The Breakfast Club - Black Tech Green Money: Marketing Strategist Mahdi Woodard on Growing Your Socials, Making Money with Instagram, and Knowing What To Post

Episode Date: November 3, 2024

The Black Effect Presents... Black Tech Green Money! Marketing Strategist Mahdi Woodard is an innovative thinker with broad business acumen and in-depth marketing and branding experience. He serves as a marketing Consultant and Chief Marketing Officer, and was previously a Marketing Brand Analyst and Associate Brand Manager at Mars Petcare which is home to Iams, Pedigree and more, and he was Brand Manager at Newell Brands, home to Rubbermaid, Graco, and Paper Mate. His social media profiles teach others how to grow online and monetize their content. Follow Will Lucas on Instagram at @willlucas Learn more at AfroTech.com https://instagram.com/afro.tech Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home, and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas,

the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all. Niminy here.

I'm the host of a brand new history podcast for kids and families called Historical Records. Executive produced by Questlove, The Story Pirates, and John Glickman, Historical Records brings history to life through hip-hop. Each episode is about a different inspiring figure from history. Like this one about Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old girl in Alabama who refused to give up her seat on the city bus nine whole months before Rosa Parks did the same thing. Check it. Get the kids in your life excited about history by tuning in to Historical Records because in order to make history, you have to make some noise. Listen to Historical Records on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

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with health, environment, and creative design. Don't miss your chance to be part of it. Secure your spot at Afro Tech Conference 2024 today. Visit afrotechconference.com to buy your ticket now. I'm Will Lucas, and this is Black Tech Green Money. Marketing strategist, Mati Woodard is an innovative thinker with broad business acumen and in-depth marketing and branding experience. He serves as a marketing consultant and chief marketing officer and was previously a marketing brand analyst and associate brand manager at Mars Pet Care, which is home to Iams, Pedigree, and more. And he was brand manager at Newell Brands,

home to Rubbermaid, Graco, and Paper Mate. His social media profiles teach others how to grow online and monetize their content and insights. So I am super curious about social strategy and I'm my I have a question that's kind of selfish, but I know a lot of people have the same thing. Why am I stuck at a 17000 followers on Instagram? Stuck. Like I just got I was at like 16.9 that I went to InvestFest and I got to 17. But then. Yeah, but I've been at 16 forever yep why am i stuck so man beautiful question and i'll try to give the short version to answer um what we know of instagram has changed dramatically and i would say the ceo has been dropping the nuggets of it but i'll try to tie it all together the first thing is we got to

remember how did we used to grow? So there's pretty much organic growth, which would come through the form of people sharing your content primarily to their group of friends. And then the second part, I'm not talking about paid, right? But the second part is what I would call algorithmic. So this is usually hashtags, keywords, or different things that will get you on the search tab or the explore tab. At this point, a lot of us, if we don't play the second part of the game right, if we're only counting on our core audience to distribute us, we end up in sort of a loop of the same people seeing the same things, sharing it to the same people, and they've already made a decision on whether they're going to follow us or not.

So your follower base might be 17,000. Your awareness base may be 10X that, right? So there may be easily enough people that's like, oh, I've seen brother's face. I'm familiar with him. But it isn't worth the follow, right? So the question becomes, how do we play the algorithmic game so that we can disproportionately grow?

At this current stage, and we're in late 2024, what Instagram has said is we're maximizing, we're prioritizing reach over everything. What I hear that to mean is some of our more niche-based content or some of our more brand-based content is dead on arrival. If you don't play to the mass audience, you're going to have a hard time getting people to stop long enough to follow you. So now let's look at a couple of triggers that get you to the masses. One is music. So if you can catch a trend or start a trend at the right time, what does that mean? I've seen that typically if you can see a song or audio that's growing, but it's under 10,000 plays, but it appears to be growing.

I try to catch that wave and ride it to 20, 30, 100,000. Or if you have the ability to start something. So you're probably tired of this, but we're a couple of weeks away from very demure, very mindful. Right. If you can be the person at the forefront of something like that, then every time a person goes to search for the origin or the history of this, they got a disproportionate amount of chance of landing back in front of you. So it gets a little lengthy, but for most of us, we're making too broad, I'm sorry, too tight of content. We're talking to a certain group of people. We're talking to them in a more familiar term when we need to be talking more to the masses in a more general language so my

follow-up to that i think will bless some people so there's two questions there for me there's one yeah i want to be seen by more people i want more people to know who i am just for general awareness purposes yes factual i would love to be at 20 30 40 000 plus followers i'm at 17 today i can't complain about that but But the other thing is also not to be so focused on those numbers because sometimes the right people following you, even if you don't have a whole bunch of people following you also matters. I've gotten opportunities with my smaller amount of followers just because the right people are following. So as an entrepreneur or somebody who's using this for business objectives and i'm not trying to be flew out you know why does this matter man beautiful and i and i will uh

i'll go to our origin you were one of the people of influence that caught me at the budding phase right so i had uh looked into our notes you first reached out to me in 2019. Oh, wow. Yeah. So apologies for the five year lag. But I say that to say you were one of those people in my world that were the right people following me before I became Instagram famous. And when you're in that space, these people have already built platforms that you can stand on. And these people already have sort of voices and megaphones to amplify whatever it is that you're communicating.

So to anyone that's in both of those spaces, if you're feeling like, dang, I'm still struggling to grow and I don't know if I got the right mix of people following, this is where asking something, and I don't mean call to action in a generic form, but I mean it in a genuine form, ask something and see what you get back. Ask for the share, ask for the introduction, ask for the opportunity to collaborate and see what that sort of conversation starts to prove. And then the last part of it is, and this is sort of a compliment to what you were saying, the DMs are magical, bro. There's a lot of stuff that we just can't do on platform. It's not the right space to be an open conversation to the public, but the right time, private message with

like positive intent, it opens up a world of opportunities. So how attentive should we be for what it appears Instagram, particularly Instagram, and then we'll talk about other things. I also wanna talk about your story, but when Instagram appears to be testing things, like right now you see, if you go to your DMs, you see now stories kind of in the DMs, like I can write a note. I still don't understand what the heck that thing is,

but how, if I'm trying to grow, should I be paying attention to those new features? So can I, let me add that contextual. If we simplify the buyer's journey or what most people are calling a funnel into like three core steps, you got to get some awareness. People can't buy what they've never heard of.

You need some level of trust, some level of additional information, consideration, and then you need the final purchase and or subsequent purchases. What I think is most of us overlook how many people we need in phase one, just pure awareness, right? And then when you go to phase two, what you just asked me is a two to three sort of phase two to phase three strategy. At this point, I wouldn't be so wed to any one platform that we neglect all of the things that we should be doing to move people down that path to purchase. And it might look like that pop up note as a gentle reminder of staying top of mind.

At a minimum, what I like about stories, what I like about DM notes is that it brings you back to the forefront and you're like, oh, I do owe Will a follow up or I was just adding that to my cart because I don't know if you have kids, but one of the craziest things that we find from research is we'd be about to buy something and then kid does something and we, right? And the best of intentions for something that you've been wanting to do takes two more weeks before you get the mental sort of focus to then click the button. So the number one thing that I would be doing is saying, what are the strategies that allow me to stay top of mind? Cause people buy when they ready to buy, not when we ready to sell.

So you have a corporate background. Um, and so what about social, if you can tell a brief story about your corporate background and think what piqued your interest about social and what was that opportunity you saw that you took advantage of to become the money we have today? So my quickest way to sum this up is I'm the smart dude from the hood. Right. So I was that kid that had great grades, did athletics, but it was more of a means to an end. Got to college and was excelling, but I didn't quite have that direction. I was between corporate finance and marketing. I met a guy who went on to become a mentor and he said, man, if you got the financial chops to do corporate finance, investment banking, you will thrive in marketing because it's not just the creative things. You are the person

that's running the business. You need to have that analytical rigor and that creative muscle. Cool. Almost 10 years in corporate. And I see this thing taken off that I'll just call direct to consumer. I'm coming from big corporate, you guys. So we're talking paper, make ink pens, number one ink pen brand in the world, pedigree dog food, number one dog food brand in the world. great go baby products so the car sees business so you're so disconnected from the people our customer was walmart amazon we call the final purchaser the consumer you know what i mean but as a person who's sitting here with both minds thinking the the the employee in me is thinking about how do i do my job the aspiring entrepreneur is thinking there's no more red tape right i don't have to do all of this bureaucratical

stuff to get a concept from out of my brain into the market what if we can just put some out in front of folks and get straight to the interaction whether that be a sale or follow or whatever it is that we're looking for so um i was sort of on the front end of it, but I didn't have a magic ball. I didn't I did not foresee it becoming this big this fast because I started college right at the start of Facebook. And so my initial introduction to social media was flirting with girls. It was never right coming up with products and services and going direct to consumer. But once I was sort of seasoned in business, I realized the power and I sort of went full steam ahead in this area. So I saw this meme today. Um,

and this is this, I'm going to tell you what this question is for. This question is an opportunity for you to talk about how you, the truth. So I'm going to give you that. And so I saw this meme and it said just like an hour or two ago, should have screen shot it but it said anybody that's making $80,000 a month it's not gonna be on Instagram teaching you how to make $80,000 a month they're gonna be trying to sell you something to that you can make sure they can make it a thousand dollars a month and so talk about how you are you are actually providing value and And yeah, this might be a source of income for you, but you're actually providing value.

Yeah. So I would like to say, I sit at the intersection of a person who has got a certain level of education, be it high school, college, it could be advanced education, and then the market itself. And you're sitting here and you're trying to figure out do i go get a job or if i have a job like what do i then do with my

extra income my extra time or these creative endeavors that i have in my mind because i don't really know how to get this from my brain to final thing you know what I mean? So understanding that dynamic, like there's a huge gap between, I'll give it another way. I say that the college to career pipeline is corroded. It used to be almost a promise that if you went somewhere, applied yourself, it was for sure to get you a job. Now that's not the case. And if it does get you a job, it ain't for sure to get you to one in your major or in your desired field of study, or even better, you could advance quicker going outside the organization than through the organization in some respects. Because the old way things were done, your manager had to walk you through something and you go through training. Now I just get on YouTube

University and I don't have to wait the two weeks to get one-on-one time with my line manager or the person directly above me. So what I'm doing is taking this information, synthesizing it and saying, hey, whether you are, again, working and you got extra capacity or whether you're out here as a full-time entrepreneur, let's get you further, faster using all this stuff that I done learned and to aggregate it over the last 15 years and that's sort of the corner of the internet that I occupy unfortunately I also occupy that with people who are just extremely charismatic really good at sales but the thing that they've created may not be of substance they're just playing a marketing psychology game so I'm more of a marketing the and a salesperson. I try to study people, see what they need, create the thing and let you know that it's available. But I don't have a lot of things after

you saying not right now or this isn't for me. I don't have a bunch of creative ways to overcome those objections. I just hope I get it right by doing my research. So my question, my next question is like, who are you specifically speaking to? So here's my personal mission. I've talked about it on this podcast a couple of times. My personal mission is to create content and opportunities for black people, black entrepreneurs to help them realize entrepreneurial success beyond their wildest dreams. So everything I do is pointed to help black people realize entrepreneurial success beyond their wildest dreams. If I were to provide an opportunity for you to say what, who's Maddie speaking to and why is he speaking to them? What is that mission for you?

And it's changed. So I'm gonna give you the old and I'll let you know where I'm bridging to. Mine wasn't that dialed in on a market. It was more so how do I create content that runs around the internet, runs up your bank account without being online all day? Like you don't have to be glued to your phone if your content and or marketing endeavors are working on your behalf. What that led to, though, was for most people was what ends up being burnout. Even with my best of intentions, it's so competitive for attention that i'm saying post three to five times per day not to drag you i'm saying post three times per three to

five times per day because you have to develop the discipline and you may be coming from a non communication background like i was reading your story you came from radio right so you understand a certain level of communication that might not, that rule may not be for you, but if you've been working as a dental hygienist who's now an aspiring fashion designer, you've never learned how to communicate a message that inspires a person to take action. So I spent the first five years of my life trying to talk to that person who had a breakdown between how do I say this stuff in order to get where I'm going. My next phase is talking to the people to say, man, listen, I went out and surveyed the land. Some things are good. A lot of things

aren't. You need to build a life that you want first and then build a business that's around it. So if you say, I want to spend more time with my kids, or if you say I want to be retired by 50. Right. What is that life you want to live? Now, let's get you into a box of what business best situates that versus the other way around. We never make time for life when we build the business first. And I've done my fair share of like pushing the grind, although well intentioned. And now I'm in a space where I'm trying to talk to the more holistic human, and entrepreneurship is just a facet of what we do. Whether you're starting or scaling your company's security program, demonstrating top-notch security practices and establishing trust is more important than ever. Vanta automates compliance for ISO 27001, SOC 2, GDPR, and more, saving you time and money while helping you build customer trust.

Plus, you can streamline security reviews by automating questionnaires and demonstrating your security posture with a customer-facing trust center, all powered by Vanta AI. Over 8,000 global companies like Atlassian, FlowHealth, and Quora use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time. Our audience gets a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta at vanta.com slash special. That's vanta.com slash special for $1,000 off. So y'all, this is Questlove, and I'm here to tell you about a new podcast I've been working on with the Story Pirates and John Glickman called Historical Records. It's a family friendly podcast. Yeah, you heard that right. A podcast for all ages.

One you can listen to and enjoy with your kids starting on September 27th. I'm going to toss it over to the host of Historical Records, Nimany, to tell you all about it. Make sure you check it out. Hey, y'all. Nimany here. I'm the host of a brand new history podcast for kids and families called Historical Records. Historical Records brings history to life through hip-hop. Flash, slam, another one gone. Bash, bam, another one gone. Historical Records brings history to life through hip-hop.

Each episode is about a different inspiring figure from history. Like this one about Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old girl in Alabama who refused to give up her seat on the city bus nine whole months before Rosa Parks did the same thing. Check it. Get the kids in your life excited about history by tuning in to Historical Records because in order to make history, you have to make some noise. Listen to Historical Records on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again,

the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars,

from actors and artists to musicians and creators sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community and breaking down barriers in all

sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el te caliente and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption

that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Justin Richmond, host of the Broken Record podcast. Every week, I or my co-host, Leah Rose, sit down with the artists you love to get unparalleled creative insight.

Now we have a special series where we speak with the artists behind one of the most influential jazz labels of the 20th century, Blue Note Records. From artists like nine-time Grammy award-winning Noah Jones, John Mellencamp, and Madonna collaborator Michelle Indegiocello. And from the legendary Ron Carter, former member of the Miles Davis Quintet, who's also played with Herbie Hancock. And on Gil Scott Heron's The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Join us over at Broken Record to hear stories behind the legendary label. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. For someone, somebody out there, him, I'm talking to me. Someone out there who, you know, I put it this way. Gary Vaynerchuk has this thing, you know, document, don't create.

And I appreciate that sentiment. And I'm an entrepreneur for businesses and i have a personal brand and all these things the majority of my day is sitting in front of a computer the large majority of my day and i'm like i don't know what to post like sitting in front of my computer is not interesting and um how so for people who are like my day is not i don't live in new york i don't live in la i don't live in chicago it's not always beautiful and scenic and i don't always have you know the vibe like i'm not it's not always that way my life doesn't look like that how do i know what to post

when i'm constantly saying no this is not interesting yep i love it so i think a couple different things and sometimes we'll we just we just have we know more people like ourselves and they become the folks that we're testing these concepts off, even if we never talk to them. So you're looking to your left and your right and you're like, man, my brother don't want to watch this. Right. My business partner don't want to watch this. But on the flip side to that kid, remind me, Toledo? Yeah, Toledo, Ohio. Right, to that kid in Toledo who has no idea how to leave Toledo and be in one metropolitan city one day and another metropolitan city the next day, they don't know what that looks like. How do you juggle time zones?

How do you manage your calendar? How do you review somebody's business presentation and also send one over to somebody, right? They don't know. So I think there's a literal form of document and or capture what you're doing. But then there's another piece that says, what if I were to block out my schedule for the next week and say, what are the three critical things that I'm going to get done? That if a person wants to walk a similar walk, and what are the sub steps? So how do you get booked to speak in front of 20,000 people? And then what does it look like

from multiple vantage points? Camera behind you seeing what you see, camera in front of you seeing what they see and merging that story to say, this is Will when he's at InvestFest, or this is me when I'm interviewing three people for my podcast. So I think don't sell yourself short that the, your peer might not want to see it, right. But the person aspiring or the person that's saying, I don't even know how I get on these platforms. They may want to love to hear the backstory of how they end up being able to be interviewed by you. So I think those things are critical. I'd also push and say for the next phase of it. And this is we just got old. But again, if you got kids, nieces and nephews, they've been watching YouTube of kids playing games and making slime and doing things that we didn't do growing up.

Yeah. I wanted to play baseball, not watch people play it. Right. And so that level of voyeurism. But from a positive side, I think that's only going to become more intensive over the next few years. So don't sell short that. It might be helpful to just set up a streaming camera and then come back on the editing side and show what it looks like to put in eight hours of focus work. That's super good. So I don't believe tech companies particularly love me. And I mean, just in general, us, they don't love us, they create things to create, you know, opportunity for them. And so what, here's what I mean by that more specifically, I remember when we opened Toll House here, Toll House is a private social club that we own, that I own, myself and my wife, obviously black owned, because I'm black.

And I remember when we signed up for Google to be on Google Business, I remember getting things in the mail that said, you know, if you're a black owned business, add that to your Google profile. And I'm like, I'm not going to do that. And so I never added it to my Google profile. And then I remember as time goes on, the coffee house, we have a coffee house here and we're the number. So if you Google in Toledo coffee houses, coffee shops, we show up first. And my conspiracy, my 10 hat person, my Alex Jones, where it says like, if I would have black owned on there, I wouldn't be showing up number one. And so my question is this, is for black founders, small business owners, what, and I'm not asking you to agree with that statement. That's just a conspiracy thing that I believe is what unique challenges do we have when we're trying to grow online? Oh, man, we got a lot of them. Right. And so I would say if we break it down into let's call it the business strategy side. So getting the right idea,

getting the right business model, all those things. Then if we get into the management and scale part and then probably pure financials, we got issues and opportunities in all three. Number one being, how do I start the right business? A lot of us are starting businesses with low to no barrier to entry, which in some respects is all upside because you don't have to invest a lot to get proof of concept.

In other respects, you're literally moving into a dead end street. Like people have went into these industries, determined that the market isn't as big or isn't as viable, which is why it is low to no barrier to entry. And so to no fault of your own, more so ignorance, you're starting something that doesn't make a lot of sense at scale, right? So that first part could be covered through coaching and mentorship, assuming that we can remove the sort of like the praying of people that happens over there. The second phase, which is how do we manage, run and scale? And it's connected to the third phase. This one is one of our hardest challenges because it's expensive to go out and grab and retain top talent.

Yeah, but it's even more expensive to try to run a business without top talent. And so you end up where you typically have very strong founders who are working way more lateral across the business to overcompensate for the mid to lower management that just doesn't have the chops or don't have the resources because we don't have the money to go out and recruit and go out and do what some of these big companies do. And that's why I say it's connected to the third piece. We typically see what it's like to get starting funding, seed funding, some of the preliminary investment money, but we don't see what it's like to get continuous money for growth. And some of our favorite companies, they were able to run in the red for five, seven, 10, 12 years. Well, if we came up with a business right now and the person said, pay us back in 10 years,

I think we can figure it out. That's right. You know what I mean? And who's going to give you money after you haven't paid back the first set of people? That's right. Because they still see the vision. And you can be like, give me five more years.

You know what I mean? Because when you do that, it smooth lines it out. It makes up for some of the innovations that don't do well or some of the mismanagement and mishaps but for us we got to turn a profit so quick right a person you get money from a black person they want to know how fast do i get my money back um and god forbid you're working in a business that has to hold strong cash. So if you've got a high amount of plant property equipment or inventory where things where your business may be strong, but a lot of it is just tied up in working capital,

we tend to struggle. And so then we go back to stage one and say, can I start a different type of business that doesn't have those downstream issues? And then we end up ballooning where all of us are just consultants for each other. So, y'all, this is Questlove, and I'm here to tell you about a new podcast I've been working on with the Story Pirates and John Glickman called Historical Records.

It's a family-friendly podcast. Yeah, you heard that right. A podcast for all ages. One you can listen to and enjoy with your kids starting on September 27th. I'm going to toss it over to the host of Historical Records, Nimany, to tell you all about it. Make sure you check it out. Hey y'all, Nimany here. I'm the host of a brand new history podcast for kids and families called Historical Records. Historical Records brings history to life through hip-hop.

Each episode is about a different inspiring figure from history. Like this one about Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old girl in Alabama who refused to give up her seat on the city bus nine whole months before Rosa Parks did the same thing. Check it. And it began with me. Did you know, did you know? I wouldn't give up my seat. Nine months before Rosa, it was Claudette Colvin. Get the kids in your life excited about history by tuning in to historical records because in order to make history you have to make some noise listen to historical records on the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

hola mi gente it's honey german and i'm bringing you gracias come again the podcast where we dive deep into the world of latin culture musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes.

You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories.

Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption

that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Justin Richmond, host of the Broken Record Podcast. Every week, I or my co-host, Leah Rose, sit down with the artists you love to get unparalleled creative insight. Now we have a special series where we speak with the artists behind one of the most influential jazz labels of the 20th century, Blue Note Records. You'll hear from artists like nine-time Grammy award-winning Nora Jones, John Mellencamp, and Madonna collaborator Michelle Indegiocello, and from the legendary Ron Carter,

former member of the Miles Davis Quintet, who's also played with Herbie Hancock, and on Gil Scott Heron's The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Join us over at Broken Record to hear stories behind the legendary label. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami.

Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Piece, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of your content I've enjoyed because you spit game, you know, like nobody's business. But you also show a little bit of your personal side. You have different hobbies, which I enjoy seeing that side of you also.

But at the end of the day, I imagine you could probably have a private account if you weren't trying to drive business. Because what's the point otherwise? How would you recommend people who have small businesses treat their content, whether I'm trying to, you know, sell things or just, you know, create things that get me in the newsfeed. The things that I'm trying to sell, they probably won't get me in the newsfeed, probably. Yep. Yep. So I think, and you, I don't even know, like you, I can't explain it, Ella, you just threw me. Because it goes back to the origin of where we started, which I'll call the new social media versus the old. And I haven't said this live anywhere yet.

We'd be better off treating all of social media just like awareness. Yeah. And not trying to convert anymore at this point. Like, there will be some conversions that take place. But what if you triple your effort on awareness? You need to also have a product or service that isn't tied to geographic boundaries. So a lot of brick and mortar struggle struggles because you can't control where this content spills out once it lands and does well. So even if you have a restaurant, you better have a recipe book. You better have some seasonings, something that you can port and sell because the content knows no geographic bounds. Right. So I would say those that have a service based business or the and to a degree, DM marketing to get to that middle and bottom funnel. that. So a person who is not problem aware, meaning they don't even know that something's

wrong all the way to a person who is problem aware, but they're just sort of trying to make a decision on who to buy from. I tell a person who was starting today, put a disproportionate 70, if not 80% of your content needs to be top of funnel focus. And then you need to convert them off of social, which is counter to what i've been saying for the last five to seven years and that's a that is 100 based on looking at the algorithm change so when i look at my most recent nine posts 60 65 of them are landing on strangers great for reach horrible for conversion for people who own businesses that aren't necessarily sexy let's

say i got a carpet cleaning business or i'm a i'm a big company i'm we're doing hundreds of millions and we have you know just non-sexy whatever pick your nonsense non-sexy category um and they want to go create an instagram tiktok account my thought is, okay, why would I want to follow you? So you have a corporate background and you're now at this company, you know, Joe's, you know, metal bending fabrication place. You're now the CMO. You're going to give him a social strategy. What is Madi thinking in that capacity? Yeah, I love it. I think, um, we're seeing it happen. Founder led stories is probably how I would attack those types of businesses. So I'm Madi and I'm on a journey to build Madi's metal

bending company. It's less about, here's how you fabricate metals and here's how hot the, the, the, uh, the fire needs to get. Because that ain't to your point. I'm not following that. But the journeys of ups and downs of mighty doing this and I'm going to go look for a building and I'm putting in a bid and I got outbid and I'm going to stay prayerful. And I'm using my my brother's wood shack to those stories. The brand story, the story of the person and or people building it is how I will win over the hearts and minds of people. And I just supplement that we actually are really,

really good at what we do in the backdrop of the story. So I would say it's less about showing the metal or the glass cleaning or the grass cutting and more about the character of the person that's doing this and taking people on those journeys. Now, for non-sexy businesses, and I don't want to leave my people who have brick and mortar isolated, I would augment their stuff with paid because you can get very targeted to a group of people within geographic boundaries. And that would be a stronger way for them to grow on social than to play the traditional organic game to where it spills out into anybody. We can draw a fence, a digital fence around 100 miles

around Toledo with people who got various interests. And then we can set up a set of rules if they've seen this piece of content, show them that piece of content and subsequent sort of strategies from there. For folks who we're talking about my personal mission, which is, you know, black entrepreneurs help them create, you know, business beyond their wildest dreams. You said you think about yours, your efforts differently. We're often taught, you know, you got to think about who is my niche, who is my target audience and focus your thing, talking to that person, build an avatar of what they look like.

What do they what do they eat for breakfast this morning? All these things. Yeah. For should we be thinking the same way about our presence on social? Like, who am I posting to? Who am I talking to every time I post? For sure. Absolutely. I think it will help. It'll help drive that content. Now, let's go back real quick because I got to do it for the listeners. When we get into targeting, targeting follows segmentation. Segmentation is just a fancy way of saying, how do I organize these people into meaningful groups? And typically we have a love affair with demographic segmentation,

age, sex, marital status, income. We typically inadvertently neglect behavioral and psychographic or what lifestyle and what phase in their life may they be in. So I'm aware that my new positioning is going to isolate a disproportionate amount of entrepreneurs because they like, Marty, I ain't got enough money yet to be self-caring. I ain't got enough money yet to be dreaming of my life. I'm fighting my life right but as i move into a different space of being okay with the fact that i'm leading leaders and serving people who are already serving people that's where i'm evolving to and i got to make space for the next person that can coach you on day-to-day content but i'm more so like how do we help will accelerate this mission because you can hit 100

million people with the airwaves now let's if i help you you get what i'm saying but i hope the listeners um so that first part is thinking about segmentation broadly and making sure we then prioritize it the right way the analogy i give and don't let me lose the back end of the question will yeah when you go to shop there are some people who go online let's say you're looking for a black hoodie. Some people go to their favorite website and just type black hoodie. Other people will follow the clicks. They go to mail, they go black, they go hoodie, they go 2X, right?

So it's that same thing. You got to figure out the best order of operations for you. And then that informs who we're making the content for. So as you see the next sort of 12 to 18 months unfold for me, as I'm talking more to the person that wants to build their life and then the business follows it, you will see me showing my life that way. So part of me showing the hobby or you'll see me showing the leadership team meetings. You'll see me not working, but the business still doing well. Well, how are you doing this? Oh, we've

designed the company this way. And I want to attract the people that are saying I desire to spend more time doing things other than working. It seems like it's working for you. Tell me more. That's a perfect segue to my next thought here is because, you know, when I was just getting deep into social, you know, we heard a lot about and I won't like talk about who the names are that said, because it might have been true at the time is, you know, you should be more narrowly focused because when people click on your profile, they want to know what are you about? But if you all over the place, they don't know where to put you. And people are not thinking as deeply about you as you might think they're thinking about you and so what I appreciate about a lot of your content now I can see money you know bird watching and taking photos of birds and who know who knew the older I get the more interested I am in my bird feeder is full because I'm actually watching it now which is why oh man

they've been out of food I gotta go get the lows real quick get them some bird food so my question here is for somebody who has a lot of interests even entrepreneurial interests i have four businesses even so even if it's not just hobbies but if i got several businesses um or it's several hobbies and businesses how do i still define myself quickly to somebody who's not spending 10 minutes on my profile they just clicking through and said is it interesting or is he not man so bro it's it's it's there's a lot of sub questions inside of this so again i'm gonna start and then help me if i drift off the first thing is they were absolutely spot on and they're still spot on as it relates to

your social strategy and the niche i think if you want to uh maximize reach and or let's say game the system, maximize the greatest return on social, the tighter the focus, the quicker it is for the algorithm to understand who you are, what you talk about, and distribute it to people with similar interests. However, it doesn't necessarily account for how we purchase. We don't just buy linearly. And so there's this dynamic between how do I stay tightly wound to one niche versus give more of who I am, right? If a person was starting with zero followers a day, I would not tell them to do the strategy that I'm using. But if a person is at a spot where their life or their business has matured, then yeah, they can move into a broader

strategy. So that would be my first answer. The second thing is, and this is the tough part, if you have multiple interests, you can either treat your – you're probably still going to need multiple pages. And you just decide, am I going to treat my main page like the river that pours into the others? And so, again, over the next sort of year to year and a half you'll see me doing that mighty what if the person is entirely too dynamic to be placed into one box but I got some feeder pages that I've built so if you want to get really surgical on content what light we use

what might what editing technique there'll be a page and that's all it teaches Wow if you like what is this hobby, this bird journey talking about? You want to go talk about a bay breasted warbler? I got you over there. And my main page will sort of be more of a switchboard and more of a just sort of who this person holistically. But that's also going to come at the expense of of some of that growth that if you were to just stay laser-focused and I'm okay with that yeah that last point I want to go in there because you know even if it's not even if it's bifurcated on one platform let's say it's not bifurcated one but let's say now got a man this Instagram now got a man is tick-tock now I got a man is Facebook still which is

still a behemoth even though still a behemoth and all these other things. X, I don't pay a ton of attention, you know, business wise to X or Twitter, whatever you want to call it. But for a small business owner, influencer, maybe not so much, but small business owners, how do they determine where to spend the most time and effort? Limited resources to put into this time and effort limited resources to put into this time and money or personnel? Yeah. What do I do here? So the first part is, I'm gonna say it's gonna depend on how big they want to grow the pie.

Right? Like, am I building I want to be big? Yeah. So then we got we got to do it. We got to do it in a staged approach like big companies do. And so the first part is there's no way around those first few years of you chasing everything that's coming left and right. you need to figure out, am I a business dev person? Do I have the ability to grow sales, come up with ideas that work? Or am I a business ops person where I fulfill the promises that this sales person just made to people? The quicker you know where to put yourself, the quicker you know, where do I start the hiring process? So as I've grown, I know I'm a biz dev person.

So I had to hire an operations person to make sure all of these things get done because I'm going to be out here fancying up some new concept and forget I got to be somewhere at four o'clock. Right. Just that that that part of my my brain. So I would say the heart me meet a hard consultant would be a look these first couple of years going to kick your butt. But then here's what you need to do. You got to start to build and replace because you can't be all things to all people. And then I'd be remiss if I didn't say how much the impact, one of my best friends and clients, her name is Connie S. Falls, she runs an operational systems company. And this is the policies, the processes, the procedures. How do we do everything?

So when Will does a podcast interview at four, what is Riverside? What mics? What likes? All that stuff need to be written down so that if you are just walking in right at four, somebody can do all that for you. Or if you're absent and you need a guest host, they can follow a step by step framework in order to do exactly what you do and get an 80, 85 percent success rate. The rest of it can be made up with coaching. So I think we have, a lot of us have personal brand businesses and lifestyle businesses, and we don't think of them as being a separate entity from ourselves or bigger than ourselves. So the first challenge is you got to be thinking about it that way.

And when you start writing out, instead of writing out what needs to be done, you need to write out who is the best person to do this. And then that keeps you in the process of thinking about the business that way. Oh, that for Pete, I have three questions left and I'm going to give them to you in a way that you're good, bro. Yeah. So for if you were to distill this conversation into three points we've had a conversation here the small business owners there's corporations listening to employees listening to this if they only remember three things and they did they couldn't rewind because we've got phone that that button just don't work on the Android why they got an Android I don't know but they hit that rewind button

didn't work that you won't let them leave with three things what are those three things they got to get out of this conversation? The first thing would be social media is the most disruptive form of innovation since the television. We read legacy stories about people sending wires or the radio. But when you talk to anybody and most of them are still living, when you get into the era of the television and color and cable, et cetera, it disproportionately disrupted how business was done. And the internet is still relatively speaking in its infancy. That's first. So prioritize social media because everything else you need is here. The research, the sales, the community, the connections, et cetera. That would be the number one thing. Number two thing is when you're building a business, you have to.

It's fundamental that you spend more time thinking about who are the people and what are the problems than thinking about what product can I build. I need to know who they are because that then leads me to the products and the messaging. Most of us, we do it the other way around. We assume the world is like us. We build what we want and what we need. And then we scream from the top of our lungs about why people should buy said thing. But I would recommend you do it the other way around. So understand social media is huge.

So huge that if you find the right group of people, you can click in the comments and you can follow some folks and you can start to see here are some problems. And if I can develop a product or service, I can, I got a business, I got a money opportunity. And then the third thing would be situate yourself in the right side of the business. Am I a person that can go out and make a sale every day? Or am I a person person that's gonna swing the hammer and get the job done every day hire for all the other jobs that you aren't good at this one is and I hate to ask two-part questions but is this okay I had to get a two-part question it is historically black people black entrepreneurs don't spend enough money in marketing we don't allocate

enough when we start enough that's those are statistics we just don't put enough money in marketing and you talked about consistency posting three times a day you said that's not always a rule but it is just by and large you need to post that much yeah what does consistency look like so if I post Tuesday and then I'm I may scroll on Wednesday but then I post again Friday morning but then I post it again on Sunday. And man, I posted a lot last week. Is that a lot? Or it's like, should I be doing that noon, 3 p.m. and 7 p.m.?

Yeah, beautiful question. I would tell folks, even though it's not all about sales, but this will help it make sense for folks. Post every day that you want to make some money. Right. Are you comfortable with your money coming in every once in a while post every once in a while right but if you like you know what it'd be good to make some money in the morning and then again around lunch and then again before i lay down right then i i orient my my content schedule around that because all all things ultimately we hope they lead to sales whether i'm gaining awareness

or nurturing or getting to a hardcore cta or a conversion we're sort of all moving in that direction um so that would be my recommendation there beautiful did i cover the second part that was great that was great okay uh the last one is you know you're obviously smart you could be doing a lot of things why did you determine that you're gonna spend your time doing this work man so um i read somewhere that like all businesses are birthed out of um some type of trauma um and oftentimes we're creating what we wish existed for us at some point in the past so So what I learned early was that I'm really good at learning information and teaching it. And after working in corporate for close to 10 years and seeing the money and getting the prestige and all of the things that you would think light your spirit up,

it came at the expense of this other thing that's been sort of nagging at me. And so I didn't fully know what it looked like. I just knew that people call me all the time and ask me what I think about stuff. And then they'll go do exactly what I told them to do. Right. And then they'll hit me back and be like, Hey, bro, this worked. I didn't know this was consulting. I thought I was just on my own game. You know what I'm saying? Um, so this allows me to, to, to selfishly do what I'm good at and feel good about.

But in the other way, I fully understand where we're going as a people. Talking about us black folks. We've always been last in education. Right. Hardest to be able to get to capital displaced by technology, the first, right? The fastest. So if I can share this stuff that I don't wait and got from these fancy universities, and if I can share this stuff that I learned at these fancy corporations, and even if I'm humble enough to share my entrepreneurial failures, I'll be able to help somebody overcome some of the things that I went through. All I got to do is just be willing to share it. It just so happens that one of the byproducts went through. All I got to do is just be willing to share it.

It just so happens that one of the byproducts is you can also make a living from it too. Man, I see you. Mighty ordered. So glad you spent this time with me. This was great. Bro, listen, man. Again, for a hug, cut this off if you need to,

but I need people to understand what grace looked like because you done extended me a lot of grace over the sort of evolution of our relationship um we locked in thank you for the platform and thank you for the opportunity to share with your with your uh with your audience keep doing what you're doing and i'm i'm so proud of you and i'm having watched your growth and thank you the sky is sky ain't even the limit for what is it for you. Wow. So proud of you, man. Appreciate you, brother.

Thank you, man. Absolutely. Black tech, green money is a production of blavity Afro tech on the black effect podcast network and I heart media is produced by Morgan to bond and me. Well, Lucas with additional production support by Kate McDonald,

Sarah Ergen and Jada McGee. Special. Thank you to Micah Davis and love beach. Learn more about my guests and other tech disruptors and innovators at afrotech.com. The video version of this episode will drop to Black Tech Green Money on YouTube, so tap in. Enjoy your Black Tech Green Money? Share this with somebody. Go get your money. Peace and love. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba?

Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home, and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all. Niminy here.

I'm the host of a brand new history podcast for kids and families called Historical Records. Executive produced by Questlove, The Story Pirates, and John Glickman, Historical Records brings history to life through hip-hop. Each episode is about a different inspiring figure from history. Like this one about Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old girl in Alabama who refused to give up her seat on the city bus nine whole months before Rosa Parks did the same thing. Check it. And it began with me. Did you know, did you know? I wouldn't give up my seat. Nine months before Rosa, it was called a moment.

Get the kids in your life excited about history by tuning in to Historical Records. Because in order to make history, you have to make some noise. Listen to Historical Records on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From tips for healthy living to the latest medical breakthroughs, WebMD's Health Discovered podcast keeps you up to date on today's most important health issues. Through in-depth conversations with experts from across the healthcare community, WebMD reveals how today's health news will impact your life tomorrow. It's not that people don't know that exercise is healthy. It's just that people don't know why it's healthy. And we're struggling to try to help people help themselves and each other.

Listen to WebMD Health Discovered on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, 1974. George Foreman was champion of the world. Ali was smart and he was handsome. Story behind the Rumble in the Jungle is like a Hollywood movie. But that is only half the story. There's also James Brown, Bill Withers, B.B. King, Miriam Akiba, all the biggest black artists on the planet

together in Africa. It was a big deal. Listen to Rumble, Ali, Foreman, and The Soul of 74 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.