Welcome to the #piratebroadcast: 

Read The Transcript

Transcript
[0:02] Boom. We are live it the pirate broadcasts and I have a special guest that is a fellow wizard and we have been going back and forth.

[0:13] And Andrew loves video as much as I do.
And we're couple of wizards back and forth and so I wanted to introduce you to,
if you don't know Andrew you need to know Andrew connect with Andrew go grab a connection request with Andrew and get on board. We're both linked in.
We're creating content and doing lots of good things.

[0:36] And we wanted to share them with you today date a couple of quick tips elements think things that you can use right now today.
And Andrew welcome to the show. How are you today.

[0:47] I am doing great. And just for all those people out there who don't know me if you're in California or you visit California hit me up I am like I am the guy that will always make the time to go grab coffee with you.
So I love meeting. I love taking the online connections on LinkedIn and making them real life connections. I've met russ in real life as well.

[1:08] Yeah. Yeah exactly. And that's what it's all about. It's really I mean if you think about and this is what I tell my clients is is you know LinkedIn is nothing more than a tool you can use to start a conversation.

[1:23] The conversation still needs to develop just like any other you know networking event or face to face or coffee or you know random connection you know in,
the reality is is it so easy to actually meet people in person connect with them and develop a relationship just like you and I now.
And we've done business together and we've had connections we met in real life you know and actually I think the first time.
Well I knew about you because you had.
You and Brian Schulman had met for coffee one day and that's what brought you onto my radar. And then we connected.
Here we are on the pirate broadcast.

[2:10] Yeah. Well I think I think you really hit on it as far as you know.
What's the number one skill that if you master you will be successful and it's communication right.
So the better you are at communicating whether it's in a digital form or in person form the better you are at that the more success you're going to have the more friends you're gonna make the more people who are going to come into your life want to do business with you the more easily you're gonna be able to talk about what you do. Right.
Like all of that stuff is all just tied back to communication. So it's like just get out there and start having conversation. You'll start getting better at this stuff.

[2:44] Well the other side of the same coin is you know with video it's much easier to pronounce,
and announce and share who you are on a regular basis very quickly and a lot of people are shy of getting on camera there.
You know like not quite there.
And what I what I recommend for people like that and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this is if you're shy about getting on camera why not start a screen share and narrate over the top of it and then share a couple of key points.
Very simple and just say hey I want to meet with you here's a coffee here's connection here's here's something we can do together or I just want to learn more about what you're doing.
And I think if you approach it with a curiosity rather than a scarcity mindset.
You were always able to get further along down the road because,
if your scarcity and your scare him away because you're asking for everything all money and you know buy my stuff that's you know that turns people off and in this day and age it's so easy to notice that activity right.

[3:58] So I like to just be curious about what the person is doing and have a conversation and find out more about them.
Because if I can help them do something or if I can refer them to somebody that can help them then I become a resource.
It doesn't matter if I do business with them directly if I can help them achieve their goals and stay top of mind with them then it's a much easier conversation to have.
What are your thoughts on Andrew and how do you approach it.

[4:24] Yeah. So I think first the first and foremost I would tell people I is the most commonly used word in the English language.
I don't know about the other languages but I'm sure it's probably similar in their language as well because it's a human thing to be concerned with yourself right.
Nothing is more important than the problems that you have right.
If there's an earthquake halfway across the world that you did not feel that caused massive damage millions billions and trillions of dollars,
if you prick your finger right now you're going to be concerned with that tiny little prick that you're going to be concerned about that earthquake that just happened right. Yeah I hate paper cuts.
I just hate paper cuts though.
But I don't cheat or ask nothing on my paper cut.
As long as it doesn't bother me I'm good right. True.
The human psychology element here is that people are way more concerned with themselves than they are with you.
So when you're getting in your head about being shy and nervous on camera 1 Most people aren't really thinking about you at the time right.
Like when they watch a video you're making them think of things in their own life.
And so they're immediately like all of their thoughts are still going back to themselves and where they are today. So if you want to reach out to somebody.

[5:38] On video make it about that person that you're talking to right now. Don't send a video.
I mean this is going to make you a little bit more shy. If you send a video in you're just talking about yourself.
That's kind of awkward. LIKE HEY JUST YOU KNOW THIS IS ME. I'M PRETTY COOL.
YOU SHOULD WANT TO HANG OUT WITH ME RIGHT NOW. MAKE IT BE LIKE HEY RUSS I was checking out your live podcast.
You always have really handsome guys on there.
This guy Andrew came on and it just was amazing and I love everything that you're talking about. I'd love to get coffee with you. Right.
Flip it around make it about them them them them and then your brain turns into a normal human brain because you're talking to somebody else rather than talking about yourself and nobody right.
Because that's what it can feel like when you're talking on the camera that you're just talking to yourself.
It's awkward if you leave it up to them.

[6:27] Even with the live broadcast like this. You know we're actually talking to the individual you know one of the lessons I learned in broadcasting was that,
regardless if a million people are listening to you you have to address the individual because you're talking to the individual in the camera and you're talking about one of the things that you have to think about is.

[6:50] The connection and you can't connect. I mean you can speak to an audience but you can't connect to 10000 people at one time.

[6:59] So. So think about the individual and how they're feeling about what you're doing. And the other thing I want to.
I want to mention is that there's a lot of people that are joining us. Andrew and I just want to give a shout out to Jessica Leslie Osborne hey love to see you.
Leslie Jordan Thomas is out there again.

[7:21] And Angie Angie and,
love that you're here.

[7:29] Appreciate you and thank you so much for being here. You know this is this is an amazing time in our life.
Andrew and it just it's just blows my mind away that we can actually reach out more now.

[7:45] Is it midnight from Dakar. This is I mean it's international and we have the opportunity I have just like you friends all over the world as a result of this platform.
So it's amazing that we can actually accomplish this goal and make progress and do things anywhere anytime.

[8:09] It's like I'm I'm traveling now I'm in Houston you know a month ago I was in Seattle and I know you travel quite a bit. You go to different events.
And the people we know are traveling around as well. So what are the biggest challenges that you have with just.
Coaching students or people your clients how to walk through the process of how to get started and make it super simple. How.
Because I just I just tell people to get on your phone and you know just pick up the phone and start doing it and just you know practice makes perfect right. But there is no perfect.

[8:49] Yeah. So I mean I do this all the time with clients too that are kind of at the very beginning stage and they're wanting to jump off into the deep end. Basically right.
And pay a lot of money basically to make video.
And for me I always say hey if you haven't really dived into that space the first thing that you're you're gonna want to do is get comfortable on your own right.
Definitely places where I'm like yes if you're doing some high end work and you have an event and you need to sell tickets to it yet like yes for sure hire people but,
organically when you are just building your audience you should be in that like the you should be laying the foundation for that right.
Like even if you look at Gary V at some point in his life he was making those on his own right.
He would just like go on with his phone whipping out his phone and just recording himself.

[9:36] He started with one line Wine Library and he says for the first two years nobody was watching anything like he tells a story like hey I had nobody watching me. I mean it started.

[9:51] It takes time. I mean I've been posting consistently now on LinkedIn for almost a year,
and it's been a very slow drip of gaining traction where I'd say I probably started in January this year.
Like being very consistent and saying OK I'm going to post it like every day ish.
And I think I started this year with maybe a little over a thousand connections and then just at the beginning of last week.
So just a week ago I was just hitting 3000.
Right. So very slow drip to gain those followers. And then this last week I gained a thousand and one week. Right. So.

[10:34] Like I feel like it sneaks up on you. You got to put it in yet. Lay and lay in that that groundwork. You have to figure out who you are you gotta find your voice.
You had to figure out what you're you're like what your positioning is what you're messaging is and sometimes it's not very clear. Sometimes it can change because the direction that you were going kind of changes and what you thought you wanted to do is not what you wanted to do.
So I feel like it's a process that you have to give yourself into.
You can't just go into it going hey I'm going to try this for a week and if it doesn't work I'm out right.
I'm not that type of thing that you do it's it's very you have to build it up. But once you do once the momentum is rolling.
It's very easy to keep it going. Right it's not something that you have to invest as much time as you did at the very beginning and you get better and better at it so you're investing less and less time as you go through. Go on in the process.

[11:22] Well I think I think the other side of that is that you become more efficient at what you're doing because you're comfortable with it.
It's like a any instrument you know artist or a musician or any kind of a creative process is cooking you know prep work takes less time when you know the recipes you know you know like the back of your hand.
Jill Sullivan and you know all of the chefs out there know this.
It's like OK let's do a matching and let's put it together that that's where your efficiencies come from.
And I want to go back to one point that you mentioned that I think is key to individuals getting online and starting to shoot video is is.

[12:08] Just know that the initial videos that you want you'll look back and say oh man that sucks so bad.
And we all started zero. Everyone starts at zero and we all know that it's going to suck and there's gonna be a period of suck that is going to last.

[12:24] As long as you take to get your efficiency and find your voice because you have to.
You have to produce enough copy content and creativity to understand what it is and get that feedback loop going.
If it's all in your head and you're doing it all in your head you'll never achieve your voice the way you need to achieve your voice to present,
to to be comfortable on camera to actually produce the content and the creativity that you deserve.
And that's what you know you have a gift. You have to share it out.
And one of the things that I love about some of the videos that you've produced is that you you almost tease out the conversation with people online and and it's a conversational aspect of it.
And I love that and I appreciate what you're doing online.
And so thank you for being here.
And I just want to extend the gratitude if you're shot if you're showing up live here. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you.
And if you're watching this hit reply comment if you want to ask Andrew anything ask questions.
He could be found it for Ferrell flicks correct. Dot com. That's all right. All right.

[13:38] So Andrew I want to I want to ask you about what has your biggest epiphany been.

[13:46] As you've been growing your content your creativity.
And how did you get started in video. And how have you seen the evolution take place and what's surprised you along the way.

[13:59] So let's start with the biggest epiphany. So at the beginning of the year I talked about that journey right where I basically said hey I'm going to record a video every day and we're just gonna see what happens.
I legitimately video about anything and everything like I had an idea I'm going to make a burrito pickle sandwich I'm recording a video right.
That's that was it I was documenting life and I.
What's interesting is that I think I gained a lot of really true fans when I,
started that process because there was literally no like nothing behind my content nothing like you know sometimes when people post content and it's very very clear that this content is meant to advertise what they do or they want to sell you something eventually.

[14:44] It wasn't that right. Like I'm not selling you pick all read it's like a I gained a lot of fans going through that process but my epiphany was,
that I wasn't really getting any business from what I was doing I was just getting friends which is fine right.
Like it was great I was growing an audience and this audience was gonna help me amplify what I do later on.
Yeah. And my biggest epiphany was that the content that did really well or the content that people really appreciated was when I was adding some sort of value directly to them.
So this is the part where people say you know like should you get like should you give away things for free. How much do you give away for free. That kind of stuff.
From my experience I've found that when I started taking all that stuff that would have been conversations I had with clients strategy and techniques that I would have used to help them get results with their videos and I put that information out there.

[15:39] People ate it up and not only did people eat it up the right people started to eat it up and the right people started to reach out and ask me more and I started to be seen as an expert in my space and not somebody who was just playing around.
And so that was the epiphany for me was it went from making,
these videos that were helping me find my voice to making videos that are what I call empowerment videos that he is that empower people to do something so that when somebody finishes that video they go what I want them to do is I want them to say hey I've got this right.
So if I get I make a video and I say here's how to each being shy on camera I want somebody to watch and go hey I can do that.
So that was the switch for me I started making more content that was aimed at others rather than that same thing.
I went from inward reflection like what's the content that I would love to make to what's content that other people would love to consume.
And as soon as I made that flip that was when it was like game over. Like now my content welling up on its own.
And the other part of that is what I noticed is that.

[16:42] By creating content it goes back to the original point by creating content that is completely random and then understanding that you know and seeing what the data brings back,
and finding out. OK.
Some of the right people are seeing it now and I could do more of this content and that goes back to the whole point of,
you know things are going to suck you know you create a random video about making coffee it doesn't really matter anything just to get content out there just to be in the feed and be noticed.
And if you and if you do that you'll start noticing trends and then you can have a feedback loop around that.
And I think that's that's really important for people to understand because until you start until you start producing you don't have any kind of a you don't know who's going to be watching you don't know who's going to be attracted to your content or your personality.
I mean we could be doing the exact same thing which we don't necessarily but we do similar things in.
We have an opportunity to attract certain people and even if we did the exact same thing our personalities would draw a different audience.
So not good or bad. I mean it's just like it's not better or worse it's just different.
You know it's like you gravitate towards certain people and that's just that's just way it goes.

[18:04] And that's a good reminder too that you know you can still mix both of these types of content and have really good results. Right.
So if you love coffee or I'll name drop Zach Metzler right out. That's awesome. Yeah.
He has a thing with it. Yeah.
Yeah. So I mean it's completely outside of what he normally does but he's actually tied it into who he is and this thing that he's really passionate about so he can make that content all day and mix it.
And his other content and it's gonna get good results especially because there's gonna be people on LinkedIn who are also big fans of whiskey and now they are tied to them. And and this is where it's really interesting.
If there are like you know let's say there are two or three other people out there who does what Zach does.
The person who likes whiskey is going to hire Jack every time. Right.
Right. It isn't as good as one of those other people because they like him more.
Well that's that's a brilliant point Andrew because if you have if you have a common thread.

[19:08] Say you know anything fishing golfing sports hunting you know cars whatever it happens to be,
that common thread allows you to have conversations outside of the business conversation right now and that helps build the grow like and trust.
So that's why I think it's really important for people to understand that hey I don't need to do everything for everyone.
I only need to do the best for some people. Right.
And you can you can develop some amazing relationships and grow your business by helping the right people do the right thing at the right time.
And I think that's important for us to understand is is you know we're going to we're going to gravitate to certain people at certain times. And that's just the way it goes.
And I just I don't know we're connected randomly and it's you know with Zach it's it's random I love Zach. He's awesome.
You know Roger you know so many people I could go down the list and I don't do a lot of tagging.
And I've purposely not done that to see who organically arrives in my LinkedIn feed.
So I.
I've connected with some very different people.

[20:30] And that's the kind of surprise I've I've found is what can you do when you,
when you know because with automation and tagging and getting on different lists and all of this other activity that you can add to enhance your lists it it.
I think at times it dilutes your real audience. I don't know.
I think that's a theory but I don't know. Do you have any strategy around that.
You've got a thousand followers this week.

[21:03] Well this week was just a really good week. Content wise so you know I think because of my slow build my audience is pretty genuine.
As far as like I don't get a lot of abouts things I do try different pod things every now and then just to kind of like dip my toes in and see how that's going if it's still working.
I monitor other people that are in pods.
They're content to see how well it's doing and the type of engagement that they get.
But I mean ultimately when you're measuring the engagement on your content it's looking at the comments and how meaningful those comments are and how many actually start a discussion. REICHS if it's just a single comment.

[21:50] And like a really good way to do this is if somebody comments and then you comment and you ask a question and you never get a good response bag it is probably like you know the engagement isn't quite there.
We're willing to have a conversation on it but the people who are and this is easier for me to see because I see these people all the time I might add my content but if I like if somebody comments on my content and I ask them a question they'll typically more often than not respond to me.
And so like that's for me a way that I can monitor like what's real and what's not real.
But yeah there's so much on Linked In that's that's going towards automation and rightfully so.
I mean some of the automation is are super helpful.
For example I'm I'm running an automation right now where I go out and I find people in a particular industry that I want to work in I want to find some clients and,
so I have an automation that goes out and does two things one it visits profiles and two it connects with people who are in that industry.

[22:48] It does like to think like one hundred a day. And it's finding people in that industry and then sending them a first message right.
That is just kind of saying hey love to connect. I'm really interested in what you do. I'm looking for to grow my network in this space right.
And then I am able to once responses come in actually start engaging with them on a more personal level.
But what it does is it shows me who's who's interested in what I do and who actually wants to start that conversation who's willing to start the conversation rather than like the old way of me doing that would have been very much head hunting and spending.
You know even if it's five minutes on each individual learning more about them but that's wasted time if that person has absolutely no interest in working with me or learning about what I do or building a relationship.
And so this automation does is kind of kicks it off and lets me know who's interested right.
Can I start this conversation. So there are things like that that for me are really nice. But then there's some other things where.
Like I could do that and somebody could have a box set up on their page to automatically respond to connections right.
And so I think essentially we get into this. That's two robots are talking to each other and people aren't even involved in it.

[24:02] That might be exhibit might be a great skit though. Hey my boss my boss better than your boss.
More realistic than your boss.

[24:14] So Andrew thank you so much for being here.
I know there's a few more people that joined in the conversation and I just want to Kevin thank you so much for being here.
Jordan it's awesome. Jessica it sounds like Leslie may have had her own epiphany.
So I know that the interaction with LinkedIn comments are a little bit challenging at times because I have a hard time multitasking.
You're there. I love love you everyone. And thank you so much Marine. Thank you so much for being here.
I know Andrew we're going to wrap up the show and I just I just appreciate you being here.
Thank you for your time. And I look forward to our next connection an opportunity to share some great advice and tips with the link to an audience so kindness is cool.
Smiles are free and you enjoy the day.

[25:17] They get together.