The Ryan Hanley Show - How to Build a Brand So Good They Can't Ignore You

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comJoin us for an engaging conversation with Jon Davids, the brilliant mind behind "Marketing Superpowers" and the founder of Influicity. Jon shares his entrepreneurial journey, exploring the "burn the boats" mentality and the critical balance between going all-in and having a backup plan. ✅ [FREE GUIDE] 7 Ways to Make Better Decisions Using AI: https://ai.ryanhanley.com/ ✅ [BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT] The Civilized Savage: https://civilizedsavagebook.comConnect with Jon DavidsWebsite: https://jondavids.com/Marketing Superpowers Book: https://amzn.to/3Vvc8e5LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jondavids/His insights on self-awareness and resisting fleeting trends provide high-level strategies and actionable tactics for entrepreneurs and business leaders looking to grow and succeed.We also reflect on the impact of Silicon Valley culture, questioning its emphasis on raising capital and relentless startup hustle. By examining personal experiences and stories of others who found success later in life, we discuss whether early career struggles are essential stepping stones for future entrepreneurial achievements. This chapter encourages listeners to consider traditional business values and the importance of enduring tough times to build resilience and find the right career path.Finally, we dive into the significance of branding and content creation in attracting talent and customers. Jon and I discuss how creating a strong brand can provide an unfair advantage in the market, emphasizing authenticity and passion in content creation. By overcoming barriers and finding the right medium, businesses can effectively communicate their value and build a loyal following. This episode is packed with valuable lessons on leadership, overcoming challenges, and the power of unified branding for business success.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Glad to have you here. We have a tremendous conversation for you with John Davids. He is the author of Marketing Superpowers as well as the founder of Influency. This is such a dynamic and wonderful conversation. If you're an entrepreneur, if you're in growth mode, if you are a business owner, leader, if you're looking to grow your business, you are going to love this conversation. John is dynamic and we hit it off immediately. This conversation goes fast and furious, and you're going to get a tremendous amount of both high-level insights as well as on-the-ground tactics that you can use in your business today. Before we get there, I want to introduce you to two new free

resources that I recently put out. The first is the announcement of my latest book, The Civilized Savage, From Mediocrity to Mastery in an Age of Cultural Conformity, that I am co-authoring this book with Chris Paradiso. And if you pop your name and email into thecivilizedsavagebook.com, I'll have a link in the description, you will get a guide to the 29 historical individuals that we highlighted as civilized savages and their favorite quote. This resource is going to get your brain spinning, get your mind going. I highly recommend you jump over and grab that and just follow along with the journey as we look to launch this book in the next six months. Additionally, I put out a free guide, an ebook, a resource, 40 pages long, seven ways to make better decisions

using AI. My belief is as leaders, as entrepreneurs, we have to get out in front of AI and use it for more than just marketing language and emails. We can use AI to make better decisions, to get more positive outcomes out of decisions we make. This guide breaks it down both in the high level, as well as tactical checklists, walkthroughs, and we break down exactly how you can use different resources like perplexity, open AI, or whatever AI resource you use to make better

decisions. Go to ai.ryanhanley.com to grab that for free. Also, we'll have the link in the show notes if you want to use that. Guys, I love you for listening to this show. I love you for being here. Let's get on to John Davis. It's such a pleasure to have you on the show. I love what you're doing in the topic of your book. It's obviously near and dear to my heart being a former CMO and creating a lot of content myself. So just pleasure to have you here and interested to learn more. Ryan, I'm so excited to talk about marketing, growth, performance, all the mistakes I've made. Hopefully people can learn from.

And yeah, man, let's get into it. So one of the things that I saw just in researching you coming on the show, you had a vein of content around this idea of kind of burn the boats, right? And I think that I go both ways on that. I often get stuck in that place. And I hear people from both sides, right? They say, hey, burn the boats, go all in on something. Don't give yourself that exit and, or, uh, out. And then I've heard from people that I have as much respect for as those that, that viewpoint that are like, got to have a backup plan.

It's about staying in the game, you know, go all in on something, but always know that if that doesn't work, you have something you can fall back on, et cetera. You know, do you fall in my right? And taking your stances more, go all in, burn those boats, don't give yourself your outer, where do you fall on this? Yeah, I think you have to know yourself really well. So I would say my, from a super young age, I remember I was doing something when I was like 16, 17 years old and I was doing an interview for like a school newspaper or something. And my stance at that point was, I know what I want and I'm going to do it. And I was always super entrepreneurial minded. And so the idea that I would sort of try something, but then maybe end

up at a nine to five, like that made me sick to my stomach even then. And like, you know, today, I could never do it. But you know, I'm in a whole different place now. But I think you have to really know yourself. And if you're somebody who wants to do the corporate thing or the entrepreneurship thing or the solopreneur thing or the investor, whatever you want to do, I would say the most important thing is don't get influenced by other people, by what you see on social media. The dumbest thing I see is you ask someone about what their intention is, what they're doing, and then you peel the onion two or three layers deeper. And you realize it's because of a book they read last week,

or because of a YouTube video they saw. And I'm like, guys, like, you don't make life decisions that are going to take up decades of your life based on something you read last week. So I think you have to know yourself. And then yeah, if you want to go all in on something, I think to a certain extent, it does help to kind of get rid of that parachute and just, just jump and trust that you're going to land on your feet. Yeah. I, my life experience has taken me down that path that you just, that you just described. And I think I, and it's all from my own beats. Every time I look that I found myself in a place where I was unhappy or unsatisfied or just didn't feel connected to the work I was doing, it was always because that was a safe option or an option that I

felt it was, it was the status I was looking for. That was what I thought I had to do, if that makes sense. Right. And I, and I'll give you an example. I was the chief marketing officer for a technology company inside the insurance industry. And we built this whole secondary brand as a way to build community. And I really want to get into that part of it. And everything was great. And then I had a bit of a falling out with the CEO and I don't need to get into all the details there, but basically six days after I put on this 815 person conference, it was like a highlight of my career. Six days later, I get fired and I'm in a place where my, I guess you could say status in that industry was on the rise and I'm feeling, and I took this position at a company that

I knew wasn't a good cultural fit. I didn't particularly care for the product, but the company's brand had this status. And it was like to be the CMO for that company, you know, and the money. And it was like, it wasn't what I wanted to do. It wasn't bringing me passion, but it felt like this safe option that also increased my and it was a mess from day one and every minute that I was there I was not engaged I felt it was friction I just couldn't you know I couldn't where the previous work I like couldn't wait to get up in the morning and start going this was like dragging myself into the into into the job. And, um, so I guess getting, getting into

the deeper part of that, if you're working with an entrepreneur or someone comes to you and says, Hey, you know, you've had so much success. How do you, how does someone, or how would you advise someone to figure out like that, that this is the thing they should go all in on? How do you actually get to that where you're not just watching some Instagram video and going, I want her life or I want his life? You know what I mean? Like, how do you start to figure out what that thing really is? So, so many decisions that we make are in retrospect based on status. And wow, like that leads to so much unhappiness. And then the years just go by. I mean, I have friends, I'm sure you do too, who are lawyers and doctors and doing all kinds of things that maybe you're great on the outside, but then you talk to them and it's like,

yeah, I really just wanted to open a store that where I can sell baseball cards. And that was always my thing. And it's like, why didn't you ever, you know, you're 46 years old. Like, why didn't you do that when you were 32? And so that, that like, those are the saddest stories to me, you know, my version of that. And I could totally relate to that moment, I'm sure it was heart-wrenching when you get fired after you climb the summit. My version of that is, I, for the first, I don't know, 10, 12 years of my, quote unquote, real business career, was just mesmerized by the Silicon Valley tech crunchification of the culture where like all that mattered was raising capital, having a startup, hustle culture, you know, how much did you raise and what valuation? And it was like, you know, being in Y Combinator, like all those things which have value for some

people in some areas of life, but by and large have no reflection of business success. Like, you know, that that's a phenomenon of the last 20 years. And if you go to people who are like over the age of 50 or 60, like, wait, like that's not business. People that built a hundred million dollar companies 50 years ago, never raised from Sequoia capital. Like that wasn't, you know, that wasn't part of the culture. And once I sort of got out of that in retrospect, and it's totally cool because like, I actually did accomplish a lot in that time that helps me today. But I wonder how many people are going through their 20s and maybe their 30s even just doing something going through the motions because they think that's the way to do it and you know fortunately now with the benefit of hindsight I can call it out pretty quickly

and I hope that there are people out there calling it out for their younger selves looking back and saying hey man you know maybe you shouldn't be doing this, and here's why. Do you think that you need that time? When I talk to people who seemingly are really dialed in, so I'm 43 years old, the people that are really dialed in, say, late 30s to early 40s that I come across, a lot of them share this story of earlier in their career, they didn't make that big entrepreneurial leap at 23 and start, you know, learn how to code and build all these things and, you know, take that. They did, they made this decision. They said, I think I'm supposed to be here. And they kind of had to grind through those years of being unsatisfied, feeling what it's like to be the low man on the totem pole of not being able to,

you know, not feeling like you're heard in meetings or having a boss that just, you know, kind of dictates your life to you. Like, do you think as much as I would love to go back and tell my 25 year old self, hey, once you learn how to sell an insurance, take that and go build your own thing. Don't wait a decade to do that. Right. Cause I ultimately did found my own startup and I exited from it and everything, but, but I was, I was doing that at 38 years old. You know, I don't know that I could have done that at 38 without the previous say 15 years of just highs and lows and being fired and situations I love situations I hated. So do you think that time is necessary? And it's almost like, it's almost like fantasizing that you would be a better version?

Or do you think that you can still get to a great place if you don't take this path of understanding what it means to be completely unsatisfied with your work? Well, so to answer the kind of end part of that question, I think there are way too many people and there are way too many people and there are way too many signals in our culture that give the illusion that people have things figured out when they're like 18 years old. And if you don't have everything in order by the time you're 22, like you're lost. Your 20s are a time to make a thousand mistakes that you look back on in your 30s. I turned 40 last year. And looking back and just realizing all the stuff that happened and what you learned from it. So I do think that's totally normal and fine. And at some point, probably in your early to mid 30s, I guess it happened for you where you sort of pick things up and get on a path where you just said. Number one, adversity, hardship, grinding, getting fire,

all that stuff happening, especially in your 20s, is awesome. You want the adversity. You don't want to be fragile. You don't want to break down and crumble when bad stuff happens because whatever bad stuff you think is happening in your 20s, believe me, worse stuff happens in your 30s and 40s. Great stuff happens too, of course, but you want to have that anti-fragile shell that does not crack under pressure. And you get that through hard grinding so that when the time comes where stuff gets really hard, you're like, this is fine. I've dealt with it. Yeah, it's fine. I've dealt with that. There are problems that come up today where people, my employees will come up to me, my team members, and they'll say, oh shoot, there's a problem with this client and this.

It's like, that's fine. I've done that 15 times. No problem. So that's great. The other thing is the experience you have can actually relate to stuff that happens later on, even if it's not like the same problem. But there's one thing you said that I want to crack into, and that is it's okay to deal with stuff and to be in an industry where you're having to eat. Can I swear on the show? I don't know. Okay, it's okay to eat shit like that's fine. As long as it's the shit that you don't mind the taste of that bad. You know, I say to people do the stuff like do

the stuff where the good stuff you love and the bad stuff you don't mind that much. And that's basically what the greatest like that. That's the greatest stuff that there is in life. Yeah. I couldn't agree with that more. I think finding a space that you want to be in a shitty position in the right space is so much more productive to your career than a better position in a space that you really don't have any interest in. And I, and I've seen so many friends who, you know, now again, in their mid thirties and or early forties are finding who they are, finding what they want to do, breaking out, which is wonderful. Right.

And, but they spent a lot, a lot of time and they find themselves a little more behind the eight ball because they took a position that sounded good, that made mom or dad happy or their friends happy, or they thought they could get a better girlfriend or whatever because they took this position, right? They could tell people I'm a VP here or I'm a managing director of this, but they hated it. The career wasn't what they wanted to do. And even some of them made great money, but all that time, you're just completely disinterested in the topic. You're just doing the work. And now when they make that transition, they feel like they're almost starting from scratch, where equally I have friends who took crap jobs seemingly, right? Started at the very bottom of the barrel, worked themselves up in spaces.

And even if they're now starting their own thing, they have all these connections, this network, this experience in the space, and they can really make it their own. So I agree with that. I think if you've never had a really terrible boss, how do you know how to be a good boss, right? If you've only ever moved into positions where you felt comfortable or it was easy, if you've never been in that position where the guy looked at you and just, you just knew they couldn't stand you or she couldn't stand you. Like you don't know how to grow from that or what you would do better. It's so true. I'll tell you something. This is like an awesome, you just reminded me when I was in college, I remember I got a business degree, but I also got a music degree. I was a musician growing up. And I remember in college, we had

this one, uh, like one session was we had to basically pair up with like four other people and write a song and perform it or whatever. And there were so many people in the class complaining that, oh, my, you know, this, my partner doesn't know how to write this. And I'm, you know, I'm in a group that's not as good as me. And I remember at the end of the session, the professor said, guys, if you're complaining about the fact that the people you're working with aren't exactly jiving with you, you have to understand that's the whole point of this project because you have to learn how to deal with the crap, with the politics, with the personalities. That's all it

is. It's not that the people that are most successful have just the perfect team, the perfect boss, the perfect customers. It's that they have the agility to deal with everything. And that's why they rise to the top. That's the number one comment or question or vein of questioning that I have with team members who they get into one of those situations where they start complaining about everybody, you know, right? Like Tammy doesn't listen to me and John just does whatever he wants. And Steve's making comments on Slack that I don't, and I'm like, wait a minute, let's just take it back. If you have problems with all these people, you think that they're all jerks

or maybe there's something you do or just the way you frame how they approach you that is actually causing the problem. And too often, I feel like we do not, we always want to put it out on other people. I'm doing my best. Why don't you understand? And why are you treating me this way? Right? When oftentimes, and most often the case is something I'm doing or some, in some way that I'm framing or, or not hearing someone or not communicating what my expectations are. Right?

So as when you're talking to early stage entrepreneurs, and I see this very early a lot of times with entrepreneurs, their first few hires are friends, whoever, and at the beginning, it's great. And then six months comes around, the struggle becomes real. We're addressing real problems. And now all of a sudden, we start to have friction. How do early entrepreneurs start to communicate their message? What are some of the exercises or, or, or mental models that you use to kind of reframe yourself in those early challenges and communicating that down to the team? Yeah, man. I mean, I've made a lot of mistakes there. I was just having a conversation. I was

at a dinner last night and someone said, what's your framework for hiring? And I think I've gotten better at it over time. So some mistakes that I made early on, and this is a very, a lot of people struggle with this is they become very, very friendly and they think about work as a family. And so then the problem is like, you're not going to fire your sister or this woman that you hire that feels like a sister to you. So I do think it's imperative as a boss to have some separation between like, I, yes, I want to be nice, but more importantly, I want to be kind. And if this is not the right job for you, it is unkind of me. I mean, put aside the fact that it's bad for business, bad for profit, bad for customer, all that stuff. It's unkind for me to waste the next year and a half of your life when I know that this is not a job that you're going to thrive in. You're not getting promoted. There's no path for you here. It's really unkind. So I feel like that approach to it puts you at least in a mindset where you can do your job. And yeah, if you've got friends and you hear these stories about like this guy fired his mom and like that kind of stuff does happen. I've had to have some very unpleasant firings. And I've also had to have some unpleasant quittings where

people are great people. They like me, they like the company, but this is just not the path they want to be on. I think separating it out and not trying to be the nice guy, the nice gal, and instead really take your responsibility seriously as a leader is where you have to start. If you don't have that mindset, it's really hard to do the job. Yeah. I just did a solo episode for the show a couple of weeks ago that was all around Jordan Peterson's eighth rule of his 12 rules for life. I'm a big Jordan Peterson fan and it's a tell the truth, or at least don't lie. And the, in that video, I told a story about, uh, one of my very early employees at my company. Uh, she was wonderful. She was a driver. She was type a, and for the first, she was actually my first employee. And for the first employee, she was a monster, right?

Just, I mean, I can just dump tasks on her and she just got them done. I mean, it was amazing. I mean, you know, I was like, God, if all my employees were like, we're going to be great. Right. And in the early days we were, and then as we started to grow and we ultimately got to 27 employees at our peak, um, her communication style broke down to the point where she was overbearing. She didn't stay in her lane. She tried to take on this boss role and departments that weren't hurt, et cetera. And the mistake and what I tell them in the, in the video and what I talk about in that episode is that I never had the hard conversation. I hadn't, I was, I didn't want to lose her productivity. I liked her one-on-one as a person and thought she was a good person. And I think sometimes, and this was the point as entrepreneurs, we always,

one of our superpowers often tends to be that we see opportunity in everything and everyone. So I always saw all the good things about her and didn't have the guts to sit her down and say, you're wonderful at these things. You're really struggling with these and we need to work on these things. And, and ultimately I had to let her go and not cause she just created too many problems. And in her exit interview, she literally said, I didn't know these were problems. Now, some of that is exit interview talk, but I also think that there was some truth in there. And, you know, think about how you can lose an A player simply because I didn't have the guts

to tell her the truth about the places that she needed to improve. And I guess, was she in sales? She would, no, she was our head of operations. She was in, ultimately what happened was she started to step into sales, started to step into service. And those department heads were like, this isn't your place. Like, what are you doing here?

And she thought because she had been there for so long that she knew everything about the company. And, you know, long story short, I could have cut that off very early. And I just didn't have the guts to communicate it. And that was a lesson. I don't make that mistake anymore. But I lost an A player on my team because I simply didn't communicate with her properly. So I want to spin that to your book and the topics in your book. And ultimately, how are we as entrepreneurs?

A ton of entrepreneurs listening to this show. A ton of business leaders, a lot of small business owners, right? So a lot of people who will be the face of their brand, they will be the one creating content. They will be the one sharing messages. So we've kind of talked a little bit about entrepreneurship in general and maybe internal communication.

And I'm sure some of what you talk about in the book and can be applied to internal. But I found the best way to get rid of those conversations was to build such a strong brand around the company that my employees either bought in or bought out. So how do we start to do that? What is that first step? Where do we start to look when we're like, look, I got this project. I got this product. I have this service I want to deliver. I know I can do it. I'm burning the boats. I'm going all in. Now, how the hell do people know what I'm doing? Where do we start there? By the way, Ryan, I love the angle you're taking with this because I've done a bunch of podcasts. I've talked so much about the book, but the angle you're going in with this with is that the marketing superpowers, and I'll tell you about the book in a second, it talks really about

how to build a brand so good that getting customers feels like magic. The other side of that is getting employees feels like magic too, getting team members, getting suppliers. So when you understand marketing superpowers from a customer facing side, Yes, it helps with revenue, but it helps with everything else. I can tell you so many offshoots, but so the, the answer to your question. So the book is called marketing superpowers and the theme of it, you know, I spent the last 10 years working with over 20,000 influencers, content creators, YouTubers, people like Kim Kardashian, people like Mr. Beast, uh, and, and Mr. Beast, and thousands of others that you've never heard of because they're super, super niche. And in that time, I've really studied and gotten down to the grain of what makes these people so magnetic. How do they build audiences?

How do they build communities? And then we took all the lessons and that's what we do at my agency Influicity. We help brands build customer communities. And what it comes down to is what I call the movement formula, which is you have to have a unifying belief. You've got to have one singular belief that your brand, that your message is based on. You've got to have number two, faith builders. And faith builders are all the things that bring faith to your beliefs. So like studies, data, testimonials, books that have been written, events that happen, experts.

You know, you mentioned like Jordan Peterson is a phenomenal guy. He has such a movement. Like he has single-handedly forklifted this movement of his and the books and the study and everything he does, like awesome examples there. And the third step is action, which is that when you get people to believe something and have faith in it, there's got to be some action. And in the case of a business, it's usually buy my product, use my service, sign up to my newsletter, whatever that is. So, you know, there's a hundred reasons why that gets

customers. And that, that, that is the foundation of building a 10, 20, $30 million business and up. How does it help with employees? It helps because when you have this movement, it attracts other people. So in my own business, you you know i make a lot of content i'm the face of my brand of my agency in fluicity and we have people emailing us all the time saying i'd love to work with you guys i'd love what you're doing i love the kind of stuff you do with clients like we don't even have to post on job boards because people come in and they understand on day one like you either get it or you don't and you kind of have to drink the kool-Aid if it's not for you, that's cool. But if it is for you, we're like the best in the world at what we do. And when you have that,

it just gives you such an unfair advantage. Yeah. So it's funny. I was just at a conference this week and one of the topics that came up, it was in the insurance industry. And one of the major topics that came up was hiring. And this like, harumph around the room went around, around, there's, it's so hard to find good talent. And I was sitting on a panel. And I just said, I'm probably alone in this. I don't understand what you're talking about. Like, I literally, I don't get what you're saying. Like you're saying it's hard to find talent. There are good people, literally like they're, they're dying to find a place that they can connect to. Cause at our, at our agency, I had a digital national insurance agency. My, my, my career has always been in the businesses I built inside the insurance industry. And I said, we didn't spend money

on hiring. We didn't go out and get a single recruiter. We had a hundred person waiting list. And that's not a joke. At any given time, we were between 90 and 110 people waiting to apply for a job, literally just on a wait list. And we would send them an email every month about the available positions. And we'd say, hey, we have a new account manager, account manager position opening. And everyone who is interested in an account manager position, you know, reapply because now it's open. And we would get people who would come onto that list, who would reach out to us. And they would sit on that list for six months. And then when a position would become open, they would apply for it. And so this audience of people is looking at me and I can tell they're like, this guy's

full of shit, right? Like this is all just marketing gobbledygook. So I explained, I'm like, do you know why? I was like, because we'd 347 videos on our YouTube channel for our insurance agency. Like people knew exactly the type of work we were doing and the individuals that didn't want our style of business, they simply didn't apply because it was obvious the way that we operated. This was a, if there's 125 people, this is like a kind of a masterminding thing. If there's 125 people in that room, 120 of them did not understand what I was saying.

Why do you think that is? Why? And I, and I struggle with this. This is a very honest question, not rhetorical. Why is it that so many business owners who have so much faith and belief in what they do, do not prioritize talking about how their business operates at all? Like, like they just, they act as if that means nothing. And when, and they just don't, they don't do anything for recruiting until the moment they

need someone. And then they try to go to a hundred miles an hour from zero. And I just, I was, I want to say I was shocked, but I really wasn't at just how much they could not connect with what I was saying. Why do you think that is? And for those who are listening going, all right, I'm sold now, what can they start doing there? How does that start to work? I'll tell you exactly why that is, because people completely misunderstand an undervalued brand. Brand means something. Brand actually means everything. The problem is that brand means a lot at the very beginning and low end of the market, that brand means a lot at the very beginning and low end of the market. And it means a lot at the high end of the market and everybody in the middle,

which is like 90% of us don't understand how brand works. So let me, let me break down what I mean by that. Your brand when, when it's done right is the most powerful thing. I mean, you're describing it like the fact that you can say we had hundreds of videos. And by the way, I love the fact that you're talking about an insurance company because people think that when I talk about this stuff, I'm just talking about makeup and fashion and like cars. This is not for passion projects. This is for most of our clients that in Fluicity are people like it's insurance, it's banking,

it's construction materials, it's home builders, because those are the ones that really need to build brand. So having a brand where people hear your name, you know, when you mentioned Jordan, Jordan Peterson, I know exactly what you're talking about. I know that I get the vibe. I get the, the life message. Like I totally understand the brand and someone like that doesn't need to run ads that say, Hey, here's what I believe in. Like, no, no, it's magnetic. If you know it, you just know it. And there's so many personalities like this, personality-driven brands in our society.

And everybody in the middle is just focused on, what can I do today to drive a dollar of revenue tomorrow? So they never invest in their brand. Why would I spend seven hours making video content for my YouTube? What's that going to equate to in dollars? And so we see this across the board, and people have no understanding of brand. Now, what's that going to equate to in dollars? And so we see this across the board and people have no, uh, have no understanding of brand. Now what's the exception? Where do people

really understand it? They understand it before they ever start a business and they have the luxury of spending one, two, three years going hard on YouTube, making that podcast, getting big on Tik TOK. And then they realize like, Oh my God, I actually have a fan base of following a community. My brand means something. That's cool. And then at the very high end of the market, when you're Nike, Starbucks, Tesla, of course they all have brands because they have multi-billion dollar budgets. But like everyone in the middle there, the people that really need it just never invest in their brand. And that's why they don't get it when you talk about it. How do you get past with your clients? I'm not good on camera, or I feel uncomfortable talking in front of people or because when I share my story, and I do a lot of keynotes, as well.

Oftentimes, they want me to come in and talk about sales marketing and things I've done. I like those topics. They're like core to who I am, but I I've kind of shifted a little more towards, uh, how do I want to say this? I've never met an entrepreneur and had him complain about tactics or her complaint about tactics, right? It's always more, I wasn't good at communicating with my team. I didn't build a brand early enough. We didn't see this market pivot coming. I wasn't able to, my health wasn't in the right place. These are the things that you hear about from entrepreneurs.

The tactical stuff is kind of figures out itself. And my reason for saying that is like, they get so caught in the tactical aspects of how do I look on camera? What camera am I using? What platform should I put this on? And they, they never actually engage in the work. How do you, how do you push them to get past these? I mean, I think to people like you and I were so comfortable being on camera, it may feel very trivial, but it would be dishonest to say that this isn't a real issue for people. So how do you start to push them past that point? Yeah. So there's all kinds of limiting beliefs and some of them are legit. Like you just actually

don't want to be on camera. And some of them are completely made up in your mind. Um, the, the thing that I would say, first of all, is you can make content in all kinds of form factors. I mean, yes, you can speak on stage, you can write, you can write long form, short form, you can do audio. So there's a hundred ways to communicate your message. And I think people who say, well, I don't want to do that in any form whatsoever. That's just a self-limiting belief that you don't actually think you have any value to give. Cause if you thought you had value to give, you'd put it on paper, you'd put it on audio, you'd figure it out somehow. And the other piece of it is that you do, you do have to realize that a lot of people who don't have natural abilities have figured out their own way and people love them for their quirks. I mean, like, look at people like there's so many examples of

folks, you know, Jordan Peterson's a good good one he's completely not like by any standard measure a good speaker like it's very hard to understand he's very slow sometimes look at someone like ben shapiro who's got one of the biggest podcasts in the world speaks a mile a minute like that guy talks so fast about such complex things and like if you try to do that on a news channel or like daytime television that wouldn't work and by the same token if you try to do that on a news channel or like daytime television, that wouldn't work. And by the same token, if you try to take someone who's used to doing like four minute videos and have them do a Joe Rogan style interview, they'd be like, I can't talk for three hours. So a lot of this stuff is just finding the format that works for you. If you're really good at short form, long form, like figure out what your thing is and make that your commit to doing it. Guys, please listen to what John just said. Like take this in that, that is the core of getting

past this hurdle. Like rewind the show. If you need to listen to it again, this, this is the core in my opinion. And I just couldn't agree with you more. There's no answer. Like, this is the part that I think people get hooked up on is like, they're, they, they think it has to be the way you do it or the way I do it or the way their favorite in, you know, candle maker influencer does it or Etsy store specialist, you know, whatever it like, those are, they figured out the way it makes sense for them. Yours could be, I follow this guy and I'll give you, I'll give everyone an example. I follow this guy on Instagram. Um, I always forget his name because I just follow his handle or whatever, but he talks about finance issues,

and he talks about them while he's walking with this upshot. Everything about the way he does the video technically would be considered wrong. If it's raining, he's just talking, and you can hear the background. Sometimes it's raining, he's, he's just talking, you know, and you can hear the background. It's sometimes it's windy, but he's, he has these topics and they're two to three minutes long and it's while he's on a walk and everything about it is wrong, except for they're phenomenal. And he gets thousands of likes and, you know, hundreds of thousands of views on these videos. And if you were to like, technically tell someone how to do it, you would never tell them to do it this way. So my point is like it guys rewind that section. This is, this is so good. Like this is so good. All right. So we've gotten them past that. They're, they figured out their way, right? Whatever, whatever their way

is, they figured out their way. How do they actually start to create some influence? How do they actually start to grab people? Uh, you know, and again, let's keep it in the context for purposes of not making your job easy for some, a small business owner, uh, you know, someone who does plumbing or has a bookstore or something, not some big, crazy Maserati influencer brand where, you know, I got, you know, champagne on a car. How does an everyday business owner, they've gotten past this thing, what's the next thing they need to start thinking about and framing how they create content? The first thing I would say, I'll answer that in two parts. The first thing I would say is mindset. You have to set yourself up from the beginning

to understand the expectations. In the second chapter of the book in marketing superpowers, and by the way, you can get this free marketing superpowers book.com. The first four chapters are up there for free. So if you don't even want to buy the book, just grab those free chapters. I talk about this concept of the axis of influence. And I say, you need basically two things for, to have any level of influence. You need reach. And the second thing you need is KLT, which stands for known, liked, and trusted. You've got to have any level of influence, you need reach. And the second thing you need is KLT, which stands for known, liked, and trusted. You've got to have some amount of reach and people have to know, like, and trust you. And then effectively it's a matter of kind of getting up the axis. And there's a visual, again, you can get it at marketing superpowers book.com. So John guys,

for you guys listening at home, I'll have, if you don't go directly, cause you forget the URL, just go to the show notes page and I'll have all these links and wherever you're listening, if you're listening on iTunes or YouTube, just go to the description. I'll have all the links. Awesome. So once you have, once you understand how influence grows mechanically, you've got to set yourself up for a bit of a long-term, like don't think to yourself, I'm going to post four videos and evaluate myself. No, no, you're going to post a hundred videos and then you're going to evaluate yourself or you're going to write a hundred blogs. Talk to anybody who has a successful podcast like yourself. They've done hundreds of episodes, right? Joe Rogan guys started making content. I think it was like 2008 or nine with 2000 listeners. And now he's got 11 million an episode. Like it takes time. So number one is expectation setting is so important. And number two is just think about who your ideal, the ICP, the ideal customer profile. So talk to one person. If you are a

plumber and you serve suburban homes, generally it's a mom and a dad and a young kid, young families, like, okay, cool. Like look at your last 50 customers, your last 20 customers and say, if I'm just talking to Becky on, uh, you know, Smythe street, like what does Becky want to know about? She wants to know about how to, how to get the hot water going a little faster. Maybe she's just, you know, turns this, uh, cord and all of a sudden that gets the hot water. She doesn't have to call me for that. Like, that's the kind of stuff that Becky wants to know.

I'm going to make content like that every single day. And I'm going to get all these people, just like you said, this finance guy that you follow because he's making content as he walks. Literally the next time you're on a job site, pick up your iPhone for 14 seconds and just film yourself doing something. And that's how you start making content. Yeah. How produced do you think it needs to be today? Today, and we're here in mid 2024, it actually is better if it's less produced. That's the trend that we're in. You know, like we talked about, you sort of alluded to this, but like, think about the content Alex

Hormozy was making when he first started. Right. And I knew Alex back in like, you know, 16, 17. And it was like literally him in a white room, like he was making a hostage video, right? And like that, that popped off. That's the kind of stuff that's sort of coming back. It's the raw content. It's the guy sitting in the driver's seat of his car because he's got 30 seconds of quiet while his kids are out playing soccer. He picks up his iPhone and he starts making videos. So, you know, today the technology that we carry in our pockets is actually good enough to make the content. And that's the trend that we're in. pockets is actually good enough to make the content. And that's the trend that we're in.

Now, of course, if you've got fancy studios like you and I do, cool. But you do not need that. That's not a barrier. The best part is if you saw everything outside of the frame, you would not think it's fancy. So guys at home, and it's funny. So I kind of, since the podcast kind of really just like you said been grinding for years about six months ago uh podcast started to for whatever reason pop off and we're doing great and it's awesome very blessed and happy uh but all i really did was like put some

lights up and frame it a little better and be like oh where'd you go like what where's your new studio and i'm like it's literally in my unfinished basement. And if you saw everything outside the frame, like, it's not that sexy because it doesn't need to be like, I don't need to have some, you know, seventh story in downtown, wherever I live place, you know, it doesn't need to be that. And I think what people get, um, and again, this is why I'm so interested in this particular one. I think they look at say what Chris Williamson is doing. I mean, just epic backdrop, panning shots, cuts, you know, all these things. And they're like, I can't do that. That's like a million dollar production. You know what I mean? And you don't need it. I mean, I'm assuming, I mean, you're, you look great. You sound great. You got the cool, you know,

the little light. I mean, you can get those lights on Amazon for like 25 bucks that create the colors and you know, and, but, but it looks amazing and it looks pro and it, I. Dude, I'll give it to you. You want it? I'll give it to you. Yeah, please. Yeah. I've got, I've got two, I've got my iPhone up and I've got one camera cost me 400 bucks. It's a Logitech face cam, I think. And literally the lighting you see behind me, yeah, there's like six lights. I think it was 130 bucks at Home Depot. Yeah.

And it took me a weekend. And like, and I did this and I, and you're a hundred percent right. You do not need to spend a lot of money on this. We're in the golden age of making content. Yes. Yeah, I completely agree. So I just, I like to, sometimes I like to talk about these things because I feel like these little barriers,

once people get past these, then you see this snowball effect. But it's, it's that first push and all these fears of, I'm so worried about people are going to think I'm unprofessional or whatever. And we, what, 500 million people viewed a guy drinking ocean spray on his longboard on his way to work with a song. And now he's a celebrity. Like there was nothing about that video that was professionally done. I mean, he's literally just longboarding and I always forget his name, but, and people probably remember that video, but like that dude had been creating for a long time. That wasn't like, he just randomly put that up.

That guy had been creating. If you go back and look at his history, he was a creator and that video just for whatever reason captured him as a person and he's talked about it on interviews. And now all of a sudden he's got brand deals, he's investing. So I think it's just, I just want to get, I know we're spending a lot of time here and I have a couple more things I want to hit on, but I do think that for, I know a lot of people that listen to this show, they're, they're so interested in these topics and they so want to up their creation game, but they get caught on some of these little early things. Is there anything else that you find that you would put in this category of, uh,

real obstacles, but easily hurtled over if we just get our mindset, right? Dude, it's all up here. I'm pointing to my head. Like there's so much of it that like you said, like, oh, I don't have the lighting. I don't have the, I don't look like a diary of a CEO. And you know, like all these things that are just totally limiting beliefs.

And what you have to tell yourself is the stuff, like the stuff that you're seeing out there that works, the next thing that works is going to look totally different. So make that your North Star. And to your point, like the guy on the surfboard, I was making content. So I have a really big audience on LinkedIn. And I was making content on LinkedIn for, I think, like a year and a half. I had people DMing me saying, John, are you okay?

Why are you writing on LinkedIn every day? Is everything okay? Because they were like, what's going on all of a sudden. And it took me about a year and a half to get to the point where I had that post that hit 200,000 views. And that was my takeoff. And people think, oh, you post something on LinkedIn now and you get 500 likes. Yeah, guys, because I spent two years honing my craft and getting good at it. It just takes time. Yeah. That, that I couldn't agree more. I, so I've built in the insurance industry, two different YouTube channels for two different agencies. One I didn't know. And in one I did that, uh, have done over half a million views in a year.

Now for the insurance industry talking about what is general liability insurance, that's a decent number of views because it's insurance, right? But I get all the time people, particularly in that space and other small business owners that reach out to me and they're like, how did you do that? I want to do this. And who else has done it? And I'm like, one, and this is real, no one else has done it ever in the insurance industry. And the reason is exactly what you described. No one wants to kind of, uh, I think Seth Godin wrote the book, the dip, right? No one wants to survive the dip. They love that initial burst. Oh, Hey, John, you're creating videos now. That's awesome.

Right. And we get all this little buzz. And then that seventh video after the initial, like you're creating now gets a 10th of what those first couple. And you're like, it doesn't work anymore. It's broken videos. Not for me. Right. And, and, and it's like, so what advice can you give to people to help them get through that dip period, that period where the initial buzz, you know, it always looks the same. Every chart. When I look at people's YouTube channels or, or whatever, it's a, you know, this ramp and then this, this line that just comes down and they always quit in that spot. How do we get them through that? How do you help your clients get

through that point where there's that lull in growth? Yeah, right. My version of that is the line like, oh, they changed the algorithm. I've been shadow banned. I'm not getting the likes. No, your content is just shit now and it wasn't before, right? I still spend, even with the audience I have on, on the different platforms, I still spend two, three, four hours crafting a piece of content because I want it to be at that level of quality. It doesn't just happen automatically. And even when you get to the point, by the way, like, I don't care if you're Taylor Swift or Kim Kardashian or Oprah, it makes no difference. You have high points, you have low points, and you have points where think about the ego hit that it would take if you were number one on the billboard charts or whatever. And then your next song was number 72.

Like, and here's the thing you might think, oh, that's embarrassing. I'll tell you why it's not embarrassing because no one is sitting in their room going, oh my goodness. Yes. This person finally came down. Like They just don't notice. If you were number one and now you're number 70, people think you're just taking a break. No one actually has it in for you. And the ones that do, the four people that have it in for you are losers. Don't worry about them. The way I go into it with clients, and fortunately, our clients are generally kind of mid-stars or larger companies, so they have a little more of an appetite for this. But if you're new to this, you got to tell yourself there's, you got to set

yourself up for the failure before it happens. So when I like, I'll give you a very concrete example. When I make a podcast, make a YouTube video, uh, write a post for LinkedIn or Twitter or whatever my, my mindset going in is okay., if no one sees this, cool. I'm glad I did it because I learned something. If 20 people see this, that's great. If one person DMs me and says, hey, I really like that, that's awesome. And then if in the end what happens is like a thousand people message you and a million people see it, that's called gravy.

That's not the expectation though. You need to go into it. The line I use is do it because you're selfish. Do it because you want to do it for yourself and everything else that happens is just bonus. That is literally what I say to people when they ask me why I do the podcast. So I live in Albany, New York. It's a great place to raise kids. It is not a bastion of innovation, high growth, high achievement, right? It, it tends to be a place more that people come after they've had those things and they want like a little quieter

life. Like there just tends to be what's here. So, like so many of my buddies are like, why do you do this podcast? Like, why do you waste your time on that? Like you could be golfing or you could be doing this. And now that I don't love golf, I love golf, but like, you know, I, I do this instead. And they're like, they're like, why? And I was like, dude, I get to have, I selfishly get to have these amazingly intelligent people from all these different walks of life. Like I just had this guy, Dr. Tom Mayer on the show a couple episodes ago. He's the head of the NFL PA. He's already the director of medicine for the NFL PA this guy like has worked with every major retired athlete and and help them through things like post

concussion syndrome and all these things and I had concussions in football so here here's guys to this selfish point and I know I'm probably talking too much but it's my show I love it man keep going I get to do whatever I want right so, here's my point is that selfishly, when you do these things, I'm talking to the, to one of the guys who knows as much or more about concussions in the entire world, right? He, this is, he dealt with this his entire life. I had three concussions, my senior season of football, and I had a football scholarship and I lost it because of that. So always in the back of my mind, I did my senior, senior thesis in college about concussions. So I got to have a conversation for free with a guy for an hour who has all the knowledge on this topic of something that I think about and worry about every day of my life.

Like that's why. Now it turns into great content and people who've been in sports. And, you know, I got all these messages from people who are like, you know, I, I got a concussion in baseball or basketball or whatever they did. And that was great. So, so that's wonderful. Right. It builds the brand, but to your point, like find that selfish thing that you want to learn. Right. I freaking guys go back. This is, this is the kind of stuff that gets you through this. I'm so glad you're here, like coming off this conference. Like I'm so fired up on this topic. Like, uh, I know we said we'd go like 30 minutes. We're way past that. No, man, this is awesome. Let me, let me add a piece to

that. So the secret to like, I I've done 140 episodes of my podcast and the majority of it, and we're doing okay in the charts, but we're not like a number one podcast yet. Check out making it with John Davids, if you like that kind of stuff. But the, the reason I have that podcast and the longevity of it, even if I have three listeners, I get to have conversations with people that I would never have an excuse to talk to. I mean, I have on my podcast in two weeks, I don't want to say the name, but I've got a very famous television personality in the business category that I just want to have a conversation with. If nobody listens, I couldn't care less because I get to do that.

And that's my mentality throughout this whole thing. And yes, when you have that kind of passion and excitement, people are glad to listen because it's magnetic. It's people just can't stop listening when they hear that passion. And then, and this is the part, guys, then people that believe what John believes, they follow him, they listen to him because they like the way he asks questions or they like the way you frame topics or the type of people

that you bring in or how you present their information. And then they go, well, geez, if John is so good at podcasting and I love the way he thinks about things, I might actually want to work with him because if he, this is the way he thinks, then he can actually, he actually thinks like me. And now we might be good partners to work together to get my brand to the next level through, through his company. And that's marketing. I mean, that's like the whole, like, this is the part I couldn't get through to anyone during this conference was when you are, and I want to get your take on these words. This is where this question is going is around some of these words

that I think are a little overused. And sometimes people get like authentic, authenticity and transparency. But when you do those things from a place of good, uh, from a place of they're, they're real to who you are. Employees self-select in self-select out customers, self-select in self-select out. Like all of a sudden that, that big spend on D like people wonder why I had one of the lowest cost of acquisitions in the industry when I was growing my age. And I said, because we created so much content that people literally just choose us. Like they just chose us because they knew who we were.

If no one knows who you were, then you have to pay to get in front of them to tell them who you are. And so coming back to my question, a lot of the people that I see who, who do actually do the work, but never get the lift. It's like, they're trying to be something that they're not. They're trying. I like John. I like the way he does his thing. I'm going to do it like him, even though it's not actually my native style. So how do you think about some of these words? And, and, you know, where do you put them on the value chain of actually creating? Yeah, you're like, you're singing my song right now. Because this, this was like, I created content, honestly, I'll get real here. I created content starting in 2013. And it wasn't until

like 1890. I mean, really, like COVID, like 2020 or 2021 that I really started to get good. And I saw, I saw the return. And honestly, like I look back at the early stuff, I was trying to be Gary Vee. I was trying to be, you know, Ryan Seacrest. I was trying to talk like this. I just, I didn't know what I didn't know. And so I, I just, my training was just trying to be all these different people.

And was that sustainable? Was I believable? Of course not. A, I'm never going to be as good as the person who is that person. No one wants reheated leftovers. And second of all, it wasn't true to who I am. Like I am, I'm only myself. I only am passionate in the things that I'm interested in.

I'm only going to, for over the long term, want to talk about things that I want to talk about. The podcast that I do, this content that I write, is stuff that I, again, selfishly want to do. And the passion comes through. I'm not faking it. When I sit here with you right now, and I'm interested, and my arms are moving, and I'm like, I'm loving the fact we've been going 52 minutes. This is amazing. I just enjoy doing this. And so that's what comes through. And that's what people have to remember. Don't try to do something for status or because this is how someone else does it be yourself. And yeah, it might take a year or two years for you to

fall into that perfect groove, but that's the only way to do it. Yeah. So, okay. So this has been phenomenal, uh, guys, the book to me is an obvious purchase. If you're in a place where maybe you want to take it next level, obviously look into John's business. We have a couple of questions that we end the show with, and I think we're in a good place to get to those questions. So the rule is answer them however you want. Not that I think you would do any different based on our conversation, but these can be short, long, however you like, but I like to end with these questions because I think it gives everyone a good framing for who you are. And I think it helps them better understand, you know, is this someone I want to connect with, follow, you know, be part of their

LinkedIn community, be part of what they have going on. So the first question is what, what standard belief, what first principle, what that you refuse to compromise on? Like, what is that first principle, that belief that you just, this one thing, everything could be going crazy. It could be in my best interest to break it, but I just won't. That's changed over time. I would say, I would say where I am right now is I I'm so glad that I make decisions and I sound like a bit of a broken record, but it's true. Cause it's just core to who I am. I'm, I refuse to make decisions based on what somebody else might think would be

the right or the wrong decision for me. And I mean, anybody else, like when you set yourself up to do something because of what Sally in high school might've thought of you or because of what your neighbor, Oh, this is cool. You should drive this car. Like all those decisions are completely, not only irrelevant and useless, no one gives a shit.

No one cares. No one's watching you. You could accomplish all this stuff. No one cares. And by the way, about You could accomplish all this stuff. No one cares. And by the way, about the good and the bad, like I, I wrote this book. It was a huge accomplishment for me. Like, I don't expect people to be applauding me on the street when I, cause I wrote a book, even though that was like cool for me. And if I didn't write the book and it was embarrassing, you know, geez, I tried and I failed at it. Like no one cares about that either. So

do not make decisions about status ever make decisions based on what's best for you, best for your family and best for your own waking moments. When you're falling asleep at night, it makes you feel okay that you made this decision. Absolutely. I love that. Couldn't agree more. What is a commonly held myth about success or personal development that you strongly disagree with that you think is out there that just isn't, isn't something that is real or is overblown that any of the nonsense that you hear about like Elon Musk and Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos means anything. It means absolutely nothing. You can't reverse engineer the success of somebody who had, by the way, a one in a billion success and look at everybody else who is ultra successful. Like look at the guy who's making $200 million a

year or has a net worth of 400 million that you've never heard of, who by the way, has a totally separate path for success than what Buffett and, and, you know, Bezos say. So like all these stories, it's cool. It's nice entrepreneur porn. It means nothing in reality. Yeah, guys, you know, Bezos say. So like all these stories, it's cool. It's nice entrepreneur porn. It means nothing in reality. Yeah, guys, if you, if you, I'm listening to, I'm like almost done with Walter Isaacson's book on Elon. I'm listening to it on tape. You can't recreate his life. You there's like, there's nothing that that guy does. That's applicable. I mean, he's, he's he is a well you said a one in a billion human being and it's amazing and i think we should protect him and i think he's wonderful and i

it drives me nuts when people hate on him obviously not perfect but i think we have to take the go with the bad with how brilliant it is but these are these are one in a million people that's such good advice and by the way and by the way it's not one in a million it's one in a billion because we're talking about like six or seven people but but not only that you not only you know it's one thing to say well what i even want that life put that aside for a second if the thing you want is money cool there's a million ways to make money like you can make lots of money without copying elon musk like it's just not it's not applicable to your life yeah so uh this one last question, um, take this wherever you want. Um, do you, do you have kids? I do two kids. So you can give your kids one piece of advice, one idea, one concept,

one quote, just to hold in their mind as a, as a framework, a foundation, a thing that allows them to be the best version of themselves, right? You just get one. And then, then you can, you can never give them another piece of advice ever again. What is that? What's that one core concept that you would implant in their mind that you think could grow and, and blossom into, into allowing them to be whatever it is that they want to be. Do what makes you happy. Go like happiness is the goal. And the reason I say that is because everyone's going to have trials and tribulations in their teenage years and your 20s. I mean, you can't skip that. Everyone's got fights and friends and whatever happens. But ultimately, especially when you get in your 20s

and 30s, making decisions based on anything other than, hey, this is going to make me happy. I love the good stuff. This gets me up in the morning. This gets me running in the morning and the bad stuff. I don't mind that much. Yeah. It's crap, but like, I don't mind it that much. And it makes me happy. You are going to be so thrilled with your life in 10, 20, 30, 40 years when other people who yeah, have money, have status, have nice car, have this, but are just fricking miserable every day of their life, you are going to win if you optimize for happiness. John, it's been such a pleasure having on your show. I, I've loved this conversation. Tremendously valuable guys. You're going to have to go back and listen to it twice. The stuff that John has shared with you is these are core principles to get into where we need to be with our brand.

And I don't, I honestly don't think we can survive today without a brand. We have to, I think, you know, I'm going to break my own rules. I'm going to ask you one more question. Okay, man, this is just, I think this is important. And again, since it's my show, I can break the rules because I'm the boss. So last question that I have for you here, do you need to have both a business brand and a personal brand if you're an owner or, or, uh, uh, out front person of that company? Do you need to have both? Okay. My, my quick answer to that is grab the book. I talk all about that. Grab Marketing Superpowers. The quick answer is the best brands, the most authentic brands,

the ones that survive the test of time is when it truly is the brand of the founder. So to say you have two different brands or the brands are somehow not connected in some way. No, like the ultimate would be one single brand. Now your brand doesn't need to represent the business in every capacity. Like the stuff I talk about, the stuff people know me for, I tell founder stories, I do business breakdowns. The thing I sell is marketing services. Like I can help you go from 10 million to 50 million. I know how to do that. But am I talking about that 24-7? No, I'm talking about other stuff that is interesting to me and attracts like-minded people.

But ultimately, I'm the same person. I'm not wearing two different hats based on my brands. And that's the reason to go get the book, my friend, so you can learn exactly how to do that. John Davids, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Loved it, Ryan. Thank you. I never switched to no change in me. The only thing changing this season. Close twice as many deals by this time next week. Sound impossible?

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