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You know it's Wednesday on the pirate broadcast and we're here to share interesting people doing interesting things.
And today I want to do a couple of housekeeping efforts here. You know thank you for joining me.
Thank you for joining me. Let me make sure that I can grab my phone,
and connect with everybody that's jumping in. And I also want to let you know that I'm also on YouTube Facebook Periscope.
Wherever you happen to consume your content LinkedIn. We love LinkedIn. So we're here.
I love the LinkedIn family the community and the pirates on the LinkedIn platform.
Also, you can always go to Russ Johns.com afterward and watch the replays and make sure that you catch up with everybody else that's in the community any of the pirates you know connect with them build a relationship with them they're all great people. And I want to invite you to check out A.J. today because he's here on LinkedIn these me sharing some tips about branding.
We're going to be talking about high ticket coaching and some of the services that he provides. And actually he's in Arizona. And I just happen to be not in Arizona today. So welcome A.J. How you do today.

Hey, Russ, I appreciate it. I'm doing pretty well.

So one of the things that you're doing. You've been involved in branding for a while. You've been involved in you know different activities online coaching and so what is it that brought you here today and how did you arrive at this LinkedIn community. How is it working for you? And how are you working it?

Yeah, LinkedIn's been really good for me. I have been on Linkedin for several years but only really started to get active in late 2019.
Last few months but in the last few months, I have grown my network, with the right people and people that I can serve and help which is typically coaches speakers consultants those who have a service or coaching something to offer where they're leveraging their knowledge and building a personal brand, growing network by about a thousand, connections within the last couple months and Linkedin is just a powerful platform right now. It's overlooked and undervalued and it's but it's a really powerful platform to get with the right people.
Unfortunately, most people don't know how to properly position and brand themselves on LinkedIn. And when you do it you can get massive results.

Absolutely absolutely. And we've had several people on you know talking about you know how to position yourself and some of the stories that we can actually build up in a profile in our platform. What's the one thing if you had to have to name one thing that has helped you more than anything in the branding space, relative to online exposure and experience what would that what would you have to put at the top of the list?

Oh without a doubt will be strategy. That's the thing that most people are missing. They have some idea of what platform they should be on that they should be posting content.
They should be engaging that they should have a message. But most don't have a real strategy or process for how to do that properly. So what I started, I got into the branding space and its necessity. When I started as a motivational speaker no one knew who I was. I didn't have a really compelling story so I had to figure out how I position myself to attract bright people convey value so that people will put me on a stage and eventually I got very good at that. That evolved into coaching other speakers coaches brands on how to position themselves online through social media. And then I created my D6 method which is a step by step process for creating a brand. And it just walks a person from A to Z. Everything they need to do to properly build their brand so it's compelling and it's powerful.

So let's dive into the strategy a little bit. You know there's a lot of different activities there did a lot of different platforms each platform has a personality and you know when you come to,
you know I've really over the years my branding has evolved and changed and I've done multiple projects with different people and collaborations and yet, the experience and exposure that I've had online are, pretty broad. However, when it comes to strategy I think I think the one thing that we can always improve on is you know kind of focusing in on a specific goal.
And it's a really very specific purpose. And so what are some of the things that you've you helped your clients with along the way and in order for them to narrow their focus and drill into what they really need to look into the gift that they need to share. Because I think everybody has a gift and they need to share it. So it's not the same for everyone.
But I'd love to get your thoughts on that and see how you're what you're thinking of.

Yeah absolutely. So when I teach someone to build their brand the very first place that we start is the first phase of my D6 method which is the discovery and this is where we really dig into our story. Now, most people in the brand space have heard this. They understand you have to tell your story but they don't have a framework or understand how to do it properly.
So what I teach that is something called golden stones and golden pillars. So you think of ancient pillars are constructed of individual stones. When I walk someone through their story we're looking at the three pillars which are your mess, your miracle, and your mission.
The mess is your story. Where did you start to make sense?
The miracle is that what was the turning point. What was the epiphany? What was the tragedy what was the thing that's that changed your trajectory?
And then the mission is what are you doing now that other people can get on board with. How do you create an impact and generating an income from that and within each pillar?
What I do is I do a deep dive into their story and find every Golden Stone every story every moment every thought every offense.
Anything that happened that has shaped who they are even if they think it's insignificant and what they inevitably find is that often they are most overlooked stories of the or the moments that they thought were the least impactful actually are the most impactful. Once they put it in the right context and that same framework is powerful for when they're telling their story through content or through speaking because there's a whole strategy with using those pillars to rearrange your story based on who you're speaking to. So it's always your story it's always authentic but it's always directly relevant to that audience.

Then you can craft that message depending on the audience. But I. I love the strategy for applying those principles because I was talking to somebody the other day and we were talking about the idea and the concept of what we see in ourselves isn't necessarily what others see.

Absolutely

from us and it's really great. Well, in fact, Leo yesterday on the piratebroadcast we were talking about masterminds and the idea that sometimes you have to have some people around you and surround yourself with people that are lifting you up, highlighting in pointing out the fact that you have some qualities that you may not even recognize you have.
And I think it's really that that process of discovery is really important for us so so the strategy is good. And then what about the selection of the platform that you're working on.
I know a lot of businesses used to say I don't need a Website you know and then all of a sudden you know everybody has a Website

Right

and then they say, Well I don't need to be on cultural media because that's not where my customers are. Well yeah, they are. And so how do you walk people through that process.
I mean yours is probably not the idea that you have to get on social media as much as how do you use social media to its best idea.

[8:39] It's really about attention. And this is something that someone like Gary V has been talking up for a long time. He calls it attention arbitrage.
You have to pay attention to the attention if you're not getting attention and you're not going to get paid. You're not going to get clients. Plain and simple.
So when I hear people say Why don't you be on social media. I don't need to do this I don 't need to be on Tick Talk. They're not paying attention to the attention where you've got to look at where's the attention of your audience. And there are three parts to it.
Where has the attention been historically in your niche in your industry in the marketplace? Where is the attention now and then you have to look and be future-focused? Where is the attention going? So, for example, I'm investing time in creating content on tick talk because the attention has been on Instagram and Facebook and YouTube and we look at those platforms.
We see the same kind of evolution happening with tick talk. So then we look at what happened with the attention on those other platforms that blew up and how do we got there early enough.
You know you could have blown up Gary be gone early. All of these influencers who now have a massive brand and attention the attention is now moving toward tick talk.
And a lot of people will say Well my audience is out there it's a bunch of 12 and 15-year-olds. That's the same thing that happened with Instagram and Facebook. People said oh that's just a bunch of kids. And that's how the attention that's how attention matures on a platform. So now I'm on tick talk because I know that in a year in five years my target audience will be on that platform as it grows. So I'm going to get there ahead of time to establish my brand establish content. So when they get there I already have set up shop and I beat my competitors.

Yeah well, every tsunami has an earthquake right. Right. I mean tick talk is. And same with Facebook. I mean it started out as college dorms. You know it wasn't for business owners it was there that with the entrepreneurs it wasn't for sales or anything like that it was just a way to connect. Same with you know YouTube actually started out. I think you know a completely different phase of business. It wasn't designed to be what it was today or what it is today.

The brand it's giving us big brands. They get this and they spend millions and millions of dollars and many billions of dollars collectively on market research. So the small business owner who has a small business who's saying I don't need to be on social media. Well if these big brands are spending millions of dollars to do market research and then they're investing in social media,
pay attention to where they're giving their attention and you've got to pay attention to where the attention is at your audience but pay attention to who's also trying to get the attention of your audience even if it's in a different industry. So if I try to reach entrepreneurs and I know that's you know a Ferrari is trying to reach the same audience. Well, where are they giving attention?
I should be paying attention to where they're paying attention because they have more data than I do. So I can leverage that.

Yeah at NASCAR they call it drafting right. Yeah exactly. Exactly. So. So what are the things? OK. So we've learned you have a strategy that has to focus on what your gifts and your message is going to be for your audience. Identify your audience and then identify where equal and in very valuable audiences is for other customers where that attention is being distributed. Where the larger brands are spending their money on your exact audience and then pursue that audience in kind. Right.

I mean right. I mean most entrepreneurs think the problem is that they spend too much time around their own people. Coaches spend too much time with coaches authors spent too much time with authors. I study films I say independent films I study comedians. I study preachers I study how sales is done for products I had nothing to do with my space. I'm studying the craft of selling marketing branding across the board. Whatever industry you're in whatever niche your in you need to master the craft and not get stuck in your little bubble because if you're in a Facebook group with a hundred other thousand other coaches and they're all talking and doing the same things well. If they're all doing the same things and they're doing it wrong you're really doing it wrong. Instead look outside of your industry so I'm looking at it as a speaker I study comedians I study preachers as well because they speak so often they're powerful.
But I also say comedians and when I look at branding lately I've been honestly I've been there's certain movies in the horror genre that I've watched recently because I'm studying how did they create emotional response. How do they tell the story? And I don't like the gore or evil demonic supernatural movies but some of the thriller suspense ones I look at how are they telling the story because that's what people like. They want to feel something emotional. So if you study outside of your industry and your needs you're going to understand how to elevate your craft to a higher level. And this is something I learned from watching someone like Kevin Hart watching someone like Dwayne Johnson.

Yeah. Yeah. And its timing and it's the way you're phrasing your sentence and then you know the emphasis on different words and I mean there's a whole bunch of little nuances that we can improve. And that's why I love the art of learning right. Yeah, I'm learning something and learning something from different audiences different you know creative sources and I really like that in fact. And speaking as well. So it's one of those things that is a lifelong endeavor. It's not like one and done. It's not like you graduate and all of a sudden you've mastered it.
It's is that you continue to watch that craft you continue to practice and explore and investigate other opportunities. So A.J. you've gone through the branding your a speaker you're talking about your you're creating a course you're revamping your course your high ticket course for, author speakers coaches that want to get. Higher coaching opportunities or increased coaching opportunities. What's next on the agenda. What are you working on to deliver value to your community next?

I'll put out a lot of free content and right now what I've heard from my community and this is something I call the focus group method. Social media really is a big focus group. Listen to your audience as you put out content. What's the value that they're responding to what are their questions so my audience is a lot of coaches and consultants and then aspiring coaches and consultants and many of them are struggling because they're doing low ticket coaching. They're charging per hour the charge for the time to trade time for money which is basically they just own their job and it's frustrating because you can't scale that because there's a limited amount of time So if you're charging based on the time you're never going to breakthrough.
You're going to hit a ceiling very quickly. So what I do is I teach aspiring coaches and consultants and then-current coaches and consultants how to land their first high ticket meaning three thousand five thousand dollar, coaching and consulting clients within 30 days, how to get there first or the next one and then create a process to continually. We do that without running Facebook apps without complicated funnels without all of the technical aspects that can happen. No experience at all. But if they have expertise I can show how to get a high ticket client 30 days.

That's fabulous. I really you know what I see a trend in this maybe because I have a lot of circles of friends that are coaches and consultants like yourself and you know a lot of people are really looking to up their game. It just seems like this sense of 2020 is you know last year was building rebuilding and you know kind of developing infrastructure and everything like that and feels like 2020 is like a new decade. Things are going to happen. Things are going to grow. You know we're growing we're expanding. I mean I anticipate. I mean I'm doing this. I'm already booked for February on the pirate piratebroadcasts. I got guests booked through February and booking March now. And one of my goals for the piratebroadcast is to highlight more people like yourself and also share the technology in the process with other people that want to do the same thing. You know it's and it's really about like we started to not talk about, the attention you know grabbing something and utilizing it to your, best advantage to highlight your skills and your gifts and get it get the attention that you need in order to be seen and heard and talked about right.

Right.

And it's really one of those things that it's increasingly getting more challenging online because there's so much going on and we're traveling so quickly and so. It's just amazing and scary at the same time because it's like where are we going to be ten years from now where are we going to be from five years from now and how do we connect.
And I think it's the relationship I think really.

Absolutely.

The big turning point is going to go OK we've seen this shiny object we've experienced this whole thing and now it's relationship.
And so with that I want to highlight a couple of people here A.J. that are in the room listening to this Sie, Seth Marlowe pirate Seth checking in from Denver today.
Thank you so much Julio. How are you today. Sherri Lolly, Lori Knudsen Good morning everyone listening but not monitoring the feed. Appreciate that.
I love that you're here. Gabriel thank you so much. Nick Dorsey is here. We've got Jerry, is here Curtis, Maureen, thank you so much.
Jessica, you're awesome. Appreciate you. If you're not connected to A.J. just tell him Russ sent you. I'm sure he'll have you knock on the door. I don't know that.
You're not at 30000 connections are you. Yeah.

Not yet. Not yet. We'll be here soon. We'll be there soon.

All right. Yeah. Yeah I really know that there's a lot of activity going on and a lot of people appreciate the piratebroadcasts and I thank you so much all the gratitude in the world for being here and I really. I really want to highlight individuals like yourself A.J. that are just I mean we're in the trenches we're doing this and we're doing what we can to highlight other people
grab some attention and say Hey I got something that you might need. So what's your process for actually reaching out and connecting on LinkedIn or building a relationship with a potential client. What what's your process. I mean lot of people are always thinking about tactics. What am I going to do for my tactics today.

Right. Well you touched on it earlier when you said you know there's so much noise out there on social media LinkedIn is no different it's getting more noisy,
but the fact is it doesn't matter if you have the right strategy you understand how to lead with value and focus on what I call building relationships equity.
Meaning you're giving value front. You're giving value disproportionately to the people you want to connect with. So when I reach out to LinkedIn and there are certain tools that I use to reach out to people, that work really well on LinkedIn I have a good friend who owns a software company and I use some of his software that helps me reach out to people and automate the process. But that doesn't matter unless I'm leading with value. So I was just looking at my LinkedIn stats yet last night and 43 percent of the people that I reach out to except my connection requests and they're all targeted because their people that I know can add value because I know who my audience is. And I also understand the psychology of my audience.
But when I reach out my very first message to them is hey here's a resource that I think you find valuable. So I'm giving them something of value right up front and they're accepting my request because they can click the link and it always goes to an article I've written on LinkedIn that has something that will help them.
So, of course, they're going to accept because I gave them a gift right upfront. And this is I mean this is not something new. This is an ancient practice where when you want to establish a relationship you give a gift. Cultures do this. Countries do this. You take a pot roast or a casserole. Your new neighbor.
So we do the same thing and build a relationship is going to be a lot more powerful. And then from there I'm able to open up conversations there.
People are more willing to schedule a call more willing to have a follow-up conversation. And there are other strategies in there to where the value leads to a call to action to an easy no brainer offer but it's got to start with value. And if you give people value upfront they not only are willing to accept a pitch from you quote-unquote but they're expecting it and they're OK with it because you already gave them so much value.

Yeah. And I think it's really also really a great introduction to meeting people in person you know.

Yeah.

It's like if you build a relationship and there are so many great tools I mean you've got zoom and you've got it and live and you have you know calls that you can schedule and put together and building that, removing the awkwardness of the next conversation I think is important for us to really build relationships online and move forward in a connection.
You know it triggered a thought though is that you know a lot of people don't have a way or they haven't really thought through how they're connecting with others.

Yeah.

You know do you have any thoughts or suggestions for things that have worked for you to you know understand and you know kind of think through how to recognize who your target audience is.

So I see something called Avatar mapping and it really focuses on three key areas. And when most people talk about creating an avatar they say well what's their age. Give them a name. What's their gender. That's ridiculous. It doesn't work because it really never has it works very poorly because you can have people who have that or during the same way have the same desire and location gender, especially with social media. Now the Internet has nothing to do with it. So what I focus on is Avatar psychology. We map the psychology of your target audience. You have your perfect class and there are three key areas.
There's their passion. Their problem and their pain. Their passion is that desire. What do they want to achieve. What life do they want to live? What they want to do with their business. Whatever depends on what niche you in. then their problem what's the problem that's keeping them from fulfilling that passion from experience in that making that money. Getting those clients of publishing that book whatever it is and then what pain is caused by that problem. And when you understand that from there you can start to map out.
And in this process of Avatar map that we map out the key statements are making the key questions are asking and that informs the content we create which allows you to create and strategize up to a year's worth of content in as little as an hour. And you know exactly what you need to say to them exactly what to speak to so that no matter what platform what medium whether it's an article it's a video or a text post your speaking directly to your audience and attracting them and repelling everyone else.

I want everybody to rewind that and play that because that's a great analogy on how to process your avatar and think about that.
So it's it says the three pillars again the.

There's their passion, their problem, and their pain. If you speak to those three things you're going to get their attention because the secret to branding marketing is your perfect clients your target audience they're already looking for you. You'll don't need to chase them. You just have to be speaking the right language to get their attention. I mean if you think about if you're in a crowd you know you get a little kid who's lost and that little kid cries mommy every mom is going to turn and look.

Yeah Absolutely

But if that kid says Hey Heather. Well, only the people named Heather are going to look. So you've got to speak the right language so that you're getting attention only of your audience.
But if you're speaking in generalities general motivational content you're gonna get a general audience.

Well, and I know that you've probably seen this time and time again as well. I can coach you everyone right. No, you shouldn't try to coach everyone

Coaches to say they can coach everyone are typically coaching no one.

Yes it's like if your message can't hit someone it's hitting everyone which is also no one right.

Exactly.

Any math will get you there. So I love that. I love that so I want to wrap this up today AJ this has been valuable information this has been tremendous and I appreciate the fact that you're taking your time out of your day to do this. What are your thoughts on podcasting an online video and some of the media that's coming out now? I know you've been in podcasting and you've created podcasts and kind of thinking what are you seeing in the future for attraction and attention and all of these elements we're talking about today.

So I've got some good friends who were some of the tops in the podcasting space. They teach others how to do it they get people booked on podcasts and when I've had conversations with them I've had them on my show and the podcasting space is rapidly growing right now. There is something like over half a million podcasts but most of them are not consistent.
Most of them are not very good and the podcasting space kind of like tick talk some other spaces. It's very if you have the right strategy you know what you're doing.
It's very easy to leverage a podcast. I got my podcast top-ranked in the top 50 in the marketing category Apple which is extremely competitive.
Within just a few days now my best friend he started his podcast on his iPhone no fancy equipment on his iPhone and got that top rate the top 100 in the entrepreneurship category which is even more competitive, but it's a great way to connect the right people. It's a great brand-building strategy. It's a great positioning and it's a great way to start growing an audience and to rapidly start driving traffic to your website or your offers. Honestly, if you have. If you're on social media and you create content you should be creating a podcast because it's one of the most powerful ways. You mean we've heard it said that your network is your net worth. Well, a podcast is one of the easiest ways to expand your network. I've interviewed people running bigger companies and have interviewed multimillionaires and it's been extremely easy to get them on the podcast. But here's the kind of the linchpin to the whole thing. If you're if you don't have your personal brand on point yeah it's not going to you. You're not gonna get very far because you have to be able to convey to your potential guests and to your audience why they should connect you that what unique value you have to offer.

Yeah. Absolutely absolutely. I love that. And so I and I've been podcasting for a number years and I've taught podcasting and I've helped people get on podcasting and I and I totally support that initiative. And right now I think last time I looked there were over a hundred thousand podcasts online. However, a lot of them may be just like one episode and they call it a pod flash in the pan. It's like a cut almost like an accident is the accident. You know it's like they do an anchor account and I'll sign they're just oh am I really recording. So. So I love the fact it's get online. have a strategy. Identify. Your avatar and then continue to create content reach out to build relationships and continue to grow your business.
A.J. it's been tremendous. So what's one thing you want to leave with the world today that is important to you that you want to share.

You know what if your brand doesn't make sense your business when we dollars and in everything you do build something worth being known for and leave something worth being remembered for.

I love it. I love it. Well, thank you so much today A.J.. It's a pleasure when I get back to Arizona will reach out and connect and catch up.

[30:38] Absolutely. Thanks for having me on.

As always you know kindness is cool.
Smiles are free
and you enjoy the day.
Thanks.