How Neil and Eric Would Go About Building Their Personal Brand in Today's World

0:00Do you want to talk about how you and I, how we would build a personal brand for ourselves in today's world if we had to start over? Yes, you can start. It's your idea. All right. So I think in today's world, I would have picked a niche. And what I mean a niche is you and I are in marketing, but I wouldn't start in marketing because it's already competitive and saturated. And I think building a personal brand in today's world is harder than it was when we started. Technically, we're known for SEO. Yes, that's true. I would have started in a vertical like B2B SaaS or AI, or you can go after marketing just for one specific industry and then expand.

0:40Because when you think about marketing and B2B SaaS, it may seem like a niche, but it's not really a niche. It's actually a massive TAM. B2B companies like Microsoft spend an arm and a leg on marketing, right? So if you pick a big enough market, but you are specializing, eventually you can end up saying, all right, even though I do B2B SaaS, now I'm going to go to B2B next. Now I'm going to go into AI next. Now I'm just going to go into software next, right? Because you're expanding in similar verticals. And what that's going to do is open up the market and you're not going to get the followers you want, but that would end up causing you to generate a lot more revenue because you're known for something very specific.

1:21And I wouldn't start with blogging in today's world. I would start with creating social content, video-based specifically. And then I would chop that up. You know, you can end up doing audio version into a podcast by repurposing. You can then repurpose the audio and turn it into a blog post and have someone modify it. But I would start with video and I would repurpose my content on all the social platforms. Yeah, and by the way, when we say we wouldn't start with blogging today, It's only because the organic reach isn't quite there anymore. Because when you think about blogging 10, 15 years ago, that was organic social.

1:54Like that's where all the reach was, right? So what we're really talking about here is like, you want to go to where the reach is. And maybe in five, 10 years, it's probably not going to be what we're talking about right now. You got to think about where the attention is. And marketing 101 is thinking about where is your audience hanging out? And it could be different depending on the type of business that you're in. But I do agree with, we have a mutual friend. He is focused specifically in one marketing niche. And he gets paid like 200, 300 grand a month just as a consultant because all he published on LinkedIn was stuff around that over the years and he was consistent with it.

2:25Yeah, go ahead. I have no idea who you're talking about, but good for him. I will tell you after. Or good for her. Do you want to say something? Yeah. So when you also end up doing this, keep in mind, Google indexes video content, both short and long, because you're still getting search traffic. YouTube, people type in a lot of queries onto YouTube. Even Instagram, 6.5 billion searches a day. So you can rank on Instagram when someone types in your content. Just like if they type in handbags, I know I've used this example so many times. If you're Louis Vuitton, you'd want to show up when someone types in handbag on Instagram.

2:56And you would still do blogging. You do the other channels. But you would start with the video because it's easier to repurpose. If you start with text-based and then you have to repurpose, it is much more work to turn that into videos and audio files and stuff like that. Well, if you do videos first, it's easier to repurpose to all the other social channels because most of them prefer videos as their main form of content. And it's easier to create audio and text-based information from the video clips. Yeah, I think one of the most underrated ways to build your personal brand today is let's say you're starting from scratch.

3:27You have no experience, right? Well, you can go on YouTube, which I think is still the best social opportunity for the next decade. And vlogs are actually back on YouTube. I don't like if you look at it, there's evidence. There's vlogs. I see people starting out. I see people more experienced. People like following people, right? They like following the story. So maybe you can document your journey as you go along, right? You don't have to be an expert at everything. Now, let's say you have a little more experience. Maybe we've kind of been in the space for a while with marketing, Neil and I. Well, I would do what we're doing right now, which is why we spend time doing this, which is why we're even together in person, right?

3:56I think being able to talk about what you find interesting, you can record so much from it. First, we have the long form right here. And what Neil just mentioned, you cut up the short form and everything. And then you can also publish it on LinkedIn too. And we're going to actually, the next topic will be the fallacy of LinkedIn. We'll get to that in a second. But I think that's one of the biggest arbitrages right now because this 90 minutes that we're spending together becomes much more. And we never know what's going to take off. Neil could be talking about his jacket on my 5 million views, right?

4:22I can be talking about discounts at Shake Shack, 6 million views, right? You just never know what you're going to get there. And this allows us to attack the long form game and the short form game. And if we choose to hit on LinkedIn X, this allows it to hit everything. and the beauty of this too is this also sharpens how we're thinking about things too which will then affect whatever else you're writing about. No, totally agree. But also if you're going to do this, you got to put in years and when we say years, if you put in three years and you're consistent, you're going to start seeing results but you're not going to do well in the first year or two.

4:53You may see some traction but it's not going to equate into much revenue and if it does, you're lucky. Yep. So and this kind of translates into where else there's good organic reach right now which would be LinkedIn. So there is kind of a fallacy with LinkedIn Organic. And Neil, we talked about this on the phone yesterday. But the common advice with LinkedIn is that you should only post one per day or else your reach will get throttled. And there's a caveat to it. We're not saying everyone should post multiple times per day. But I found with experimenting, when I jack it up, it does in fact triple or quadruple the reach.

5:29But Neil brought up a good caveat to that. Yeah, because we were on the phone yesterday and Eric's just like, dude, you know, people have LinkedIn all wrong. You can post as much as you want. And I was like, no, I think the numbers are actually correct. And he's like, no, dude, my reach, I'm posting 3x of content. I'm getting 3x of views on average. And he's looking at stats. And I'm like, yes, but the difference is, is Eric's a marketer and he's a good marketer who understands how to craft content for LinkedIn. LinkedIn will take as much content as you have, assuming it's great and it heads hard and people love it.

6:02The algorithms don't penalize or push you down for that. But if you just keep releasing content on LinkedIn each and every single day and multiple times a day, but the content's just crap and no one wants to engage with it, it will hurt you. And that's why you should be careful on how much you post. And instead of trying to post three, four, or five times a day, you should just post once a day and try to make that content piece amazing. And if you got it down and it is amazing, then post two times a day. And if you can get two with great engagement and both the content pieces are engaging, then try to go for three and then so forth and so on.

6:34And you're jacking yours up from what to what? I was out one last year sometime. Then last year we increased it to two. This year being January, we're recording this podcast. It's the last day of January. I'm still at two. Sometime in February, call it mid-February, I will ramp up to three a day. Yeah, great. So you have this one over here on how we spend our days. Yeah, this is interesting because I was looking at my calendar. And yesterday, Eric and I had a podcast interview, and it got rescheduled. And I don't mean this in a bad way. I'm assuming it got rescheduled because something on your end.

7:10Because you were the decline on the calendar. I was the decline because I had an overlap where it was a recurring meeting with my team. Yeah, which isn't a big deal. My schedule is much more flexible than Eric's. And I was telling him, like, my day is pretty chill. I look at today, it's a Friday. Drop the kids off to the school in the morning. I worked out really early in the morning, so 4.30 was my workout time. Finished by, call it 5.20-ish. Ate breakfast, showered, did some work, dropped the kids off to school, and chilled at home, watched some TV while working. I always watch TV while I work.

7:51Eric knows that about me. I actually don't work as efficiently if I don't have a TV on, which is counterintuitive, But for some reason, I need the television to be in the optimal mindset to just crank workout. And then we're recording this podcast. Then Eric and I are going to do lunch after. And then I'll pick my kids up from school. I'm going to surprise them with the Girl Scout cookies that Eric gave. I'll let them know that Uncle Eric gave them. They're going to be happy. I'll see if I can get them to record a video for him. And that's pretty much my day. I don't really have tons of set scheduled stuff.

8:32What I mainly have is I spend most of my days either on content production, so marketing, or business strategy, or just following up people within the organization and helping them tackle and solve problems or just checking in and putting pressure. I think the way to look at this for everyone is there's no right or wrong way to do this. It's what are the highest leverage activities you can do today? So if you're starting a business right now, you probably have to do everything, to be honest. Yes, your schedule's not going to be my schedule. If you have good scale like Neil does, the highest leverage thing, yeah, it is marketing.

9:04Because for one hour of input here, it might be millions and millions of views. Or if he's pushing someone on a really big thing, it's important. Or if it's a huge strategic thing where he might need to correct a strategy, that's huge because it affects the entire company. right? So leverage points is just, you think about, oh, if I put in, again, one minute of effort and if I get like thousands and thousands of dollars back, you should probably keep doing that thing, right? But in the beginning, you probably have to do everything. Now, we'll bring it to me. So my response to him, I was like, well, you know, single grain side, you know, there's good people helping with the agency side.

9:38But the challenge right now is building a startup on the side with the software, right? Where the CTO and I, like that startup up culture where he's on 24 seven, I'm on 24 seven, and we've really jacked the intensity up. And I actually mentioned in passing in December, I told someone on my team, I was like, this is a different company now. And I didn't realize that I didn't think about that. Right. Well, let's go back. Yeah. And I have two questions for you before you carry on. The first is what percentage of your time do you spend on your software versus the agency? And the second question would be when When you say it's a different company now, what do you mean by that?

10:12Yeah, great question. So I don't know. To me, it's 50-50 because I'm always working now, right? And then in the afternoon or at night, maybe I'm watching Netflix or something. But it's just every day. You know how this is. When you're starting, it's like you wake up. Oh, here I go. And then all of a sudden, you're in bed again, right? So that's me right now. And it's not going to go on forever like this. And my CTO is built to work like this. I am too. when I say it's a different company and this has been brought up on the single range site because people are seeing it. It's like the way we're behaving in LA versus the way the agency is behaving they're two completely different companies because our working styles are completely different.

10:49So we addressed it yesterday in that meeting and we basically talked about okay so what are we building here right? And the conclusion is basically we're going to keep pushing how we are in LA we're probably going to hire more out of LA but agency side is just going to keep moving right? Because I believe even if we build software, whatever software we build, whatever products we build, we're still going to need what we mentioned earlier. We're still going to need great people managing this stuff. And so I think the agency of the future, and you already have the products, we're going to see more and more of this.

11:18I think you guys are going to build more as well. I don't think the agencies from the 60s, 70s, 80s or so, you're going to have hundreds of thousands of employees. I think those will still be around. I think we're going to see less of it is what I'm saying. so when I first started my business the overwhelm was real I didn't have the tools to help me scale if only I had Shopify from the start to handle all the behind the scenes work Shopify is the platform behind millions of businesses globally from huge names like Mattel and Gymshark to the smallest brands just getting started the best part about it it has everything you could need say you're ready to launch your own design studio Shopify has hundreds of templates to create a beautiful store that matches your brand style or if you need help with content creation, Shopify has got AI tools that write your product descriptions, craft page headlines, and even enhance your product photos.

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13:52And I go over problems, solutions, and design changes that I want in the product and what they should fix. And they showcase. They show everything to me before they make the changes. Most my day is not really scheduled. I think your day is very heavily scheduled. It is scheduled now because even today, I was not going to have a scheduled afternoon. And then a couple of these sales calls where my CTO and I get on the call, they're important. These are enterprise-level companies. We're doing these sales calls, and this is maybe any of you that are building products right now. If you're building a SaaS product and you're talking mid-market enterprise, you want to use these sales calls.

14:29They almost become customer development calls because they help guide the product roadmap. Because a lot of them start saying the same things over and over. and we have this product roadmap, we'll start to shift things based on what people are saying more and less of. So it's like sales calls doubling down as customer development calls. And then there's also customer success with the customers. And we have other people helping too, but it's just a lot that you have to juggle when you're starting up. And that's how my days look right now. I love it. But here's what's changed. Do you want to say something before I go into here's what changed?

14:58Go to what changed. I have a few follow-up questions for you. So this actually does go into, maybe you should go follow up questions first, because I'm going to talk about the unusual way in which we give feedback at our companies and if you should criticize in public. So you go first. So the first follow-up question I have for you is, I've seen more passion in you recently than I have in the last few years. I think you've always loved single grain. I think at the same time, though, you love product more than running an agency. And I think most people would agree with that. If you run an agency, it is very, very tough.

15:35And I'm not saying you're not cut out for it. It's just more so building product. I think for most people is more fun than running an agency and dealing with all the customers at once. And I can see the spark in you when you talk about it, right? Especially when we're on the phone. Do you think your agency is going to suffer by you not spending a hundred percent of the time on the agency by spending 50 % of your time on the software? And I know your agency is still growing to caveat this and it's doing well and it's doing better now than it has been in the past few years. Markets also been bad for all agencies over the past few years.

16:10But if you are spending 100 % of the time on the agency, my belief is, and I could be wrong on this, the agency would grow faster. Just my take knowing you for so many years. But on the flip side, spending time on the software, I get they're the same company, right? Or even if they're two separate companies, they're still owned by you. And if the software grows, you can say, hey, the total pie is growing anyway. So everything is growing. So you're still good. But the service-based revenue may not grow as much because you're spending so much time on the software. Yeah. Great question. Fair point.

16:48And I would say you're probably right. And I would say the thing is, I still attend all the important agency meetings. I'm still doing the one-on-ones, all the things, right? All hands, everything. I think where you're seeing the energy from is because I've had to jack up the energy for both single grain and the product at the same time. And so I think my natural normal is higher now, right? And I did mention to you, yeah, it's more work, it's more stress, but I wouldn't have it any other way. And so we actually talked about this in the team meeting yesterday. It's like, okay, single grain is still very much the first focus, right?

17:28But at any given time, I told everyone, I was like, what's the plan for next three to five years? I was like, guys, if I can say I know what the next three to five years is going to look like, I'm lying to you. Because everything is so unknown now. It's like fog. Everything's like a stepping stone. You have to closely look at where you're going next, right? And that's where we're going. I'm like, if Carrot all of a sudden just overtakes single grain and we talk about triple, triple, triple, double, double, right? Getting to$108 million in revenue or so. That could very well happen. or carrot maybe just flat lines.

17:58And then maybe it's just a thing that we fold into single grain because the thing is, what happens with these leads for carrot is, I told you this already, but any lead that comes in single grain sales team will then reach out afterwards and it actually books meetings for single grain, right? So I look at it as it's building a lead engine and it's actually, it's focusing us more on B2B ABM. And I think it's a net positive. So, but to kind of wrap up this answer over here, how is it going to affect single grain? It is affecting single grain, right? So what do we do? We hire a great person, which I don't let them do their own thing.

18:33I'm going to be heavily involved and we just make sure that they're doing what we need them to do to run the agency. The reason I think you're doing better on all fronts is not your energy being stepped up because you have to. I think it's because you're getting traction on it. Anytime you're starting a business and you're starting to see early traction and you're talking to customers, you're in the weeds and they're saying wonderful things and you're getting quick wins of closing new accounts or people showing interest of it, it just lights a fire under most entrepreneurs and they just push harder.

19:08And I believe the validation you're getting from the external market is causing you to fire on all cylinders. That, you're definitely right on that, but I'm also pissed off. The reason I'm so pissed off is because, This is what's caused one of my people to quit, right? The reason I'm so, and we can go into that in a moment, but I'm so pissed off because I'm just like, when my CTO and I were just sitting there working all the time and the amount of effort we're putting into it, and then I'll hear from people, like, here's my thing, right? I'm not only the investor in my company, I'm also a player, I'm also a coach, I'm also marketing too.

19:49And sales. You're doing everything. And product. I don't expect people to work as hard as I do. That's unfair. But I do expect that if I'm going to be putting everything into this company and I'm in the trenches with you, I'm not just watching from the sidelines. I expect you to fight hard too. And so when I don't see people pushing, that's the change in the company. Where on one side, it's like full throttle. On the other side, it's like, okay, we can't quite push them to do that too. And I understand that. And the single green team understands that too. and so there's like a balance here and I said hey guys like for real we're just going to keep balancing this and see where it goes so yeah alright that's it for today guys please don't forget to rate review and subscribe go to marketingschool.io slash agency to learn more about the agency owners association to grow faster and we'll see you tomorrow