Social Media Editor
Katie Wade Gets the Social Media ‘Skinny’ from Top Expert
PLUS… This Week’s Publisher’s Page by Richard Fenton & Andrea Waltz… Million Dollar Rolodex®… ‘How Do You Define Value?’ by Lois Creamer… Mozart… Public Service… Links… ‘What We Believe’… And, well, actually that’s it for this issue! October 15, 2012 www.MillionDollarBrand.com
October 15, 2012
‘MILLION DOLLAR BRAND’ Magazine
Want to Create the ‘Perfect’ Product? Forget It, You Never Will! One of the most tragic things we’ve witnessed over the years is watching people postpone releasing a new speech, book, coaching program, etc., working and word-smithing and waiting until both the product (and the timing) is ‘perfect’.
Most of us can trace the roots of this need to be perfect all the way back to early grade school, when failing a test, or getting anything less than an “A” on a report card, was enough to cause a cold sweat and heart-racing panic to set in: What will happen when I get home? What are my parents going to say? Will they yell? Scream? Or worse still, will I get… GOUNDED! As adults, not only can no one ground us, we get to give ourselves the greatest gift ever: The gift of imperfection. A woman called our office once to inform us she had found ‘over thirty places in our book Go for No!®’ where we should have put commas.’ We were shocked! “Thirty? Really? Only thirty?” -R&A
So, you know what? Give up the idea that anything you do… ever… will be perfect, and adopt the motto of virtually every ‘high performer’ we’ve gotten to know over the years, which is:
“Done is better than perfect.” What a wonderful word: done. It almost makes you smile just to say it. Go ahead, say it now. Seriously. Done.
Andrea Waltz & Richard Fenton, Publishers/Editors www.MillionDollarBrand.com
Copyright © 2012 by Courage Crafters, Inc. All rights reserved. To CONTRIBUTE CONTENT please click here. For information on becoming a JV/AFFILIATE PARTNER please click here. For everything else, please see buttons on Back Page
Disclaimer Statement: Our definition of a ‘Million Dollar Brand’ is any brand that has generated one million dollars (or more) in gross revenue. Additionally, while this publication is made FREE to subscribers, please be aware that we do maintain affiliate relationships with many of the advertisers and content contributors contained within, from which we may receive monetary compensation. However, we only recommend products that we've either personally checked out ourselves, or that come from people we know and trust. With this said, neither we as publishers, nor Courage Crafters, Inc., are responsible for the success or failure of any investment and/or purchase decision any subscribe elects to engage in with affiliates Or advertisers.
Well, here’s a newsflash: It ain’t never gonna be perfect… not ever! No matter how much time you take… or editors you hire… or how many times you proof-read it… nor how many sleepless nights you spend… there will always be someone, somewhere, that will find a typo, or won’t like what you’ve done, or will disagree with your premise, or write you to inform you (for your next edition) that you spelled the word ‘canceled’ incorrectly (“It’s two ‘L’s’, you moron!”) And if you change it in the next edition? Expect an email to arrive saying, “It’s one ‘L’, you idiot!”
D… O… N… E.
is published weekly by Courage Crafters, Inc., specifically for professional speakers, trainers, authors, coaches and infopreneurs.
inside WHAT’S
Features 2
This Week’s Publishers Page with Richard Fenton & Andrea Waltz
6-10 Katie Wade Interviews Social Media Guru Kim Garst
11
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Million Dollar Rolodex®
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How Do You Define Value? by Lois Creamer
14-15 Links to Us & ‘What We Believe!’
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Issue 3: October 15, 2012
Looking for ways to increase your brand’s popularity?
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An In-Depth Interview with Social Media Guru
by
Katie Wade
Social Media Editor, Million Dollar Brand
Last month, Million Dollar Brand magazine social media editor caught up with social media strategist and personal branding specialist Kim Garst. With well over 20,000 likes on her Facebook page and over 83,000 Twitter followers, Garst is a superstar in the world of social media training and coaching. And our timing couldn’t have been better with the release of her new book, The Quick and Easy Guide to
Branding Your Business and Creating Massive Sales with Pinterest. Million Dollar Brand: Kim, thank you so much for being on this interview today.
Kim Garst: Thank you so much for having me. MDB: Absolutely. I want to start by asking you how you first got started doing social media? KG: I’m going to date myself a little bit with this answer. I have been online for over 21 years now. When my oldest son was born I started trying to figure out how I was going to make money from home. Of course, 21 years ago the term social media wasn’t a part of our vocabulary yet. I frequently laugh and tell people I was doing social media before social
media was actually called social media. I would visit B-to-B boards and business chat forums in an effort to connect with new clients. Needless to say, I have a long history of connecting with people online and building a business through those connections. Today, the social media platforms make it so much easier. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, all of these sites make it much easier for people to communicate and connect with one another. MDB: Absolutely, and what do you love about social media? KG: I think the thing that I really like the most about social media is the people. The people you have the opportunity to meet, that in the ordinary course of life, you would never have an opportunity to connect with and do business with. My business serves people in over 17 countries! While I have never met them in person, through social media, I have a connection with them. In some cases, I know about their families and they know about mine. Social media is such an amazing conduit to relationship building. The really neat thing is that those that get that social media is driven by relationships can build
Interview with Kim Garst huge businesses using social media. MDB: And what are two or three of the most important things that you teach people in social media that they can do to grow their businesses? KG: The #1 thing that I stress almost religiously on a daily basis, with all of my clients, is authenticity, and taking the time to be real, and build out relationships with people online. I see so many people who don’t understand that social media is a conversation. I am always hearing people say that they don’t know what to say or what should they say on social media. There is no hard and firm answer on this because this comes from each individual. Remember that there are people on the other side of the things you share. How do you normally talk to people in person? When you go to a regular job, the first thing you do when you see
someone in the morning is you usually say a number of standard things. It might be ‘good morning’, ‘how was your evening’ or ‘did you watch American Idol last night’. It is essentially the same thing online, except you are talking to potentially 1,000’s of people instead of one individual person. Time management is also big and a lot of people struggle with this. If you want results from social media, you have to do the work. You have to get in there and work it. In order to do that you have to get a system together around the time that you spend on social media. I highly recommend Hootsuite as a social media management tool. It will help you manage your social media presences and save you a ton of time. Both of those are great.
But the real key in social media is listening. You have to listen to your audience. You have to understand what people need, and what they’re talking about. The really neat thing about social media is that they are telling you all this! You have invaluable market research right at your fingertips. Many major corporations pay huge sums of money for credible
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market research and all you have to do is put your ear to the ground online and there is a goldmine of market research there for the taking. You have the opportunity to find out what your ideal client’s pain points are and then you give them solutions to those things that they are struggling with. All these are great ways to ultimately increase your business using social media. MDB: And who are the one or two people that have influenced you the most on social media? KG: There are quite a few amazing people within social media that have definitely influenced my journey so narrowing it down to just a couple is a little bit difficult. But I think the first person that
“When you first get started with social media, it can be overwhelming so my best advice is start with one or two social media platforms.” stands out solidly is Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary is just a real, amazingly authentic guy, tells it like it is. I think he really has a handle on where social media is headed. I laugh and say he speaks my speak or maybe I speak his speak, I don’t know which, but he definitely has the care mentality that I feel is critical to being on social media. The other person that I really tune into is Chalene Johnson but for different reasons. Chalene is very inspirational and, again, a very real, down to earth person and it comes across very clearly in social media. I have admired that aspect of how she connects her business online. I follow both and I pay attention to what they are sharing. I’d advise anybody else to do the same, they both have different messages, but they’re both just very real authentic people. MDB: And what would your biggest challenge be when using social media? KG: I think my biggest challenge is probably the biggest challenge that most people have with social media, and that’s time. It takes time to build relationships online, and a lot of people don’t want to take the time but it’s critical! To successfully manage (continued on next page)
Interview with Kim Garst your social media time, first you have to determine what you want from social media. Set goals, both weekly, monthly even yearly. Once you determine what you want from your social media efforts, it becomes much easier to focus on specific tasks to accomplish your goals. Then narrow your focus. When you first get started with social media, it can be overwhelming so my best advice is start with one or two social media platforms. This will allow you to really monitor your efforts and identify what works and what doesn't. And last but not least, tools will help you tremendously! I mentioned one earlier, Hootsuite. It’s one of my most coveted social media tools and will help you so much from a time management perspective. DB: OK, and what do you think is the #1 thing that people do wrong when they’re using social media? KG: I think the #1 thing that people are doing wrong is they’re approaching social media from a marketing, advertising platform standpoint instead of using it as a tool to build relationships that create business. I see a lot of big brands do this too, and in all fairness to them, it’s the way they’ve done business in the past, so they bring that mentality to social media and it simply doesn’t work. You have to plant many seeds and market UP not down. You can’t ‘push’ market on social media, it’s just not effective, and a lot of the traditional advertising methods are not effective anymore either. I think a lot of brands really need to get their heads wrapped around the fact that social media is here to stay, it’s very effective if you learn how to use it appropriately, but you can’t expect it to be the end all answer, and you can’t approach it from a pure advertising platform or push marketing standpoint that I see a lot of people approach it from. MDB: And what would be your favorite social media platform and why? KG: My favorite social media platform is Twitter. Twitter is social, but it’s also content and news driven. Facebook is a friends and family platform for
(continued)
the most part. It’s also very visual. There are lots of pictures and personal sharing going on within Facebook. Twitter is also social but it is so much more. It is a tremendous news source. News is usually broke on Twitter before mainstream news sources get it. People also use Twitter to search for content and conversations using the hashtag system. Twitter is an amazing traffic source if you have blog content. I think its got two sides of it – you can still be social, but you can get your message across, your marketing message, your content message across much better on Twitter than most any other social media platform out there. MDB: OK and I know you’re very active on Empire Avenue. How has that helped you with your social media marketing and is it something that you recommend? KG: Actually I love Empire Avenue. When I first got involved with Empire Avenue, it can be addictive, because it’s game-based, and before you know it, you find yourself sucked in. Empire Avenue is based on the stock market, so you buy and sell people. The nice thing about Empire Avenue is that it cuts through a lot of the barriers that many other social media platforms have as it relates to connecting with influencers with in your niche. EA provides tools that help you sort through the masses and identify those who have certain qualities that you may be looking to connect with. It also gives you access to people through their networks that allow you to connect with people and brands that might otherwise be hard to connect with. It is a great platform to connect on because most are very open to building connections with people. Strong… (continued on next page)
Interview w/ Kim Garst
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engagement from real people is very important and it’s very powerful for your business. I think Empire Avenue is great for that, especially from the mission standpoint, because you can use your eaves on there to purchase what they call missions, which is an advertising opportunity. It is also the reason that any person or business who is active on social media and has the need to promote or highlight various pieces of content, should definitely get on Empire Avenue. You can use those missions to drive certain types of promotions such as more Facebook likes or perhaps re-tweet a specific link on Twitter. I highly recommend at least checking out Empire Avenue. MDB: OK, and if you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice when you launched your business in the early days, what would you tell yourself now? KG: Two things actually. Hire a coach and outsource. A coach will really, really help in so many ways, not so much necessarily from the standpoint of learning things that you may not know, although you definitely will, but it’s a great way to quickly get your head wrapped around the details of your business, because they help you focus, they help hold your feet to the fire, and I wish I had done it much sooner. I wish I had a coach when I first started my business many years ago. It shortens your learning curve and gets your business moving so much faster than if you try to do it alone. I think some people are sometimes hesitant to hire a coach from the standpoint of the financial outlay but I’ve had several coaches and I’ve learned from every one of them. I am a firm believer in having a coach. The second thing I wish I had grasped much more quickly than I did is the value of outsourcing. A lot of us tell ourselves that we can do this and take care of that and then six months later we look at our lists and realize that we’ve still got things there that we put on there when we started the list. I believe that the outsourcing element is critical for growth and scalability of your business. I would definitely tell myself not to scrimp in either of these areas because they have allowed me to generate so much more business than if I had tried to do it all on my own. MDB: And where do you think the future of social media is heading? KG: I believe that social media is changing the very (continued on next page)
Your Invisible Brand How the Brands You Use and Surround Yourself With Impact YOUR Brand (and Your
Chances for Success!)
Coming in the November 12th Issue of Million Dollar Brand!
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fabric of how we communicate with one another, how we shop, how we find information, etc. Social media is changing the face of marketing as a whole. I believe that we are going to be more connected marketing style. We look for and accept personal recommendations much more readily than the old push marketing techniques. We are much more savvy when it comes to our purchasing power today.
A Public Service Announcement from Million Dollar Brand.
Which Way Is Your Elevator Speech Taking Your Business? Have You Truly Mastered It? If Challenged, Could You Recite Yours, Right Now, Word-for-Word, Without Thinking?
Interview with Kim Garst
People are looking to connect with the people behind the brand. Brands don’t own their own message anymore. They can direct it but the consumer owns the message today because social media gives them a voice. This is really what social media brings to business today, it’s the opportunity to have a personal relationship with your audience, and your ideal clients, and even your customers. Now, not only do we have that as business owners, we have that opportunity to connect with people one-on-one, but it goes the other way – they now have a voice, and if we listen to their voice, which if we’re not, we’re not smart business owners. This gives us invaluable market research that we can in turn use to serve our clients better. I think that social media has invaded our very culture. It’s not going away. When social media was first coined as social media, many said, oh, it’s just a fad, it’ll go away. When you go to a restaurant for dinner, four of you sitting there, mom, dad, and two kids, and everybody is on their phones. Right, wrong, or indifferent, that’s where we are, and I don’t see it going away by any stretch of the imagination. I think, as business owners, we have a very small window of opportunity to orient our business around our ideal client, serve that client to the best of our ability. That is what will ultimately make us stand out in a very crowded marketplace. -MDB To learn more about Kim Garst and her Social Media services, visit: www.KimGarst.com Or you can reach her by sending an @ direct message on Twitter @KimGarst
Looking for More Great Resources? The business profiled above is just one of the many product/service vendors we know of and highly recommend to others. To see a complete listing of hundreds of organizations ready and willing to help you grow your brand, check out the ‘Resource Section’ at:
www.MillionDollarBrand.com
How Do You De fine Value? I just returned from doing a program for NSA-New England in Boston. What a terrific group! One of the questions posed was: “How do you define value?” I had just said to the group that if a prospect doesn’t have your fee, use these words: “If I could do that, what else of value might you be able to offer me?” Then I suggest you not say a word. Let silence reign! Wait. Wait to see what your prospect has to say. If the silence is long, expect the prospect to say, “What do you want?” Then be ready with an answer! Value to each of us can be different. You have to define it for yourself. It has much to do with what you may need in your business at the time.
by Lois Creamer Recording. Either a video or audio or both! Great video is a plus for promotional purposes, but also may be a product! Same thing with audio. I think live audio makes a terrific product. I like it better than “in studio” recorded product. Don’t worry about flubs, people know it’s live and are very forgiving of any flubs.
“If I could do that, what else of value might you be able to offer me?” Barter. Maybe this company produces something you could use. Think of it as a trade. I’m not a lawyer so I feel compelled to say consult your tax advisor on this one!
Product, product, product!
Here is a list of what I think may be “value”...
Can the client purchase some of your products? Books, tapes, whatever. Product can also be used as a way to shore up fee as well. And if you don’t have product yet in your business? Get it! -MDB
Referrals. Perhaps it’s having the client offer to make three or four calls on your behalf to contacts they think can use what you do, and have your fee.
A full paid speech… later. They must commit to booking you for a full paying engagement within a year of the date of the speech you are doing now. (Note: Get it in writing!)
Lois Creamer works with professional speakers
who want to book more business, make more money and avoid costly mistakes! For more information on Lois’ business, check out: http://www.bookmorebusiness.com as well as http://www.bookmorebusiness.tv! She can be reached by email at: Lois@BookMoreBusiness.com
“My dear young man, don't take it too hard. Your work is ingenious! It's quality work. But there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect.” -Emperor Joseph II
“And which few did you have in mind, your Majesty?” -Mozart
He said all men were created equal. He never said anything about brands.
Links to take you where you want to go‌‌
November 5, 2012
We Believe... #7… Spending your life working for a stupid boss makes you a stupid employee, even if you’re self-employed.
#8… The biggest sale you will ever make is when you sit down to negotiate your future with the eight-year-old-inside-your-head (the one who is scared s#!*less and constantly telling you why you can’t and shouldn’t do something) and you ignore every single objection the little bugger throws at you.
#9… Kevin Trudeau overcharges for shipping and handling, but we also realize that most people pay it anyway (is there a lesson here?)
And we believe KIVA (‘Loans that Change Lives’) to be a worthwhile cause, and while we have no first-hand experience with Kiva ourselves, Jordan Adler (author of Beach Money) supports them passionately… and that’s good enough for us! To learn more about KIVA, or to donate, visit: www.KIVA.org
The age-old question:
Is the glass half-full or half-empty?
Here’s a thought:
Maybe the glass is simply too damn small! For Even More Great Content & Brand-Building Resources, Visit Us at: www.MillionDollarBrand.com