The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Mandy Hoskinson of Zolay Studio Marketing Agency Founder, Community Leader, and Creative Person

Episode Date: November 4, 2023

Mandy Hoskinson of Zolay Studio Marketing Agency Founder, Community Leader, and Creative Person Zolaystudio.com Show Notes About The Guest(s): Mandy Hoskinson is the founder of Zolay Studio, an award-winning marketing agency that works with clients in various industries. She is also the president of Social Media Club of Los Angeles and the vice president of Social Media Club Global. With her expertise in social media and marketing, Mandy helps businesses navigate the ever-changing landscape of digital platforms. Summary: Mandy Hoskinson, founder of Zolay Studio, joins Chris Voss on The Chris Voss Show to discuss her journey as an entrepreneur and the importance of staying up-to-date with social media trends. Mandy shares her insights on the role of social media in marketing and how her agency helps clients build their online presence. She emphasizes the significance of engagement and the need to be present on multiple platforms to reach a wider audience. Mandy also highlights the importance of mental health and work-life balance in the fast-paced world of social media. Key Takeaways: Building relationships and rapport is crucial in business and mentorship. Being present on multiple social media platforms helps reach a wider audience. Engagement is essential for effective social media marketing. Boring industries, such as health tech and finance, can provide stable clients. Mental health and work-life balance should be prioritized in the social media industry. Quotes: "If you're good at three places, that's good enough, and you can grow." - Mandy Hoskinson "You need to be social on social media. So go interact." - Mandy HoskinsonAbout Mandy Hoskinson Mandy, also known as "MediaMandy", is a talented digital marketer and visual artist based in Los Angeles, California. She has a passion for digital marketing and community management, which began during her time at UCLA where she co-launched the university's social media platforms. After her successful experience at UCLA, Mandy took on various roles in the digital marketing industry, including work for LA 2028, Apple, Fox TV, and CBS. As she gained more experience and recognition in the field, Mandy started to work as a freelance digital marketer, taking on small projects on weekends and evenings. Over time, her client base grew, and they began to request additional services such as photography, videography, analytics, print marketing, design, and more. This led to the establishment of Mandy's own boutique marketing agency, MediaMandy Agency, which has since rebranded as Zolay Studio. Mandy's dedication to her industry extends beyond her work at Zolay Studio, as she is also the President of the Social Media Club of Los Angeles and previously held the same position at TogetherDigital Los Angeles. Her talent and expertise have earned her a reputation as a leader in the digital marketing community. Mandy is also an accomplished visual artist and has published seven poetry books. Her passion for photography and her chihuahua can be seen on her personal website, amandahoskinson.com. Social media users can connect with Mandy on various platforms, where she can be found under the username @MediaMandy. In conclusion, Mandy, also known as "MediaMandy", is a multi-talented digital marketer and visual artist based in Los Angeles. She has a wealth of experience in the digital marketing industry and is highly regarded for her expertise and leadership in the field.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

Chris Voss. Dot com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. We certainly appreciate you guys being here for 15 years. We've been bringing you the Chris Voss Show. And boy, my legs are tired. I've been carrying it this whole time. But there you go.

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and chrisfoss1 on the tickety-tockety over there. Today, we have an amazing young lady on the show joining us. She's going to be talking to us about all the wonderful stuff that she does. Mandy Hoskinson is on the show with us today. She's an agency founder for a marketing agency. She's a community leader and a very creative person. We're going to be talking to her about everything that goes into it. And you're going to learn all sorts of good stuff or else.

I don't know what that means. What are we going to do? Or else? You're going to learn stuff and you're going to get the Chris Foss show glow. Mandy is a marketing agency founder, community leader, and creative person. Her award-winning agency, Zole Studio, works with clients spanning B2B, B2C, SAAS, or SAS as they like to call it. The kids like to call it that. Government and creative industries. This social media impact-focused agency also gives away 20% of its work away pro bono. Mandy is also the president of Social Media Club of Los Angeles and vice president of

the Social Media Club Global. You can find her at most places as at Media Mandy. Welcome to the show, Mandy. How are you? Thank you. I'm having a great day. Thank you. I feel like I should call you Media Mandy throughout the show. I never know if i should just like just lean into it and no longer go by my name yeah i think you should tell your parents they have to start referring to as media mandy and all gifts need to be addressed as such just change my birth certificate get it right just change your birth just own it baby just own it so give us a dot coms where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? Yeah, it's my first and last name, mandyhoskinson.com. And then my company is Zolay Studio, Z-O-L-A-Y studio.com.

There you go. So give us a 30,000 overview of what you guys do in your words. Yeah. So I started an agency. I came from UCLA. I helped create UCLA social media, created the social media for the LA bid for the Olympics, Fox, Apple, CBS, and really got my feet wet. Social media was still getting its start. My job was not called social media manager when I got started. Really

loved it. Always wanted to make a bigger impact. So I started an agency five years ago. I realized, I just found out today that we passed a million dollars in revenue, which is pretty cool. Realized that that milestone has passed. And so we are at a bigger place. We've had clients for a while and they really do span a lot of industries because of my own mixed background. And at the same time,

we try to take care of people and take care of our community by sharing those skills pro bono. There you go. That's awesome. And what motivates you to do the pro bono work? I mean, that's pretty large of you to do that. It's big. It's big. And social entrepreneurship can be challenging, but I think nonprofits are inefficient, a lot of them. So there's a whole movement called social entrepreneurship where a cause is funded by a business. And so social media and marketing is one of the biggest expenses for nonprofits and BIPOC founders.

So what if they had agency level support for free or nearly free at an agency that takes from their existing large companies clients so that's the vision it's inspired by another agency in LA called very nice that gives away 50% of their work for free also a UCLA alum yeah incredible and they work with like NASA and Disney and those clients love working with them because they create great work and they create great work for the community too. Yeah, that is awesome. That is awesome. So, uh, you, we do a lot of work for your clients. Uh, there's lots of stuff that goes into it. How do you navigate the ever changing landscape of social media, the trends, the strategies, the success stories we were talking

before the show about how, uh, you know, social media club, we knew of them uh back in 2008 2009 2009 we started this show um and uh uh things have changed a lot you know it used to be like twitter was the thing and now i don't really know what the thing i will tick tock is the thing now so um and how what's it like trying to help navigate that for yourself and for your agency and for your clients. Yeah. Yeah. Don't miss out on threads. Don't sleep on threads. It's a lot of fun over there. I'm having a great time. So, you know, social media club was much earlier in my career and I emailed them. So social, I'll step back. Social media clubs are a networking and learning nonprofit. It's international and the LA chapter is pretty big. You knew about it, which is really cool. I love hearing when people know about it. And they know that we're

legit. Like we're not just a cute little organization where we've been around for a long time. We've got some amazing people affiliated. And I wanted to go to one of their panels and I couldn't afford it. So I emailed them and said, Hey, can I like move chairs or something? And they were like, yeah, whatever. Sure. And I was on the, you know, like they're like, yeah, like it's okay. Like it's fine, you know, um, because they've always been super reasonable and down to earth. And, um, you know, two months later I was on the board of directors and now I'm the president and I'm part of the global org, but the, one of the best ways to go to events is to have to run them. And so being on the board of directors of a learning organization, you're always planning learning.

You're always talking to people about what's trending. And then you have to attend because you're running it. And so 10 years of being a part of a professional's organization has kept me up to date and just doing it. I know you do it. Being on these platforms as well as trying to read up on everything that's going on really helps. Just do it. Just do it. Just do it. One of our big visions was being everywhere. I mean, we recognize that being

everywhere was so important. And it's kind of funny i had i had so many people that used to say oh you're on linkedin there's no reason and linkedin's boring there's nothing going on over there and i'm like no i'm future proofing i'm on linkedin i'm on like everything you know and back in the day i used to be first on everything as soon as i could get on it uh and still am uh or i try to be i think I was a little late on Tik TOK. Um, I, I just didn't get it either.

I was just like, this is really, and it's evolved quite a bit too. It used to be just like kids dancing and singing. And now it's turned into a giant competitor for Amazon. Um, the sales that are going on there are crazy. And the people are just making,

I saw a guy on Tik TOK, uh, the other day he had to turn away like thousands of sales because it overwhelmed his, you know, he's just a little, he's a guy with a sorry. We just cannot fulfill what you guys did with our offer. And I'm sorry, but we're just one guy. And he does videos. He's like, it's just me here, man. You see, the power of it was extraordinary. And there's some customer loyalty going on.

I bought some knickknacks off of there as well. And they're kind of cool. And they're fairly expensive. Some people are using 3D printing and doing interesting stuff. So, you know, why is this important for clients to be able to keep up on all the latest things? And what do you recommend for people on staying up on all this stuff? I love that you brought it up. And I love that you said future proofing. I

think that's a really great argument. So simplified. It's perfect. I've been really reflecting on this because, you know, being located elsewhere, if you're in house, then you're full time, your job is to take care of all parts of a brand. So I ran criminal minds, the television shows, social media. So I needed to be everywhere. Yeah, like I always say, like your favorite TV show, your mom's favorite TV show,

NCIS, Criminal Minds, Y5O, Blue Bloods, Magnum PI. Really? Yeah, yeah, it was fun. It was a lot of fun. And you have to know everything. I was on Reddit checking conversations. I was sneaking in Facebook groups, checking what people were saying. I was in all the like conspiracy groups like knowing what

they thought was going to happen and i would tease it like because i knew that i could talk to the fans so much better um but did you have to fail it sorry to interrupt you did you have to fail it like like you would did you have to veil that you were on the staff uh yeah and you'd be like hey i heard a rumor or something uh there's a rumor i heard i so i live tweeted east coast west coast time and like there was you know and we at the time live streaming was really big as well six years ago and so we did we i was my responsibility to live stream 300 minutes a month which sounds easy but when you work with actors who are used to having lines and being able to plan being on camera, live streaming is a whole other ball game.

But you know, what I would do is I would wink at it. And so you watch the episode in advance, you pre-plan your content in advance. And then I might say like, didn't expect that one, did you? And like have a little wink from one of the actors you know what I mean so there's like a little there's the tiniest of nods but they if they knew they knew and it was really fun to make the fans feel super seen uh-huh and so you were doing that and then you decided to start your own agency or were you doing that along with your own agency? You know, when you work in a futuristic

plot like space, just like AI right now, everybody's always asking you questions. Like there's always work, be it like side consulting or actual jobs. Of course, when I was in-house at CBS, I had no time, but there was always people reaching out, asking for consulting. And so I had a really big opportunity. And television went through a lot of big movements about five years ago in terms of equity and experiences of employees. And so just everything sort of lined up. And I took the plunge a little earlier than I expected to, but I have a great network. And, you know, it was scary, but it was really worth it. So what's it like moving from in-house to owning an agency? Was it your first foray into

being an entrepreneur? It's so funny how you start looking back on the patterns of your life and see like, oh, I was kind of leading up towards this, but I didn't realize it. So, you know, answering your earlier question in thinking about should you be everywhere? I there's it's hard to price this work. And so I usually start people on three platforms with a certain number of posts per month, because that's what clients can wrap their heads around. And we always try to tell them if you're good at three places, like that's good enough and you can grow. but we work with like midsize, some larger brands, you know, if you're really good in these places, then we can grow, but let's get you good here and then expand your strategy where else it makes sense. But to your point, future proofing,

that was something that you could do more casually if you're not in a contractor, like if you have more expansive hours. So in entrepreneurship, you know, I sold jean purses in fourth grade with my best friend and I sewed quinceanera dresses in high school. And so, yeah, it was one of the, you know, you don't think about it as entrepreneurship. I just thought about it as like doing something and making money, but you look back and you're like, no. Yeah, it was practice was it was practice it was practice you know it's funny how we do and this is why we love people to come on tell their stories and their adventures of life is because it's real owner spaniel life we like to call on the

chris voss show and um did i just do that in the third person uh as it's one of my, I have multiple personalities, so, you know, that's how we do it. Uh, but, uh, he's crazy. Um, but what voice was that? I don't know. That's a new one. Um, but, uh, you know, we, we future proof through LinkedIn. Uh, and I remember I used to get so much shit from it and we made a lot of money off LinkedIn. I built 130,000 group over there.

Uh, I built a huge amount i think i hit the max follower following limit on linkedin like i don't know 2005 or something um and a lot of people like oh it's just stupid and i'm like no i think it's going to be a good place and you know after google plus fell off uh a lot of different things have kind of fallen apart um things have kind of not turned out as great as maybe you wouldn't hoped and you know this is you know we've seen the aoling and the my spacing of like facebook and twitter and uh you know new advancements different thing and you know the new shiny thing you know the facebook killers this is going to be the facebook killer

yeah good luck finding those on the internet anymore uh and so we invested heavily in all the platforms but also linkedin and now linkedin is a powerhouse i mean our linkedin newsletter is crazy it grows insanely almost daily like i'm going on it's like who else subscribed this thing there is this many people on linkedin they're active uh we still have our big group over there. It's actually become a really great source of stuff. And when it comes down to money, the amount of money that's on it, like CEOs, people in abracelons and stuff, it's where all the money is. It's the money.

It's tough to get people to drop serious buck on uh youtube because it's all 10 to 15 year olds but on linkedin and so now i've seen all these people who used to uh throw shit at me going i'm so silly to be over there on that linkedin they try to get on linkedin now and they can't make any traction i've seen their try to set up podcasts and do lives and do all sorts of stuff and it's like, that's not going anywhere. And I'm like, yep, should have listened to me. But the future proofing and trying to be everywhere is hard. It's expensive.

But it definitely can pay off in the long term. Yeah. Do you, how are groups now on LinkedIn? They're better. They're still not back to where they were. So I don't know if you know this, but I may have a different opinion than yours. But basically what happened is groups were killing it. You would do a one-week recommend that would go out to everyone's email, and it was just awesome.

And then when Microsoft bought LinkedIn, they really trashed it and kind of neglected it for a while. And they paused groups because I guess there was some sort of thing where they built groups on a secondary sort of system. And it still is kind of on a secondary system if you look at how you access it. And in doing that, they needed to revamp it. And so they literally put it on like a one to two year sort of redo. And in doing so, they took away our ability to moderate it. And so literally I couldn't moderate my group anymore. And it just began filling with spam, you know, all these spammy guys from different countries

that put all this trash into the thing. And it really hurt the base. But, you know, it's just something we keep promoting and growing and you have to just keep building it. But finally, they turned the moderation back on for us so we could block all that crap. And the damage was done. And I don't think groups have ever really made it back since. We keep ours pretty active. I know a few good groups, but you just have to work at it, man.

It just constantly do. But actually, the newsletters are taking over. So the newsletters go out to people's direct emails. It's basically like having your own email list on LinkedIn. And people like it. But you have to be consistent. You have to put up content daily you have to do the work and and uh and it pays off so yeah yeah but i mean tiktok is the same way i'm sure

pinterest uh is still from what i understand a great search engine thing most people don't understand pinterest is a search engine thing so uh what a difference it makes um so you built your own company was it was a hard was it easy because you had maybe had some clients you brought over what was it like going through setting up a company you know a lot of people want to know what it's like that entrepreneurism journey yeah of course it wasn't easy um i don't come from a highly privileged background. And so, you know, I didn't have, uh, really parents at all. And I certainly wasn't surrounded by people who had done something like that. I just spoke to, um, speaking of like finance, uh, my company does social media for venture capital companies, venture capital firms, venture capital backed companies, and then

nonprofit that helps women become venture capital firms venture capital backed companies and the non-profit that helps women become venture capitalists and uh for many reasons i was just talking to some funders uh thinking about that journey and how i was so not plugged in and i didn't know where to start if anyone's out there start with the freaking small business administration. It is so underrated. It is so underrated. And go get a SCORE mentor. There's a nationally funded mentorship program. I now get to meet with a woman who did HR for 30 years. I get to meet with her whenever I want. I get to meet with a man who was a CFO for 30 years.

You know, he became a CFO. I think he was CFO for 30 years. He became a CFO. I think he was CFO for 15 years. Whatever I want, because he wants to, because he wants to talk to small businesses. And those are the people that I didn't know how to find. And so now I have a fractional CFO. I don't know if you've gone through this kind of experience too, but I'm a fractional CFO and I have an assistant

and I'm a little better at finding help, but it has been a lot of stumbling along the way. And I'm still cleaning up the mess of trying to get started without fully knowing what to do. Well, that's good though. You found your way down the pathway. You hit your million dollar mark. That's awesome. You know, most businesses never get there. In fact, I think probably 99% of businesses don't get there or something like that. They fail in their first two years. So congratulations.

But it sounds like you're, you know, you, you're agile. You're always learning. I see a whole pile of books behind you on the, on our interview video for those. What are some,

are there some books or some things that you look to on maybe leadership or running a business? Or what sort of books or mentors do you kind of seek out? So the LA library and most libraries have a free audible. It's called Libby. I just passed 570 books on there. I'm obsessed. I found out one of my friends sort of speed reads audio books and I, you know, I had to get over my judgment. So stepping back to entrepreneur or to mentors,

I helped, I worked on the LA bid for the Olympics, LA now LA 28, but it was LA 24 when I was working with them, uh, and met a really cool person and, uh, became friends with her. And I've thought a lot, and she and I talk a lot about making content about mentorship and being a mentee. She was an Olympian, and her partner is a gold, silver, and bronze medalist. And they've been just absolutely incredible people to know. And she was drawn to me, and I was drawn to her. And so it was mutual and sort of feeding any sort of experience where someone more advanced

is interested in your career and keeping them updated and starting that sort of dating experience. You know, I'll see people walk up to someone at a networking event and be like, will you mentor me? And it's such an awkward exchange. And even in my, even in my experience, like helping run this, this nonprofit that helps connect people, it's so much more personal than that. Like, it's not, it's not this like one time transactional

thing. She didn't start officially mentoring me until like three, four years after we met. Yeah. And now we have a pretty, we've created a great system. For anyone out there, bring one question. So with all my mentees, you bring one question and that's usually the thing, it's the heart of what you're trying to solve

and it leads to a lot of other questions. But it forced me to focus instead of to ramble and that just brought us to the next level. I like that idea. Yeah. Yeah. I get hit up to mentor for stuff all day long on LinkedIn.

Like, it's insane the message that I get. And sometimes on Facebook. And they do, like we said, they don't build a relationship first. And I think, you know, where you're very smart is in building relationships with people. And, you know, people are more willing to work with you and help you, especially if they're kind of vested in you personally. Like, I really like this person. They're really trying hard. I can see that they're just not somebody who's trying to, I don't know, swipe some quick bucks off me.

I sometimes get that, too. Or people, you know, will write me and say, what's your business model? And I'm like, it's proprietary, buddy. I'm not telling you how we do business. Figure it out on your own. But I mean, you just come out and boldface ask me. I have no vested interest in helping you. I could barely help myself at this point. So I can't feel my legs. And you've produced a lot of content. Like you already gave a hint at your media model in this interview. And I'm sure if somebody listened to you, they could learn your philosophy and learn your approach. I think even that much of doing your homework about

someone and saying, you know, this, do you ever watch the hot wings interviews? You know, I'm talking about the, yeah. so he is like one of the best interviewers and every single one of his interviewees almost 100 will say how did you find out about that they'll say that phrase because he researches so hard and i really admire that and if somebody came up to me and said you know hey you talked about this challenge on an interview or like in an article you wrote. And I'd like, you know, I'm having that experience too. Can you give me a single tip, right? Like making it really bite size and worth their while and flatter them with something like it's it should be mutual. And yeah, and so she's been a really

great I mean, just like an utterly life-changing mentor. And then I am trying to get a free MBA. I just, this year I did like just classic MBA books. And I also did all the classics like Odyssey. I just finished like all of Henry David Thoreau and her, his bio, Shakespeare, like getting down and dirty with the original media references that everyone else ends up building off of. And it seems silly, but having that like really deep understanding has been really enlightening and really helpful this year. That is awesome. I mean, it sounds like you're on the right track. I mean, I remember early on, I think, think what was it did you say it was the score things of the better business bureau uh yeah yeah it's through sba sba i remember i think i remember going to those when we first started companies you would go to like breakfasts with people

and exchange referrals was that it yeah they do in person too yeah and now they're virtual so you can you can line up with anyone nationally call yeah, they're virtual. So you can just call. Yeah. Nationally now. Because it was always hard for me to get up in the morning. And you'd go down and they'd have coffee. And everyone would come that were new entrepreneurs. And you'd try and share leads and pass out cards and try and get business going. And so you're on the right track. You're building relationships. You know, it's really about the relationship building when it really comes down to it. Uh, and so how do you balance that with your mental health and work and, and taking, uh,

all this in with a high pressure agency and, you know, this 24 seven. And then when, you know, social media faux pas happen, you can sometimes, you know, come right in the middle of the night and everything's melting down and the client's calling you going, Hey, uh, someone posted the wrong thing on social media and we're going viral yeah yeah yeah i love that you brought up mental health um my father was a vet who lost his life to his battle with depression and it that like created a lot of importance and focus in my life around that i think anyone who has that experience starts to really examine their life. And I noticed that in the pandemic, a lot of people had those kinds of experiences too,

that brush with mortality or with loneliness. And one of the reasons I started my company, you and I were talking about LA and how it can be a little toxic, It can be a little draining. I wanted a place where people were just kind and calm. And so that's actually, I've had to be very intentional with who I work with. You know, entertainment. And I always call it cool job syndrome. Because if you have a cool job, then everyone, they treat you as disposable because you are. And so if you're disposable you're easily abused and like just think about fashion and entertainment like this is not a not known thing

uh and so you know i started finding that these quote-unquote boring industries and got great advice that boring industries are great health tech uh finance sass um and started pursuing that i went to ucla i presented research there i presented research as a kid i love i love the internet and i like tech and that's how i got here and so there's actually a whole under tapped business to business nerd corner of the internet where you can write about finance and venture capital and technology and nonprofit work and KPIs as a corner of social media. And those people pay their bills and they work nine to fives and then they go home. And so, you know, I found that if I wanted to have a team that was taken care of, which is something we pride ourselves on and something we won awards regarding, I needed to have clients who paid their bills on time, trusted us, and also understood that

turnaround times can't be immediate. You need to give us time to digest and to create because if all you're doing is reacting to news when you don't even strategically need to, you're going to have worse content and everybody's worse off. Everybody's more stressed out. And so it's built into our contract, our turnaround times, our team gets two weeks off at the holidays because who's doing something the week before Christmas? No one, no one's doing anything. We plan all the content in advance. We have a skeleton crew available. So I've had to create a lot of boundaries around that because it's one of my life's top priorities. Unfortunately, social media is one of the most stressful industries. It's a tabloid and agencies are built to take advantage of people just by inherently by the

business model. It eats people's time because there's no rest seasons and there's always work to do somewhere else. So they know that I talk about it. I'm trying to fight these two demons and somehow create a place where creative, kind people thrive. There you go. Creative, kind people. It is hard to do business in LA. There's so many faux people. There's so many, you know, I mean, this is a town where people own a Ferrari that's broken down somewhere and they, you know, or they rent a Ferrari and rent a suit for a day and show up to meetings and pretend like they're the rock stars. It's all a rental. This is the place where you can go to get a picture for your social media of a stage set that shows a cutaway of a private plane.

I think it's like $ bucks or 100 bucks or something. You can go there and they fill you with champagne. You can pretend like you're living the life. And so there's a lot of faux fakeness in LA and stuff. I remember going to the parties there and it was just people would be talking about all the sets they were on. And who they were working with and different things. And you're like, you're an extra,

like you weren't on the set with Robert De Niro. You were in the extra table. It's, it's funny you bring up. And I think a lot of people don't know about this, like this whole business of making people seem like influencers business. We all knew about MTV cribs and the fact that they rented cars, right? And it's, it's kind of the same version. I, a friend of a friend went on a retreat to like,

turn him into an influencer. And so it was a series of 30 shoots, like getting into a helicopter, getting out of a helicopter. I think it was in tulum of course like somewhere like that and it was all it was just dozens of those shoots and then you just saw him um push out this content uh for like years and it worked you know and you and i were talking about that about how like if it works it works like more power to you and but this like all these sub businesses of social media and, and of people's desire for that, I think like the way that it worked was for him like socially. Uh, but you know, if that's, if that's your jam, uh, more power to you, it's effective. And also like rock on the person who invented that business because most people, it doesn't work and they're the ones raking in the cash.

The challenge I have with it is when they're the ones raking in the cash the challenge i have with it is when they're usually spouting bullshit about being authentic yes and uh the one of the things that would go on with la is i would be at the parties or i would be hanging out with you you know some there in la you go to a lot of the after party you go have like uh uh you know after dinner it's late at night after the clubs or whatever, with the bistros or whatever, uh, you know, there's all those great hamburger places are open late. I forget them.

Uh, but you know, you'd, you'd see, you'd hang out with people and you'd actually learn what they're going. And you're like, Oh, you don't own a studio.

You live at home with your parents and in a bedroom, you don't even own a car. Uh, but you have this online persona that, you know, and I don't feel deceived. I'm like, you presented that you were a rock star and you're just some guy in your mom's

basement. Hey, uh, and you know, you don't own a car, you're not making any money real, but everybody online thinks that you're the, you know,

you have some giant studio and you're rocking it. So with your agency, you help people, uh, with social media packages that you have set up. You help with strategy and playbook, engagement. That's a really important part. Copywriting, support for the social media, analytics. Those are important to have data to find out what's working, what's not, and graphic design. So it sounds like you're a full service agency, right?

Yeah. We're turnkey. Just hand us the login and we do the rest. Really? There you go. there you go there you go yeah and talk to us about why engagement's important if you would please because i mean without engagement you're just spitting out content in the ether and it's not going anywhere yeah uh you've probably heard of semantic creep where a word just starts to lose meaning because it stretches and stretches and stretches i think think the word trauma, for example, has gone through this where, right, like everything's traumatic now. So engagement has a lot of semantic creep. I think it's really creeping into other parts of marketing. And so it's funny you bring it up because I'm going to retitle it. If you're

looking at our materials, because part of it is customer service. So, you know, like CBS, I think is a good example, back to a TV show, people can understand that they want to know what time the show's coming on. So like you answer them, you get annoyed, just like every customer service provider does just think like, Google it. But you smile, you tell them what it is, right. And then there's another part in this case, like getting the fans up and going, right? So behind the scenes, hype content, that kind of thing. And so you might make a piece of content that is engaging,

which people have sort of started to meld what that means. And then somebody will respond and then you'll start to have a conversation with them. And that was like with these sort of big fan communities it could get really fun um some of the shows at cbs even have character twitter accounts so then you'd go sign in as one of the characters and then go interact with these fans and tons of fun or like hit up the actor and find out if they're willing to tweet which like younger shows are totally happy to do. Shout out Shamar Moore. Just like always down to interact. So that's a piece of engagement. And then so we call it outbound and inbound. So

if someone's talking to you, if they're coming in, right, that is inbound engagement. So interacting with those people who are talking at you, but then outbound is the really underrated part. It's joining conversations, and sometimes creating conversations. I was just training someone about this with a, that women venture capital organization that helps women get venture capital and become venture capitalists. And in a moment, these VCs were chatting on Twitter, X, whatever. And they, we joined the conversation. Both of them were part of our organization and they were chit-chatting about resources. And we actually knew the study because that's our job.

We were like, hey, like here's the study that you were referencing. You're totally on the money. This is the stat. And that's the kind of thing where you join. And it feels a little weird. It's kind of like walking up to someone at a party and joining their conversation.

But sometimes you become well-loved and they start calling you into future conversations, which is what started happening. So anytime somebody needed a piece of data, they would contact our account. They DM us or they bring us into the conversation online and magically we're their go-to person. That's outbound engagement.

So we strategically, we have databases to support this. We've got analytics to support this because it's way, way important and you can put out great content, but you need to be social on social media. So like go interact. Yeah. I mean, people, people really want to see if you're really there and doing stuff. You know, one sad trend I've seen that I just really don't understand, but it started with COVID I think is people aren't monitoring their Facebook. Companies aren't monitoring their Facebook page anymore a lot of the times. Like, I mean, I'm talking like 80% of the Facebook pages that I'll interact with.

There's nobody paying attention anymore. I mean, not even the bot going on. And I'm just like like are you guys insane and one of the reasons you want to be everywhere or it's important to be everywhere is you never know where your whole database is like i've had some people say well you know most of our customers on facebook no they're not no they're not if you have customers everywhere and and everyone's got their own little thing like i'll talk to people like i'm just a linkedin person or i'm just a twitter person or I'm just a Twitter person

or I'm just a Facebook person. And I'm like, oh, you don't really work on these other platforms? No, people have time to be on five or six different platforms, but your customers are everywhere. You know, I recently had, well, this was recent,

a couple of years ago, I had my good friend, I have a headache today, so I'm not quite on my par, but, uh, she, she's the CEO of Hint Water and she was on the show a couple of years ago to promote her book, Tara, um, and, uh, or Cara, Cara. Uh, and, uh, she, we were talking after the show and I said, Hey, are you on TikTok yet? And she goes, no, we don't get it. You know, and I don't know, man. And I go, you got to be over on there. There are people talking about your brand over there. They're posting like videos and tagging

hashtag hint water. And do you understand that there's a conversation going on over there without you? And she's like, you're sure. It's Cara Golden, right? Cara Golden. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I said, you need to get over there. And so I without you and she's car golden right car golden yeah yeah yeah yeah and so uh i said i said you need to get over there and so i i sent her some searches and she's like holy crap people are talking about a brand over there and i'm like yeah you need to get over there and have a conversation and so she went over there and uh you know a year later she exploded with not only her account and hint water's account and uh i don't know what it did to their bottom line but she told me chris that's the best advice you've ever get i ever got

was i don't know if i ever got but it was super good advice she's like it was just wonderful that you told got me over there chris because it's it's really a game changer so uh you know that's the important thing about being everywhere is people you don't know where your audience is and sometimes they're changing or something like TikTok kicks ass and takes names. We could go on forever planning this out, but let's do this. Let's give us some final word from you. Pitch out to people on doing business and how they can onboard with your company, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah.

Yeah. So our website has information about how we work and we're not for everybody we tend to work with mid to large size businesses but we do have pro bono available that form is there if you are a non-profit or bipoc founder just getting started and social media club international and social media club LA both have thriving communities. You were talking about LinkedIn groups. Our Facebook group is incredibly thriving still. Oh, there you go.

Those are good too. Yeah, yeah. Facebook groups are so underrated. And so you can always go there. You can always hit me up for resources. But maybe don't ask for a business model or a mentorship moment without doing a little bit of research first or building a relationship or building rapport for hell's sakes people i mean i in the old days you know they used to teach us in sales build rapport first before you try and make a sale and you're

selling yourself if you're asking somebody to be your mentor or whatever the case may be. Is it social media LA on Facebook groups? Social media club, Los Angeles. Yeah, there it is right there. I might be in it. In fact, I might,

in fact, I am surprised. Yeah. There you go. There you go. Nice. 7,000 members, 6.5,

uh, hubbers around there. I like what, uh, I like what, uh, facebook has been just recently done i don't know if you've seen it but they they've made it so you can have a private chat messenger thing with your group i hate it yeah it went go ahead they auto add you and like i'm in thousands of groups for the sake of research per and so I am in hundreds of chats and somebody said,

I messaged you on Facebook. And I was like, you got to understand. I manage like hundreds of brands and I'm in, it's just so spammed. They can add everyone and they can add anyone they want to a group. And it's, it's painful. I'm sure it works for someone, but I, for me, it's just, it's only spam to me. I, I, I, one of the issues I've had with it is it's kind of exposed to those, who those people are from other countries who always post some weird shit that you're just

like, this has nothing to do with the topic at hand or the group at hand. And it's clearly spam or some sort of hacker stuff and whatever they're trying to get people to you know it's always weird shit and and so yeah it's actually kind of helped me clean up my groups because i'm like oh yeah block and kick that guy ban him from the group so i've been kind of using this as a ban hammer i love it but i'm trying to figure out ways to make it work um there's a few dating groups that i have for locales like Vegas and Salt Lake City that are on there for my own express interest. And, you know, if you can't make Tinder work for you, just start a dating group. And then I've got our meetup groups that we have as well for different things.

And it seems we were good for that. You know, every then and then you get the weirdos in there that you're like, hey, dude, you're tubing the conversation with all your weird ass, you know, needy shit going on. But once again, to, you know, your recommendation, build relationships, be cool, and don't be weird, I guess, is the message there. So this has been wonderful to have you on. Great rundown memory lane of social media in LA.

I love LA. I grew up in California originally. And then my parents moved out when we were, I think, 12. But I love LA except for one thing, the traffic. It's par for the course. Yeah. Par for the course. You got to pay, you got to pay to play. So there you go. So thank you very much. We really appreciate you coming on the show and spend some time with us

today. For sure. Have a good one. Thank you, Mandy. And thanks to our audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, fortunes,

Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, fortunes, Chris Foss, youtube.com, fortunes, Chris Foss, Chris Foss,

one on the Tikiktok and all those great places internet thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time