we'll get into that in tactical detail, what is the difference between, we talk about raving fans versus a community? Because they are fundamentally different.

And then I want to walk through the process of how do you do that? How do you build a community in this environment? Yeah, the definition that I would give that's really straightforward is a brand is built in the boardroom and a community is built in the wild. So brand was a really good, and I love the term brand. We'll get back to brand in a minute. But like brand, as most people use it refers to something that was really important in like 1997. You know, it's like, here's our brand. We this is our logo. This is our font. Check out this Pantone color, the blue, right? And it's like, none of that stuff matters in 2024. And the reason is very simple.

About the same time when people started worrying about having comments on Facebook, like there was a time I remember having conversations with brands in like 2010, where it was like, oh, we want to have a Facebook page, but we don't want to let people just like comment on stuff because what if they say stuff that's off brand or off color? And I remember thinking to myself, what year are you living in you think that if

somebody has a thought they're not going to get it out there whether it's on your page or on reddit or on whatsapp or on slack and so community and so like that's brand community is it needs to survive in the wild so if you're embarrassed about what somebody might say about you, I don't think you're built for the modern era. That's the difference. And then, so when it comes into this and we're building community, how do we change community from identity? And the reason I ask that is there's a significant difference between Apple as a product and the people who are part of Apple who are just married to their product and the product lines. So there's an identity and people go, again, this is branding brand identity versus what the community does for it.

And so many people that when I work and I try and scale people, they want to force the identity that they've created down their community's throats. And it has never, ever worked. So when you do this and you work with your clients and you try and how do you get them to understand that community is not the same as identity and how it organically flows instead of forcing it down their throats? Yeah, I think so. Like the conversation you're having makes a lot of sense. I think just, just to take a step back, I don't like when we're talking about small business, I don't like to even give examples like Nike and Starbucks and like, you know, these billion dollar stories, they're great for North Star reference points. But it's very hard to actually use that as a

practical lesson. Because, you know, my question, okay, well, do you have $300 million to spend this year? Oh, you don't? Okay, cool. So like, let's put that conversation aside. The identity is defined by a whole bunch of stuff that you have very little control over. So let's go back to Teresa, because we just talked about her very simple example. Here was somebody who sat down in her bedroom, pulled up her Nordstrom bag and started like pulling out clothing and saying, here's what I like, here's what I wear. Someone like that, what do we associate with them? Well, we can say that she's real she's authentic she's an everyday kind of girl next door she's definitely authoritative in fashion and shopping and hair

because that's the stuff she talks about and so a lot of those things sort of take care of themselves and then the second or third phase of that would be like okay if we're going to start professionalizing her content what might that look and feel like? But the idea of kind of putting that part before the horse, if you will, is like sort of a waste of everyone's time. Because if your brand doesn't mean something already, having a different shade of blue isn't going to make a difference. So when we talk about this, you know, we have influencers and we know that you've worked a lot with influencers and we know that you've worked with the high end. One of the things that surprised me as I was going through your material was that this actually should be done for small businesses as well. You can build these communities

not just as the $300 billion a year spending on whatever, or the influencer in your bathroom, that this is actually for small businesses and you can use this as a scaling tool. Walk me through that because I have never heard anyone describe building a community around a small business before. Yeah. So I'm going to share my screen in a second and give you a really tactical example. But one thing I'll say is I think brand is the easiest to understand when you're really small or really big. Everyone in the middle. So the minute you have a business that has obligations, payroll, employees, customers, brand gets very fuzzy at that point because everybody turns to reality and says, I need to spend a dollar and make a dollar this week so I can pay

my bills tomorrow. And so brand gets pushed to the side very quickly. The best time to focus on your brand is at the earliest stages or even before you've launched a business. That's why I love using content creators and influencers as the example, because many of them build their audiences, their brands, their communities before they even have a business. It's just like that comes first. And then where brand also becomes relevant is when you already have like $90 million in sales. You know, everybody in the middle there is like kind of not paying attention and having a very hard time doing it. So that's sort of how I think about it in terms of placement. And there's a way around that. I mean,

at Influicity, my agency, we work with lots of companies kind of in the middle there, and we get them to the point where they can focus on both. The conversation... One of the... Yeah, go ahead. One of the things you did, which I really loved when you talked about it, was you don't even have to have the identity. You don't even have to have a person there. You can build an entire community and an entire empire, and you could be a cartoon picture. You don't even have to be the actual person. It doesn't matter. And the opposite side of that as well, which is, hey, I'm this influencer.

I'm going to be Mr. Beast in this example. And then I, Hey, you know, I should probably sell something here. Let's figure that out. Just like the Kim Kardashians of the world. Like I should probably sell something. Everyone thinks you need to have this identity. You need to be this influencer. There are brands and there are people who have built entire communities who have never

shown their face before. And literally it's a cartoon avatar of who they're supposed to be. It's this idea that, you know, these myths that just don't exist anymore. It's 2024. We live in a completely different world. It's so true. And the flexibility there, like, you know, a couple examples, like this guy over here, on my screen here, there's a character on Twitter named car dealership guy. And this is one of those anonymous Twitter accounts. And what I've heard, I don't know this for sure, but it's very believable to me. Car dealership guy has like a $15 million a year car buying service where he'll help you buy a car. So like, no one knows who that guy is. You know, here's somebody else. These are just three

creators that I know of who have built businesses in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. And so, yes, you don't need to be Joe Rogan, highly Jenner to do any of this stuff. The example I always like to say is, you know, you know, Kim Kardashian has skims and she makes 750 million a year. Cool. Did you also know that there's 10,000 people you've never heard of who are building communities and making tons of money? And the reason you've never heard of them is because you're not their customer. There's no reason that they should even

get in touch with you. That's why you haven't heard of them. And also, you know, I tell people all the time, I'm like, tell me the name of the person that you bought your product from on Amazon. Who is the person that actually sold to you? And they're like, huh? I'm like, what's his first name?

I dare you. What's his first name? Give me his last name. Give me an initial. And they're like, oh, it doesn't matter anymore. You don't have to be the product. This is why building a community. And I agree with you.

So it's so important when you're using these, but what are the marketing superpowers? And we're going to go into that here. What are the tactical? How do we do this? How do we build a community? How do we get into the details? And this is, again, I love that you're sharing the screen to show us this. Let's dive into the details of how you actually do this.

A hundred percent. So the first thing to understand, I talk about in the book, this is actually chapter two of Marketing Superpowers. And by the way, this is free. I put the first few chapters at marketingsuperpowersbook.com for free. So you can go there and grab it. And then of course, buy the book if you like what you read. So the first big concept I talk about is called the axis of influence. And the axis of influence is basically everyone knows an axis, you have an x axis, and you have a y axis. So in the axis of influence, the x axis is on the very, very far left, you have zero, what I call KLT, known, liked and trusted. That's what KLT stands for. And at the very far right, you have max KLD. So think about when you when you start off, you have a zero, nobody knows you likes you or trusts you. And then as you get to the other

extreme, where everyone knows you likes you and trusts you that that's that's the other extreme. So that's that's kind of the x axis. And that's the first ingredient you need to have any influence. But the second thing you need is reach. And so the y axis we talk about is reach. And at the very bottom, you have zero reach. And at the very top, you have max reach. So when you have those two things, you have influence. And it's very important that you have both of those things. Because if you just have reach, but no one gives a crap about you, believe me, you don't have influence. And if people know you like you and trust you, but it's like three people, that's not very useful. So you need to have a combination of both. And then here's where

it gets super tactical. And this is where I like to shift people's mindsets into understanding why this is important. So think about we're at the bottom left now, if you have zero KLT, no one, no one knows, likes and trusts you and you have zero reach, we call that anonymity. And essentially, anonymity is the place that everyone starts at, right? There's only one exception. That's if you're like born to the King of England. Okay, fine. You don't have anonymity, but everyone else has anonymity when they start, right? And this is a really critical time for learning, developing your skills, and sharpening your communication. People want to move from anonymity to influence. I want to have a million followers. The reason

that's actually a very bad thing to wish for, and you shouldn't want that to come true, is because you're just not prepared for it. So the time in anonymity is the time that you actually spend, what we say, is fail in the shadows so you can thrive in the sunlight. So if you look at my content, Charles, from back in 2011, I sucked. I was so bad. You know, fast forward 2024, I'm pretty good, but I guess because I failed in the shadows, right? So that's the bottom left.

Top right, we've got mass influence. So think about people like Oprah, Tom Cruise, Barack Obama, Joe Rogan. These are people that have mass influence. Top right, it's the highest level of the axis. But it's not necessarily today where you want to be because the reality is a lot of the really, really powerful people today, powerful brands, I should say, are actually niche. So even though you might think, oh, I need to get to the top of the mountain, you really don't need to get to the

top of the mountain. You just need to get to the mountain with the right people. So I don't want people to think, and I'll dig into this more in just one second. I don't want people to think that they ever need to become like Oprah, right? That was a snapshot in time. And I don't know that we're going to have another Oprah anytime in our lifetimes. So true influence. Especially with how AI is integrated in, it's going to be completely different now. And I love it. I love where AI is going.

And I feel bad for Hollywood. And I feel bad where we're going because you're going to have a kid who no one knows who they are, who's going to create all of this. And it's going to be the next Disney, right? He's going to go and he's going to do these things. It's going to rewrite the world. And I'm so excited about it. But just like you were talking about before, what worked in 94, what worked in 2004 doesn't work in 2024. So we're in a different world now. So being able to understand that's important.

A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And, and, and, and by the way, the, the analogy that you just gave, like, I think there's a 17 yearold out there who's going to be the next Walt Disney because the next Bugs Bunny Mickey Mouse is going to be an AI character. And we can totally see that right now. Absolutely. The next Jon Stewart is going to be virtual. It's all going to be a virtual people because it is what it is. It's so true. The world.

So those are the two, the bottom on anonymity and the top on mass influence. But there's two other squares here that are super important, probably more important. So the next thing you have to think about is 15 minutes of fame. So people that are sort of nobodies and then immediately become like the biggest thing. That's like your one hit wonders. That's your 15 minutes of fame. You get really big, but you have zero KLT. Again, nobody really knows who likes you or

trusts you. An example of this is like someone who goes viral on TikTok. And all of a sudden, for 20 minutes, they're like the biggest thing in the world. But the reality is that that person going to be around in 15 years, no one really knows them or likes them or trust them. So you actually need to build that foundation. Otherwise, you're going to wind up in 15 minutes of fame land. So if you do get here, if you if you are, you know, lucky enough, I guess you can say you better rush to build KLT, because that's not a great place to be. And then if we wrap up the this axis of influence, we get to the the promised land, as I call it, and that's niche influence. And this is the place that people should really be thinking about. And the reason is because niche influence is the place where 95% of the action happens.

If you think about the software you use, the Netflix show you watch, the face cream that you use, whatever it is, if you turn to the person next to you and say, hey, have you heard of product X or show Y? Chances are they haven't because we're in this very splintered society of brands. So niche brands are actually where most of the action happens. And I could name you billion dollar niche brands because that's just the reality of the world today.

So the goal is not to be the biggest and the best, the Oprah's of the world, and not to be the 15 minutes of fame, the double rainbow guy. The goal is to get on the other side where you have maximum KLT and then be very, very niche. So inch wide, mile deep. And there's a bunch of these out there. For example, there's a licorice company right down the street. I'm in South Florida. They sell licorice. I've never heard of them in any way, shape, or form. And a buddy of

mine is a FedEx driver. And I stopped by and he stopped by, he wanted to show me something. And I looked at the back of his truck and it was just completely full with licorice. I was like, what the hell is this, dude? Why do you have all these boxes? Why are they the same? And he's like, dude, I pick up from them three times a day. He goes, they're, and no one's ever heard of them that I know of. He delivers for him. That's the only reason he knows about it. But I looked him up and this is a solid seven, eight figure company. I'm like, what? And I've never heard of them before.

So this goes to your idea that somebody out there has maximum KLT, no like and trust. Someone adores them, but it's only a small group of people and that's their community. And that's what brings them then in them into that environment. So we're trying to do this. Yeah. If we're, if we're trying to get into this environment where, you know, how does someone build KLT? For me, it's always been the same. Don't lie.

Don't lie. Be authentic, be transparent, and serve their pain on the highest level. It's really simple. People do not buy from people that, you know, you have to be eliminating pain. It's got to be KLT. So in your way, how do you build KLT? If you're trying to build this community, which you say, okay, well, I don't want to be the number one influencer in the world.

How do I build this KLT? Are there steps that, you know, kind of checklists that you can go through and say, hey, this is going to get me the customer. These are some of the things that are going to get me there to build that KLT. How do you do that if you're just starting out or if you've already been in business for 20 years? Yeah. So in the book, I'm very tactical. So I've looked at 20,000 influencers. We've worked with

about 20,000 of them over at Influicity in the last five, six years. And I've noticed a pattern that exists in every influencer that has a lot of success in a sustainable way. And then if you extrapolate that, everything in society, every movement, if you will, from diet crazes to books, to political movements, to religious movements, they all follow the exact same pattern. And I boiled it down to a formula. I'm a very formula driven guy. I'm like, okay, if I do this and this and this, here's the outcome. So I'll give you the formula now. It's called the movement formula. And in marketing superpowers, really like the whole book is based on this formula and putting it into action.

And if you do these things, you will build a community. So here's the formula. You start with a unifying belief that every community has some unifying belief. And that unifying belief is essentially something that you believe. Maybe it's counter to what others believe. Maybe it's a new way of thinking about an old thing, but it's some core belief that you have that unites people in some way that unites your people in some way.

And by the way, maybe it repels other people, but it unites your people. That's number one, number two, faith builders. So the second thing you need is once you have that belief, you've got to have stories and data and things that you can put out

there that build faith. For example, books that have been written on that subject, thought leaders, experts, case studies, testimonials, right? A really good example of a faith builder. If someone says, hey, there's a brand new restaurant, they serve the most amazing Thai food. Cool, I want to go. You check online, you check Yelp, and it's got 2000 five-star reviews. You call it to make a reservation. You can't get a table for three and a half months. That is serious faith. Like, how bad do you want to go to that restaurant?

So those are all examples of faith. And the third thing is action. Once you have somebody believing in you, having faith in you, you need to have action. And in the case of a business, it's buy my product, buy my product, buy my product, right? Sign up to my newsletter, use my service. So that formula, and I can give you a hundred examples, that formula is always how it works. So this is, goes back to what you were saying before. Like you want the fame, but you're probably not going to be ready for it. Because if I took 300,000 people and I drop it on your door, is your website ready? Can you convert? Do you have your payment?

I mean, what's going on? If you're like, oh, well, and now I need to rush to go build a course, or I need to go get the product, or I need a back order. And like, you're screwed. It's over because you just burned that KLT. So give me, give me two examples. One where someone's done it just beautifully. You're like, God, I wish everyone could do it, done that. And then give me another example. And we'll have to rename it a little bit. We're like, don't do that. So people kind of have the binary thing here and the two options. So pick whichever one you want to go with first. Let's get tactical on it. Can you think of someone who was like, do that? That makes me feel great. And then another one, some of the mistakes that they've made. Yeah. So I'll get tactical on a small level.

Let me just give you some examples everyone's going to know that are in our culture, in our society right now. Think about crypto. You're in Florida. You must be around crypto, right? Regrettably. So this is one of those times where it's really embarrassing. I used to own an IT company and one of my guys came up to me. He's like, hey, you got to get this thing. It's not real money, but it's like a hundred bucks for each one of these coins. You got to buy it. I'm like, I am not going to spend $100 on Warcraft because that's what I thought it was, Warcraft coins. It was Bitcoin. So I have a very, very, it hurts to talk about this because I could have bought it when it was 100 bucks. So I'm going to go jump off my

house now. Thank you. But yes, I spoke at an event. It's the only time I've been booed off of the stage. I'll get to that later. Yeah. So crypto is like a great example of a movement because crypto, if you think about it, it's like, what is the unifying belief? Well, money should not be governed by our society. You know, money should be free. Money should be democratized. Like that is the core belief. And people really rally behind that. What's the faith?

For years, it was like, look at the, you know, the leader, you know, look, look at these banks who was like look at the you know the leader uh uh you know look look at these banks who are who are you know our enemies like it was all kinds of books and studies and experts and this person in the etf and so like when the bitcoin etf came on board it was like a huge faith builder that that you know caused a run-up so all the things that are that are done to build faith and then what's the action buy bitcoin buy bitcoin huddle huddle right so there's an example of like a major movement just so people can understand and like i can give you diet crazes i can give you religions i can give you political movements like it all follows the same pattern well how do we do this on a micro level there's a guy on twitter that i follow i followed him for years and like four or five years ago he just started talking

about investing in commercial real estate this was years ago, he just started talking about investing in commercial real estate. This was like a thing he just started talking about. And this was before like commercial real estate and holding companies and like all this kind of stuff. I think like bigger pockets might have been around, of course, back then. But like, you know, that was more residential. But like commercial real estate was a thing he would start talking about. And he built this audience around like, what is commercial real estate? Why is it so good? Why is all the other like, why is it better than investing in the S&P 500? Why is it better than investing in this and that? And he just kind of built this community around this core belief of like, invest in

commercial real estate, no one else is doing it. I'm the guy who does it. And then of course, all of his content was around, what do you think faith builders, studies, data, experts, records, and like, you can always find lots of data to support your case if you look hard enough. And then of course, what was the action? After about three years, what did he do? He launched a fund and he raised a bunch of capital and syndicated. And now the dude owns like $200 million of commercial real estate with his syndicate. So clear cut example, a dude on Twitter, $200 million in commercial real estate. So in Marketing Superpowers, your book, are there more examples? I know you give away

the first three chapters. I'm guessing you give more unifying belief examples on how to do it. So once someone does this and they go through this process, what's the most effective platform to build your community that works for you? Is it LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram? Because everyone wants to know, you know, what community, where should they do this? Should they do short form? Should they do long form? Should they tweet? What are the ones that when you sit down with your clients that you say, Hey, this is where you should go. So I have an entire section on, I think I call it, uh, communicating your message or your

story. So yeah, uh, the kind of content you make, how frequently you make it, what platform you make it on, go, I go deep into that in the book. The quick answer to that is it really comes down to the creator. So because we're talking right now, probably to a lot of owner operators or people that in some way, shape, or form are going to be the main characters of their business. What are you good at doing? So like, don't try to reinvent the wheel or put yourself into a position where you're going to fail. If you're a really good writer, right. And maybe that becomes LinkedIn content or Twitter content. If you're really good on the mic, do a podcast. If you're really good at short form, if you're really good at graphic design,

create a meme account, right? So like, it really depends on the on the talents of the creator. And then you have to match that the Venn diagram, you have to match that with where the customer or the prospective customer is. So if you're doing B2B content, you know, like business to business, LinkedIn would be a great place to do it. But some people who are really great on camera in short form are doing that on Instagram. So it really is about matching your best talents and the kind of content you can make with where the customer is. This is when we talk about this all the time, you want to double down on your strengths and outsource your weaknesses. If you're great at this, great, go do that. Go. I love that for you. We'll find someone else to go do those other things for you.

So as we're going into this, I know you've talked about there's, there's so many other things in the book where you can learn, like there's cheat codes and a cheat sheet and there's checklists and, and all that is, I know you give away three checklists on how to finally convert and get your customers. Can you, from your checklist, the first one that pops to your mind, I don't know if you want to share one, what are the things that help do that, that help drive to that and say, Hey, let's, let's go through this checklist. This is what you're going to do to kind of get that customer. And again, I know it's in the first chapters of your book. What are the things so that people at home are going, all right, I need to pull over. I need to write some stuff down. This is how I'm going to convert and do this. Because again, just the beginning of the

book is like, crap, I need to start taking notes. So what are the checklists? How do you do that to start getting those initial customers to start the scaling process? Yeah, I really packed, I tried to pack a ton of value, 267 pages. The audio book is just over five hours. And like, yeah, I hope people are taking notes. So one checklist that I think would be useful for people is the faith building checklist. So there's the unifying belief, which again, there's like unifying belief, which again, there's like a whole chapter, but probably like 10 or 11 chapters dedicated to that. I'll talk about faith building. Cause this is where I think people get, get a bit confused.

So the way to think about faith builders are, what are the things that you can say that are like darts and every dart you throw just makes another little hole. And collectively, now we've got a huge wall with a million holes in it. And then that just, you know, that creates all the faith you need. So some really quick examples of things that you should be doing that are low-hanging fruit. Like what can you do right now to help get another customer today? The first thing is every customer who comes in the door who is even moderately happy with you, you should get a testimonial from.

And a couple ways to do that, you can just ask for it. You can offer them a $5 gift card. That works really well. Literally $5 Starbucks gift card. No more than that. The act of reciprocity will get people to give you a review. And some people hear that and they say, oh, isn't that bribing? Believe me, if they weren't happy with your service, five bucks isn't going to change their mind.

They really don't like you. But if they do like you, five bucks is going to get them to jump over that hoop. So that's something else. And then another hack, because some people say, yeah, but my people aren't giving me reviews. Here's an even quicker hack to do that. I call this the check-in testimonial.

Send somebody an email and just say, hey, it's been two weeks that we've been working together what do you think so far and they write back and they say oh you know what i i like the fact i love working with sally she's been really good i really like that uh that report that you guys sent me that was awesome it's been so far so good then what you do is you screenshot that email message they sent you black out their name right and you start pasting those on your website on your brochure on your pamphlet now you don't even have to ask them for it because you're anonymizing who they are but you all of a sudden have this page on your website of like here's all

our happy customers and it's it's called a check-in testimonial those are just two things um and and like again there's there's a whole list of them but really easy things that people can do without changing the way they run their business. Just get more out of every single customer you have. So one of the things that people ask all the time when it comes to testimonials, I get pinged on this on a constant basis. What are the questions that I should ask in a testimonial? Do you have, do you have a list of what they should specifically ask? And I love that.

Okay. So for those of you not watching um he literally just opened his book he literally just pulled his book open he's like i'm just gonna show you so again and it's in the beginning of the book so he gives away so the literally literally the questions you ask and we didn't plan this we didn't plan this so i gotta go okay this is on page 189 i'm checking my table of contents now on page 189 of the book i'm gonna go uh just to make sure I get this right. So, okay. So here's five questions you can ask.

So we call this the interview testimonial. So this is if you're going to interview somebody, you can do it by email, ideally do it by video, jump on Zoom, say to somebody, I need 20 minutes of your time. I'm going to feature you as like a success story,

especially if you're a small business. It's great to be able to say, hey, I'm going to promote you to my audience so people feel good about it. Here's five questions you can ask. Number one, what was the biggest problem you had before joining my company service product? What was the biggest problem you had? Number two, why did you choose to work with me over everybody else you could have worked with over my competitors? Number three, as a result of implementing my lessons or my product or my service, what was the outcome and how has it made your life different? How has it made your life different? Number four, where do you think you'd

be right now if you didn't use my product or service? And the last one, number five, if there's anyone listening or watching to this, who's on the fence about working with me, what would you tell them? Every single one of those questions, you can run it as one long video, cut yourself out and just have them answering in full sentences. Oh man, if I hadn't worked with Charles, man, I'd be four months behind. I would never have known this. I would have lost out on that $100,000 deal. And that becomes either individual short-form content or one long-form testimonial. And you're feeding them the question. So they're going to give you the answers, especially, by the way, question three.

And how has it made your life different? When you can get someone to give a personal anecdote, man, you know, my wife and I were fighting. And after working with you, God, it's just so much nicer at home. We're not fighting anymore. We're traveling. It's great. That sort of stuff is what puts people over the edge. Absolutely. And I love how you went through in detail. It's one of the reasons I liked this. And one of the reasons I moved things around so we could actually talk about this is getting into detail. If someone's in a situation where they've got some sort of fame, some sort of

ooh-la-la, it's starting to come up, they're starting to get known, they're starting to get some reach, and they've got a little bit of KLT and they're going into this, how would you say, okay, I've got this, I've been running my business for a while, I've got these ideas, they know me in my neighborhood, whatever that is, they know me in my niche. How do you start building that community? Is it a newsletter? Do you start my in my niche how do you start building that community do you say do you is it a newsletter do you start giving things away how do you start driving them because normally when business owners are doing this and they're trying to scale what they're talking about is i just need more customers i just need more customers forgetting that they already have

customers and the best way is just upsell those continue to upsell and upsell and upsell and upsell how do you go okay i've got some you know you just became a bestseller again, Muscle Talk, and you're going through this and you're coming up and you're going through, welcome to the club, and you're coming through this and you've got some testimonials here and people know who you are and you've got some social proof. How do you go through and say, okay, I mean, I am this bestseller, I'm ranked, I have these things, I have, how do you start building the community? What are the next two steps that you say, okay, I've got this, what do I do next? What are the next two steps that you say, okay, I've got this. What do I do next?

What was the next step for me to get more? Okay, I'm going to give you an answer. And I want people through in the car pull over because this this might be a game changing answer for you. So the first thing to do is you want to get people to your own channels as fast as possible. So there's like, you have your and I'm going to talk just organic. So let's put paid advertising aside, you've got your organic, tick tock, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, like all the things that you use to get your message out there that every business or

every, you know, creator would have, then you move people down one step lower to what we call first party data, which is you have their email address, or you have their phone number. Now you want to get that first party data sort of as quickly as you can, because once you have that, you're able to do all kinds of fun things on the marketing side. And you're able to get rid of the, of the, um, of the in-between of all the gatekeepers of like, you know, the fact that when such and such platform that only lets 2% of my audience see my content. All right. It's okay. Cause my newsletter is going to get exactly all of them. I know exactly what platform that is. Exactly. There you go. Oh my God. Yes. We know exactly which one. You all know. You all know. So that's how you get people down into the funnel and so that you have

first party data and you're able to talk to them. Now, I want to really get into something here. So this is called, and you and I were talking about this off mic, I have this framework called rent-to-own marketing or R2O for short. And I'm going to tell you what this is all about. And this actually isn't in Marketing Superpowers. This isn't a keynote that I deliver. But rent-to-own marketing is the way that we think about how you actually grow your business

and build your brand without sacrificing revenue today. Because one of the biggest challenges, I talked about this. Because one of the biggest challenges, I talked about this earlier, one of the biggest challenges is it's one thing to say, hey, build your brand, build your community, invest in social. But let's face it, business owners need to make money today. They have obligations today. So they can't just turn off their marketing machine and focus on social, which isn't going to pay off for six, nine, 12 months. It will pay off, but how do I run my business in the meantime? So rent to own marketing is basically a framework that we use to say you should run paid advertising like Google ads, Facebook ads, TikTok ads, all those

performance marketing channels that work today, right now, such that you can pay your bills. I call those the slot machines of marketing slot machines are great, you put $1 in, you get $1 out, you get $2 out, right? That's how that's kind of how Google works at its best. I put $1 into Google, Google ads, Google ads gives me $3 back when I sell something. So it's like it's like marketing slot machines is how is what I call it. The problem is, you don't want to be addicted to the marketing slot machines so that if I talk to you in four years from now and I say, how's business going? You're saying, oh my God, I'm paying Google $19,000 a month and I can't get off this train.

It's like, yeah, because you should have started building your brand three years ago. So you want to do the rented stuff, rented being I'm paying Google and Facebook and Amazon to promote my product. And at the same time, you want to do that ownership piece, get people to join your newsletter, get people to tune into the YouTube such that in three years from now, when we're talking, you've got both of those, both of those machines working and you're not overly dependent on each one. I love it when people go into, well, what do I put in my newsletter? What do my emails have to say? I'm like, well, it depends on who you are, what you're selling, what your audience is

doing, what pain they're in. It's very, it's vastly different. It just, it all moves around. You and I could go over probably about a bazillion different things. I want to go into fan loyalty. I want to go into growth speed pass. I want to do all of these things, but we just, there's just no way we'll spend hours and hours and we'll probably end up doing a masterclass together to get people to understand this

and go through this. If people want to know more, if they want to get out there and they want to get ahold of you, how do they track you down? What is the best way to say, Hey, this was great. I learned a butt ton. The lab report at scale lab.com was great, but I need more. What is the way that people can start implementing this today as they can start building their community to get off that roulette wheel? Because sooner or later, it's not going to

work anymore, right? We talked about this with Google ads. If you're paying $400 now, if I come back in five years, you're going to pay $40,000. Trust me. Someone else is going to penetrate your market. They're going to steal your ad spend. They're going to steal your ad copy. Trust me, you're going to lose. So getting them off platform is phenomenally important. But there's so many other superpowers. There's so many other things that they need to know about marketing. How do they get to the next step? How do people track you down and move forward? So step one, everyone should do this. Go to marketingsuperpowersbook.com. Grab the free sample of the book. As long as you don't think it sucks, get the paperback,

get the Kindle, get the audio book, get whatever you, whatever format you want at marketing superpowers, book.com, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, uh, take your pick. That's number one. If you want to go deeper. So I did a course, which is, which is like an expanded, much deeper version of some of the material in the book, and then a whole lot more. And that's at marketing superpowers, pro.com, marketingsuperpowerspro.com, and you can get that course. And then for bigger companies, if there's folks listening, any kind of small business,

read the book, try to do it yourself, try to build it yourself. The clients we have at Influicity are already doing 10, 20, $30 million a year and up. So by all means, if you need help at that scale, give us a call. You can go to influicity.com. And for me, I'm putting out content all the time. I mean, I spend my time talking to people,

making podcasts, talking to great folks like you. You can go to johndavids.com, my website. All my socials are on there, my newsletter. And that's where you just get unlimited free content from me because I want to help and I want to see entrepreneurs succeed. I love it. I love how tactical the book is because I got to see before it got released, guys, he let me see it beforehand and I got to go through and I was like, finally, something tactical, just like the lab reports are. So, John, I appreciate it. Cut from the same cloth. I thank you for being on the show. I really, really appreciate you being here. Charles, a great pleasure. Thanks so much, man.

Thanks for tuning into today's episode. We hope you enjoyed the conversation with John Davids, a brand building mastermind with over 20 years of experience, having worked with industry giants like Disney and Toyota. I would also like to give a massive shout out to John for generously sharing his knowledge and time with us today. Your expertise and straight talking approach are truly inspiring. To our amazing listeners, thank you for your dedication to growth. Your enthusiasm keeps us going strong. If you're looking to dive deeper into the insights we discussed, don't forget to check out the companion guide. It breaks down everything we covered in detail, providing you with valuable resources and actionable tips to elevate your brand.