Unfortunately, a lot of people are putting a lot of effort and energy into content, into their personal brands, but they’re just doing the wrong things.

Nowadays, for people, it’s you got to create like a signature framework or do something which is a little bit innovative to stand out.

But when you do, you can really get all of the benefits.

By definition, to grow an audience, to grow followers, you need to be speaking to people who don’t follow you.

Even with a thousand followers online, you can have people out there as marketers for them because your content is working for you.

No Bullsh*t Talks is a podcast for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs.

There’s too much bullsh*t out there, especially when it comes to business.

This podcast aims to highlight what’s true and what’s not in the world of entrepreneurship, bringing you honest and raw conversations about the roller coaster that is entrepreneurship.

Each week, my guest will be a high-performing entrepreneur sharing the ups and downs of their journey and helping you prepare for the road ahead while providing you with actionable insights and absolute gems of knowledge.

Stay tuned as I introduce this week’s guest.

Joe Gannon is the founder of Amplify, the personal brand agency behind some of the biggest names on the internet, including Ali Abdaal, Jordan Peterson, Chris Williamson, and Sahil Bloom.

He built an 800,000-strong audience for Ali Abdaal, starting from just 20,000 followers.

And he did it while most people had never heard his name.

I present to you this week’s guest, Joe Gannon.

I am super psyched about today’s podcast guest because I have been trying to get him on the show for ages, and I mean years.

He was in London at the time, or was in the UK at least at the time,

and our schedules just couldn’t workout and now he’s moved all the way to Miami and I’ve stalked him basically in Miami to hunt him down and bring him in the studio today to be able to talk to me and I am really happy that he’s on.

He is one of the legit personal branding experts out there.

There are very few who are really legit.

He is one of them and he has worked with some of the biggest names in the business.

Some of the best creators that you follow and love, that is Joe.

He has been behind the whole strategy and building up their personal brands.

And he is here to share how he did that, how he landed those clients, his journey, but also how you can genuinely build your personal brand as a business owner and a creator and what that looks like and just some legit steps for success.

So, I am super psyched that this episode has been in the works for several years and it shows you that hard work, consistency, grit, determination, resilience, all the buzzwords of entrepreneurship really does pay off because we’re finally here today.

Welcome Joe to No Bullsh*t Talks.

Yeah, lovely to meet you finally.

I know.

How long has this been in the works?

We’ve been flirting for like three years across time zones, across countries as well, across different mediums like LinkedIn, email.

I can’t believe I am now, instead of in London, sitting with you talking.

We were in Miami talking and in your massive studio, how you’ve grown since.

I wish everyone could see the space because it is massive.

Crushed it.

I don’t know this sadly, but I mean we can pretend, right, for now.

That’s okay.

But why are you in Miami?

I feel like let’s talk about you first.

I guess quickly introduce yourself for those who don’t know you.

And then let’s say, why the hell are we in Miami?

Yes.

So I’m Joe.

I’ve been running an agency called Amplify all about personal branding, building content for the last like four, five years.

Always been an international business, remote teams based in the UK initially, but yeah, the last year and a half I’ve now found myself in Florida.

So yeah, when you mentioned you’re here in Miami, it was we had to hook up, we had to make it happen.

And yeah, it’s been interesting to move, but I’ve always, I think similar to you, always been sort of nomading and doing travel

and enjoying that flexibility.

Obviously, COVID is how I started my business. Sort of forced to figure things out myself, which we’ll discuss today.

And then when COVID sort of finished, I really wanted to maximize having the freedom and flexibility in my business and then that allowed me to travel more.

So yeah, I really love the work that we do.

Grateful to have the team that we have and for everything to be able to be remote.

I never saw myself moving from the UK.

So I know a lot of people right now are leaving the UK.

Bit of a hot topic, but for me it just seemed a little bit more natural for lifestyle reasons.

But now I found myself here, there’s a lot of opportunity as well.

So we can expand a little bit more in the American market.

Yeah, definitely.

Because I think so many people would love to move to the US, but it’s not that easy, which we definitely will talk about too.

But yeah, I think like what you’ve just said, the flexibility of freedom, I think that for me is what true success and wealth really is.

Like as a personal brand expert, so many people talk about success and wealth and what that looks like.

But for me, running your own business, it is that freedom and flexibility to be able to do what you want when you want.

And I was saying this to my friend last week.

We had a client who was soaking up so much mental energy, physical energy, like they just wanted me essentially full-time for a tiny percentage of a full-time wage.

And they were just…

And I was like, I can never have a client do that.

That’s the point.

Like, if I’m allowing a client to take up that much space of my time, then I failed as a business owner because I started a business to have the freedom.

Otherwise, why don’t I just go get a normal nine-to-five job and then switch off and get perks and benefits and when I’m on holiday, I’m on holiday rather than bothering me all the time?

So I was like, if I need to realize that the moment I start having things that interfere with my flexibility, then I’m not doing the right thing.

And I think like if, like you said, you can just pick up and go anywhere in the world and do what you want when you want.

That’s true success, I think.

Yeah.

I think the first half of starting this business, I was definitely more reactive to the work that came inbound.

Like we really sort of hit the ground running initially.

We had some great early clients we can discuss and then we got into circles of trust and then all this attention was coming inbound.

But I hadn’t necessarily designed what our true ICP is or what our signature frameworks, our methods, and everything were.

It was all just like the market wanted what we could offer.

Right place, sort of right time.

But to your point, the first sort of half of my business, maybe the first two or three years, was just reacting to everything that came inbound.

Not once did I stop and remind myself why I was doing it.

And then, you know, eventually that does lead to some path of burnout.

Yeah, people have different mixed opinions on what that is.

But I think if you don’t intentionally design why you’re doing this, to your point, and I think that why does evolve.

Maybe the reason you start a business has changed.

So you got to check in with yourself like why are you still doing this?

Yeah.

It takes a lot out of you for sure.

Yeah.

I mean, let’s talk about what you actually do there because I feel like you started…

How old were you when you started that business?

So yeah, sort of self-employed at like 22 and then I think Amplify started as an agency around 24.

I mean that’s young for starting an agency, I think.

Okay.

It’s not that young these days because I feel like everyone’s young, but it’s still young.

And you know, at 24 most of the time you don’t know what you’re doing.

Like you’re kind of new to the market.

But you have launched your first business and it’s like you said, it’s hit the ground running and you’ve got a very successful company from your first ever business.

And that’s not normal.

Like I think that’s what people would like to glamorize and how easy it is.

And maybe you could do a lot of content on how easy it is and follow your three-step framework to making a successful business overnight.

I’m sure that would work, but we’re on a No Bullsh*t Talks podcast and you’re here to tell me that that’s probably not exactly how it went.

But from the outside, it does look like a perfect success story.

It looks like, oh, okay, you’re super young.

You jumped on the personal branding trend like so many people did.

You landed A-list celebrities and your client base overnight.

And here you are now living life in Miami.

That’s what this fairy tale could say.

But what was it really like?

What did that journey look like?

Yeah, I think in the early days, a previous mentor said to me that the best part of me really was one thing, which was enthusiasm.

So like in my evenings and weekends, I enjoyed what has become the creator economy.

Like I was watching, listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos, reading books.

Like most entrepreneurs or people who are entrepreneurial, I was doing that anyway.

And then it just kind of naturally happened where I was realizing that I could probably support some of these people because I was obsessed with their content.

And that soon became Ali Abdaal, the YouTuber who’s got six million YouTube subscribers.

He really is just a thought leader in the space.

Like he was teaching YouTube in a way for years.

What is now common knowledge, he was an industry leader.

He referred me to Chris Williamson, who we’ve worked with for three and a half years.

He’s now in the top 10 in the Spotify global charts.

So there’s, you know, I’ll be the first to say that I got in at the right time with certain people.

But then obviously,

you have to prove yourself because they’re at the top of…They’re at the top of their game.

They are the true professionals.

Everyone looks to them and thinks that it can be replicated.

But so yeah, I think, to what I initially said, I was enthusiastic and I genuinely was consuming some of these people’s content all the time.

And then there was a transition.

I was suddenly being paid to watch those videos or to edit the content, which felt unbelievable at 21, 22 to be doing that.

And then yeah, it all became, it sort of compounded from the fact that they look, it’s circles of trust.

These people at that level, it’s not going onto Google or ChatGPT and saying like, “I need a video editor. Who’s the latest thumbnail designer? Who’s a content strategist?”

Like they text in these groups, in these circles, and they’ll go based on recommendations.

And I’m sure you benefit from that in your business.

Like once you can, if you just do a great job for one person, so much happens afterwards.

And I’d say that is really the through line of my story.

But to your point, yeah, it’s not been a smooth ride at all.

I think I’m coming up to five years as an agency.

It was never meant to be an agency.

Like I was that individual, like the social media manager in the first stages.

I enjoyed the content strategy side of things.

That was my zone of genius.

But so when TikTok came and the whole content landscape changed with vertical video, I needed to hire editors.

I wasn’t an editor.

I got as far as I could with that, but that wasn’t my skill set.

So the clients needed us to become an agency.

We needed to become a team.

And then that’s how an agency formed.

It took me like three years to realize I have an agency and I should probably talk to other agency owners and understand the business model.

But I genuinely didn’t do that for like three years.

Wow.

But I was lucky.

I think in the first 12 months a lot of work was coming inbound.

And we were just swimming as fast as I could and keeping up with it.

I did burn out at a certain point, but I think that’s when my sort of maybe naivety about business and really understanding a business and what a business needs versus just the craft and the artistry of what I was used to doing.

That’s kind of where things broke because I hadn’t learned about finances or operations or like if a business is a chair with four legs, I didn’t realize all of the things it needs to prop up objectively.

And eventually that comes to bite you.

Now, I’d say in the last year or two, I’ve focused more on being a business owner, understanding what that means, and understanding how to cover my weaknesses.

And that’s been a whole journey.

Yeah.

I mean, but even listening to you now, I feel like the way you were like, “Oh yeah, we landed Ali Abdaal as a client, then he passed us on to Chris Williamson.”

It still sounds like you’ve had an easy journey.

Like I mean, just landing these big A-list celebrities.

But tell me, how did that happen?

Because I feel like that’s everyone else’s dream, right?

They want to land, like you said, one big name.

One big name to prove yourself because obviously you got to do a good job.

That’s the thing, right?

You know, you got to prove yourself.

And then that person’s like, “They’re amazing. Here’s another bunch of people in my network that you can work with.”

How did that start though?

Because obviously you need to start somewhere.

And how did that start?

Yeah.

My first full…

So I’ve never been in a full-time job for more than nine months.

Okay.

Probably will continue for the rest of my career.

So my brother is way smarter than me and stuff.

And when I was…

He’s two years older than me.

So he was like, out of university, you should probably get a big logo on your CV.

And I was like, all right, I’ll just follow the big brother’s advice.

So we live near Cambridge.

That’s where I’m from.

So he was like, “Oh, there’s a job for Cambridge University as a social media assistant. You should get that.”

So I literally just applied.

Didn’t put much into it.

I didn’t get the role, but the guy brought me in afterwards and said, “Hey, out of 200 applicants, we’re going to bring you on as a temporary worker, like a temp.”

Because we think…

Like an intern?

Yeah.

Because you’re young, we think you’re probably going to be good at this.

And it was a new social media department.

So I’m like 21 and suddenly I’m working my first job at Cambridge University.

Amazing team, but maybe the environment wasn’t for me.

And the whole Ali Abdaal story.

One day one of my closest friends in the office comes in and just starts talking about this student who’s not only a junior doctor, he’s got a business, a podcast.

And I just heard this and I was just like, “Who are you talking about?”

And then typed in Ali’s name on Google.

On his website he said, “If anyone’s ever in Cambridge, I’ll meet up for a coffee.”

So I didn’t know who this person was.

For some reason I emailed him and then he replies within a minute, which kind of speaks to the productivity guy.

Yeah.

Like that’s who he is.

Replies within a minute to a stranger saying, “Hey, can you meet up after work?”

Basically, we just really got on.

We talked about Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek, and all these different things.

He paid for dinner, which was great.

He then said, “Yeah, let me show you a bit more of what I do.”

We went to his studio.

He had an old camera, an old Kindle he didn’t need from a sponsorship.

So I left that evening with a part-time job, an old Kindle, and an old microphone that he didn’t need.

And then I was like, “What the hell has happened today?”

Like how has that happened?

So we mentioned before this about serendipity.

Like I was ready.

I loved personal development content.

I was reading books like The 4-Hour Workweek.

I was primed and ready, but I couldn’t really say that I did anything in that situation.

Then I became probably the most enthusiastic person.

I was just like, “You should do this. You should do that.”

He didn’t have a LinkedIn at the time.

He had a business trying to help students get into med school.

So I was like, “You should probably be on LinkedIn.”

And then at the time he had, I think, 50,000 YouTube subscribers, let’s just say 10,000 Instagram followers.

But I soon created a Twitter account for him, LinkedIn, and then TikTok.

And pretty much became the guy like, “Anything you can’t do or don’t want to do, I’ll do that for you.”

Wow.

And that’s how it started.

But honestly, he has changed so many people’s lives.

Like, he changed my life.

I’ve never met anyone more gracious and giving.

Yeah.

And I’d actually say the same about Chris Williamson and all these other people.

Chris Williamson has now been a part of me getting a visa to be here.

Yeah.

So, like it really speaks to the levels of these people.

Not just professionally and how they take their craft.

But I owe a lot to them.

I can’t really take much credit.

But then I would say I worked hard.

So that’s all I kind of did in that process.

I feel like Ali’s one of the ones that I vouched for as a no bullsh*t person because I also followed him back in the day.

I was probably following him when you started working for him.

I didn’t know it was you behind there.

But I really liked his stuff because he was real.

Like he was just doing.

And when I’ve met him, I’ve met him a few times now, and he was great.

And actually he was really sweet because I think when I met him, he told me he thought I had a really good radio voice.

And then I was like, “Does that mean I’m ugly because I’ve got a face for radio?”

I was thinking, what?

And then he was like, “Because you should have a podcast.”

I was like, “I do.”

And then he was like, “Hit subscribe.”

And I was like, “Oh, that’s cool. Ali subscribes to my podcast.”

So, hey Ali, if you’re actually listening, I don’t think you are, but you know, you should if Joe’s on it.

And he was great.

And then he basically gave me access to his PTYA course, and that’s what made me start my YouTube.

And actually, it’s funny because I’ve now gone back and re-enrolled in that because now I’ve created a few videos.

Because he always says to me, “Don’t talk to me until you’ve done 100 videos.”

Right?

That was his thing.

I’ve now done so many videos.

They’re not good, don’t get me wrong.

I’m still learning.

But I’m now going back and rewatching and taking his course because I’ve now got all these things to learn from.

But he’s always…

What I’ve really seen with him and everyone else is he just has so much time for people.

I think it’s the people who actually also put the effort in and he can see the enthusiasm.

They see, you know.

And I think what you said there, like you were saying, “Oh, you know, some people hearing this story probably think, oh it’s luck,

he just landed this role.”

But I don’t see it as luck.

I see…Like there’s so many other things.

Like first of all, you had to reach out.

How many people do that?

Like how many people actually take the time to reach out to someone like that cold and be happy to kind of do that?

First of all, that’s number one.

Secondly, you turned up.

People are scared to do that.

Meet a stranger and just take an opportunity.

But the fact that you connected with him and you impressed him because you spent all those years learning all that stuff.

Like you said, you’re absorbing all the content.

You’re already primed for that role, but you just didn’t know you were.

And I think that’s the difference, is that people don’t do the hard work behind closed doors.

They expect to land all the opportunities because they think they’re entitled to it.

But you spent how many hours consuming the content?

Like you were there and you knew what works and what didn’t work.

You just needed a chance to prove it.

And yes, there’s an element of luck in absolutely everything.

The fact that Ali saw your email, connected to it, and actually spent the time and took the time to do that.

Not many people will do that.

But you earned that space.

And that’s what I think people don’t realize.

Like I think people, you know, if other people turned up, they wouldn’t have connected with him as much.

And that’s the difference.

So I think it’s…

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think one email could change your life.

And I think we said before about lifestyle design or business design.

Like whether you’re out of work right now or in a job you don’t like, people do not take any time to consider, like who are the people or brands that I…

The brands I use already, the people that I enjoy already.

Why don’t I try and get around them?

Because now on the other side, and you have it too, like hiring teams and stuff like that, it cuts through all noise when someone clearly sends a message where they’re clearly interested or they’ve clearly checked out something that you do.

And I think I would even now, with clients we’re going after, remind myself all the time, like who do I actually want to work with?

Like I have a choice.

Yeah.

We have a choice of who we work with, all these different things.

And that’s not just related to being a business owner and clients.

But if someone’s out of work, I always say this to friends.

It’s like if you didn’t enjoy your previous job, what brand would you love to work for?

Like why wouldn’t you want to start there and then tap into that energy?

Because to your point, people don’t do that.

And there’s not…

Maybe public figures nowadays have inboxes which are gatekept by assistants and stuff maybe.

But even then, maybe they have one platform which is a side project or a personal blog or something like that, an old email address somewhere.

Like maybe I shouldn’t say this, but on LinkedIn, most people’s personal emails are on their profile.

Yeah.

Like it’s there.

Whether you’re supposed to say that or not.

But I get emails all the time to my Gmail.

I’m like, how the hell has someone found my email?

Oh, it’s on LinkedIn.

Or, you know, find a personal blog, to my point.

So people don’t take that time to start with energy.

And I love the whole concept around energy management more than time management.

People don’t do that.

So yeah, I think a part of my journey, I kind of followed my curiosity and what I enjoyed.

And you mentioned PTYA.

So then, Ali doing great work with Ali, then Chris Williamson, who I think had about 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, was taking Ali’s course.

No way.

Yeah.

Wow, that’s kind of nuts thinking about it, knowing where Chris is now.

Like I feel like he’s a…

Okay, that’s my projection.

Yeah, a lot happened in the first cohorts.

And you know, this was like three or four years ago now.

Ali was really at the front of all this stuff.

You know, he’s really at the front of all this stuff.

But it was a referral.

And then I did the same thing for Chris.

The first thing that I worked on was me editing clips for the Jordan Peterson episode.

Like Jordan Peterson was ill for a couple of years.

The episode went on to be one of Chris’s kind of inflection points.

But he’d already been doing three episodes a week for four years at that point.

Did that many?

Yeah.

He’s done three episodes a week.

He saw what Joe Rogan was doing in the US and was like, “I’m going to do the same in the UK as a professional podcaster.”

He’s the biggest pro.

Wow.

And I’m just shocked at that.

Just from the fact that, you know, there’s always the conversation around consistency and what does that look like.

It doesn’t have to mean frequency, but the fact that he was churning out so many videos.

Like everyone I speak to, obviously he’s a business owner.

It’s different from being a content creator.

Obviously it’s a very, very different thing.

But it’s like, does that mean if you post that many times it’s going to pay off?

It’s not always going to pay off.

Or has it got to be quality?

But that’s a lot.

That’s a big commitment that he did.

And he did that every single week.

Yeah.

I think now it’s been seven years.

Three episodes a week.

He’s still kept it up.

Yeah.

It’s unbelievable.

I mean this is the thing.

People join creators’ journeys at different points.

And now they see the studios and the sets and he invested to do these 4K episodes and all this sort of stuff.

But he’s been doing this for seven years and it compounds.

And so then that went great with Chris.

Another person who’s changed my life because, yeah, he since moved to Austin.

And when I saw that happen, I thought, what a move.

Like he’s such a professional.

He’s moving to Texas.

This is where the podcast stuff is booming.

Tim Ferriss was there.

Joe Rogan’s there.

And at the time I was like, wow.

What a move.

Like what a gamble almost for your career.

And you had to bet on yourself.

And then like two years later, I’ve used the same lawyer.

I asked Chris for a referral.

He gave me the lawyer and I’ve got the same visa as Chris from his referral.

I don’t know.

I think it’s like be enthusiastic.

And if you be enthusiastic around the right people, they can give you 10x opportunities which will change your life.

Then obviously you’ve got to be able to learn the skills and be someone worthy of those opportunities.

But that went well with Chris.

Chris at a bar in Texas was with Jordan Peterson and I get a text in the morning in the UK being like, “Just gave your name to Jordan Peterson at the bar.”

And I’m like, “What’s happening?”

And that’s kind of what kept happening.

And that’s sort of the thought leaders and the creators.

But then we’ve sort of taken that knowledge.. To help more entrepreneurs.

And you just mentioned there, like there’s a difference between being a creator and a founder.

For a long time, Amplify was marketing to both because we were getting both coming inbound.

But it’s different.

It comes down to the purpose of the podcast or the YouTube channel, your LinkedIn.

And that’s stuff that I enjoy teaching now today because it is different strategies.

And everyone needs to know why they’re getting into this because for a lot of us, you can put a lot of hours and time into it and get no immediate payoff.

But there’s definitely, I think, everyone who tries it sees the indirect benefits.

Yeah.

But people usually go into it, “I want to get sponsorships. I want to make money from this.”

And yeah, it’s a noisy space.

It doesn’t always happen.

Yeah.

And actually, this is something that I…

Because I said to you, I started a YouTube channel and I think I only started it because everyone said I should be on YouTube.

And I don’t think I really had a passion for what I wanted to create on YouTube because, as I said, it’s a noisy space.

I admire Ali Abdaal and I love his content.

I’ve always been very educational, so I always want to do educational-style content.

But what do I create it on?

Because everyone’s already doing that and it’s really hard to break into a space where you’ve already got massive thought leaders like the Ali Abdaals of the world.

And what do I create content on?

And obviously I’ve got special niches.

I’ve got this kind of cool niche where I am a chess master with an MBA and I’m teaching chess strategy for business.

And that’s really cool.

But at the same time, I don’t want to be known for that.

And it sounds really rude, but I just don’t want to be known for that.

I think I’m so much more than that.

And yes, it’s a cool kind of thing I have, but I love having really cool conversations with entrepreneurs.

And I love this sort of stuff where I’m getting real bullsh*t out of people, not the same stuff that everyone talks about.

I want to go deep.

And I feel like when I talk to people, people love the conversations that we have.

And I think that I do have the ability to bring good content out of people.

But I can’t do that on my YouTube channel by myself necessarily.

And actually, funny thing is, I was thinking about…

I’ve taken a break from it just for this month while I’m touring.

Makes it sound cooler than it is when I’m touring here.

And I thought about talking about content as a content creator versus content as a business owner.

Because I’m talking a lot to business owners and I keep seeing so much content out there which is all geared at creators.

And I think when business owners try to take that same advice, it’s a detriment to their business sometimes.

And I think that’s funny you mentioned that because that’s the sort of direction I want to take my content in.

It’s very much because all my people are entrepreneurs and business owners.

And so that’s the angle I want to do it.

But I’m still kind of working out what that looks like.

But yeah, I definitely want to talk more about it.

We could talk.

Yeah.

I think that the difference between successful brands and those that don’t go on to work is that through line.

So you can have all this social media activity, all this content, but there’s not a through line to your objectives.

And that’s the biggest problem.

And we teach this in cohorts now where the first thing is, what’s your personal brand objective?

What are you trying to do?

If it’s leads, then you need to reverse engineer backwards from leads.

Okay, then it’s maybe discovery calls.

Okay, then is it a newsletter?

Is it a lead magnet?

Is it then social media?

And then you map that funnel out or that sort of marketing funnel.

So I think with everyone it’s like, what are you doing this for?

People usually say revenue.

People usually say leads.

For yourself, like you’re building an ecosystem.

Like is it to share useful content for your community?

Is it to put you out there and to be able to get into the right rooms?

You don’t need many reasons, but you just need to have a singular reason which isn’t borrowed from someone else.

And I think nowadays, I love what you said.

I think with the chess and the MBA, the first step is get memorable.

And then the second step is probably try and be a maker.

Like make a category.

Yeah.

Greg Isenberg, who we worked with for a year before his podcast absolutely blew up, said this to me.

He’s like, “A podcast nowadays needs to be a show. Like it needs to be bingeable.”

And he said that maybe two years ago and he had like 10,000 subscribers on YouTube.

And then he’s now got like 500,000.

And I’ve watched that clip back so many times.

Like he literally said that before he took off.

And I was like, that’s it.

That’s the gold.

Like you need to build a show.

Like what’s the core concept?

He was obsessing over the music of the show.

He wanted a jingle.

For me, with The Diary of a CEO, I don’t know why I didn’t put two and two together, but when I first saw the trailers, which initially felt revolutionary, like a trailer for a podcast, it took me a year to realize that films have trailers.

I was almost embarrassed.

Movie producers are essentially creating each episode like a little movie.

I was almost embarrassed to realize that because it felt so innovative in the industry.

But you just need to borrow things from elsewhere.

So going back to Greg and his podcast, it was like, let’s have a jingle and let’s make it fun.

And he’s a little bit more introverted, so he wanted to be the host.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And he’s more in the tech scene.

And with everything with AI, he was so ready for that wave because he’s always been known for his writing, commenting on AI and tech.

But now he just grabs the latest founder or entrepreneur who’s just had the most innovative thing in AI, brings them on for a podcast, they share their screens, and it’s over to the guest.

So he can react in 24 to 48 hours and that’s his goal, you know.

That’s his zone of genius.

So I’ve seen so many examples where people have stumbled on that.

Where just the stars align, it seems.

But it’s always from what they’re interested in and they’ve always done so much work beforehand that looks like it was just luck.

But it wasn’t.

They were just ready.

Yeah.

And I think for myself, platform success comes and goes.

Both of us have used LinkedIn a lot.

TikTok changed people’s lives.

But that was one sort of wave that came and I saw it happening.

And you can kind of see that if you hit volume on that platform, you could probably go from nobody to successful.

But it never felt like my opportunity.

So I’ve sort of helped clients grow there and saw that opportunity come, but sort of waited, observing it.

That’s not for me.

I want to do educational content, you know.

So the great thing about our space is that there’s always opportunities, there’s always waves.

And if you just keep learning skills, networking, building a community, at some point everything’s going to align and you can be ready.

And then you can make something which is a little bit more unique.

So yeah, I think

nowadays for people, you’ve got to create a signature framework or do something which is a…Little bit innovative to stand out.

But when you do, you can really get all of the benefits.

It’s funny you mentioned Greg because he’s one of the people I reached out to try and interview when I was here this time.

I do this thing now where I’m trying to reach out to people who are so out of my reach because it’s almost like getting used to that fear of rejection.

And it’s like, what’s the worst they could do?

They could just ghost you.

Most of the time they’re going to ghost you.

It doesn’t really hurt.

Or they’re going to be like, “No thanks. You’re too small for me,” or whatever.

“It’s not worth my time.”

But that’s life, right?

And if you don’t ask, you don’t get.

And I just feel like he’s one of the people I was like, “He’s in Miami. I’m going to reach out to him and see what happens.”

He didn’t say anything.

But maybe one day.

Like I said, maybe I join a Chris Williamson and go all in on myself on a podcast and in a couple years’ time, maybe he will become a guest on my podcast, you know?

Yeah.

I love what you’re doing.

I think keep staying in the game.

Keep getting the consistency and the path becomes clearer as you take steps.

So keep going.

People stop with podcasts in particular.

Everyone just stops.

Yeah.

I want to keep going.

I’m going all in now.

Like I said, I’m bloody in Miami doing it.

I mean, this is not half-assing it.

This is full-assing it.

So I feel like I’m doing it.

Let’s see where it goes.

But we should talk about personal branding because I feel like that is your expertise.

We’ve obviously touched on a little bit about it.

Like you said, what you’ve done for Ali and Chris and everything.

But I talk a lot about personal branding and how bullsh*t it really is.

And there’s so much bullsh*t in the space.

You started this during COVID when I think it’s when the personal branding boom just kicked right off.

And there were so many people in the space who are big deals now but I still think are full of bullsh*t.

And they have ridden this wave and they’ve manipulated the system.

They’ve bought their followers.

They’ve done all this stuff and they’re still pushing out a lot of crap out there.

I think one of the reasons why I really liked what you did and do personally is because, like I said, I saw you start out.

But you produce genuine, tangible results for real people.

Like you’ve just said, you had Ali when he was at like 10,000 subscribers.

All these people, they’re all at millions now.

These guys are literally at the top of their game and you did that.

There’s a big difference.

And for me, there’s a huge difference between doing that on YouTube, which is a ridiculously difficult platform to actually conquer, versus LinkedIn or Instagram where people are still manipulating the algorithm, buying followers, and still able to fake things.

You can’t really do that on YouTube as much.

And so that’s why I was thinking you’re one of the few people in the game who has actually got proof with real tangible results and real big clients.

What is your thought on the personal brand space?

How has it changed from when you started to where it is now?

And what is real personal branding?

What does it or should it look like for people when they’re investing in it?

Yeah.

I mean a lot goes into these outlier successes.

But on a day-to-day basis, we work with people who were experts in real life but had no online presence.

And we’ve started fresh channels and been successful too.

So I think there’s three main things.

You’ve got systems.

Having a system which is sustainable for the individual, for the expert.

The strategy of the platforms, understanding the platforms and the native content and formats and the trends as a whole full-time job.

And then beyond systems and strategies, it is that positioning.

You have to be crystal clear on who you are, what you do.

And obviously with socials, it says it in the name.

You need to create stuff which is saveable and shareable.

And if you’re doing content which is speaking to someone, even if they’re not your ICP, they need to be able to go, “Okay, cool. So Sabrina, the No Bullsh*t Entrepreneur. Okay, amazing.”

And even if you want to expand that branding in the future, great.

But at least right now, people are working for you in the background.

And that’s where all the benefit is.

Anyone, even with a thousand followers online, can have people out there as marketers for them because your content is working for you.

And we teach that you need to start somewhere.

You need to sort of own a category or things like that.

But I agree with you.

There’s a lot of people who live in the growth hacks and the tactics.

I just never do that myself.

I think there’s patterns across platforms.

And being in this for long enough now, you can kind of see more of the principles of how to build an actual engaged audience and stuff.

But success for anyone listening to this is really like success with your personal brand would be that you had a goal and you’ve achieved it.

And that looks different for everyone.

So is it that you are more on the audience path, we call it, or the leads path?

So the audience path is you want to put content out there, educational content or entertainment, build traction, just help so many people that you begin to get known.

And then you’re going to monetize the fact you have an audience.

Which could be public speaking.

It could be sponsorships.

And you are going to build an audience and monetize the fact you have an audience.

Like that’s the audience path.

The leads path is when you’re doing this for your business.

I think to your point with the personal branding boom, definitely the younger generation, I’d include myself, we think that social media marketing is the only form of marketing.

But you can get clients with paid ads.

You can get clients with leaflets and flyers.

You can get clients with SEO.

But because it’s the self-fulfilling prophecy that we all spend time on our phones and on these platforms, we can forget there’s other forms of marketing.

But on the leads path, it’s like, right, is content marketing a good idea for you as an entrepreneur and founder?

Beyond just putting yourself out there, beyond maybe enjoying the process.

Can this help your business and how would it help your business?

Then that informs the platforms you should be on.

It informs your strategy.

It informs whether you do it yourself, whether you have a team.

And that’s the leads path, which is that you’re using your personal brand as a marketing asset.

Obviously directly related to sales and then in the long term it should be revenue.

And it’s fine to do both.

If you’re seeing that you’re on the leads path and you’re trying to get leads from your personal brand, but you don’t have any presence online and you’re not clear on who your content is speaking to, you probably need to build your audience first.

You know, if your total audience size is less than 10,000 people, you probably should just do the upfront work of your positioning.

Get a system that works for you.

And then with the strategy, just live and breathe on a platform.

The strategy, you’ll understand.

And then at a certain point you’ll start getting inbound attention and you can sort of shift gears.

But when we teach this in a cohort we do, we always say, “Are you on the audience path or the leads path?”

Because it’s two different things.

And people on the leads path are usually very impatient with the results.

But then it’s like you’re not clear on who you are, what you’re trying to do.

You don’t want to give much time to this content thing.

Honestly, maybe you should just do paid ads.

Or maybe you should just do SEO.

Or maybe you’ve told me that 90% of your clients come from referrals.

Why are you trying to grow a personal brand when none of them look at your content or website or profile?

So I don’t know.

I think a lot of people think this is the only answer.

So to your point, there’s a lot of misconception and people think it’s the only solution.

So exactly what you just said.

You said audience path versus leads path.

But that’s me talking about content creator versus business owner.

That’s the same thing, right?

So it’s like the content creators are on the audience path usually.

The business owners are on the leads path usually, right?

That’s the same thing I talk about, but obviously on a much lower scale.

But it’s the same sort of thing.

And you said about the leads path being impatient.

And I get that because they’re expecting leads instantly.

And like you said about, you know, why are you doing this?

Maybe…You should be doing SEO.

I say this all the time to business owners because my clientele, I’ve been running a creative agency, so usually the people I talk to are business owners.

And you know, we do a website for them.

We do some marketing content and again, SEO, ads, all that stuff should be coming into it.

That way of marketing is so trustworthy.

And email marketing, we need to talk about that because email marketing still has the best ROI of almost any form of digital marketing.

But people are sleeping on it because it’s not front and center.

You can’t brag about your emails going viral or looking impressive because no one really cares how many replies you got, even if it makes you more money.

It’s social media.

Like you said, people see it’s the only thing because somehow it’s like this badge of honor to go viral or whatever.

People see and they go, “Oh, you’re popular because you’ve got so many followers,” or whatever.

And I think that’s it.

So for me, I hear all the founders I speak to are like, “I must have a personal brand. I need to build my personal brand.”

People come to me all the time going, “Can you help me build my personal brand?”

I’m like, “Do you even know what it is?”

Like they don’t even understand what a personal brand is.

They think it means posting on LinkedIn.

Like that’s what they think it is.

And they don’t get how much of a system it is.

We both spoke off air a minute ago.

We were just speaking earlier saying that I reckon your personal brand really works for you because there were so many times with people saying, “I need to talk to you,” at different points along the way.

For me, that’s personal branding.

It’s when you’re consistently recommended at different angles.

And I think when your name keeps coming up, it’s reinforcement that you’re good at what you do.

And I think that’s the difference.

And so many people said that to me.

Like another lady wanted to work with me because she said, “Well, three different people recommended you from different parts,” and not even connected to each other.

And I’m like, that’s real personal branding.

And I don’t know whether they’ve seen my podcast, my YouTube, my LinkedIn.

I don’t know where that is.

And obviously it’s a bit of everything combined.

And I think that founders think they need to do a personal brand because everyone else is claiming that’s what’s doing it well.

But what do you think?

Because you’re working with, like I said, the big-name guys, but you said that you’re helping out business owners.

Do you believe that everyone needs a personal brand?

Do you believe that everyone should be working on content and having a personal brand?

Because some people hate being in front of the camera.

Some people hate being front and center.

They want their brand to do that.

I think that’s the question that I would sort of ask because I think it’s changed over the last few years and people all say different things.

But from your perspective, genuinely helping people do this, what is the situation with that for a business owner versus a content creator?

Content is different because obviously they are front and center.

They’re doing it.

But as a business owner, do you think everyone needs to be creating content and building a personal brand?

Everyone has a personal brand already.

Okay, good answer.

It’s just whether you’ve been intentional.

So like that LinkedIn profile which is inactive for three years and says that you still work at your previous company is causing problems if you’ve not updated it.

So there’s a little bit of maintenance.

We all need to live in this world, right?

And I think the most up-to-date thing is with LLMs.

We signed a client last week who came across me from ChatGPT.

Yeah.

Very interesting call.

He comes onto the call and clearly ChatGPT is saying good things because he was so like, “Good to talk to you. I’ve heard great things.”

And I’m like, “Have we met before?”

And he was like, “No. I was suggested three people and every time I was talking to ChatGPT, it was saying out of the three I’d go with Joe and Amplify every time.”

So I need to thank OpenAI.

But we’re talking, this is going to be outdated advice probably in one month.

But the thing now is we’re back to the game of, all right, LLMs are reading our online profiles and stuff.

I used to laugh when people would have a LinkedIn profile where the about section was in third person.

To be like, “Joe Gannon is…”

But now that’s kind of come back into play because our profiles, our websites, all these algorithms are looking at our profiles to say, “Is he an expert in his field based on his experience?” and all these different things to then know who to serve the content up to.

So there is a little bit of maintenance we all need to do.

Everyone has a personal brand.

Have you been intentional with it is the first question.

But then to our point, the gold standard is when you can have content and have messages out there and media of you.

Daniel Priestley says it takes seven hours to build a parasocial relationship.

So he says based on that there should be seven hours of content from you.

He’s talked about that in Key Person of Influence.

So that’s great advice.

That’s the modern world.

And anyone who’s a business owner should probably try and get that seven hours of content.

It could be conversations like this.

It could be media they’ve created themselves.

Beyond that point, we’ve all got to be honest.

As long as there’s not incorrect information that’s not factual leading someone down the wrong path, we have to be honest with our goals.

Does it help our business?

And those are the real questions as business owners we get too busy to look at and consider.

It’s maybe not for every business, but definitely if you get it right, it can be such a help.

And you only need to be as good as your competitors really.

So if you’ve got an eye on who else is in your space, if you’re seen as a little bit more professional and have higher production quality, that could be the bar.

Not everyone needs to be a Chris Williamson.

He truly is a professional and it’s his full-time focus.

And he’s putting in the most crazy hours and now has the resources and it’s all coming back into the business.

So to your point, creators and founders are two different people.

I would actually say I’ve always been on the audience path, which might be surprising.

But our clients were more…

We got into the circles of trust with some of the best in the world who weren’t reading my LinkedIn posts.

So I realized I’m doing all of this activity on LinkedIn, building it up maybe like 15 hours a week, beginning to work with a freelance editor, all these different things.

But I knew that was Joe’s network for the future.

Joe’s diversifying his options.

I’m talking in the third person now preparing the LLM.

That’s funny.

But I realized this myself.

I’m doing all this activity over here building an audience.

But that was okay because I wanted to do that.

So yeah, even for myself I had to be honest with myself that I’m building an audience online, putting time into this for the future, for my network, for future opportunities.

It definitely indirectly has helped my business.

But I would be lying if I said that qualified leads of our true ICP, the people we’re trying to reach, were coming from LinkedIn.

Interesting.

Maybe every now and then their teams, but they were not scrolling on LinkedIn looking for a brand team, a strategist, and these different things.

That’s when I started realizing, okay, it’s the founders, it’s the entrepreneurs, it’s the business owners.

And then for me, the headline clients we’ve worked with have been pretty much signposting of social proof.

But then we were getting entrepreneurs coming in saying, “Cool, I’m not like one of those, but I trust you because of who you’ve worked with.”

So if a business coach was looking at my numbers, they’d say it is referrals or outreach we’ve done where we’ve put time into creating content for someone upfront.

But even I had that disconnect because I wasn’t measuring my LinkedIn success based on leads.

That wasn’t my intent.

So we’ve since tried to go, okay, we shouldn’t probably leave those entrepreneurs hanging.

And maybe it’s advisory, which I do now.

Or maybe it’s a cohort and we can teach them what we know.

And I didn’t want to leave money on the table.

I wanted to build a product and I’ve done that since.

But for myself, it wasn’t like I’m growing a LinkedIn audience for leads.

That’s so interesting because you’ve got a shit ton of followers on LinkedIn, right?

You’ve got a good profile.

And it’s like you’re saying that actually most of your leads don’t come from LinkedIn.

And on the one hand, I’m listening to that going, what the hell is the point of spending time on LinkedIn 15 hours a week if you’re not getting…

Like you said, it’s a part of what you do and it’s that social proof and everything.

But again, coming back to being a full-time content creator, it’s a different thing.

But coming back to running a business, you have to spend time running your actual business.

How do you decide what’s worth investing in time-wise?

Everyone talks about LinkedIn like it’s an essential part of what you do.

You must be on LinkedIn every single day.

You have to be building it.

And I’m someone who’s got a lot of business on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has done really well for me.

Don’t get me wrong.

I see the value in it.

But so many times I’m thinking also if I just spent less time on LinkedIn, or most of that time, say if you’re investing in other forms of leads and doing stuff, is that a better use of your time?

And that’s that balance.

And like I said, personal branding.

How much time do you spend building this personal brand?

And for me, what I’ve noticed as well about the people who are obsessed with personal brand, it feels a little bit egotistical.

It is slightly like, “I want to be on a stage. I want to be known for this. I want to be a thought leader.”

Because I just want to be famous essentially, is what it feels like.

Their business is almost like a byproduct.

It’s like, “Oh okay, I’ve got a business, but really I just want everyone to talk about me.”

And that’s what personal branding feels like.

Then it becomes a distraction from their business.

And actually their business doesn’t do as well because they’re spending all this time trying to be LinkedIn famous.

Do you see that?

Is that a pattern you’ve seen?

Yeah, 100%.

And yeah, like 15 hours a week when I was doing everything myself, you’re spending time in the DMs and doing everything.

It probably takes about that amount of time.

I’d say for any business owner, it should probably take around two to four hours a week.

The systems and the team.

But everything has to be flowing down this content waterfall system.

Like your expertise, your thought leadership, your original thought can be…

The world has changed, but equally not a lot has changed.

What was good content was original thought, frameworks, talking from experience.

And if you couldn’t do that, like in the start of my career, I was just documenting the path to that.

So anyone can post.

Don’t let that put you off.

In the early days I was just sharing, “I listened to this podcast, it was interesting.”

Or, “I just had this conversation. Here’s what I’m learning in my career.”

You can document on the way.

But what hasn’t changed is that it should be expertise, original thought, and experience.

Share from lived experience.

I believe content as a service.

Like people say sales is a…Service.

I think everyone should post because we all have experience and life lessons.

Like I can learn so much from you.

You’ve grown your business in all these different ways and come across challenges.

I’d love for you to share that so I can benefit.

Every single person has all this knowledge.

So to the point about people wanting to be famous, I think it’s better to see it as service.

It’s a little bit more sustainable that you have information that could help someone.

And I think that’s why I’ve been in this industry for like seven years.

And we’ve helped educational content creators or entrepreneurs who had the craziest stories but no time to share them.

And I was so enthusiastic and passionate to unlock that.

So that’s kind of where I live in the industry.

I think that people have stories and expertise the world needs to hear and I want to help unlock that.

Anyone listening to this who’s not posting content, it feels a little bit like, I don’t know, it’s a better angle if you’re not sure why you’re posting.

It doesn’t have to be egotistical.

But to your point, yeah, I think people do it for the wrong reasons.

Some people are literally doing that though.

That’s their intent.

It’s like, “I want to create content, build an audience to monetize it or to get speaking opportunities.”

So that’s what they’re doing.

Like what you’ve called out is what they’re doing.

And I’d probably encourage them, if you want speaking opportunities, like one every quarter, so you need four in a year, you should reverse engineer from that goal.

And do outreach and prove that you’re capable of talking on stage.

Share content of you on stage and all these different things.

Like that’s the right thing to do if that’s your goal.

But yeah, I think a lot of people are doing it for the wrong reasons.

And then to bring it back to your original point, if content isn’t your business, if that’s not your full-time thing, then it can definitely be a distraction.

One hundred percent.

I’ve been there.

And then you need to build the systems to literally distill everything down to just what only you can do in that sort of content waterfall system.

So your voice is captured in all these different ways.

And then you can have people and you can sort of build a media team around you because you need to focus on your business.

Yeah.

And I think that’s it.

People do need to focus on the business and they’re not.

And so I guess my question would be, for business owners, for those business owners out there who are going, “I need to create a personal brand,” whether, like you said, they already have one, but whether they are already creating content.

And I think a lot of people are at the point where they’re creating content but it’s not landing.

Everyone’s moaning about the LinkedIn algorithm obviously.

It’s not reaching, but whatever platform they’re on, say if they’re creating content that they consider as good content, they’re spending a lot of time, they’re maybe even investing in production value, but they’re not getting the results that they want.

In terms of vanity metrics probably, but the results that they want.

What advice would you give to someone who’s a business owner who likes creating content maybe, but isn’t sure what they’re doing and they’re not getting the results that they want?

They’re not getting the leads.

Where should they look?

How can they be improving and what should a good personal brand journey look like?

I think the biggest metric of all with content is how useful is it?

And the second question is who are you trying to be useful to?

So with the business owner, again we’d fall straight away to say that a successful personal brand for them is X followers or this.

But if you speak to your customers, you speak to prospects, you spend time in the DMs, and you ask them, “What content could you create to solve their problems?” then that to me would be success because you’re being useful.

And I spoke to Ali Abdaal recently.

I did this summit online and he came as a speaker.

And he says even to this day, his biggest criteria with any YouTube video is, “Is this useful?”

That’s the bar.

And that informs then the framework he’s agonized over to make the information digestible for someone.

So I think for any business owner, and I think this is advice across industries, it’s how can you educate someone on what you can do?

So that is the criteria of success.

So I think my answer is you should deviate.

The success of a personal brand is unique to the individual because I think that’s the truth.

Yeah.

I’m not going to bullsh*t here.

Like that’s the truth.

I would say that to 10 different people.

So it has to come down to that.

So it’s like if you, and I know you work with a lot of service-based entrepreneurs as well.

So it’s like, okay, cool.

If we take you as an example, if you truly helped a client get a transformation, do you think there’s other people out there who are also in their situation experiencing pain?

Yeah, of course.

Yes.

Okay.

So then it’s like the real work for all of us as entrepreneurs or anyone is what did you do?

Like what was the secret sauce?

What was the method you did?

Where was the aha moment?

How did you help someone?

What was the transformation?

Yeah.

That informs all of the content you should create.

Then it’s like what’s the right platform?

Then there’s a little bit of understanding trends, just the formatting.

Content does need to look like it should fit on the platform.

But all of the secrets to that are just scrolling your feed and seeing the market signals.

You don’t need to have a large following yourself because you could just scroll your feed.

Every feed has become a For You page.

Yeah.

You’re being shown, when you log in, the content which everyone wants to see, or where the demand is at least.

Make your content packaged up in the right sort of way and then just continue on that journey.

Yeah.

And then every time you get a comment or a DM, you talk to that person.

What else can I create for you?

Yeah.

Amazing.

And keep going, keep going, keep going.

And then suddenly it’s like wow, then you’re charging for implementation.

Yeah.

And that’s it.

And you give everything away for free and then they come back to you and say, “That’s a great plan. I want to do it. I haven’t got the time. Can I hire you?”

And that’s business.

That is the right way.

But like you said, you’ve got to be in the DMs.

But that’s slower.

And I think people want this mass kind of virality and everything coming to them.

But actually you need to work and put that effort into it.

I guess the only follow-up question I’ve got to that is, like you said, is it useful?

Does it look good?

Is it packaged in the right way?

Now, so many people say they’ve done all that.

They’ve got great content.

It looks great.

They’ve put all the effort into it.

Some people are delusional and think that’s what it is, but it’s not.

There are some people.

But there are legitimately some great creators out there producing really quality work.

It looks fantastic, but they’re not getting traction.

And obviously they’re getting frustrated because other people who are doing bullsh*t stuff are going viral because they’re in engagement pods or whatever.

And their competitors are doing really well and they’re not.

That’s what I think is causing the frustration.

What advice would you give to those people who are consistently showing up and doing good work, but they’re still not getting it?

They’re doing all the right things, but they’re not getting the results.

What’s going wrong?

Great question.

Yeah, it’s probably lots of different reasons.

Let’s just quickfire different reasons.

Sometimes people are not speaking to the audience and they’re sort of speaking to people who know them.

So as an example, they’re not optimizing if they want to grow an audience.

Or even in the right way, they want to reach more prospects, more of the right people.

Amazing.

But they don’t maybe realize that they’re starting from humble beginnings and they’re not known just yet.

I think there is an element as well of respecting the platform you’re going to be on.

So we’ve spoken about this before.

If you’re a business owner, you can only spend a couple of hours a week.

Completely understand.

But if you want this to be a success, sometimes the shortest path to success is the long way around.

And if you’re going to host a podcast on YouTube, you need to look at who’s the best in the space and how does it look.

You do need to respect these platforms.

And I think everyone does want all the success of their personal brand and for it to be…

You know, a home run for their business, but they’re not respecting the craft of it.

And anyone that we watch as a success story, even if it’s in business, even if it’s an agency owner who is using LinkedIn successfully or they’ve got a podcast which is helping their business, that’s success.

They haven’t just arrived.

They haven’t just recorded an hour of footage of a podcast like this and just taken the raw file and put it on YouTube.

It’s like they respected YouTube.

It’s like, okay, what’s YouTube?

What’s YouTube titles and thumbnails?

You can have the best video, but if no one clicks on it, they’ll never watch the video.

That’s what Ali Abdaal spoke about four years ago.

Okay, well that’s a little bit of an insight into how people use YouTube, how people consume YouTube.

And you do need to respect that.

So I think unfortunately a lot of people are putting a lot of effort and energy into content, into their personal brands, but they’re just doing the wrong things.

There’s a really cool matrix called the effort-impact matrix.

And that’s probably the thing I tell the team the most every single day, every single week.

The goal of the effort-impact matrix is you want to ultimately create content which is low effort, high impact.

So in our team we always talk about effort versus impact.

Just in general, the highest performers do this.

You should think about it too.

You want to create content which is low effort, high impact.

Yeah.

That could be that you do a podcast because you really enjoy the conversations and you look forward to it every week.

And therefore it’s low effort, but you get so much material from it.

It could be that you do a newsletter.

It could be that you do YouTube because you enjoy it.

So people can agonize over creating the wrong type of content.

“I have to do video. Video is so important.”

Yes, it’s great to be a 3D creator.

I think every single person or brand I’ve bought from has had video.

So it’s like, okay, cool.

That’s good to know.

Probably should do video.

But if it’s just not you, you do not need to try that.

So I think people are doing all this activity, but unfortunately they’re doing the wrong things.

They’re not respecting the platforms.

Usually there’s two types of content.

You’ve got content which grows followers and content which increases engagement.

If you just did content only speaking to people as if they’re already in the know and you’re educating them on what you do, by definition, to grow an audience, to grow followers, you need to be speaking to people who don’t follow you.

Yeah.

So if you reverse it back, it’s like, okay, so I can’t pretend that they know what I know.

I need to do content which gets reach and views, not for vanity metrics, but I just love to map all of this together.

And on a monthly basis, what is the content which is for views?

What’s for followers?

What’s for comments?

What’s for leads?

And then put it all together like pieces of a jigsaw because you need all of it together.

So sometimes people just aren’t speaking to new people and then they wonder why the followers haven’t grown.

It’s like, okay, I think the answer’s there.

I think everything you’ve just said though, the thing that cries out to me is that you need actual strategy.

And I think that’s what people are missing.

And I talk about this all the time as a chess master.

I love strategy obviously.

And it’s that actually thinking through with consequences.

And I used the word intentional earlier to you.

Is that intentional kind of what you…

As you said, what do you want out of your personal brand?

And I think people just go, “I need to make content because people say you need to make content. I need a personal brand because…”

But they don’t know what that looks like and how to show up.

And I think that’s it.

Like you just said, which bits are for views, which bits…

People don’t know that.

Like if you ask most people that, they don’t know.

I don’t know half the time.

I just feel like I’m sitting here and this, like you said, low effort, high impact.

This is what that is for me.

I love these conversations.

This is easy.

I could basically be in my living room or having a coffee and having these conversations.

This is easy for me.

This is not easy for most people, but it’s easy for me.

But I’d like to hope that it is high impact.

I’d like to hope that this conversation is going to be so useful to so many people.

And I guess that shows you that I need to be doing this format more.

Yeah.

So what’s your ambition here?

Oh God.

Put me on the spot.

To be the new Chris Williamson.

No, I guess not.

I guess I want to take this more seriously.

I want to make a real go of the podcast.

I hated being known as a content creator.

I hate being called an influencer.

If someone says that to me, I get really insulted.

Only because I guess the way that influence is known.

I want to genuinely make an impact on other people’s lives.

But to be a content creator that people absorb because they want to have a no bullsh*t answer to business.

And they come for real educational content that genuinely helps them grow their business as opposed to just being entertaining, being loosely inspiring, and that sort of stuff.

And so I want to have conversations with people like yourself who have genuinely built a business, who are genuinely doing good work, and get them to tell the stories of how they’re doing it and why they’re doing it.

And inspire other people to do things legitimately.

I think there’s so much bullsh*t out there which is focused on the generic stuff, the hacks, all those sorts of things.

And I think there’s too much focus on it.

And people are trying those things and wasting time, wasting money, wasting energy, as you said before.

And it’s destroying businesses.

It’s destroying morale.

And I want to talk to the people doing it properly.

And I want to encourage more entrepreneurs to build businesses in the right way, in an ethical way, that are sustainable businesses that are going to be here in the long term.

To create the lifestyle that we talked about at the very beginning of this podcast so they can have the best possible lives for themselves.

And I want to do that because that’s what I want for myself.

But I’ve never, I guess, kind of gone all in on myself.

I’ve always been helping other people grow their businesses.

And I think it’s time to start doing that for myself.

Let’s go.

I’m excited for you.

Yeah.

I think you should be doing it.

I agree.

So there you go.

I’ve just held myself accountable to all my audience now by saying that on air.

Why wouldn’t you do it?

Like what is the reason right now why you wouldn’t do it?

It doesn’t sound like there is one.

But it’s scary.

It’s scary.

It’s definitely more high risk because helping other founders is, I guess, what I’ve done all my life.

And so you get steady income doing that.

I was talking about monetization earlier.

I’ve not monetized the podcast yet.

I’ve not monetized my YouTube channel yet.

I don’t have a vision for that because I never considered doing that.

It was always a side project.

It was always a hobby.

And so I think the fact is that I don’t see that as a possibility of being a revenue stream.

If that suddenly became a possibility, there was no reason why I wouldn’t do it.

But it’s that sort of thing where I also have bills to pay.

I have a future to build.

If I could see the financial impact coming in, then I would do it.

But because I’ve never considered it as a financial stream, I’ve never thought about doing it.

I think it’s a really good point on sponsorships.

I realized maybe similar to where you are right now because you could get a sponsorship for this.

Because of all of the work until this point where you’ve helped so many entrepreneurs and founders, you’ve got the track record.

So that is very attractive for a brand to sponsor the next series.

That’s not a crazy idea.

It’s already happening.

But then you told me earlier that you haven’t spoken to sponsors just yet.

And the same thing for me.

I think like six months ago I was like, I should probably start getting sponsorships.

But I wasn’t doing any activity.

And this literally was like a tap being turned on.

The second I was like, “Oh, I should probably start doing the work required to talk to some brands and just get the ball rolling.”

They’re like, “Yeah, we’ll pay that.”

And I’m like, “Are you kidding me?”

Like this whole time?

For both of us and maybe people listening, obviously I don’t know, but sometimes those opportunities can come easily because of all the hours and hours and hours of free work you’ve done.

I probably have the worst per-hour rate in my business.

You’d probably say the same.

And probably the worst per-hour rate of my personal brand.

And you may get a sponsorship of a couple of thousand dollars now, but you’re still in the red probably.

Yeah, definitely.

But I think for a lot of people listening to this, you’ve sort of earned to finally get some wins which didn’t require a massive push.

I think that would happen for you.

It’s not like you’re saying to me that you’ve gone pro with this and you unfortunately haven’t generated revenue from it.

It’s like you haven’t even tried.

Yeah.

So it’s like, cool.

What an opportunity.

I like that you’ve put me on the spot.

Thanks.

And kind of held me accountable to it because I think,

yeah, it’s really scary. It’s just a scary thing, I think, going all in on yourself because, yeah, when the rejections come, which inevitably they will come, then it’s almost a personal rejection, which I think is harder to take.

But like you said, I’ve not even tried.

At least I can do is try.

And I think that’s it.

And you never know what will come.

Like we’ve talked about right at the beginning.

You put yourself out there.

You reached out to Ali Abdaal.

You reached out to so many different people.

And you wouldn’t be where you are now if you didn’t do that.

So it just takes one person or one brand to believe in you for it to completely change your trajectory.

Right.

So I just need to do it.

And yeah, I love that you’re beginning to go more professional.

Like, you know, you said to me you’ve taken all this equipment from the UK, right?

Like that’s a cost of entry that 99% of people wouldn’t do.

Yeah.

So you’re entering the territory to get opportunities that 99% of people can’t get.

There’s a podcast right now called TBPN.

I don’t know if you’ve heard of this.

No.

It’s like a tech business show.

And they’ve just been acquired by OpenAI within just over a year.

It’s an extreme example, but they sort of dared to have a studio and they livestream.

And then they bring on guests.

And it’s kind of like a mix between a sports show.

Basically, it looks like a sports show.

You’ve got the ads at the bottom and you’ve got the latest news on the right-hand side.

And they bring on livestream guests and they livestream for four or five hours a day.

But they dared to go professional.

They dared to do an extreme version, to build a concept, to create a category.

We’re going to do a business-style livestream podcast in the shape of sports.

Went fully professional.

The reason I’m mentioning this is because yes, that’s high cost, but that was needed to be a podcast which could get acquired by OpenAI.

And then OpenAI have just acquired them for, I think it said, the low hundreds of millions.

I mean low hundreds of millions.

Because hundreds of millions, that’s nuts.

It’s unbelievable for a podcast.

But they dared to go after a concept which had the ceiling to achieve it.

So when you professionalize your craft, you allow sponsorships to be attracted to you and to want a recurring sponsorship as well.

So, you know, I’ll be the first to say for everyone, create content.

If you’ve got messages you want to share, do not let production quality and all this stuff stop that.

But there is a world where you dare to be courageous.

And by just doing that, you open doors for opportunities that you couldn’t get if you were being more amateur about it.

Yeah.

So it’s like only that podcast could get acquired.

It’s just, you know, they swung for the fences and they got a home run.

And there’s lots of examples of that nowadays happening.

I think Gary Neville’s podcast, The Overlap, have just acquired the largest Manchester United community channel.

And it’s like, wow.

Previously, maybe the best-case scenario with a podcast is firstly maybe a lifestyle business is stage one.

You can work on your own terms.

Stage two was you’re maybe getting very lucrative deals.

Because now even that, your community and your brand can get acquired.

That’s crazy.

And then you can continue on as the host.

Yeah.

You just continue doing the same thing.

Yeah.

But actually just being paid millions of pounds to do it.

So it’s like there’s more saturation at the beginner level now.

I’m the least technical person, but I was able to film a course in my apartment because ChatGPT.

“What camera should I buy?”

“Set up the camera.”

“What tripod do I need?”

Didn’t think about that.

Okay, cool.

“It’s all blown out.”

“I don’t know what aperture is.”

Take a picture of…The screen.

ChatGPT says, “Okay, cool. So you need to put a plant on the right-hand side, lower this to f/3.2.”

Suddenly, I’m filming in my apartment.

But to your point, you’ve got to be someone who has the drive to want to learn.

That’s never going to change.

AI is enabling the people who have drive and are creative and who are happy to take action.

But there’s all the saturation at the bottom.

Now there’s still great opportunity to professionalize.

So you can make money from this.

And then the ceiling at the top is loftier than ever before.

But if you dare to do it, you can get opportunities that will change your whole life.

Yeah.

Exciting space.

I mean, it’s kind of…

And when you just talked about that company, that podcast who have done the streaming, it made me think.

I had this idea for years and I’ve told people about it and they’re like, “Oh, I want to do that with you.”

And I’ve never, ever made it happen again.

And now I’m trying to give accountability to myself by saying these things.

But I’ve always wanted to do a 24-hour podcast.

And it’s like where we just go for 24 hours.

Obviously, I don’t think I physically can do that myself for 24 hours, but I would have other creators coming in and out and we swap places.

And we kind of do that and it’s consistently going.

But also it would be livestreamed.

Obviously, I would have people coming in day to day and they could join the conversation.

And it’s just No Bullsh*t conversation for 24 hours.

I wanted to do it as a charity thing as well.

Kind of raise money and get people involved.

And I think it was really easy to do as a Zoom concept because obviously everyone can log on whenever they want.

But I would love to do it in person.

But I’m guessing that would be the most difficult thing to arrange.

But I still want to do that.

I think that’s a really cool concept.

No one’s ever done that before, right?

And I feel like this is the thing.

How fun it would be.

So fun and it’s memorable.

It’s saveable, shareable.

I think it’s a great idea.

I think we’re in this space now where those ideas are rewarded.

Yeah.

I mean, do it for yourself.

It’s exciting for you.

Do it for the intrinsic reasons.

But that’s a great concept.

So there you go.

I feel like I’ve just given you a concept on air and you just said it’s a good concept.

Why shouldn’t I try and make this happen?

I look forward to it.

Oh my God, this is exciting.

You’re going to have to come back to London for that.

You said you like the concept.

24 hours is that you do a podcast in the UK, you get on the flight and then you get to Miami.

But I wanted to film the whole time on the plane for like nine hours.

Be like, “Okay, that’s going to be pretty boring.”

But oh my God.

Yeah.

Okay, fine.

You’ve never backed me.

I’m going to be like you’ve held me accountable to all these different things now.

I feel like my life’s about to change.

But I want to end on a question I’ve been asking everyone.

Which I feel like is a good one for you in your industry.

What do you think is the biggest piece of bullsh*t in your industry right now?

I think there’s a misconception on the audience side that the people we see creating content are the most qualified.

But they got there from creating content and that’s available to all of us.

Oh, that’s an interesting concept.

Because that is why, going back to what I said earlier about the people who want to become famous from it and want to be known.

There is that thing where if you stick someone in front of a camera, people always say if you put a microphone on someone it gives that extra elevation of authority.

Like they are somebody important.

They know what they’re talking about because they’re talking on camera.

But again, going back to the bullsh*t, people are full of bullsh*t but they have this high production and they make themselves look like they know what they’re talking about.

I guess then, how do you determine if everyone has high production quality?

How do you determine who is legit and who isn’t legit?

Because say if you’re an audience, who should you follow the advice of?

Because if there is a lot of bullsh*t out there, but they’ve got really high production quality, but actually the advice is really bad, it’s actually going to be a detriment to you.

How do you know who’s legit and who’s not?

I think with long-form content, there’s no hiding.

I think with newsletters, like a written piece, you can know if it’s just parroted from other people.

But with a podcast or YouTube, there’s no hiding.

We’ve had a chat for an hour plus and who we are has come out.

Yeah.

It has.

Like it just has.

And real meets real as well.

I think business owners know the journey of the ups and downs and know that nobody has an easy ride.

And if anyone claims that, your bullsh*t detectors go up, right?

So I think it’s a problem because we’re all shown content.

And I don’t think it’s on us as public people.

I think there’s definitely problems and dangers where misinformation can be shared to the public because you could see something for three seconds in your feed.

You didn’t ask for it, take it as a fact, and go on with your day.

There’s 100% a problem.

But I do think the general perception is that it comes down to the message and the value of what someone’s sharing.

And this is why I like…

We said about LinkedIn.

The algorithm has changed.

But it’s amazing if you’re someone who has something to say or you’re someone who’s curious and you’re building and you want to share the stuff you’re doing.

If you’re doing it all for the right reasons, platforms like LinkedIn, their AI models are kind of doing the sifting for us of who’s authentic, who’s not, who’s just sharing stuff that anyone could share.

So I hope we’re out of the wave now where production quality can fool everyone.

Or on a platform like LinkedIn, a lot of people grew just because it was the early days of the platform and they grew because they were the only ones posting.

Now it’s like even me right now, I’ve gone a week without posting because I’m kind of like, I want to wait until I have something to say.

And yeah, I’ve got busy too.

But now my advice is not just post every day and get the volume, you’re going to benefit from it.

It’s like, alright, maybe you should wait until you’ve got a useful take because that useful original take will perform 10 times better at this point than 10 posts which are kind of average or anyone could say.

So I mean, it definitely is a problem.

But I think we’re all kind of spotting who the real ones are out there.

We kind of know.

We know the ones who are gamifying stuff.

We know the ones.

It’s kind of public, right?

I think a lot of this stuff on social media is public.

It is.

But some people are very naive with it.

They just see the numbers and they believe it.

Like you see someone’s post going viral every single time.

They must think, “Oh, that’s really good advice,” even though it’s parroted.

It’s not even theirs.

And other people do believe that because they have no idea that it can be faked that much.

And I think some people do believe that.

I think that those people who are gamifying the system are actually aiming for the people who are more naive.

And their products are like that.

The courses are oversimplified for the naive people.

And it’s almost like a scam for those people, which sucks.

But I guess that’s why you pick the people you do to work with because they are producing long-form content.

Like you said, they’re actually producing good quality stuff.

Then you know they’re not bullsh*t, right?

Because they’re already doing that sort of thing.

I can’t work with anyone else.

I’ve definitely held the business back.

I’ve turned down clients we probably should have worked with.

But I didn’t want to work with the client.

I didn’t really believe in it.

Didn’t want to work with that person.

Didn’t want to support their voice or message.

I’ve definitely had periods of time where maybe the business financially wasn’t doing well and I had a lot of opportunities and I didn’t take them.

But I think it comes down to, yeah, why are we doing these businesses?

Stay true to your values.

I want to build an audience which hopefully have got useful things from me.

And then even if I change my opinions in the future, want to talk about different things, build different businesses, hopefully they’re along for the ride.

I think if you’re going to be a full-time creator, that’s success.

People will kind of stay with you through phases of your own development and learning.

And yeah, that’s definitely the people that I’ve learned from as mentors who I’ve surrounded myself with.

And anyone who’s getting a quick buck or success…

There’s been agencies that I’ve seen come and go in a year, made a lot of money, but they’ve sold it or they’re out or they made their quick buck and they’re not doing it anymore.

The other side of personal brand we’ve not spoken about is when it goes wrong.

It’s all reputation management.

And if you’ve done some things which maybe didn’t paint the best picture of who you are, you’ve done that publicly.

So, not to fearmonger on that side, but your name and your reputation is attached to all of this stuff.

So if you’re short-circuiting your values in any shape or form, that might come back to bite you.

And not to end on a negative note, but…

No, but that is the reality of it.

And that is the no bullsh*t of it.

And I think it’s not a negative note.

And I think this is what a lot of people say to me about my content.

Some people go, “Oh, you’re being negative.”

And I’m like, “No, I’m being real. There’s a difference.”

Some stuff in life is a bit negative.

Some stuff in life needs a bit of a dose of reality.

That’s what I call my content, a bit of a dose of reality.

Not everyone wants to live in reality.

Some people want to live in happy fairy tale land and would rather not know the truth.

But that is true.

And I think what you said about turning down work is so great to hear from my perspective because it’s the hardest thing to do.

And I definitely did a solo audio podcast the other day on compromising values because I felt like I did that recently by taking on the wrong clients from a monetary perspective.

And it destroyed me.

I really should not have taken them on.

And I think that the fact that you stay true to your values even during difficult economic times says a lot about who you are.

And it’s obviously why I wanted you on the No Bullsh*t Talks podcast for that reason.

But not everyone wants to do that.

And I think it will eat you up.

And I think certain people, like you said, who are doing the negative stuff, they’re wired a certain way.

I think that’s the thing.

And not all of us can do that.

And I want to find the people who want to do things legit and build their business in the right way.

So, love it.

Well, thank you so much.

That’s a great place to end, I think.

And thank you so much for coming in.

And I can’t believe it’s taken us three years or whatever to get here, but it’s been totally worth it.

Yeah.

I look forward to the next episode.

It’s like a team of 10, massive sponsors everywhere.

You’re like an F1 top with all these different sponsors on your T-shirt and you’ve gone pro.

Well, there you go.

That’s my goal now.

You’ve just made that vision board for me.

That’s what’s going to happen.

And I’ll invite you back for a fluffed-up episode with loads of budget that I can use.

Let’s go.

It’s been great.

Thank you.

Amazing.