The School of Greatness - 421 6 Ways to Go Mainstream and Build Your Brand

Episode Date: December 19, 2016

"If you want to get more attention, you've got to be outstanding." - Lewis Howes If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/421

This is episode number 421 on how to take your business and brand mainstream. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome everyone to this episode.

This is going to be more of an entrepreneurial episode. I'm doing this by myself. A lot of you have been asking me about how to build your business and your brand and how to really get more influence and become more mainstream. So I thought I'd talk about the six ways to become more mainstream and build your business and brand by becoming mainstream. And the importance of this for me is huge. There are a lot of my friends that I see who are not doing these things, and I see them suffering long term.

They may make some good money right now. They may be making six or seven figures, but if they're not moving their brand into becoming more mainstream friendly, then they're going to be missing out on huge opportunities to really sustain the momentum, the opportunity to exit in the future, the opportunity to increase their prices more and more, become more attractive to potential leads and clients. So you want to constantly move into this process, whether you do all six or you do one of these, focus on as many as you can in integrating this into your day-to to day business. Again, by me for the last seven, eight years of doing business online, the more and more I focus on becoming mainstream,

the easier it is for me to build my business, the more I attract a bigger audience, generate a bigger email list, build a bigger following and all these things support my overall mission in my business and in my brand. So I hope you guys enjoy these six ways to go mainstream and to build your brand. Let me know what you think over on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, at Lewis Howes. Share this with your friends, lewishowes.com slash 421. If you have any entrepreneurial friends that want to build their business, then share this online with them right now. And without further ado, let's dive into this episode on how to go mainstream.

What's up guys, Lewis Howes here. And in this video, we're going to talk about how to take your brand mainstream. Now, why mainstream? Why do you want to have a bigger, more mainstream brand? Well, a few things, because this is going to help you make more money. It's going to get you premium pricing. It's going to make you bigger speaking fees. It's going to allow you to charge more for the services and products that you have. So the goal is to actually always work towards being mainstream, mainstream friendly, and more well-known, more influential in your industry. So we're going to talk about six key ways to go mainstream to build your business and brand today. Number one, the first key is to write a bestselling book or a noteworthy book. So I've got a book called The School of Greatness

and it's a New York Times bestseller. And the whole strategy around writing a book for me was to become a New York Times bestseller. When I hit the New York Times bestseller. When I hit the New York Times bestseller list, I became instantly more mainstream. More people reached out to me in terms of brand deals. More people reached out to me to sponsor my content online. More people reached out to me to pay me bigger speaking fees. All these things started to come in because of the mainstream credibility. So the first thing would be to write a mainstream book and to do your best to hit the New York

Times bestseller list or to hit any type of bestseller list that you can. Now, obviously, not everyone's going to be able to do that. And you may not want to write a book. And if it's not a book, then you want to have some type of consistent, unique, mainstream content. So you're creating content on a platform that is mainstream, like my podcast, The School of Greatness is on a big platform. It's credible than just being on my blog. So you want to think of how you can take some type of

content and make it mainstream through a book, through consistent content that you post online, but it's got to be unique and it's gotta be high level. So that's number one. Number two, way to go mainstream is to improve your design. Guys, there is such bad design out there for people who have websites and all people's social media design. You've got to increase this.

If you want to be more influential, you've got to look that. You've gotta look the part. You just can't have crappy looking design out there. So if you want to increase your fees, make more money, then increase your design. Spend a good amount of time and energy thinking about how can I be the most unique looking site and have the most unique and qualified looking design out there. Do some research and really set an intention of what do I want to

represent? What does my brand want to represent? Whether it's yourself or your company, how am I going to be more unique or different and at a different level than the rest of your competition? So really invest in finding the right designer or the right design team to support you in crafting your vision and bringing your design to life. Number three, if you want to go mainstream, you need to surround yourself with influencers in your industry. If you want to be more influential, hang out with influential people. It's that simple. When I started out in my entrepreneurial journey about eight years ago,

I was a nobody. No one knew who I was. I didn't have any influence in any way, but I started going to all the big events that the influencers were hanging out in my industry, the New York Times bestsellers, the authors, the big entrepreneurs, the people who were getting all the press. I started to go to the events and I hung out with them. I became friends with them by being in their proximity, just by being in their space and other people seeing that and them tweeting me or messaging me online and posting about me, it made me get up to

that level and be more influential. Maybe not as influential, but it raised my level of influence. It gave me access. It gave me opportunities, partnerships that allowed me to build my brand and business at such an exponential rate rather than not hanging out with influential brands or individuals. So make sure to spend time with influencers, add value, give them something, promote them, really look out for them and bring them into your inner circle. So become more influential by being friends with influencers. Number four, you want to become more mainstream, you've got to do what the celebrities do or do what the influencers do, which is they have high end photography. You don't see celebrities ever posting anything online that's just crappy photo. They always have some paparazzi photo or something that's this beautiful depth of field and stylistic and nice design with their photography. So you've got to do the same thing with yourself.

If you want to be more mainstream, you can't have a photo from 10 years ago that you have on your LinkedIn profile and that's the same photo you use for everything. You've got to get updated photo. Really invest in either a nice camera or find a friend who can take great photos of you every few months. You have some new images you can share online, on your website, on your marketing materials, or on your social media platforms. You've got to step up the photo game. I'm telling you, you can't just keep using old bad photos. Constantly look for ways to improve the photography you use and put out there to the world.

Number five, you've got to do something outstanding. So you can either partner with a big brand, you can sell your company, you can come up with a new terminology or new strategy and coin a new term. Do something that's unique in the industry where you can leverage for another brand to make yourself more mainstream. By attaching yourself to one of these things, you're enabling

yourself to get more attention, get more people interested in what the thing is you're doing. Figure out, hey, how did he partner with that brand? How did she sell her company? What were the things that they did? So people will be more interested in talking about you and bringing opportunities to you because you do something outstanding with your business. If you want to get more attention, you've got to be outstanding. You can't just be average doing the same thing that everyone else is doing. Really find unique ways to stand out and be outstanding. And number six, if you want to become more mainstream, you've got to get mainstream press.

Guys, from the early on, I started doing small blogs, trying to do guest posts on other personal development blogs to bigger news sites like Huffington Post and Forbes and Entrepreneur to then moving into getting featured in magazines and eventually on TV and anywhere else that I could for mainstream press. First it was local TV, then regional, then national. You know, here's a magazine cover that I've been on. I've got a few other magazines here that I've been featured in. This all allows me to level up my brand by getting featured in press. It shows other people you're credible.

It shows other people that you're worth talking about. You're someone that I should look into. You're someone that I should follow and learn more about your products, your services, or your brand. The more attention in press you get, the more mainstream you become. Again, the more you can charge,

the more you can make, and the bigger your business or brand will be. These are my six ways to go mainstream and build your business and brand. I hope you guys use some, if not all of them to support your personal brand or your company. Use them and let me know what you think in the comments below. There you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this one. Again, it was a quick one. Wanted to get right to the point and let you take action. If you have any questions, feel free to message me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook at Lewis Howes. Let me know what you thought of this. Let me know if you have any specific questions on each point, and I'm happy to get back to you.

And as always, if you want more advice on business and entrepreneurship on how to build your business and brand, then sign up for my newsletter at lewishouse.com. Just go right to the site. We're going to have more resources, tips, tools to help you grow your business and your brand. Thank you guys again for being a part of this incredible journey of greatness. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. ស្រូវតែរាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពី Outro Music