Episode #90 – Building a Digital Brand: Tough Lessons I’ve Learned that Will Help You Grow, and Scale Income, Faster

 

Do you have something you want to share with the world? In the digital age, you can build a platform, like I have with Indestructible Wealth. I will warn you that the road isn’t easy… But I have quite a few shortcuts I can share to make it easier. Tune in to hear what I have learned the hard way.

My book, “Building Indestructible Wealth: The Six Figure Earners Guide to a Multimillion Dollar Portfolio,” just launched. Get your print and audiobook copies and a few other timely insights into what to invest in right now at this link: https://bit.ly/3xjGFQ7

Do you have a question you would like me to answer on the podcast? Follow me on IG: @indestructiblewealth and send a message, or visit me at www.myindestructiblewealth.com for more resources (and check out the new blog page while you are there!)

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Building A Digital Brand: Tough Lessons I’ve Learned That Will Help You Grow, And Scale Income, Faster

It’s great to be with you again to have some real extensive travel. We were in Detroit for our big sales conference and the extravaganza for a week. As soon as we get back from that, we leave for Wisconsin Dells for a week with our brothers and parents special 50th-anniversary trip. We had a blast at the waterparks. I don’t know if you saw any of that action on my Instagram but I did post me going down some slides and had a blast.

As soon as we got back from that, we turned around the next day, and we went to Ohio to visit my parents for three days. We had a great time. I went golfing with my wife and to the pool. It has been a great travel experience but I’m ready to get back to work and stay focused on serving my community and building this brand.

In this episode, I’m going to teach you how to make more money. There are three buckets that I talk about quite a bit. The make it and keep it bucket, and then you grow it. You make, keep, and grow money. Those are the three stages of growing wealth. I haven’t talked too much on this show about different ideas to increase your income and to be able to make more money.

On this show, I’m going to teach you the lessons that I have learned in building a personal brand and talk about digital marketing, digital branding, and digital influence over the next decades is going to be absolutely critical in business. If you have considered, contemplated or even a little tiny spark in your heart, brain or voice inside of you that says, “I want to build my own brand. I have a message that I want to share. I want to get digital influence. I want to build up my ability to market online.”

I’m going to teach you what I have learned over the years since building and starting Indestructible Wealth and things that I would do differently if I were to start over, so this would be good for you to know, and then things that I have done well. You can get an idea of some of the things that I have done right. I have lots of mistakes.

Whenever you are going into something new that you don’t know much about, you have to give yourself the space and the grace to make lots of mistakes and to do things that don’t all workout or aren’t the best use of your time, money, and energy. If you can learn from others that are going through the process, it could potentially shorten your learning curve, so this is what I hope to do now.

Challenges Of Building A Brand

First, before we dive in, I want to talk to you about some of the tough things that are part of building a brand. I’m going to start with the tough things because I don’t want you to go into this thinking that it’s going to be all sunshine and rainbows. I’m sure that you probably don’t think that. You know that it’s a lot of work, it takes a lot of effort, and you got to build up a lot of skills.

Having that self-expression through your own platform is incredible and almost therapeutic. Click To Tweet

There are some things maybe that we didn’t consider or that I didn’t consider when I got started. One of the things that I knew was going to happen without any doubt was that I was going to get trolled. It’s impossible in this digital world that you will not get trolled if you build up any sizable audience. If you are not getting trolled, that means that you are probably not making very much traction yet. You haven’t grown your audience large enough.

What I didn’t know is what happened that another whoever Instagram user will go through the effort to duplicate and replicate my entire handle and then systematically message my followers, trying to scan them as if they were me. That was something that I wasn’t aware was a possibility for me until maybe I hit 100,000 or 200,000 type followers on Instagram. I have grown the account to about 7,500 followers.

I appreciate it. I have 20 or 30 messages, people reaching out saying, “Are you hacked?” I was not hacked. Nobody was able to get into my account but they created a new account, a new handle Indestructible Wealth within three underscores underneath it at the end. They took all of my content, all of my posts, everything, and put it on their page, so the page looks like mine. It’s identical to mine, except for the three underscores.

The other thing that they are doing when they reach out where people are figuring out that it’s not me. Number 1) They are surprised that I’m reaching out because I generally do not cold message anybody. Number 2) The language that they used. It is not anything like what I would be using. It’s like, “Hello. How are you?” I don’t speak to people like that. It’s like, “What the fuck is up? How are you doing?” That’s how I would probably start. I’m kidding. I don’t start a message like that. It’s not congruent with my messaging style.

Thank you for reaching out. If you do see this account, please report it. I don’t know. I have heard from other finance creators that Instagram is very shitty about deleting these types of accounts. I don’t know what else I can do about it. I have asked anybody who’s reached out to me to report them. I have got my Facebook ad specialist, who has connections to account reps, to try to get them to take it down. It’s not down yet. I don’t know. Be careful. I only have one account and generally speaking, I don’t cold outreach to my audience.

Those are the tough things. In addition to that, I get trolled pretty hard. One of my ads that are going out on Instagram to promote my book. I have had one gentleman that is brutal. He told me my hair is terrible, and then you can’t trust people if they are ugly to take financial advice. I’m not ugly. I’m not super handsome. I know I’m losing my hair. It’s not the best hair at this particular point in my life, but I don’t think it’s terrible or ugly.

That hurt my feelings a little bit. I have feelings and had to take a step back and realize that there are lots of narcissistic people out there. They derive pleasure from making other people feel worse about themselves. Kids have been doing this since I was little. I talked to Tyler about this. He’s had kids that have made some mean comments about a mole that’s on his cheek. I have had to tell him and say, “Kids are cruel, and they are mean. They are doing that. They don’t quite realize the effect that has and how their words hurt.” At the end of the day, kids and adults do it. It’s not anything that we can get away with.

 

I did engage back and told him what I thought of him and garbage type of human troll, human type thing. Sometimes I can’t help myself but overall, the best strategy to deal with that is to delete and ignore it, and that’s pretty much what I have said. I noticed that I was getting, as I was engaging, and then he was responding, and I was responding that I’m like, “I’m devoting negative energy towards this. That could be devoted to figuring out how to better serve my audience.” That’s probably my best advice on that.

Express Your Ideas To The World

There are some things that are tough that you are going to have to deal with that you maybe didn’t think about that was a possibility when you go to build a digital brand but there are great things. There are amazing things about building a digital brand. First off, you get to express your ideas to the world. If you have ideas inside of your heart and inside of your spirit, those are best to get out to the world. If you’ve got that feeling inside of you like, “I have this message, this lesson that I have learned or these skills that I have acquired that I want to share with others. I want to bless others. I want to help make the world a better place. I want to get my message out there.” That voice that’s speaking to you doesn’t want to ignore that.

That’s very important for you to be able to express that thought leadership to the world. Having that message bottled up inside yourself isn’t doing anyone any service. It’s not doing anyone any good, so it’s best if it’s released. Being able to have that self-expression through your own platform is incredible, and it’s almost therapeutic as well. It helps you to deal with and cope with other things that are going on in your life when you are able to do it.

Digital Influence: The Next Currency

I know that writing for me, getting my thoughts down on paper or the computer, that’s very therapeutic. That’s a great part about building a brand. Expanded influence is huge. I have said this before online influence, digital influence is becoming the next currency. It is the new currency that’s out there. The more influence that you have will create more opportunities for you to grow your business. If you are in a job to grow your profession, to grow your career, that influence will be able to be monetized.

I have not monetized this brand to any extensive level yet. I know that that’s coming but the fact that I have more influence than I did years ago with expanded influence. For example, I have a Bitcoin mining company. I haven’t talked much about it because we have been waiting on supply parts from China for months. Those parts are about to come in. They are at port and will be able to get us online and mine Bitcoin. I’m going to have opportunities for investors to be able to purchase machines and get them set up in our mining rig, in the containers that we have specially ordered and produced to be able to house Bitcoin mining machines.

I’m going to be able to offer this to my audience. It’s an incredible opportunity because it’s very difficult, trust me, to find anywhere that will be able to host your Bitcoin mining machine. You can go out and purchase machines but to be able to get them hosted online and mining that’s extremely difficult. I’m going to have 400 slots for 400 machines.

Once these containers are in, people will be able to mine Bitcoin right alongside me and my business partner and not have to have the technical expertise to be able to do it. Mining Bitcoin is an extremely efficient way to get Bitcoin at a lower cost per coin. It takes away a lot of the risk that is traditionally involved with buying cryptocurrency because you are going to be able to mine it at a cheaper price than what it’s typically going to be offered on the exchanges.

Digital influence is becoming the next currency. Click To Tweet

That’s one example of how having influence is going to help you to promote whatever it is, whatever opportunities, businesses or products that you have. It’s going to be able to help you to do that. It’s going to be able to help you create automated income streams. Once you produce a digital course or something that’s evergreen, then as you continually create more influence and traffic through your platform, then more people are going to be buying your courses.

Eventually, through getting ranked on search engine optimization through Google, you are going to have this automated stream of traffic, and then they are going to be directed into your blog, podcast, and things that you’ve already done. Maybe you recorded them or wrote them years ago. That ecosystem is going to continue to help you to sell your digital products over and over again.

Maybe you order. You don’t have a digital course but you have a physical product, a health and fitness product, and the nutrition product. Having influence on your own digital brand is going to be able to help direct people to buy those products from you much easier and efficiently. The other thing, of course, is that you get to make an impact on others.

I see people at church, out and about. I get messages and emails back from people that say, “I love your content. Thank you so much. I appreciate everything you are sharing. It has been life-changing.” Those types of messages are something that money can never buy. No matter how much money I make, nothing will ever be as valuable as those types of messages of making an impact on other people.

Overcome Personal Obstacles

Those are some of the tough and great things, and things that I have personally had to overcome. Being able to do this, you are going to have to have personal obstacles that you are going to have to work through to be able to build out your brand. For me, self-doubt has certainly been high. That may come as a surprise to you. I’m human. I’m like you. I’m like everybody else. I have doubts about my own abilities and doubts that I can make this happen. There have been periods of time where the engagement has been lowered, downloads have dropped, social media posts that go nowhere, Instagram reels or TikToks that I have done that go absolutely nowhere, and they are good content.

That creates self-doubt. It makes you think, “Am I good enough for this? Should I be doing this?” That’s something that I have had to work on. For me, the health challenges. I have explained before how I have had toxic mold exposure and how that wreaked havoc on my health. These past years, I have gone through a lot of changes in my health protocol. I worked with a new functional health doctor that’s helped me work on clearing out the toxic mold and restoring my health back to optimal.

That has taken a toll on my overall energy levels. There are some days when I don’t feel like doing anything. It’s a physical or even mental lack of energy. That has been something that has been tough. Family commitments, my kids are at the stages ages where they are involved in many sports, so I constantly take them to their sporting events.

 

Tyler had 40 baseball games. That’s tough to be able to stay consistent in producing your content. In addition to family commitments, I have other businesses that need attention. This has been something where I have had to work on and be intentional about producing the content and staying committed to building this because I have an overall vision of where I want this to go.

The other challenge like a personal challenge, is my desire to play and have fun. Sitting here behind your computer recording to an empty screen. I enjoy it and love speaking life into people but the weather is beautiful outside and I would much rather be out on the new private golf course that I joined or be out golfing, in general, going to play cards or whatever the case, things that I love to do. I have had to try to quell that desire to play and keep that in check so that I stay focused on building the brand.

The other challenge too if you are already successful, then it’s even tougher, in my opinion, to get the motivation on a daily basis to do this because you already have success. You already have money flowing, and you don’t have to do this. When you don’t have to do it, then that creates a lack of motivation sometimes where the desire isn’t as strong because it’s something that you could push off, procrastinate, and delay because you don’t have to do it.

Lessons Learned: What I Have Done Well

I want to talk to you about things that I have learned that I have done well and have not done so well since I started. I will start with the things that I have done well. The first decision that was critical was that I hired a company called Brand Builders before I even started the platform. I listened to them. I heard about them years ago on a podcast. The Mike Dillard Show that I had listened to. It’s an entrepreneurial show. He doesn’t do it anymore but an incredible show.

He interviewed this guy Rory on the show, and he was running a company called Brand Builders that helps people to build, design, and monetize a personal digital brand. I signed up with them, and that was a huge and incredible turning point because they got me focused on creating or building a specific niche and sticking to it.

If I had done this without going through brand builders, I would have talked about a lot of different subjects because I have expertise in a lot of subjects. I know health and fitness. I have been in the health and fitness industry for many years. I have coached hundreds of people on nutrition, weight loss, weight gain, and muscle gaining programs over the years.

I have experience in entrepreneurialism. I built multiple businesses. I can talk about poker. I have made several hundred thousand dollars playing cards. I could talk about that. I can talk about parenting. I feel like a pretty present father. I know a thing or two about that. I know there are a lot of things that I don’t know and that I don’t do well but I could talk about that.

If you don't stick to one thing, then you really never break through. Click To Tweet

Now I could talk about toxic health challenges. There are so many things that I feel I could talk about but if you don’t stick to one thing, then you never break through what they call the she-hands-wall where you have to be niche and talk about something specific. Once you break through that wall, then you can start offering other services because your brand and your images are so respected and well-known that anything that you are talking about, people are going to tune in to listen to.

I haven’t broken through the she-hands-wall, so I don’t have the ability to do that. I need to talk about one thing, how to grow and make more money or how to grow your money. The other things I have done well are building two courses and writing a book. I spent a lot of time producing my content and producing those products that I’m very proud of. They are extremely good and educational, and the value that I put in is competent is 10 to 50 times more than what I’m charging. I’m proud of the fact that I jumped into action right away. I stopped procrastinating.

Another thing that I have done well is batched produced content. This is critical for you to be able to produce enough content to be consistent. When I say batch produce, what I mean is you block off a longer window of time. For me, it’s 2 to 4 hours, at least 2 hours need to be blocked off for me to get in. Here’s the thing that I have learned when you switch tasks.

According to some research that I have read, I don’t know if this is true or not. This could be total internet like don’t believe everything you see or read on the internet type thing because so much of it is BS. It said that it takes your mind about nine minutes from when you switched to one task that you are focused on or working on when you go to the next.

Every time you do that, there’s this time where you got to get reacclimated to a new mode of thinking, a new creativity. You lose a lot of valuable time if you are constantly switching between tasks. What I have found with being able to produce content is if I’m going to go to write, for example, my blog, then I’m going to need to spend at least block off two hours and get into it. It takes me about 15 to 20 minutes to get my thoughts centered, get present with what I’m doing, and get rid of the distractions and the other things I’m thinking about, so I can get dialed in and get into that particular train of thought.

I have noticed too if I’m going to produce an episode, it’s much better for me to produce the episode like a chunk in one day versus trying to keep switching gears. That creates a lot of loss of energy, motivation, and thinking. We are going to do this. You want to be able to block out bigger chunks and then stay hyper-focused on that particular task.

If I’m going to go to produce Instagram content or reels, for example, there have been days where I crank out 19 or 20 and in 1 day, in 1 4-hour block. That is so much easier than trying to do one produced each day. You got to set up things. You got to make sure that the lighting is right and that you are in the right spot. There are so many little things that go into producing if I get the scripts down. The challenging part is getting the content dialed in like what’s my topic. What is my bullet point underneath that topic? I will do batch content on that. It’s my mode.

 

I’m going to sit down for 2 or 3 hours and write down all my topic ideas for my reels like what’s my main point of this particular reel, and then what are my bullet points? I’m going to map out 10 to 20 of those all at one time, so that’s batching that. When I go to film, which may not be on that same day, oftentimes it’s not. That day is idea generation or content generation day. When I go to film, I’m going to film and batch everything all on the same day. That has worked wonders.

The other thing that you got to consider with batch creating is that there are going to be lots of days where you are not feeling it. You are not feeling it to get in front of the camera or you are not feeling it to produce the content like to come up with the ideas. You are drained, tired, and traveling. You could be down that day. Maybe your last few posts, reels or things that you did, didn’t get much engagement, traction, or views.

To go up, try to do it, and produce that content when you are not feeling that motivation and inspired because your other content is bombed out puts you in a poor state to be able to think about serving your audience. This whole thing comes down to, “Are you helping other people solve a specific problem that they have or helping them overcome a challenge that they have?”

The bigger to the degree that you can help people solve a specific problem in a niche, the better that you are going to do. There are going to be certain times when motivation is not there, and trying to force it is pretty tough. There are times when you could have an extended week where it’s a down week. Those are the times when it’s tough work but you have to fight through it. You got to keep your content consistent.

The other thing I have done well is that I have built a great team. That takes time. It wasn’t something that won all at one time. I have an incredible show and book editor, Jess. She is fantastic. If you ever need a great editor to get you going, that provides incredible value. Reach out to me. I will connect you with Jess. It’s totally great on to figure that part out. I have got a great reels video editor. All I do, once I record the video, it’s instantaneously text with the title, and then he does all the editing.

That’s something I can’t stand doing, and that’s what originally, when I started doing reels, I was doing great. I even had a reel that hit 100,000 views. I got a little bit of virality. That’s awesome but I burned out because I could not stand the editing process. It’s not how I’m wired and built. I have to pay somebody else to do that, and I’m happy to pay somebody else because I hate it. The other thing you’ve got to start considering is what are the things that you enjoy doing. That’s where you want to be, and that’s your zone of genius.

What is it that you don’t like doing? There are things that need to get done to build your brand that you probably won’t like doing. You are going to have to have cash or revenue coming in to be able to take care of those things or have those things taken care of for you that you don’t want to do. The other thing I found that I don’t enjoy doing is engaging in other people’s posts.

The algorithm really punishes any sort of break or inconsistency. Click To Tweet

I don’t dislike it because I like the networking and all of that but the time is very time intensive. That is a great way to get more views on your post, brand, and platform. For example, I have a VA, Gerby. He’s fantastic. He’s in the Philippines and does a lot of the engaging on Instagram and other people’s accounts. That engagement and those comments get more people viewing my thoughts, so to speak because he’s commenting as if he were me. That drives more people and followers, and awareness of my brand.

That’s an incredible way to drive your brand up if you have more time than money. You want to be very focused on at least 30 other accounts per day on that platform. You want to be engaging. If you don’t want to do it and hire it out. I have got a new gal, a company I hired for LinkedIn. Again, I dropped LinkedIn because I didn’t enjoy that process of engaging or the time that it took to engage in other people’s posts. I have got a company that does all of that engagement for me. She posts and comments on 30 other accounts every day and the incredible job that she’s doing, and that drives a lot of people to follow me.

That engagement, if you keep consistent with it over the course of time, it’s going to compound and create some incredible results with other people supporting you and engaging you. If you want engagement on social media, you got to get it first. You could produce some incredible quality content and get the engagement that way but what I have found is that if you want engagement, you have to get it. That’s the only way that you are going to consistently get it back.

Lessons Learned: What I Have Not Done Well

Things that I have not done well. In terms of hiring out and spending money to do the things that you don’t want to do, it’s pretty expensive. There are a lot of things and costs of doing this type of platform that can add up. Especially if you are going to do a part-time where you have another business or job, then your time is even more limited, scarce, and valuable, so it’s going to be even more critical for you to be hiring people and building a team out to help you to build out your platform.

That’s where you want to make sure, and the mistake I made is that I wasn’t focused on driving revenue and creating cashflow from the brand early on. Even now, I’m finally getting to do those years later. I’m focused on getting my book and courses out and doing the one-to-one. If you want to build your brand revenue quickly, the fastest way to do that is to sell your time and expertise and offer one-to-one coaching. That’s what I would have done way in the beginning, to drive some cash and revenue so that this brand isn’t a liability. It’s immediately an asset that’s positively generating cashflow versus a negative cash strain, which is pretty much what it has been so far.

Another big mistake is the lack of consistency. You would probably say, “I don’t know about that. He has been pretty consistent with this show. He’s got 90 episodes.” I did take a month off because I was right in the middle of writing my book and creating my courses. I got hyper-focused on those and was like, “I will get to the show. I get to it.” A month went by and I’m like, “I don’t have anything out there.” I posted a show, and then my reach, views, and downloads dropped in half. The algorithm punishes any break or inconsistency. That’s why you always want to have plenty of shows in the hopper.

What I did was I came out fast and furious with 3 episodes per week for the first 3 months. I don’t think I necessarily got burnt out but I got busy with travel, trips, and things, and then I got behind. All the content that the show that I had in the hopper was gone. I didn’t have anything. I was at a low point in motivation in December. The cold, the winter is approaching. It’s a little bit more of a down-type time leading up to Christmas. For me, that’s seasonally a time where I’m a little bit more down than normal, and the motivation isn’t quite there. Not having the content in the hopper to get me through those down months was detrimental.

 

The other thing is you want to be on the same day, same time. That consistency is critical for the algorithm to realize that you are consistent. They will push you out to more people and your readers to know when to expect your content to come out. I was very across the board in terms of what day and time my show would come out.

When I come to relaunch with my new three episodes a week, I have talked about how this is going to be a motivational mindset type day. In this show, there’s going to be an epic guest and then a market-specific opportunity. When I come out with that, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 8:00 AM or 9:00 AM or 1 of those 2, I will figure out what’s best with the optics, the analytics, what they show me, it’s going to be that same daytime every fucking week without any hesitation whatsoever.

That’s the thing too with my blog. My new blog is going to be dropped every Wednesday at 12:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. If you want to check out my new blog, my first one was released. It’s on my site, MyIndestructibleWealth.com. It’s written by me. A lot of the blogs that were on my site before were written by the search engine optimization team. They tried to get in my voice but they couldn’t and were pretty generic. They weren’t anything I was excited about. They were only done to bring people to the site for SEO, for Google traffic type play.

That is what the SEO that I hire is. The SEO guru told me to do it, and that’s what the service they provided for me. After fourteen months, they never got me ranked any higher than I expected. For a couple of keywords, I was in maybe the top twenty. That was a hugely expensive process to hire a search engine optimization company that ended up writing generic blogs that weren’t in my voice. Nobody ever was excited about reading, and I wasn’t excited about promoting them. That’s critical. In everything you do, be extremely consistent.

With reels, I was inconsistent. I was posting them for a while, and then I stopped for a while. Now, it’s consistent. One reel has to go out every single day with batch creating. I know that I can stick to that especially having a video editor, somebody to edit the reels. That’s allowing me to be able to stay in my zone of genius and keep cranking out the great quality content and then pushing it out, seeing hits and what sticks. Also, learning from that to try to optimize and get better.

The other mistake that I feel I made is not driving to an email list. I have a few hundred or 400 people on my email list but I have not put the attention, time, and energy into that at all. That’s probably one of the most critical parts of building a brand. You have to go about thinking of it this way. Any social media platform where you are posting, you are in rented real estate, meaning that you don’t own that real estate, so you are renting it.

They can change their algorithm. They can kick you off. They cannot take care of you when other people hack, duplicate or replicate. Fraudulently, your account tries to scam your followers. That’s all stuff I can’t control because I’m on a rented real estate. When I build my own email list, that is somebody who’s invited me into their email box. They want to get the content. They want to learn from me. They want to get my email messages. They want to get my newsletter. You want to put a lot of effort into growing your email list and serving that list. That’s your space that you own. Nobody can take away your email list. You own the rights to that list.

The power and strength of your brand are in your email list. Click To Tweet

Many content creators have said, “The power and the strength of your brand are in your email list.” I’m focusing on launching a consistent eLetter or newsletter every single week, and that’s about to drop on a consistent basis over the next months. I believe that will probably end up launching once August 2022 and summer is over.

The other thing is that Facebook ads so far are a complete and total money drain. I haven’t given up on them but if you don’t have a significant amount of revenue and cashflow coming in from your brand, then in all likelihood, you are going to spend a lot of money trying to test and not ever get any sales. Facebook ads are very difficult to be able to get profitable. It takes a lot of tweaking. I have even got a Facebook ad specialist that helps me run my ads, do the targeting, and all that. Still, we are not there yet.

I would recommend that if you are going to tackle paid advertising, you have all these other things in place first and that you have sufficient cash to carry you through because it is going to be expensive to get it dialed in. The other thing, I wish that I had created a shorter lead magnet. When you go to my website MyIndestructibleWealth.com, there’s an awesome seven-step video series there. The problem is that it’s too awesome. Meaning that I give away way too much and too lengthy of content for free. When people don’t pay for content, they don’t value it the same.

I have noticed that a lot of people, even though I know the content is good, they are not getting through that video series. I’m going to shorten that to three videos and start experimenting with other lead magnets. One of my next lead magnets is going to be something that I only give away if somebody ops in. It’s nine investments that you can know that they are safe and reliable and then create streams of passive income. I’m going to dial in all nine plays, and that’s going to be on my site, and that will probably be there soon. It’s going to be an incredible value that I should charge for but I’m going to give it away to build up my email list and create more value for my subscribers.

What I do differently if I were starting, to sum it all up, I would focus on generating income earlier. I would hyper-focus my marketing budget on influencers promoting me. There’s a cool site called Influence.co. You can go there and find influencers who are willing that you pay them, and then they will post to their followers and drive people to your site and your brand.

That’s a much better way because you are getting a hold of people that have influence over their audiences. It’s much more of a short thing that that’s going to work than running Facebook ads to an audience that you have no idea if they are going to be receptive to your offer or not. I would hyper-focus my budget strictly on that. I’m launching an influencer campaign. That’s the only thing that I would probably be spending my money on initially, as far as marketing dollars go, instead of Facebook ads.

I want to go on a podcast tour. Even if you don’t have a podcast, you can go on a podcast tour. There’s a cool site called GuestIO.com. You can go there and get on shows. You can place yourself or message people and say, “I would be a great guest for your show.” You can even pay to get on shows that have a much larger audience. That’s the other place where I would direct my advertising dollars.

 

There’s a show that reaches several hundred thousand people per episode, Entrepreneurs on Fire. He wants $5,000 to be able to do that. That’s a better spend than $5,000 on Facebook ads because that could get burned up quickly without any results, whereas you are getting your message in front of hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs in long-form content, not even close.

I don’t even need to do it to know that that’s going to work better. I would surely be writing my own blogs and having somebody edit and get them formatted correctly for a blog site. I have somebody do the graphics and so on, and I have a service that’s doing that for me. These blogs are in my own voice, and they are written by me.

I hope this helps you. There’s going to be more about this as I continually learn more about building a digital brand. I don’t want to dissuade you with all the things that I have talked about because it’s a wonderful thing to be doing and focused on and building up. It’s a long game. If you are going to play this game, don’t come into it with less than a five-year commitment. It’s not going to work in one year. There’s too much to learn, test, and figure out. You are not going to get it done in a year.

It’s a five-year play. If you are coming into it committed to posting and creating content regularly, pushing it out, and promoting it for a five-year process, then you are going to do very well. You will break through the noise. The noise is that there are 90 million messages that go out per hour. That’s what you are fighting against. You are trying to get people’s attention but you also are fighting against a lot of other messages that are being distributed throughout all the various social platforms that you’ve got to overcome. Consistency is the only way that you are going to be able to overcome the noise and get your message seen, heard, and respected.

I hope this helps you. If you got questions, I know that a few of you have talked to me about creating your own podcast or brand, don’t hesitate to reach out. I would be happy to answer your questions, and also, those questions give me content for my future episodes. I love questions. Don’t feel that I’m too busy to answer them. I will absolutely answer you. In most cases, I will respond to you individually and then utilize that to create more content to go into more in-depth for you.

I hope this helps and serves you. Go out. If you’ve got that inside of you, that message that you want to share with the world, don’t keep that bottled up inside. Push that out into the marketplace but know when you do it that you are going to be excited when you first launch and then hit the Valley of Despair. You’ve got to be able to work through that Valley of Despair and keep going because consistency is what wins the game. Like with anything else in your life and your finances, consistency will trump everything else by far. Have a great day. Thanks for reading.

 

Important Links

• Instagram – Jack Gibson
• Brand Builders
• The Mike Dillard Show
• Rory Vaden – The Mike Dillard Show Past Episode
• Influence.co
• GuestIO.com
• Entrepreneurs on Fire
• https://Bit.ly/3xjGFQ7