Letting Your Marketing Work For You with Billy Gene

0:00Ten years ago, I made the decision to build my personal brand that was elevated, yet approachable, and reflected who I was, not just what I did. I created my website with ShowIt because it's true drag-and-drop freedom, so you can easily build and update your site. Plus, their real human support team, game changer. Want to try it for yourself? Head to jasminestar.com forward slash showit for a 14-day free trial and first month free when you subscribe. Test one, two, test one, two. Oh, he's got a hot 100 voice. That's what he has. Be 85. Here we go. New York City. Might check one, two, one, two.

0:47Welcome to the Jasmine Star Show, where we talk about life, business, and everything on the In Between. This is back with our co-host series, Marcus A. Player Murphy. Wow. That's what we do. A. Player Murphy. No one's ever said that. Wait, what do I get? He gets Player Murphy. I'll debut. I'll debut. I'll debut. I'll debut your nickname at the end. Y 'all, we are joined by Billie Jean. Now, here's the thing with Billie Jean. We met years ago. We were a part of a mastermind here in L.A., and I got to see you up close. And then I got to see who you are online. And it's beautiful to see that who you are offline and online are the same thing.

1:26Thank you. I'm very happy that we get— Wait, can I pause? Because that is the compliment that I appreciate the most. Okay. Because I never want anybody to meet me and be like, you're different. So that, you just made my day. Thank you. That's better than Marcus Player. Billy Staines on camera, Gene. Yes, I take it. He doesn't have the same ring on the frame. We'll stick with it. So one thing that I will do to up-level it is I wanted you to be on the show. Well, Marcus curated the guests. And so he made a list, and I was like, I really want Billy to be on the show. What were you going to say? No, I was just going to say that the same thing that you take as a compliment is exactly why we are so tight.

2:04like it's the reason why like you you know how you look for people in this world and just in our world that authenticity is tough bro yeah it's really hard to find and so when i sit around i look at people are you saying there's a lot of fake people in the industry bro no no no yeah yeah lots of fake anyway but anyway i think you guys totally vibe and the reason why i really wanted this conversation is because you're the same person in that way yeah also we do business different like really different and so that's where i want to start first and foremost because we will get into origin story but first people are listening to a podcast and they want to know what's in it for me?

2:35How am I going to learn? What am I going to do? And so Billy, you came in and you're like, how do I serve best? And I'm like, be 100, share the real deal. And then like, let's talk about action steps. Like people want to like take action. So in a recent Instagram post, you mentioned that you make a handful of quality content pieces, just a handful. And then you run paid ads to those things. And so people are like, that sounds like the dream. I do a few key things and then put money behind. How did we get there? And what is your firm belief about it? Because is super different than what I do. It is.

3:04So let's address that is there is no right or wrong. This just was for you. So I think we're on the same page there because, you know, like you said, different approaches, but probably same beliefs, both care about helping people. Like, so we probably a lot of similarities, but our route to get there's different. So take me, let me tell you what I don't want to do. I don't want to post 12 times on Instagram. I don't want to comment back to a single person. I'm playing Xbox with my daughter, going to her basketball games, chilling with my fiance, hanging out with my friends and family, like posted up in San Diego and La Jolla.

3:40I drive a golf cart around and I play tennis all day. That is exciting to me. Like that's what fulfills me. At the same time, while I'm doing that, I still fulfill my, what I believe is a duty, which is to help other people. And I do that with advertising. So what you just mentioned is it's not that, first of all, posting a million times a day, I should be doing. It would reach more people. It would make more money. I literally just don't want to. Like, I just, I just enjoy, like, just doing me. So I don't want to knock it because if you're hearing this, you should do it. but if you're as stubborn as I am then here's the game plan make one awesome video that teaches people educate some etc and then put money behind it and let it run every single day so like I give an example like take like creators for example like a musician somebody makes a song and they're a local artist and everybody in the community hears it and so then they move on to the next song, but they forget the rest of the world hasn't heard that song yet.

4:47There's still 7 billion people who need to hear that song just because you're over it. Just because the message ain't new to you doesn't mean it's not new to someone else. I remember that. So to me, I curate my greatest hits, my best speaking gig, my best videos that I make, my best posts that I do, et cetera. And then I run ads and show it to new people every single day. So while we're here today, I'll spend about$10 ,000 to$20 ,000 on ads. I'll reach one to three to five million people. It will sell my shit. And then after this, I will continue watching the season finale of Too Hot to Handle.

5:24This is simultaneous. To me, that makes sense. That fits my lifestyle. And I've tried like, you know, in the last decade, I've tried a lot of times to be like, all right, Billy, you're going to do your content thing. You know what I've learned about myself? I don't like to do the content thing. And I'm learning to accept that. We wanted to start the conversation. I'm going to turn this over to you. But I really wanted to distill what just like went down right now. Billy presented what he wanted to talk about in his perspective as a value add. There are some people who know they should be doing something and just won't because they know who they are.

5:56So first and foremost, identifying who you are and then building a business around those things. And then kind of just being a little irreverent around other people's opinions. Okay. 100 % love that. I've never had anybody in my inner circle say no to me more than Billy G. Oh, okay. Well, see, this is what I want this person to do. What did he do? No, no, no, no, no, no. So what I'd want people not to miss is the fact that Billy doesn't do anything Billy doesn't want to do. And, in fact, the no's are so important even to people that, like, love. I love Billy, but I know there's boundaries. And actually what is beautiful about that is, like, when you're saying no, you're saying yes to something that really matters.

6:34And like when we have daughters and we talk about this quite a bit, we all, we have families. And a lot of times I feel like it's really hard when you're building content and trying to be out there and everywhere to set those boundaries and to say, no, I love this version of Billy because there is a very clear, like, I don't want to do that. I want to do this. And in fact, you can't say no unless you know what you want. And I think that that's something I hope people didn't miss is like, if you don't know what you want, it's really, really hard to say no. And that's changed. I appreciate you saying that, but that's changed with the seasons, right?

7:03Right. So like I'm 12 years into this digital marketing game. Our ads have been now seen 1.5 billion times to work with some of the largest franchises in the world. I've spoken at the stages. All of this that I wrote down on the list as a kid of like what I wanted to do. Thank God. A lot of support and hard work. I accomplished it. So now it's like you have to create a new vision for yourself. And this new vision of myself is Kailani. That's my baby girl. Brittany. That's that's wifey. My homies. But before I was saying yes to everything. I said, how many audience you got? Oh, you got three people?

7:35That's cool. Come on, bring them. Let's go. You got six going together? That's nine. If I can do four of these today, I hit 30. You know? And somebody mentioned the other day, they said, like, when you get 30 views on a post, people get demoralized. You want to delete. But if that was 30 people in a room, you feel a different way about it. If it was 30 people in front of you, like, oh, my gosh, everyone's all eyes on me. And so just every human matters, you know? But in the beginning, it's just hustle. Like in the beginning, it was no sleep. In the beginning, it was, you know, travel here, do this.

8:08It was harder to balance time with my baby girl. Like that was the season you have to build, right? They have to, you know, treat the soil and plant the things before you can just walk out into the garden and just eat tomatoes and apples. That big, I don't garden. Tomatoes and apples, bro. Clearly you don't garden. I know there's work to be done before you do it. I just have my chef cook it, but like whatever. That was a subtle That was a subtle Like Shep came Shep came later You know But you gotta take it In a step so Jeff's good by the way Yeah She's fire She's great I just tell everybody Like be aware of What season you're in So you don't ever Feel bad for yourself Okay so We had the very Instagram version Of this conversation Okay I liked it I liked it But I wanna know What did he say no to Oh Like let's get I didn't know Man that's a good question You know what's funny There's two things Personal stuff Billy has rarely said no to He's always supported me we support each other i feel like we always try and try and do that when it comes down to like hey i want to bring this business opportunity billy would be like that doesn't fit right and i feel like not not just doesn't fit but it's like actually that could be a lot of money for us this is what trips me out it's like this could be big for the money and for maybe dan the ceo of their business and he's like but no man we're just gonna we're really focused on what we're doing like no man it's season premiere too hot to handle but because money is not my thing Yeah, that's actually, that's surprising.

9:31Okay, but wait, wait, wait. Do you say, as somebody who's rich, money doesn't matter? No, okay. Because it's like, you know, place. Yeah, you meet rich people like, are you kidding me? Why do you care so much about money? But like, nah. Like, first of all, let me be clear. Money's very, I love it. It's great. There's that. But also, it didn't come that way. Parents, born to be Southeast San Diego, same here. But both my parents grew up on welfare. Like, my mom was one of 13. I feel like everybody has a sob story, but to give context, grandfather was murdered, uncle was murdered, drugs, sexual abuse, prison.

10:06These were normalities in my life. I got lucky because my father got really good at sales. So he was selling cars. So my dad was making six figures and he was the first one in all of the families to do it. And when I said six figures, you make a hundred grand. If people are in poverty, you're rich, right? So later they took us out of a situation, put me in private Catholic school, and that allowed me to see all the opportunities. So when I say I'm not a money guy, I'm a super, like I appreciate it, and I understand how it can help and serve people, and I think you should all value it. But this season in my life, if somebody's like, hey, I'll give you a million bucks, but you're going to steal a million minutes from my baby, oh no, I'm good.

10:52I'm good. yeah it just i know my priorities you can't put a price on oh like what i'm gonna play xbox with the homies tonight till three yeah i'm good i don't need the cash yeah like there was a time that you needed the cash but what's interesting though is like i'll bring billy speaking fee is 50 grand just to even turn up at a 30 minute thing and and i don't even know if that's true anymore that used to be what it was but i remember being like yo man there's this thing the funniest thing in the world was billy would be on xbox and be like no and i and i would sit there and And part of me, when I was coming up and when I was thinking about that, I would always value that back.

11:26Man, if you did 10 of these, that's a half a mil and whatever. And you start doing that math in your head and you can't believe somebody said no. Yeah. But at the same time, like when you talk about what we sacrifice, like I was on the road 400 ,000 miles a year. And I almost literally worked myself out of a great marriage and being a good dad. Say that again. Yeah. Worked myself out of a great marriage. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. That's powerful. But isn't that interesting though? because if you don't have, let me ask you this. Who else helps you say no? Oh, I got gatekeepers. Really? Yeah, you can't get on.

11:59Yeah, but I'm saying like, do they know where you want to go and what you want? Oh, yeah, yeah, the whole team. I mean, there are Kane, Paul here on the side, like Daniel, my CFO, my assistant, Sheila, like literally, I'm in a world of no's, my friend. But also I'll say it to, if I know someone, I'm not going to be rude. Like I'll just politely say no. I appreciate the opportunity, but I'm good. I really want to know Jasmine's answer that question too. who helps you with like, because you have to also say no to quite a few things, I'm sure. I'm in a season of yes, brother. She's like, give me those$50 ,000 talks.

12:31I'm going to happily take your leftovers. I want to be a sloppy snake. But look, we may watch. We come here in six more months and then it may be opposite. You'd be like, yo, Billy. Oh, 100%. It's just coincidence at this moment. 100%. That's the season. She has to support JD's skincare routine. Yeah, skincare routine, bro. It's wild. It's wild. It's a four-week facial. softest hands i've ever felt in my life but yeah okay no here's the thing like if i was the farmer i feel like i'm planning a whole new orchard right now and i really want to like hold space marcus had said i almost work my way out from the thing that i very wanted and so what i would say is that we have a conversation at the top of every year and it's like what what do we want yeah and then like what are the parameters within those things and so yeah like i'm hitting it hard and i'm saying more yes than i am but i got a partner who co-signed on the yes and i got a baby girl who's young enough to co-sign on the yes and so as long as the yes we get to do together we're all in so that's where we're at right now but yeah i like that yes you get to do together bars yeah hold on what you just said is exactly how i run my business so take this this is great right because we have obviously a dope setup here by the way but yes i bring k and paul hitter film too because to me i want leverage absolutely and leverage is this absolutely is hey we're gonna Yeah, what is happening right now?

13:47Because look, like, this is dope. And this is going to go out to your audience and amazing. But I'm like, awesome. Well, now let's run an ad, target the entire world. I want this plane in Brazil. I want this plane in Spain. I want this plane in... Well, shout out to Mexico and Puerto Rico, okay? Because you're like, hey, let me the man there. I want to be moving to Latin America, okay, papi? Let's go. And that's funny. So the conversation I've just been having this last week with Dan, our COO, is, all right, we're going to bite the bullet. and are we going to get these translated into Portuguese and Spanish?

14:16And it's an investment. But again, just to make this live, because everyone's going to experience this awesome content, but it's like, let's amplify. Let's throw gas. So every single time I'm not running ads to something, I think I'm like, you know, using 10 % of it as opposed to 100. So you just mentioned something about that. I'm actually just curious. Genuinely, I don't know the answer to this. But you're big in Brazil. Yeah. Why? Ad inventory is probably cheap there. I know. Like, we, we, we, you know, it's funny. I don't know, especially because most people there don't speak English. Yeah.

14:49Right? But the ones that do. So digital marketing is a global thing, right? Like, no matter where you are, like, people want to know digital marketing. And so after 12 years of putting out content in the space, I think it just kind of happened. And so, yeah, I spoke in Brazil, which was amazing. That felt like a pinch myself moment when we're in Brazil. And someone's like, oh, Billie Jean, I've been following you for six years. I started my agency here and I'm like across the globe. And that's what I meant is like those 30 views. When you post something, you don't know if that's the kid in Brazil who's about to blow up.

15:19You just don't know and never take that for granted. So it's honestly, it's humbling. It's very humbling. It's weird. Do you talk about like, so people are listening and they hear this and they're like, I'm more in alignment to how he wants to live his life. Like he or she is in the farming season of no in harvest. They're in the harvest season. So what's like tactical stuff? Like somebody who's listening and they might not have a CEO and they might not have this massive team and they might not travel with their own video crew. Like what is something that somebody can do now? They're like, there's a pop-off piece of content.

15:46Yeah. Okay, Billie Jean, what do I do now? So first step is what is that pop-off piece of content? And usually it could be an interview, a content. Like actually let me kind of go real tactical for a second and take a step back. So my best performing ad right now is a Facebook ad that's in the news feed. And fun fact, it's one hour and 42 minutes. So when I text you about, when I said, yo, I don't usually listen to your talks, not offensive at all. But I sat and watched this one and sat through it. And I was like, yo, that made me actually sit there and listen to this. It was an hour, an hour.

16:22An hour and 42 minutes. You're welcome. You're welcome. I had stuff to do. Yeah. So one, first thing with advertisements is sometimes when you post, a lot of people believe that it has to be like a 15-second punchy thing. No. Essentially, with Facebook and YouTube, you can run modern-day infomercials is essentially what they are. Now, infomercials are kind of cheesy. It's like, buy this water glass now for$19.99. If you call right now, I'll throw in a second water and da-da-da-da-da. It's none of that. It's just educating people and teaching them. So starting off by literally creating your perfect talk, everything you want to say.

16:58You can literally go to look at the local colleges. There's always almost a media department. And a lot of the interns in there are looking to actually have hands on project to build their resume. So if you just go online and find out who the director of media is or who's teaching this and you send them an email. Hey, I have a business owner. I'm looking for a student to do X, Y and Z. Can they get credits in exchange for this? You can get somebody for free. I'm giving this because you don't have to pay for this stuff, right? So there's a lot of people who are coming into this industry that, boom, they'll come and film.

17:29And then the other thing that I will tell you is if you think about the biggest movies in the world, right, Avatar, et cetera, every word is planned. Every scene, the actors, it's planned to the minute. So if you're going to make something that you can eat off of, for many years to come, I've had ads I made literally six years ago. I still run today. If you're going to have an asset, wouldn't you put everything into it? This is not something contrary. And you can, there's a style of content where you can just wing it. Don't wing it. This is your masterclass. This is just shot to the world. So my videos, they feel natural when people see them and they go, God, this guy can just get on camera.

18:10No, I've just been writing for 12 years. I know what I'm going to say. Yeah. Very rehearsed. Right. So literally that's the next step is write out every freaking word that you're going to say. Then when you're filming, to make it look fancy, if you don't have like three cameras or whatever, use two cell phones, you and your significant other, who else is in the house, and have them filming at the same time. One is a tight shot. See how you're like all up in my face here. And then one is a wide shot. We can see all of us. Hello, right? And then you have them recording at the same time. Then you can go to upwork.com or fiverr.com and then you can upload your video footage and say, hey, I'm looking for somebody to edit this together and make it look really professional.

18:48find a link to a video that you really enjoyed and you thought the production value looks sick, maybe like this one, send it to them and say, make it look just like this. So you don't even have to speak tech or media to deliver. Just say, this is what I want the end result to look like. Can you do this? You'll probably get the whole thing done for somewhere between 25 to 50 bucks. Once you do that, you'll go into Facebook's ads manager. If you don't know how to do that, go to Google and say how to run a Facebook ad. They'll explain it in like five minutes. There's this thing called Facebook Blueprint.

19:16It's from Facebook. It's free. Go on Facebook's Blueprint and then spend$10 a day running the ad to whoever you think is most likely to buy and buy in. And stereotype. You can go to men, women with this age who graduated from this university who have an interest, if you're talking to entrepreneurs, who have an interest in Shark Tank, who read Robert Kiyosaki, et cetera, that follow Jasmine. And like, you could do all of these things on a couple of click of the buttons without being techie at all. Then if you do not know what to say in your advertisement, ask ChatGPT. ChatGPT is free. And put in this prompt, how to write a Facebook ad to get people to sign up for a phone call, whatever, put in anything, talk to it like it's an assistant and it'll write the whole ad for you.

19:59So you can do all of this today to start selling for like, I don't know if that was$2, like$10. It doesn't have to be crazy expensive or nothing. No, but that's a really good shout for people that are sitting here going like, I just can't do it. Look at them. Yeah, I might not have three cameras, but it's complicated. What I just heard, even though you are literally talking yourself into a sweat, because I was like, is that, is that, but it sounded, it sounded, oh, we do, okay. Let's go. But isn't that interesting though, how streamlined that actually was? Because if we went back and we just did the bullet points right there, it's pretty on par with being like step one through five.

20:35But see, here I am, I think of like immediately what he just did. And I think of, that is a clip that you could absolutely run on Meta. And then I think that if you were to clip out each one of the four to five steps that you just listed, that is a 15 second reel. Like, you know, I mean, like I just think in those contexts for this long form one hour and 46 minutes video in the beginning, were you really specific around like your hook? What are the graphics? Can you describe like how are you going to like hook? Yeah. So because she's right. You know, usually when you're creating content, that first thing out of your mouth is going to decide if someone sticks or not.

21:09but don't forget there's what you say and then there's what's being said based off of the environment so the first shot that you see is somebody's on stage being introduced and there's like a standing ovation for somebody coming up so we're trained when you see that situation think oh something important's about to happen something announcements supposed to happen right and then from practice from speaking for 10 years you know i start usually talks off with jokes and get people smiling, et cetera. And it's funny how everything that you do in person kind of translates online, right? It's kind of the same thing.

21:42And so there was no crazy hook and I didn't plan to put it directly in the newsfeed, but just tested it and it worked out that way. But a big part of compensating if you don't have a good hook, and this is why I like Facebook ads in particular, is you get text with it. So the text is my hook since I'm not saying anything. And I believe the hook is like, you know, 13 tools to make more money with artificial intelligence and less time explained in one hour and 42 minutes enjoy i hope you like it if you do buy my i feel like that's your tagline now and it actually is but again authenticity counts because anybody else who says that is an absolute it just absolutely doesn't work yeah yeah you know the one thing i was going to say about this this is so important we actually argue about this so i i've been on this is just for a context point not me dropping like hey you know the food in the harvard cafeteria was really bad.

22:31Oh, God. So I wanted to share that. It's not easy being an intellect, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah, I've been on the advisory board at LinkedIn for a while, and we constantly argue about the length of content. And I used to, I will always plant my flag in the ground and tell them, they're like, no, it needs to be like eight minutes consumable content, and people don't learn that way. And I went, okay. I was like, have you ever sat through a really long movie? Yeah, exactly. Like content, it's good or bad, and people are going to be invested in it or not. And I've sat through six hours of binging on Netflix to watch a show to catch up, to be able to talk about it with my friends.

23:02So I know for a fact that content matters to the person who's consuming it, but also like good content rises to the top. Another way of saying that? Yeah. Boring will put you out of business. Boring will put you out of business. Yeah, that's what people have to realize. We live in a day and age where boring will put you out of business. It's not, is this content too long? Is this content too short? No, is it too boring? Ooh, that's a good one. That's the only metric. What's boring, by the way? Okay, so what's boring? and then how, if somebody actually has enough self-awareness to be like, maybe I'm not boring, I know I'm not interesting.

23:34Like, what are those two? You know what I'm playing, bro? No, no, I hate that all the time. No, it's good, it's good. People are not like, I hate myself, but they're just like, I just don't know how to be more interesting on camera. That's a really good, that's really good. So the boring test is very simple. You know, make something and then give it to somebody and see how long before they either check their other phone or they look to the left or to the right or before they just stop. Like, boring is when you fall asleep, when you no longer watch. Like, that's the metric. Like, it was boring because people watch entertaining.

24:07Like, right? But how to be interesting or how to create interesting content if you feel like you don't have a dynamic personality. And by the way, you don't need one. So a couple of things is take out a blank piece of paper and draw a giant capitalized T, okay? And then on the left-hand side, I want you to write problem. And then on the right-hand side, I want you to write solution, okay? And then I want you to think of your ideal customer, the person who you would like to buy from you. And I want you to write out every problem that they are going through in their blank, right? So if you're helping someone start a business, you know, getting customers, da-da-da, you know, their logo design, their website, hiring people, da-da-da-da, and be as specific as you can.

24:50And then literally answer those questions and that is your content. 30 problems, that's 30 different videos. And then if you're unsure of what your person's going through, you can survey, but that takes a long time. I have a better tool for you. It's called answerthepublic.com. It's answerthepublic or answerthepublic.com. My buddy Neil Patel, you guys know Neil. Neil Patel is the creator of it, but it's freaking amazing. It's probably my favorite online tool. So you can go in there and there's a search bar, it looks like Google, and you can type in any subject that you can think of. And it will tell you every single question that is being asked and searched for around that topic according to Google.