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Connect with RJ
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rjredden/

Connect with Russ
https://russjohns.com/
https://thepiratesyndicate.com/
https://nextstepnext.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nextstepnext/

Audio digitally transcribed by Descript

Introduction: [00:00:00] Welcome to the #PirateBroadcast™, where we interview #interestingpeople doing #interestingthings. Where you can expand your connections, your community, #kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree. Let’s get this party started.q

Russ Johns: [00:00:10] And it's a beautiful day when you can see a beautiful smile like RJ and we're in the house with the Ninja Black Belt Bots. You are a master at staying in contact, starting a conversation and I love that because it's near and dear to my heart, starting conversations. So how you doing?

RJ Redden: [00:00:33] I am so good. Russ, it's been it's been a crazy good couple of months, getting some awesome training and continuing to explore my my little bot world here that has also yielded some awesomeness. I'm just happy to be in business. I am thrilled to be making great connections with people. And I get on a plane on Wednesday for the first time in a year and a half. I love planes.

Russ Johns: [00:01:02] Awesome. Where are you going on this plane?

RJ Redden: [00:01:05] Going to Orange County, California to participate in a training up there. I'm becoming one of Paydroid's certified partners to run challenges and things and it's so exciting. I'm going to stop by and see a friend I haven't seen in a long time. Doing that before and then the event, there's just 20 of us in a workshop. So it promises to be some awesomeness. I'm not sure that I'm spiritually ready at this time. But it's going to be good.

Russ Johns: [00:01:37] You can prepare it by Wednesday.

RJ Redden: [00:01:40] Yes, I will. I will attempt to do yes.

Russ Johns: [00:01:43] The classes that you've been promoting, I know I'm on your list and see these things come across my email in my notifications. So talk a little bit about what you're teaching and training people on.

RJ Redden: [00:01:57] Yeah so I've  got a big class, but one of the things that is the stepping stone to that, that I've been talking a lot about lately, is finding what your marketing personality is. And because a lot of times we're taught about target market and you need to word it this way to get these kinds of people, and we're forever honing that principle, which is good, but also for me, I want to know... I have a little quiz, it's a personality test. So you can find out what your own marketing personality is. What do you like to do? What do you like to put out there? A lot of people come at us, a lot of marketers, some of them shady, come at us with their quick fix or they're just do this five step process or whatever it is.

Russ Johns: [00:02:48] This the one thing will save your life.

RJ Redden: [00:02:49] The silver bullet of marketing. Here's the thing. If that silver bullet doesn't really match you, what you're passionate about, what you're like to do, how you like to connect with people. It doesn't matter what that silver bullet is, because unless you just outsource it to someone else and have them do the entire thing, you're not going to feel passionate enough to wake up in the morning and go, Yes, this is the way that I connect. You're going to drop it. And that's what a lot of people do especially as a non young entrepreneur, I was buying a lot of magic bullets and hoping one of them, I was playing roulette with the marketing silver bullets, just trying to find one that would work.

Russ Johns: [00:03:35] Don't do you think though, sometimes, and this is me speaking, is if I know one more thing, if I can improve one skill, then I'll be prepared to sell something.

RJ Redden: [00:03:48] Yes. I do think that improving your skills, you heard me, I'm going on a training in a couple of days, improving your skills is a wonderful thing, but also knowing what your strengths are and your personality. What's a really good marketing opportunity for you, Russ Johns, that might not be a good marketing opportunity for me, just because of the way we look at the world and what we're passionate about. And so yeah, lately I've been just encouraging people to take this... I made this bot up. It's a little quiz and it talks to you about what your marketing personality is. And then it gives you your personalized ninja marketing mix. Here are the activities marketing wise that are going to be the highest yield for you, Russ Johns. And yeah,  the marketing mix has come from just years of working with people and learning how to make them successful. So if you're learning skills, you may as well learn them in this certain kind of pocket of energy right here, which we know will be of the highest effectiveness for you. Does that make sense?

Russ Johns: [00:04:59] That makes perfect sense because we all have personalities, right? We all have our nuances in the way we like to approach and have conversations. Introverts,  pirates, and ninjas. We're all unique in our own way. And therefore we have to be unique in our approach and selling.

RJ Redden: [00:05:17] We do. And a lot of people, just a lot of people that tend to gravitate toward me anyway. I wouldn't say gravitate, elevate. They elevate toward me. A lot of people that elevate toward me, they don't like selling at all. They don't like the aftertaste of having to do some of the marketing stuff that we're continued to be instructed to do. And you know what, there's a reason for that. There's a reason for that. And it's it's a lot like StrengthsFinder. Have you ever taken that one Russ?

Russ Johns: [00:05:48] Yeah.

RJ Redden: [00:05:50] When I took that one, it changed my life. For those of you don't know, it's a little, what does it take 20 minutes or something, and you...

Russ Johns: [00:05:55] Simple process.

RJ Redden: [00:05:56] Yeah. Simple process. You pick certain things that you'd rather do and then it comes out with an analysis of your particular personality rundown. And  it's really interesting. And that's where the idea for this came from was we all have an approach. We all have an approach to invite people in to our inner circle. Why are we not catering ourselves toward that approach? Why are we not focusing our energy toward this  is the kind of person I am. These are my strengths. Let's build on that and build a business.

Russ Johns: [00:06:31] Yeah. Yeah. Is that something someone can just sign up for on your website and just take that?

RJ Redden: [00:06:39] Of course. Yeah. It's a free thing.

Russ Johns: [00:06:42] Walk us through the free thing.

RJ Redden: [00:06:44] Walk us through?

Russ Johns: [00:06:45] They sign up. You can just take a quiz and it'll give you an answer.

RJ Redden: [00:06:50] It's a multiple choice and at the end of it, I give you a little video describing that personality set that you belong in. And then in your email, you will get your personalized marketing message. Which will tell you the activities that are going to be of  highest effectiveness for you. And then if you want, you can hop on the phone with me.

Russ Johns: [00:07:13] The interesting thing about sales is the idea that right now we're living in a environment where I think this statistically speaking is eight to 10 touch points before somebody converts A lead to a prospect to a sale. And it's because we have so many avenues to approach people, bots, email, live streams, all, I use Dubb, I use these video messages and there's all kinds of activities that we can provide. And sometimes as a market, It just seems, okay, I don't want to bug people and at the same time, people are busy. They may not see your first three messages and they might not have the moment in that time to respond to it or do anything with it. And so how do you as a marketer make it easy access and create value in the messaging and still convert business into you're helping more people.

RJ Redden: [00:08:21] I think that the thing that is missing here, there's a bit of a disconnect when we say, and I've heard seven to 12, I've heard eight to 10. I've heard so darn many,  Russ. It's just amazing number. It's just a number and it's true, to a certain extent it is the truth.  And what we're missing is this, that if we are sending out message after message with no invitation to connect with no two way conversation or an invitation to play, then that's why it takes eight to 10 messages.

Russ Johns: [00:09:01] So you actually have to have a call to action, is that what you're telling me?

RJ Redden: [00:09:05] Well, not just a call to action. Cause like you say call to action  and most people will go, okay, it's a button on the end that says, schedule a call and boop, I'm now scheduling a call. That's not necessarily what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is when you invite me to a two way conversation. So let's take the quiz for example. The quiz allows the user, whoever's on the other end of that screen, it allows them to play. It allows them to put some of themselves into the situation. The quiz isn't about me, it's about you. And in that way, it's much more involving than if I just flashed some stuff before your eyes, eight to 10 times hoping you'll notice. There's a difference there. And the single key there is involvement. Are you involving people in what you're doing? Engagement, marketing, that's my thing in involving them, are we involving them with the quizzes? Pretty easy stuff, right? Five day challenge, super easy to involve people. Anytime you are asking them to play, any time they are giving some of themselves. That's now a two-way conversation. That's an opportunity. The most of the stuff that we're told to train to do marketing wise is just, it's an electronic billboard that changes every five seconds when I have a new Instagram post. You know what I mean?

Russ Johns: [00:10:29] Yeah. It's like going down to New York and watching all the billboards change out. So I want to give a shout out to our guests here today. Good morning, Elize is in South Africa. She's international. So Amy. Welcome. Good morning. How are you doing my friend? Marcia Reece. I hope you had a wonderful weekend with the family #piratenation and if you're not aware, RJ, I didn't even ask you. I got so excited about talking to you and seeing you again, that we're doing giveaways every day. And so if I could probably do a giveaway and you could probably contribute to that.

RJ Redden: [00:11:06] I would love it. Please do.

Russ Johns: [00:11:08] So the winner today can hang out with you and have a conversation.  Luis, I hope pronouncing your name right. Tracie will school me on it. So good morning, Russ and RJ groovy Los Angeles. RJ hit the beaches when you're here.

RJ Redden: [00:11:21] Oh, I will try Luis. I am almost translucent. I have been in the bot cave for a year and a half. It's going to be crazy. 

Russ Johns: [00:11:30] You've been in the Ninja cave, huh? Russ Hedge says, good morning. Thank you so much and such great information, RJ. Thank you so much for being here and everyone type in hashtag #piratenation and let's bring this thing together. Thank you so much for the value you bring every day, Russ #kindnessiscool #smilesarefree absolutely positively and we love it, don't we? Let's see Hiett Ives says, RJ, you'revery mellow this morning.

RJ Redden: [00:12:00] Morning, Hiett! How are you doing?

Russ Johns: [00:12:01] I think you connected through a #PirateBroadcast™, didn't you?

RJ Redden: [00:12:05] We did. We did. Hiett is a wonderful human and so much fun to talk to.

Russ Johns: [00:12:11] Yeah. Wendy says RJ is a delightful addition to the ship. Absolutely. Let's do this. LinkedIn user says let's do this. Yes, you are. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. #piratenation Luis #piratenation. Amy says #piratenation, it's a great day to be a pirate Russ. It's hashtag #piratenation. You've got to remember the hashtag or you'll be missing out. So RJ, I want to talk a little bit more about this marketing piece because a lot of people have challenges with marketing and knowing what to do next. I'm one of those. I've been in marketing media advertising since well, a long time and still for me, it's if you provide the information you provide the answer, and the only conclusion is that here's the answer that you need to move forward with. And then I just recommend we do this. And a lot of times people are willing to move forward if you have the right solution and it's the right time and the opportunity and not everybody's ready to move forward. Not everybody's ready to take that next step and take action. So what do you do to follow up and keep people engaged and keep people involved in the process because that's also a piece of the puzzle. Because if you're not ready now, you might be ready in the future and if I don't communicate or extend the invitation to stay connected or have a live show every day for 445 episodes, how will, you know what I'm doing?

RJ Redden: [00:13:46] Exactly. There's that nurture part that you're hitting on that so many of us find difficult. We, as entrepreneurs, we want to see everybody through that front door. But once they get into the party, then we just don't quite know what to do, especially with people who aren't ready right now, but they might be in six months. I have the experience of being the queen of the six months later buyer. I hired my coach that way. I knew immediately I wanted her, but at the time it was just not going to be financially feasible at all. So I waited six months and I hung around and I hired her. And there are many times when I've done that in the past. So the question is really this. How would you like to be treated during that six months or eight months or two weeks when they're not ready to buy right now, but they got something coming and they've got you in mind. How would you like to be treated?

Russ Johns: [00:14:44] Yeah, what's in your inbox.

RJ Redden: [00:14:46] What's in your inbox. I love that. So beautiful. My people, my tribe, they they love fun and games. They love entertainment and so I come out with entertaining pieces that allow them to play a game or take a quiz or do something. I keep turning out things that involve people. I don't think of one of those a week. That would be a whole lot, but what I do is I make sure that just like you, you are putting on the show every day. And you've got something to come to. You've got a party to come to. I make sure that I have parties to come to. I make sure that I am doing fun things. I'm not just like here, read this blog article. It's here's, what's in it for you and here's your chance to connect with me. And so it's a totally different way, but you all can get to that and you all can get to that by just thinking about how would you like to be treated if you were interested in working with somebody, but it just wasn't feasible, but it will be how would you like to be treated during the period that you are hanging around? My people like to learn. My people love when I come along with the new software suggestion. I do what my people love for me to do and the right ones keep going.

Russ Johns: [00:16:05] It's amazing how that works naturally. When you just put what you want out there and people that want what you want show up.

RJ Redden: [00:16:14] It's the truth, my friend.

Russ Johns: [00:16:16] It is a process. It's a process, and I just thought about this, as you were saying that, is the idea that what is in your inbox that you consume all the time. And that's probably a clue of the kinds of things that you could put out there. And then the alignment of the people that enjoy that same kind of content will show up. Like I always open up and read Seth Goden, he's a master at every day, it's what the #PirateBroadcast is modeled somewhat after that concept. Consistency. Just get in the group and build something, create something every single day. And the other thing that I like and I appreciate is I put something out there, inspirational or motivational or a quote that makes you think about something every single day. So those are the kinds of things that I enjoy and appreciate. And I think that the people that are in the pirate community also appreciate, I hope.

RJ Redden: [00:17:17] And what you're doing there is you're becoming a magnetic force. I see a lot of people do broadcasts and they're put on a face and a voice and they want to teach you something. Which is all good. I know no negativity about that, but this show, this culture that you've created around your show is absolutely real. This is the Russ you get always.

Russ Johns: [00:17:42] Even if you meet me at the corner At the restaurant or the coffee shop, this is the same person, The beard is real.

RJ Redden: [00:17:52] Yeah. And so if you're drawn to us now, you'll be drawn in six months and you'll be drawn in a year. There's a big call among marketers, oh, you got to keep on their brain.  Hey, why don't you do something amazing for somebody? You'll keep on top of their brain. It's fine. You don't have to shove their inbox full of invites.

Russ Johns: [00:18:09] No, it's very subtle.  Just be there. Sometimes just sending a text message and saying, hey, hope you're having a great day. You never know what people are going through. So having that surprise and it's not about sales, it's about being yourself. It's about being real and being available to people to support them when they need help. Not, hey, how much can I sell you today? Elizabeth says, hi Russ and RJ. Great day. Love the swimming. Diving and swimmer here. Love it. Newsletter. I need to understand this bot active. Okay. RJ is the one that you need to talk to, get ahold of her. Love your #motivation, #inspiration quotes, Russ. Thank you so much, Liz. Appreciate you. Good thing that this is the Russ we love. I love you, Wendy. Thank you. Elizabeth, Love it. Authenticity, kind and cool. Gabe. Absolutely. We enjoy doing this every day for 445 episodes. You rock Russ Johns. Thank you, Gabe. I love you, man. Let's stay connected and catch up soon. I see you doing live streams again, so I have to catch up with you soon. I wanna make sure that we allow people to understand that you've been doing bots for awhile now and they've evolved. AI has come into play, a lot of automation and there's a balance between authenticity and automation. And the way I think about it is the mundane tasks that you do repetitively. It's really nice to be able to automate those things. So you can spend the time to actually take a moment and have that presence to communicate authentically with some people. What are your thoughts? How do you expand on that in your business?

RJ Redden: [00:20:08] Authentic automation. I love it, Russ. Yeah,  for every person it's different,  but for me, client service is one of the things that is really important to me. Because people often think, okay,  how are we going to pay the bills this month? We got to get some more people in here. We got to get some more people in here. If you treat those people, every single one of them, if you have the opportunity to treat every single one like that VIP, if you had the opportunity, let's just say we can wave a magic wand and make it so that everybody who ever took one of our classes, all of them get the reminder to show up. If they don't show up, all of those folks get a little, hey, I hope you're doing okay. And if you're stuck in about anything, I want you to give me a call or get on my calendar here. What if you could help people through the bumps in the road when they're taking your yearlong master class? When they're taking your eight week course, what if you could help them through every bump in the road without being chained to your computer? What if you could take extra special, awesome care of people? For those people that care about that, because, in the end you get an army of people shouting your name and writing your hashtags in broadcasts. If that's important to you, then to me, that's what one of the things that bots allow us to do. Because where it comes in, where the authenticity comes in is I'm writing those messages to my people. Where the automation comes in is the computer goes okay, Natalie, hasn't been in class for two weeks in a row, so I'm going to make sure she gets a nice message to help her remember that we're here and we care about her. That's the automation, right? But the messages, they don't have to sound robotic at all. In fact, the more of your personality that you can put in there... It's basically there's a hula hoop around your feet. Somebody told me this once there's a hula hoop around your feet of your influence, this is the area that you can influence very good. So bots allow me to extend that hula-hoop, so that I can personally touch people at a time when that they need me. I can ask them if they have questions and bring them closer into the circle. If I need to be able to answer those questions, it's just a way to be able to be authentic at scale. Now, always tell them it's a bot. Yeah always, right up front, hey, I'm a bot. These are the things that I can do for you. And if you ever need to talk to a human, press this button right here and we'll get you connected.

Russ Johns: [00:22:55] Yeah. Yeah.  It's almost like being on perpetual hold. Press one if you'd like to talk to someone. Press two if you'd like to talk to no one. Press three to talk to someone else.

RJ Redden: [00:23:09] If you'd like to carve your eye out with a dull spoon press 4. Yes, here are the instructions. We're all tired. We're all tired of being automated too. It's time to make them personal. It's time to think and guide that process thoughtfully so that people know we care. They don't care how much, until they know how much you care.

Russ Johns: [00:23:31] Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So how do you appreciate people connecting with you that haven't connected with you previously?

RJ Redden: [00:23:40] Do you mean people that I've never talked to before?

Russ Johns: [00:23:43] Yes. Yes. A pirate in this community that has not talked to the ninja RJ, so where would we send people to have them connect with you?

RJ Redden: [00:23:54] Oh, beautiful. If you are super excited by some of the ideas here and you want to hop on my calendar it's really difficult. I made the URL super difficult on purpose. It's just meetrj.com. I got ya, Russ.

Russ Johns: [00:24:08] You're cracking me up. You're cracking me up.

RJ Redden: [00:24:10] It's just meetrj.com and and I would love to hang out and just chat about these ideas and some stuff that might work, some strategies that might work for you that are not the mainstream, everybody buy my stuff.  And if you want to take the little quiz that I mentioned earlier, it ends with an appointment with me. So that is also super difficult. Your core, like an apple core, your core code.com. That'll take you into helping you learn what your marketing personality is and what your specific marketing mix needs to.

Russ Johns: [00:24:50] Let's connect you with somebody and actually have somebody become a winner in the pirate community today.

RJ Redden: [00:25:00] Yay.

Russ Johns: [00:25:01] Can we do this?

RJ Redden: [00:25:02] We must.

Russ Johns: [00:25:03] Are you ready? Are you up to the challenge?

RJ Redden: [00:25:07] I am ready.e

Russ Johns: [00:25:08] This will motivate you for Wednesday?

RJ Redden: [00:25:09] This'll be great.

Russ Johns: [00:25:11] All right. Thank you for being here, RJ. I really appreciate it. Really loved the idea of helping more people doing some stuff. And guess who the winner is? Hiett Ives, winner, winner, chicken dinner. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. And also there's so many things that we could be talking about RJ, and I know that we could probably talk for another four hours and hang out and create a lot of value. However, I know that you have things to do and we all have things to do and I just want to stop by drop a little message in every morning and add a little value in your day because what can I say? #kindnessiscool and w#smilesarefree.

RJ Redden: [00:26:00] That's right.

Russ Johns: [00:26:01] And then also everybody just go checkout RJj's site and make sure that you have an opportunity to take the quiz. I'm going to go take the quiz. I'm going to go do that.

RJ Redden: [00:26:11] I already know which one you are, my friend.

Russ Johns: [00:26:13] See, this will give me an opportunity to see what takes place and  I could have a discovery moment. And then I can book a call with you afterward. Everyone, thank you so much for all your love. Love that you're here. Thank you. All the #gratitude in the world for showing up being part of the pirate community. And if you're watching this in the future, just drop me a message. If you want anything, you need anything, you need some help or assistance, or you need some direction or connection, whatever it happens to be, like comment and share this with somebody that needs it because yeah, #kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree, so RJ till next time. Love you. Take care. Be well.

RJ Redden: [00:26:52] Thank you, #piratenation. Thank you, Russ.

Russ Johns: [00:26:55] Be in touch everyone. Take care.

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