OK, but I'm not an expert. Call number 1 888 written by miracle 10. OK, here are the ideas we're going to be covering in a two part series. Why an expert finding your expert niche staking a claim using something she calls the authority architecture. How to market your expertise. And to create a marketing campaign. It gets pretty deep into that stuff towards the end of the book. All right, so let's first make a case for expertise. You know what? That little dot is right there. That's how you might feel like an insignificant speck. And you're sitting there thinking, you know, I want to speak, I want to write, I'm going to create, I want to sell, but the problem is, Chris, I don't have enough experience. I'm not an expert, I don't want to be considered an expert, it's yucky, all those kind of things. I don't have a ton of amazing client testimonials. And if I make something, no one will listen or care about me and I can't see you right now. But I bet you if you threw an emoji right now, we'd all feel like who's in this boat right now? Who's feeling this? Just throw up an emoji. One, two three. Or maybe all of these things. OK, so let's start off with the definition of what it is. An expert who can be considered an expert. An expert is someone who is acquired knowledge and skills through study and practice in a particular field or subject, such that their opinion this is the important part. Their opinion may be helpful, in fact finding problem solving or understanding of a situation. It's taken from the business dictionary, which is cited inside the book. And so like, you know, expertise is relative. Like somebody gets to decide that your opinion is going to be helpful. It's not necessary for you to decide, and an expert is someone who knows more than the next person. OK, so there's this thing, and I'm going to just pause real quick here. You guys know what qualifies or constitutes as an influencer. Look, how do we know we're an influencer, does everybody know, according to like, widely held beliefs, what is it influencer and what's the difference between an influencer and a micro influencer? Let's see here. I'm going to stop this real quick. Anybody know who without looking it up on the internet? Anybody at all? Somebody here knows. Come on. I do. OK, I see I see hand one hand from Jennifer, Jennifer. And I guess the one that I've heard is that, like an influencer is somebody who has influence and other people. Generally, people talk about content creators on social media. Micro influencer has a very small niche influence that it can still be valued by companies to work with because they target a specific audience. OK, very good. Very good. I'm now looking for a numerical difference like how do we know? Like, how does the internet define who is qualified to call themselves and influencer? OK, I heard another voice, but I couldn't see hands. Oh, it was me. OK go ahead, Peter. I thought it was a woman. But go ahead. Oh, sorry. Your high pitch this morning, OK, I get it. Go ahead. Yeah influencers, usually when I've asked agencies, they're usually valued at like 500k followers plus and then micro influencers are anything below that. The numbers depend from person to person, but generally it's around the 100k range. Very good. OK that's kind of answer I was looking for, although not correct. Beautiful thank you, Peter. Now there was a female voice in here. I couldn't spot you quickly enough. Who has another guess at this? I'm looking for a number and you're both. Now we're getting very warm. Jennifer kicked us off. Peter took us closer. Somebody take us home. OK, I see it. Kia as your hand now. Here I was writing in the chat, I'm sorry. Ok? don't worry, sir, has built trust with people. OK, OK. They do both do, actually. This is very good. OK let's try Bastian. Hi, there. First call for me. In Germany, we count micro influencers from 5,000 k and upwards. And influencer. From 100,000. OK, and we have medium in between. All right, beautiful, well, first of all, welcome, Bastian. I see you have. I was like, you're at the office. How'd you get into office? Ok? he's got the background. Ok? according to the definition, an influencer has one million followers, one million plus followers. That's what constitutes as an influencer. OK Chandler's like nodding his head. Yep, yep, I do that. And a micro influencer. This is good news for everyone. Yay 1,000. 1,000 Almost everybody in this room already has 1,000 followers. Almost every single person. And if you don't, I'll help you right now. Just do you me later, I'll just give you a shout out. We'll get you to 1,000. OK, I want you to get to 1,000 or so. That means all of you qualify as being a micro influencer. So let's go back to sharing. OK OK. So, you know, this little area in the middle. I mean, annotate this, I want this color, I think. Let's here. Oh, shoot. I can't annotate on top. Can I? I do this. Somebody draw in that center area. I don't know how come I can't do it today. You know, the center area between the Venn diagram, yeah, that area, that area is called the sweet spot somewhere they exist between an expert influencer or and a micro influencer. OK so the expert has some advantages in terms of reach. They have a lot wider reach. But because their reach is so wide and so broad, they have lower trust, lower impact and lower engagement, relatively speaking. And then you have a micro influencer that's all of you basically with your 1,000 followers on whatever platform. You have less reach, but you have much higher trust, impact engagement. Does that sound about right to everyone in this room? You know, with your 1,000 fans, when you post something, they care more about it, they're more likely to trust you. So according to a study, the author cites that experts have about 3% influence over purchasing decisions based on the size of their audience, whereas a micro influencer has 30% And this is why brands are interested in working with micro influencers. OK so do me a favor and clear this thing. Let's see here. There I can clear it. We're all drawings, there we go. OK, so everybody, you guys can do this, so the spot in the middle is you picking a niche and being seen as a person who's chosen to be part of that niche and serving that community? And it's just writing between. So we're all going to work on growing our reach. But what we want to do is maintain the trust, impact and engagement from being a micro influencer. Now, of course, there are exceptions to all of this stuff, but that's a general observation. All right. Samir talks about this thing called the expert quotient, and we're going to spend some time talking about it on this one diagram here. So if you want to go ahead and screen capture this ahead of whenever we upload this sucker, so in case you want it, so there's three components to making yourself an expert knowledge and skills authority, architecture and marketability. OK so knowledge and skills are the things that you create and curate, and it's defined and built around your signature process. We'll get more into that later. OK, and I'll move all the way to the right here. Marketability is the visibility that you have social proof and the number of assets that you have. For us, it's a lot because we create a lot of content, media, YouTube, podcasting, Instagram, clubhouse calls, the list goes on and on and on. What we want to spend some time are the three Bs. The authority architecture is built on the three bs, build, borrow and be, build, borrow and be. We'll start with B. That's the part where you have certificates, you have degrees and you have achievements. Now if you have a PHD, a master's in a field, you're considered an expert already. The problem is that takes a lot of time. And it's really hard work, and many of us do not have this. Many of us are career switchers. We changed our mind about what it is that we want to do, and we could even be switching verticals or horizontals. And so we don't have the required ingredients to become or be the experts. And so that's why that part is grayed out. What's more interesting is to build and borrow part. So when you build, this is when you display your expertise and you offer what you refers to as mini transformations. You're helping somebody change to improve and to grow. And as you do that consistently over time in their eyes, you're starting to display the traits of an expert and they might even label you as such. The borrow part says, well, I don't have the expertise, I cannot build it on my own, so what I'm going to do is leverage other micro influencers. That's when you interview them, that's when you collaborate with them. So you're borrowing from what influence they have and just being associated with people. And the case is when I interview Brian Collins or Marty Neumeier and we talk about branding some of their branding expertise is shared with me. So people are like, oh, Chris talks to people about branding. He has really smart questions, even though I haven't done big branding projects. And that's how that works. And you'll see that there's then two tails leading from those boxes into you becoming seen as expert. So that's how it works, according to mirror. OK so you build and you borrow it, and the more you build it and borrow it, the more you're seen as an expert. So I want everyone to take a moment right now and right in the chat. Think about somebody that, you know, present company excluded. Think about someone that you look up to and you're like, that person is an expert at x, but you've never figured out if they have a certificate degree or they have any achievements because they're using the Bills and borrow technique. They've interviewed a lot of people. Or they keep demonstrating to you over time. That they know what they're doing by helping you achieve some kind of mini transformation at this point, I'm hoping that the chat is going a little crazy. That you guys can now identify a couple of people and then you're like, oh, I see, that's how they did it. And we'll save that answer for later. Whatever you wrote down. OK whoops. How to build expertise. OK, so this is done by you demonstrating what it is that, you know, through events, challenges or live coaching, and I love the live coaching part because. It really like the platform, clubhouse allows you to do this to really help people on the fly. And this is why I would love for more of you to be actively participating in clubhouse calls to help you build your expertise. You can share and document your progress online. So many influencers have said this. Gary Vaynerchuk talks about don't create document. Austin Cleland talks about this. The documenting your work is a way of it's like an open, shared journal that you're involving in enrolling people in and the author points out, you notice how many people are like posting on social media, how they're tracking their monthly progress, they're sharing the income reports and giving you behind the scenes updates that actually builds expertise even when they don't have it. A case in point, and I'd even though I was doing this, is I was sharing things about what was happening with our channel in terms of its growth. Now I'm going to try to draw one more time. I don't know if it'll allow me to draw. Format? Yes. Where's my pen drawer? That line? Can I draw, no. Draw got. One more time. Oh, there we go. I can draw. Now All right, let me undo that. OK Look at this thing. This is from our YouTube channel. And so far, it's gotten this is a lifetime, I think. 99 million views lifetime. OK over here, you'll see that we've generated 327,000 lifetime. So the channel for me when I got involved was in 2014. So in seven years, it's earned just $327,000 so far. And this is freaking crazy 1.4 million subscribers. Now you'll notice here, I just want to point out to you, look at this general area right here. So we've been doing this for six years. So if I cut this right here, look how many views we didn't get the first half of those six years, the first three years. And then look, what's happened here? OK people talk about when they're making graphs, the hockey stick growth, and it usually looks like this and it goes up like that. But this is a wall. This is like the wall and Game of Thrones. There's like nothing too happens. And then all of a sudden there's a spike. That's happening is because of shorts. Shorts are driving insane amount of growth on our channel right now. And you see here on the right hand side over here this list, the top 10 videos ever from our channel and you'll see how many shorts are. Here's one here's to. 3 and 4 and 5. So five of the top 10 videos that have the number of views on our channel come from shorts, and we only started making shorts, I think, 2 and 1/2 months ago. Look at this here. 16 million views, 10 million views prior to that, the next best was 3.5. All right. All that is to say that I'm sharing my progress with people in real time and I'm documenting as I go and sharing very openly and transparently. And then sooner than later, people are going to start to think, I'm a YouTube expert, even though I'm not. So I wanted to spend a little time just sharing that with you. Ok? does anybody have a question at this point? Go ahead and ask it. Just unmute yourself and ask. Although we're going to move on. Miriam has a question where she wants to know what made you think of doing shorts recently? Yes, thank you for asking that question and thank you for voicing that for her. The reason why I started doing shorts is because I was talking to Brian Brian Elliott. He has a channel called Behind the brand. And he and I were talking. He said, Chris, what can I do for you? You've been so helpful. I'm like, I don't know. He goes, because you got to get on the shorts thing. I've been interviewing a bunch of people that I tell me to get on shorts. And he told me, like, why did I need to do the next day? I told the team to do it a week later, we're starting to release shorts. It's just that simple. Somebody has an idea. I didn't even know if it works. They tell me what the parameters are, and we just do it. And you're going to hear this as a consistent theme for me, the single biggest indicator predictor of success for people inside this group is people who take action period. So if you're new to this group, if you've been in this group for three, six, nine months, whatever the time. I'm going to tell you right now, whoever takes more action in the next person will exceed their goals. It's that simple. So Brian Elliott tells me something I don't know anything about them, like shorts here. I heard about it. Should I be doing this? He's like, just do it. I'm like, OK, I got the team on it, and we did it for about three weeks with not really good results. And then all of a sudden it went haywire. And I've talked about this before. OK all right, any other questions before I move on? I got one. OK, I know what to do since I can't see you because my sponsor. You know, I'll stop the share. I'll just do that. Ok? can people raise their hand easier? Because I see people raise their hand and people start talking at the same time? OK, let's do that. Thank you very much. Analyst so, peter, go ahead for your shorts because they're so successful. Are you going to start cutting back on the medium form content like the 5 to 10 minute videos and make longer ones to create shorts out of? You know what? We have over 1,000 videos, Peter. I don't think we're going to get more of an audience by making more videos. We have to give the algorithm what it wants. So the team all has almost entirely stopped making long form content and focusing all on shorts. We have enough shorts now, I think, to last two months without cutting another video because they're only a minute long and they're leading to the crazy growth. I'll give you the York press, well, how fast are you growing? We've increased by 1,400. OK let me put the numbers in perspective. On any given day, prior to doing shorts, we'd get about 400 new subs a day, which to anybody here in this room, we're like fudge. That's more than views that I get right. I get more subs than you get views, ok? But today we're getting about 5,000 to 6,000 subs a day. Let's put that in perspective, that's more than what we got in the first two years combined. We get more subs a day than the first two years combined. Yeah, undressed. Yes, it's sick right now, ok? So this is what I do, when somebody stands outside and they say free gold, I don't really ask them how long, what's going on, what kind of equipment? I just get the gold. And I get it for as long as I can get it because I know it doesn't last forever. I don't question it. Let's just go for it. So, peter, go back to you. What about has the negative reaction to some of the shorts like, for example, the ones, they're really fiery in the comment section. Like, have they negatively impacted you at any way at all because it's like taken out of context of the whole, you know, video. Yes Yes. OK, so Peter is saying something that's really important. And it actually really ties into our conversation today, which you're going to see if you don't know what I'm talking about when we cut shorts. It's just shared with a lot of people organically on your mobile. I have no control over that. Google just takes over. And so a lot of times people have no idea who we are and what we do, what we stand for, and they see a clip. And there are a lot of clips where I say stupid, like dastardly things like, I'm just not nice and they just go to town, they rip me apart. Most like reading this with me, and we're like laughing for like 30 minutes. Like he's, oh, here's another one. Look at this one. He said, you just called you a douchebag. OK one person said, I don't trust anybody with a polished head and that is nonbinary. That that wears lip gloss. I'm like, OK, I guess you're right. You're entitled to your opinion. So they are just me apart. They're they're making attacks on the way I look, the way I dress anybody, any man that wears earrings you cannot trust. I'm like, cool, OK, says you. And then they're attacking Melinda. It's just it's vicious. It is spicy and spicy. Is not even the word, guys. It's racist. It's homophobic. It's ages. It's everything you could ever ask for on a troll. You know what I do? You know what to do with hot and spicy things. I just put on a taco and I just eat it up. I do even care. I'm just reading them one after the other. You know what the best revenge is? The more they comment, the more they get served the same videos. So now they're angry and they keep commenting like, why? Why is this guy all of my feet? I'm like, I don't know. I have no idea why I'm in your feed, but you can keep doing the negative comments. It's good by me because all I care right about now is subs, views and revenue. What more do I want? OK, so you have to like, develop really thick skin imo and I are planning to have an entire clubhouse call where we just read the nastiest, meanest comments ever and I'm going to respond to all of them. And he's like, Oh man, the way that you respond to. It's just a lesson in how to respond to trolls. OK, so peter, all that stuff is driving the algorithm crazy, and I'm letting most of them live. There are some horribly vicious attacks on Melinda. I usually delete those when I can catch them, I delete them because I can take it. All right. They say the worst possible things. OK all right, so it hasn't hurt me. OK, I focus on the people who show up, not the people who are angry about not showing up. And you know what's crazy? The trolls actually watch the longer videos and the comment. Here he is again. I'm like, oh, so now you are actually looking for the video. Wonderful OK. Cue up to you. Now you're meeting, what tweaks did you make you say you quickly made some tweaks, what were the tweaks? OK, the tweaks are the videos have to be under 1 minute and Brian told me they have to be 59 seconds. Not like, don't even risk it because anything that's close to minute, he says that you two adds a little metadata to it, and if it's over a minute, it will not be considered a short. Number two, you have to actually use the hashtag Short for it to know because it can't tell if it's shorts, even though it's vertical. So it's a vertical. Video and the team had to learn how to tell a really quick, self-sustaining story in one minute. And we found that the highest engaged, highest viewed videos are things where I make people really angry. Like, there are angry, angry, if you were just curious, just go check it out. It is bananas, guys. All right. And it's usually like me telling somebody they're not worth it or not like they're too cheap. Get on my face. There's the door. All those kinds of things. I don't. Out of context, I sound like a terrible person. I admit it. That's why I'm not even angry at the response. At first I was angry. I'm like, you stupid? Don't you know what I do for the community? Like, oh, watch the video. I'm like, I am a jerk. All right. So like, you're a jerk. I can't argue a kid out of context. I can't. That's how I respond to them. OK, Carol, your next. My question is two parts. I wonder if the shorts damage your viewership, I know that you've got lots of subscribers and lots of hours of viewership, but for people that haven't because I've heard from people who've got round about, not that I've got anywhere near this, but around about 60,000 subs. And when they started doing shorts, it just knocked the guts out of their viewership. Yeah, I can't I can't say because there's too many variables size of audience, topic delivery of the short itself and the 1 minute. Brian's the guy who told me to do shorts and his shorts have not taken off. I know YouTubers who have not been able to create content that is performed well in shorts. We can't figure it out. I don't know what's wrong, and I don't know what the short answer is. OK I like that part. Yeah so you know, Hector Garcia, he did a clubhouse call with me recently. He's a CPA. He's in this group and he's like, Chris. I've taken the plunge. I dropped my first short. I'm like, you know, God bless you. Let's see what happens there. Just the internet trolls are coming out. They will come out. So what I would tell you to do is try it for a month without judgment at all. Like when we first did it, the guys, we literally had a meeting about this and they said, Chris, do you want us to continue making shorts? It doesn't seem like it's working. This is about three weeks in and I told them, let's keep trying. Let's just keep trying. And sure enough, like that weekend, it just went. You just went bananas. Right, and you've heard me talk about this before the dip where everybody quits because it's hard and it's not working out. And we would like look at the videos like, you know, I think it's the wrong title. Let's change the title here. Because that's all you got, you got you got a little vertical sliver and a title, and then they decide based on the image, whether or not they can click on it. If they do and enough people do that, you're going to win. OK, you had two questions, right? Well, my second part really, I think you have answered because I was going to ask, you know, is IT industry specific? So I'm in coaching? Is it appropriate for coaching? I'm not going to be shouting or anything or ranting on mine, that's just not my approach. I'll tell you what. This is not me trying to get an extra view out of you, but go to our channel. Watch on the shorts and sort by most popular and you'll see. Though, when we drop a long form video, if it gets 20,000 views in day one, we're just thrilled. We are thrilled when a short gets and when it hits and they don't all hit because we have a lot of them. It's getting hundreds of thousands of views a day. Quite literally, sometimes when one goes viral, it's like it's already had a million views and it's been a couple of weeks. It's bananas. OK, so I would encourage all of you, whether it's on YouTube, LinkedIn or anywhere else, whenever they offer up a new feature to just go for it and see what happens, it's your best chance to grow an audience really fast. And I just think, gosh, and people say this all the time. This This channel deserves more views and subscribers. I agree. Short of spending a ton of ad money in it. This is like amazing, this is even better. So I will take a pause on creating long form videos because there's enough long form videos out there. We have no shortage of them. OK OK, thank you. Good luck. And if you have questions, let me know. Let me know in circle, OK, and I'll help you. And if enough people ask, I'll do a clubhouse call just on shorts. All right, Tim, your next. Hey, Chris. I was just curious if you and the team at the future are cutting down your long form content and turning them into the shorts when you're using them. And then the second question is, do you have any hesitation based on the overall feed and the aesthetics that happen? Because when you put shorts on there, it's vertical and short. Yes OK. Number one, yes, we are and the best way to make a short is the look at your highest viewed video, look at the engagement graph, it usually drops off and then there's like little spikes. The spikes are where you should cut the shorter round. OK, so when it's a retention graph, not engagement graph. So if you guys get into your analytics, you'll see a retention graph. And when it spikes back up, it means that somebody rewound it and watched it again. And the bigger the spike, the more times they rewind it. And we almost know I can almost predict when they rewind it. When I say something complicated or when I put up a graphic on the screen and they're trying to follow all the parts, they will rewind and watch it again. And if you think back to like how you watch YouTube content, it's the same way. If somebody says something like really smart, a smart, pithy quote and you're like, wait a minute, I got to get the phrasing that was excellent. The way was said. A magic tricks people who fall down stairways, I bet you the engagement graph of the retention graph spikes every single time because they rewind it and they watch that part again. That's telling you that the audience likes that part or that part was intriguing to them. So go in and clip that part and try to make a stand alone video. OK, so we're fairly lazy, we just take the hits and we recut the hits. It's like remixing the number one singles. That's what we do. OK, I hope that helps now. Number two, am I concerned about the aesthetics? Zero I give 0 F's about the aesthetics. I care about channel growth, ok? It could be the most beautiful feet, but if we're not growing, we're dying. That's just my take. Somebody like Matthew would probably struggle with this because it doesn't look beautiful. You can't control the thumbnails on the phone you can't control on a desktop, but I don't think anybody is really watching shorts on desktop. It seems like a weird thing. YouTube just picks the thumbnail for you. So I don't even try anymore. We were spending too much time designing the thumbnail. OK Andress. I have some questions from the chat. Do you mind if I ask them, please? OK so I have three. And the first one is from Miranda. Do shorts need a long version? Oh I don't really think about it that way. I think shorts are their own animal. And if you track how you're consuming video and content online on Instagram with reels and on YouTube. Create how you consume. I'm starting to get hooked on these little short clips. It doesn't demand too much of my time. I can have a satisfying conclusion to something pretty quickly. And the algorithm tends to feed me more of what I want to see. So if you want to go back and say, that was a hit, I'll make a longer video go for it. That makes a lot of sense. OK, next question, Andres. Chad Cox asks, can you start a challenge starting only with shorts? 100% There's a grandma who makes videos and she has like a million subs now. I'm forgetting her name. Something, Lindsey. Her name is Linda. And she goes by ninja like Ninja and Linda put together. She's a grandma who cooks. It's hilarious. I think it's made from her, her grandchildren. It's just it's hilarious. Asian woman. Cooking show, it's a friggin hilarious, they have a funny grandma. OK, next question undress, Miriam asks Chris, what's the follow up to the shorts? Shorts are great bit-sized teasers. Can I use shorts to lead people to the articles? I'll be publishing. Yeah, 100% As everybody knows, the name of the game is built on audience, right? Once you build your audience, you could do whatever you want. So if you use shorts to hijack the system, the algorithm kicks in and you get 10,000 1,000 followers or subscribers on your YouTube channel. The create the long form content, the content that's really meaty. And then in that video, you can drive them to somewhere else. OK any other questions? Well, good. OK, I got one more from. If you don't mind. What is the ideal size for shorts? Video video any specific and vertical format has to be vertical. It has to be vertical. Has to be under 1 minute long. I would just cut it to be under 59 seconds. And if it's 40 seconds or 15 seconds, that's OK to make a satisfying piece of content under 59 seconds and you can do it and you're like, wow, that's really challenging. But think about it. We've been consuming 30 second commercials for a really long time, and many of them could go from 0 to 30 seconds can make you cry. So it is possible. You just have to be very disciplined. The shorter something is, the more disciplined and skill you have to have. That's it, vertical evening captioning. Right captioning is a pain in the butt to do? OK, Dennis, you're up. Last question. Hey are you planning to use subtitles on your shorts? There's the question one and the second one was, are you planning to use these shorts on different platforms like facebook? Very good question. Number one, we're not doing any captioning right now, it's just too much trouble for us, right? The shorts are just doing their own thing. They're just racing away, and a lot of the shorts that I watch don't have captioning either, so I'm not going to sweat it. Now YouTube has default captioning it's not 110% accurate, but it is there if people are visually impaired. And number two, are we repurposing this? You better believe we're going to repurpose the hot ones. I have yet to post it on my feed because I'm like, oh, it just one thing at a time for me, but I will. I believe Mark is taking some of those shorts and posting them on TikTok. So I guess we're TikTokers now. I don't even know what we're doing. OK, so some people are finding us on YouTube because they saw us on TikTok. They're like, oh, I saw you on TikTok. I'm like, well, OK. It's nice to have a team, it's all I'm going to say, I can't do the work on TikTok. Who's that? Are you rich? I've never, I've never, I've never on TikTok and I found you on TikTok and here I am now. I'm like, deeply embedded into the beast. See, it works. I don't know what we're doing it. It just works. Yeah, it's like omnipresence, right? You're everywhere all the time. OK, now let me go back to the deck at hand here. Thanks for asking all those wonderful questions. Everyone share that. Go back to keynote. All right, so what I do oftentimes is I share in public, I tell people how much money we're making, what deals that just happened, what deals we may lose and doing all those things. And talking so openly about it and sharing my process and progress with people. They're going to assume and make this assumption that I'm an expert at something. All right. The reason why you should do any of this stuff before we get into all the tactics here is because here are the five things that Meyer talks about, which is word of mouth advertising. When you're seen as an expert, the ability for people to tell more, tell other people and share what it is that you're doing, point to a piece of your content. Content helps your word of mouth awareness. OK, word of mouth advertising is super important. It's probably how 90% of you get your leads because other happy clients tell their friends. It helps you with drawing a bigger audience to generate leads into the top of the funnel awareness. It helps you have a leverage in the conversion process, so you'll see that it's easier to close clients. And this is an argument and criticism that we get a lot on our channel, which is easy for you to close. The clients show up because they're looking for you. Duh that was the whole point. That's the whole point of specializing. That's the whole point of being visible. There's the whole point of why I spend most of my days making content because I want them at the point in which they're reaching out to already say Yes to themselves. So that's why you want to be seen as an expert. It helps you to set yourself apart from other people. There's a bunch of amateurs out there, so the experts going to be the one that sought after and it's going to be easier for you to create partnerships and to collaborate with people. And that's what's happening right now. So the top two illustrators might be like, yeah, let's work together. Whereas the unknown person, the person who doesn't put out any content who is not seen, it's going to be much harder for them to collaborate. And of course, you can charge a premium. Experts don't have to compete on price, not as much. OK, well, now we get into like, what's your expert niche and finding your thing, your thing, you know, so it looks something like this to find your thing. It's a combination between these two things your target market, which is your audience and your expert niche, which is your specialized offering to that audience. So what do you do for that audience specifically? OK now, I'm just trying my best to teach what is in the book itself. I may cover things that I don't necessarily agree with, but I want to be faithful to the original document, if you will. So I'm just sharing with you what I read, not my editorialize opinion on top of it as much as I can. So here's what it looks like your expert niche is in this Venn diagram. Now there's three components. There's part the audience and the market, and right in the middle or marketplace, I should say, is your expert niche and you're looking for a hungry market that's actively looking to get help from someone to solve a very specific problem. And your ability to deliver a solution to that set problem. Is your expert ngige? OK, you're looking for a hungry market. That's looking for help right now to solve a very specific problem and how you dovetail into that. How aligned you are and what you offer and what they need is your expert niche. And there's a worksheet that we're going to be doing together in a little bit. OK, so let's talk a little bit more about the audience part. The three components, the audience, they're actively looking for solutions like coaching, consulting masterminds, live events, workshops, conferences and products. Physical and digital. They see that they have an urgent problem. That needs to be solved right now, there's the dire sense of urgency that they're having, like right now, I need to solve this right now, and many of you are in this boat right now. Perhaps that's why you join this group. And you're looking for the same. That's your audience, the marketplace, you want to have a marketplace that's robust enough to support you. And so Mira talks about this. Are there others? Are there other experts in this space who are already successful? That's a good sign. So you're looking for a marketplace that's big enough, and she recommends doing this thing where you check the keyword search volume and you can use answer to the Publix or Uber suggests. So type in your keyword and see what comes up, you can find how many people are looking for this, so it's a little tick. Keep refining the keywords. Does that make sense if they're only 10 people looking for this keyword, not a good idea. Hundreds of thousands. OK, that's pretty good. Millions, yes, it's big enough. The you part. This is the part it's a little light and fuzzy in the book itself about why you want to be an expert in this particular field. So there's a couple of things that she says to ask yourself. And they revolve around this idea, but are you committed to doing this? Are you passionate about doing whatever it is that you want to do and to be an expert at the next three to five years? And are you passionate about the clients and communities you get to serve? So if you like doing something, but the clients that you serve suck and you don't like them. This is not it for you. So you have to like what you're doing and you like, you have to like the people you're doing it for or with. Couple other things like do you already have an ability to reach this audience? If you're already known for it, this is a good sign. And the last one is, is there an increase in demand for this thing? If there is. It's a good sign, so for me. There is an increasing demand for digital marketing, especially in social media. I don't see that going in the opposite direction, so if you create something to help people build a personal brand, how to make marketing funnels and to drive new leads and to help them become prospects and then convert them. You're going to be in demand. If you create software. Anything web related is in demand. So look for things that are growing. So that you can tap into the trend that's happening right now. Ok? a couple other things. We've heard of this before. The opportunity gap and when we can find something that's poorly served by your competitors, that's an opportunity. OK, so here's the worksheet. That I'm going to share with you after this. This is kind of hard to read, I'm not going to read all of this, just screen capture this and later on, I'll export the PDF and you can work on this. I just reformatted free downloadable from Mira. So while your brainstorming about the different nations that you want to get into and you can have as many as you want, you're going to answer these questions as you go and hopefully they start to give you some insight into what you want to focus in on. OK, and I'll read some of these things a little bit. So everybody had a chance to screen capture this because this is what I would want you to work on. OK, we've been down this road. So many times, but I imagine when I'm 85 years old and I'm running the group. As a great grandpa, somebody is going to say, Chris, I want to, I want to be a generalist. Are you sure specialization has its advantage? And I'll still be here seeing the same thing with my dentures. You do want to specialize because it reduces competition. You want to become the obvious choice for whenever somebody is looking for what it is that you do. Of course, you want to make more money, you want to get that price premium. And when you're specialized, it's easier to focus on your marketing and speak clearly to a hungry market as opposed to trying to be all things to all people. OK somehow, I feel like my slides may be out of order here. Let me just double check real quick. OK. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. OK, so this is the next part staking claim, so you find your expert niche. You did the worksheet and everything. And now we're moving on to how to claim it. OK, so a couple of ideas here about knowledge, people who have knowledge feel more confident. And if you're seen as someone who has knowledge, you're more credible. So what we need to do is we have to work on building up our knowledge base. And you've heard this before. Hey, man, create high value content. And it's kind of soft that definition, so she's talking about like high value content changes, the perception and mindset of the people you're talking to. And you helped them to go from I could do this. To I should do this, and here's how. Another idea from the book, which is, what about this idea of originality, like, I don't have anything original to say, well, you've heard me say this before, everything has been done that all you want to do is add to the body of the literature. Add to the body of literature that exists in the way that you do this, you find a way to differentiate yourself to add a new angle. OK, I'm going to just take a quick stop share here. I realized something. This morning. I read the book. And the subtle art of not giving an f, I finished this book pretty quick read, I do recommend this book, but this book isn't that different than. This book. It's just a different style, and this book is not that different than I don't have the book right here next to me. The compound effect by Darren Hardy and that's not that different than from grit to great. And so many books about perseverance. And that's not that different than the book, the obstacles the way. In fact. I think they're all the same book. They pretty much say the same thing. They even have overlapping stories, believe it or not. But how can this be a bestseller? How can the obstacle is the way be at best? How can this book be the seller? Because the authors have realized something, there's nothing new. There's just how I say it. So all they do is they add their point of view to it. And when we can free ourselves of this idea of originality, it's a horrific idea, it's like a cancer to me. Then you'll be free to create. Like, I'm sharing an unoriginal idea on top of unoriginal ideas today we're talking about, but I'm not an expert, which is a lot like a bunch of different books I've read already. Right, and you're here, you're all tuning in, you're paying good money to be here. Why? because you want to hear me talk about a book. It's my POV. And if I can do it. Surely you can do it. OK that's what I'm talking about. It's all the same books, and I've read probably six or seven books now in marketing, all very similar. All of them have said the same thing. And here's the shocker. Ok? this is a spoiler alert. All the books I've read in marketing say the same thing. Specialize, serve a small audience. Every single one of them, I have not read a book that said the opposite. Yet here we are. 85 of us, I bet you there's 50% of us in this room, like. But I think I should generalize. I should be a generalist. But the audience is too small. Like, that's like, you're going to make enemies head spin around in a circle. Every single book and then they cite one book. Range, I'm going to read that book. Just so I can just throw up all over it. But Blair ends and David Baker. They hate that book so much. They're saying that that's like intellectually dishonest. It's vile to them. It's the one book. And they say, even if you read the full book, it actually doesn't say what you think it says. OK back to sharing. So everything's been done just fine, your angle, that's it, that's the whole trick. Find your angle. She talks about content lovers. OK, so these are prompts for you to create content. No one and anything that's three of these, I think, breaks sacred cows. That's myth busting to do something that goes against the grain of popular or conventional wisdom. So challenge the sacred cows, I would say slaughter, but that's so bloody in the mind. But just if everybody says specialize, you can. You could be the one person who says generalize if you want. Whatever conventional wisdom is, go against it. So for us, conventional wisdom is, well, this is how you learn how to design, and designers and creative people should not be taught about marketing and business and sales and negotiations. Those two worlds should not mix. Conventional wisdom says online education, distributed via free portals like Instagram and YouTube, can't be effective. They cannot be effective. Well, I'm going to challenge all those ideas. You can't pay teachers well. In America. No, you can. Number two. Have a clear point of view. OK time and time again, we're going to be right here. You have to take a stand. By virtue of standing for something, you have to stand against something. So you're going to be polarizing. Umm snappersk, our friends make enemies gain fans. Only way I know how to gain fans is you're going to make some enemies, I don't set out to make enemies. But the more passionate I am about my fans, the people who I care about. The anti-fan is going to hate me. That's just how it works. I'm OK with that. So she warns that if you don't, if you're not able to back up your claim, it's going to sound like a rant and it's OK. Virginia, start working on your ability to substantiate your claim. Talked about this already fill an opportunity gap address, frequently asked questions that should say being. That's Oh no, that's OK, that's been ignored. OK I saw Sean, Sean Scannell talk about this on his channel, he says, ask so what you want to do is answer a specific question. Answer a specific question. And you can use all those search tools to find out what questions are being asked a lot. And then find the answer, and if it's not satisfying, that's an opportunity gap. So for us, six years ago, I typed in branding. Horrible answers. I knew that was an opportunity gap. So I started making content on branding as odd as it sounds, in 2014. There was not a lot of great content on branding on YouTube, at least. So now we dominate. We're where many videos in the top 10. OK, next idea that she talks about, which is mid funnel content, right, everybody's familiar with the funnel. In order for you to get customers, it starts out really wide at the top and it goes through six phases. So she's sick at any one time. When you're creating content, there are six types of customers who show up six types of people. I should say the stranger, the reader to subscriber, the engage subscriber, the customer and the advocate. At any one point in time. All of you here are, I believe, engaged know your customers. But on clubhouse, it could be a stranger, a reader subscriber. OK, strangers never heard of you. Obviously, a reader has heard of you, a subscriber or someone who's new to your list. And this is where it gets real, interesting and engaged subscriber is someone who has a brand crush. And they like your style. Your style being the way you deliver the message, your voice, the aesthetics. Like Matthew, is a very distinctive style, so his fans are in love with his style. And once you get into advocacy and customer now, they become attuned, your style. So let's move on here, so when you have mid funnel content, this is where you need to really to push and capitalize on this. Things like challenges, email sequences, webinars, workshops, newsletters and emails nurture sequences because they're already here, they're already shown up for you. So what can you do? To drive engagement. And she's talking about email is still the most powerful way to engage your to interact with your engaged subscribers. And they're in a state where they're still discovering more about the problem that they came to find a solution for. And how you might fit into that. And all you have to do is think about yourself and why you join this group. What triggered you to we'll push you over the edge? You were you obviously have a problem. Maybe some of you are just like feeling like you don't have community, and it's a very isolating experience to be an entrepreneur. Maybe you want to find others that are in your space have more experience than that was the trigger, as many of you said it was just to get more access to me in the content that's in here. Appreciate that. And so what you want to do is create content that Spurs dialogue and conversation. And the critical part is without being salesy. It's on a clubhouse call yesterday. It's going pretty good until they got super salesy at the end and I had to leave. You don't have to pitch and sell everyone all the time. OK, and how do you develop more of your expertise because you have to be able to back up your claim is to continuously learn, and that's a commitment. And she talks about being two steps ahead of your audience, that's all you need to be is two steps ahead and I would agree about with that. One step is OK two, but 2-step sounds pretty good. That's a good lead. So of course, you have to read books, listen to podcasts and read industry blogs. And she says that they're unlikely to read your audience. Because if they're already reading it, they won't find it from you. They'll just take that source. So here's our plan identify experts in your niche. OK you already found your niche, theoretically, you're going to create a list of 5 to 10 experts and you can consume all their content and join their email list, so if they have podcasts, search for them on YouTube where they're being interviewed. Anything that you can get your hands on. A white paper, PDF, anything and consume that. OK a reading books takes a lot of time, and not many of us do that, we don't have the time and we want to consume it in a different way, and that's totally OK. So she said she says that she tries to read two books a week, and she says almost everyone that she knows who can read to two books a week do not read it. Cover to cover. Not the way I read it. So she's like, you know, you can get the idea, if you read the synopsis, you scan the table of contents and then you want to map out what you've learned. So you create an overview. It has three parts to it a heading a subhead and phrases that you like. And if you go to mine monster.com, I believe that's a mind mapping tool. It looks something like this. And so these are her notes on the book centralism. So she's scanning things for ideas like the big headline idea. Right and then she looks at the subhead and then finds phrases that she likes. And that's enough for her. And you keep doing that. There's some other tools besides mine, Mr. Buswell. The free one will show you who the experts are. So if you search for certain phrases like I did this once before for like logo design and the one the number one most dominant person driving traffic, according to bazunu, and my free account was logo inspirations. When people are searching, they were looking for his content. So the most shared domains by network, and that's how you can find your expert using buzz Sumo. OK, I we have a couple more slides, so. What you want to do is you want to start to make content, and I think you guys are aware that there's a challenge I don't think is 100 days. I don't think you need to start this right now. But there's something that I tell people to do, which is to pick one platform. One niche. And make 100 pieces of content for 100 days and do not judge yourself during that time. Just keep doing it. And if you commit to this for whatever way that suits you best, it could be podcasting. It could be short form, long form articles. It could be like an infographic drawing that you make. And what I would do is I would build this up because it builds a habit or routine for you, if you can make that commitment, just survive the 100 days. I'm pretty sure your level of expertise as perceived by people who consume your content will go way, way up. The other thing is she talks about is developing your signature process, which will need to work on in this group if this is of interest to you, which is your surefire proven framework from A to Z. So you want to develop your secret recipe? Like what ingredients, what steps does somebody need to take to know what you know? Um, and I don't think I have more slides in this, let me see. Yeah, I think that's it for me, for this part. OK, so next time when we talk, we'll talk about authority architecture and marketing your expertise and building a marketing campaign. So I'm going to open it up to questions and we're going to talk about this. OK so let me stop share here. All righty. I see. Hands are up. So we'll go to Irving andress, and we'll see whoever else wants that to ask or say something. So go ahead, Irving. How could you repeat the three things, one, one more time, 111-1111 content? Yeah I'll repeat it. It's the 1 1 handed rule. Pick one platform, one niche. Make 100 pieces of content. One 100 role in platform one niche. 100 pieces of content. This is critical. I see you all bouncing around. All over the place, all the time trying to be everywhere, omnipresent. There is a way to do that. And if you want, I'll talk to you about the infinity circle. But, but not just yet. I will show you how to make 1,000 pieces of content on multiple platforms, but it requires you having built up enough expertise. Enough knowledge, OK, because it won't work without that. So when we're ready, I will show you how to become a content animal. I'm not sure we're ready today, but all right. So, Irving, I'm going to move on, undress, go ahead. All right, this question comes from Miriam, and I'll read it verbatim. There are two areas that I'm really passionate about fashion tech and transformative tech that helps with reducing stress, anxiety. I have a hard time focusing on just one of them. For the past 10 years, my research has focused on coming up with noninvasive solutions that are help reduce anxiety, stress and pain in five minutes. And that's what people know me for. But I have a passion for coding, are do in no fashion tech and want to start speaking about it. So the question is, shall I just start making content for both as a way of A/B testing to see which one resonates with people more? Just let me just talk to you, Mary, where are you? I'm here, sorry, I got to go, but I can talk to you. OK, can you talk now or no? Yeah, yeah, that's just good. OK Yeah. OK a lot of people get caught up in this where that I like this, and like this. But do you like one more than the other? Oh, well, I really love helping people overcome their inner critic in such a short period of time. And I know that. Yeah, OK, so sure question is I love helping people overcome their anxiety and stress and just want to help them with that. I don't know. I can't decide which one because I love fashion tech as well. So can one be your main thing and the other just be a hobby? The answer to your question? Now I got your answer, actually. Can you just pick one and then let the other thing be your hobby? Yeah, I guess I could. Yeah right, say, I have a lot of interest that I'm passionate about, but I'm not going to try to build 14 different Instagram accounts on these different hobbies and interests. Mm-hmm It's a lot of work, man. OK well, you were talking about gas, right? And I've seen how saturated that this whole area of transformative technology, especially using sounds and frequency that leads to reducing anxiety and stress. I've been focused on sounds, you know, evidence based compositions that reduces anxiety and there's a lot out there right now. So that's why. But I do see a specific gap that is not being addressed in fashion tech industry. And then I thought, should I focus on that or just I see you remember that worksheet that it was too much for me to go through. What the heck did I delete things? OK, so here's what we'll do, we'll say, helping people to overcome their inner critic and then fashion tech, and then we're going to answer a bunch of questions like are there money flows within this niche right now? Are people willing to pay for solutions? And you go, Yes or no on both. Are people actively looking for solutions to the problems associated with this niche? Are there others who have successfully monetized this niche regardless of the business model. They use? Is this an urgent problem they need solve right now? Is this a big enough marketplace you just go through and if you were just to score based on that, I think you'll have your answer was which one you want to go into including? Do you have an ability to reach this audience? OK let's see what you come up with. All right, so let's move on. Address it, was it or can I move on to bianca? That's it for me. OK, beautiful. Thank you. OK, Bianca, go ahead. And so I have a question in relates to what you said, but you can't be all things to all people. But what if the expectation is to be a generalist when you would like to be a specialist? So if you look at the job opportunities and LinkedIn, they have the requirements and it's often it's quite general in what the requirements are. So how do you make? Especially Yeah. OK, yeah, just call me, Chris, by the way, if you call me, sir, I'll feel really super old. OK yeah, a lot of people write those job requirements are just copy pasting and they're super lazy. I think if they had the time they would write like, I want a sales ninja. Who knows, I do x, y and z can run this script and do that. They would write that and you would show up and like, that's me, that's me. But what they do is they cast a very wide net kind of how people are afraid to specialize because they think if they cast such a narrow net that not enough people are going to apply. And I'd rather get 10 qualified applicants than 2000 unqualified, but maybe air license to prove why they have a job. And so they have to sit here and sift through 10,000 resumes because it's so wide. I generally find and you could disprove me if you like that people who are specialized, who have deep expertise, who go deep versus wide, they generally have an advantage over the other people who are not as deep in their experience. And so when they write like a very broad job description, look at the first thing they say and don't read the rest. So we're looking for a person who does x, and then they go on to add too much junk because it doesn't hurt them to add that if you fit that, just apply. And hopefully that's with your expertise. OK, yeah, that's helpful. Thank you. You're welcome. OK all right, Jennifer, your next. Yeah, I just wanted to share one thing I've done to try to establish established expertise is that I created my own award for best packaging design in the cosmetics industry. I did this at least the winner, the finalists and the winners. And like December, I made like a more nice landing page because I felt better about sharing that with the brands. And I'm going even bigger for this year. And right now I'm going to rethink the categories and then I'm going to try to contact brands and see if they will work with me on that. I don't know if you have any advice on. I want to contact the brands and the goal I want to get out of it is to see if they will send me products because it's going to end up being really expensive, getting all the products that I can make way better content if I have it and also judged a contest better. How would you in a conflict with them, try to, you know, establish that you actually have some kind of expertise and that you're not just. Whoever just making up their own thing. First of all, I just want to say, giving out the award is a brilliant strategy. It's because you're like, I'm not even going to compete, I'm the judge. And I think about award shows, and I think they must have all sorted out very small and usually what you can do is this is a borrow one. Remember, you could build, borrow and be. This one is where you can borrow if you got together a panel of celebrated packaging designers and say this is who's going to be judging. Right, all of a sudden, you borrow from their credentials. I'm often asked to judge like logo design competitions and things like that. Somebody must think I'm an expert at logo designs. I don't know. I don't think of myself as one, but then they tell me who else is judge? And I'm like, damn. All right. So they're borrowing from their credibility. So what I would do is do that, so there must be some name like big names within the packaging industry. I'm sure you know who they are. No, I mean, most of the biggest brands, they have in-house designers that design it, and I don't know if that would even appeal or the brands would care about that. Would yeah, the designers would. But are they going to send me products? I don't know. One step at a time. Yeah, Yeah. No, no, I get you. It's that I have thought about it for quite some time. Yeah so that is something that I have thought about, but I'm trying to. Yeah it's also other issues with having judges, because then I'd have to have even more products for other people to also judge it. But yeah, it. Could photos do the job or do you need to have a physical product? The thing is that if I had the physical products, then I can take my own photos and make my own content, and that could also be something, then they have more things to share to. Oh OK. Yeah, to a big deal for you. OK what I would do is to have a different rounds. So the first round is just send us four photos of the product from different angles to qualify, right? So those are the requirements for the competition. And so when you get into the second tier where these are the ones most likely to win, then you can say congratulations, you've made the first cut. We now need for you to send us the package so that we can then evaluate it and for ourselves, whatever it is. Yeah, I do like that. One option I was thinking is that after I've selected the finalists, I could then say, you're a finalist. Yeah, we would really appreciate if you could send your product. We're going to take photos and make content with it. You're welcome to use the photos also. And, you know, no charge just as long as you if you share the product. Yeah, I would do that. Except for the last part, I would just say, congratulations, you're a finalist. We'd like for you to send us a product. So we can do deeper evaluation and just don't even offer them to use your media content. It'll be fine. Yeah, they'll either send it to you or they won't. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, I'll probably end up having to buy some of it because I'm not going to end up getting harder with them. But you know, anything you can do to kind of make it easier because, yeah, Yeah. If you're committed to this concept, you can say the first couple of years are going to be pretty rough. You could probably be spending more money than you're getting back. And then eventually you're going to be like my friend Andrew Gibbs, who's like the number one packaging resource online. Mm-hmm Yeah there's a little fan thing, and then it becomes like a real thing. Yeah, I mean, that is kind of how I see it. I don't see it as something where I'm going to make money because like, that's already a big problem with all the awards that there are and in, like the industry, they're basically pay to play and you pay them to be there and they make a lot of money off it. I'm more trying to just establish expertise with it because then I won't have to worry about making money from doing the award. So Yeah. OK, brilliant. I want to share a real quick story. Thank you, Jennifer. You guys know that the book local lounge. Local lounge, anybody? Yeah Heather does, Yeah. So I recently judge for local lounge. It was brutal. I had to like, look at thousands of logos. I'm probably not going to do that again. It was just brutal. But I got to tell you, have no offense to the author. I never heard of them before I purchased the books. And so now he becomes like the sought after local expert, right? He didn't make any of the logos. It's a brilliant genius thing to run your own award show. It really is. If you want to be committed to that, there is definitely an idea here. Each person will have to sit there and think about their commitment and amount of work, but it's worthwhile. OK, so next up is Stephanie. Come good morning, Chris. This has been very, very helpful. But I do have a question because my niche is more on helping emerging luxury and premium brands by, you know, crafting a distinctive brand so they can attract the high value clients they enjoy working with. And so far, my clients have been luxury travel, luxury interior design and luxurious subscription box, premium nutrition and health and fitness, and also personal branding for women who want to empower other women. So I'm kind of like broad and, you know, just listening to this call today, I'm like, Oh my gosh, I realize I probably need a niche, but I love working in the luxury and premium brand space that brands that are emerging that not the ones that are established already. So I think I need some help. How can I help you? I mean, just based off this call, I feel like I'm really, really broad, but I want to stay in their luxury and premium space and just some of those clients that I've worked in the past I really like. So should I just. Target, just like I guess, for example, luxury travel just at one thing or yes, because luxury travel versus luxury watches and luxury shoes are very different markets. Luxury and premium is not enough to identify a niche. It's to say you like expensive things and you like to help people with expensive tastes. Mm-hmm It's nice, but it's not. Not nearly narrow enough. OK Yeah. And here's one thing I want to caution everybody about. If you're going to choose to pick a niche, make sure that next three to five years, that business is going to be OK. Why do I say that my friend who does a lot of study with design and business, he told me that 40% of the businesses in New York have closed permanently. And as the pandemic is hitting different countries and they're getting their third, fourth wave, he's like, man, the hotel hospitality space is just wrecked right now. That's who a lot of his clients are. And he has friends that are entrepreneurs who are restaurateurs. They're all closed. He's like, they're not going to survive this because the margins are so thin to begin with, this is just effed up. So if you're like, you know what? My niece is restaurateurs in a big city. You better hope and pray that there's not continuing shutdowns or that COVID 20 is not around the corner and I think it is, it's just the way that the world is now. It's the new reality. So please, please do yourself a favor and think about the industries that you serve and what direction it's heading. Because here's the ironic thing. My friend, who I've known for over 20 years, he's a very successful business person and as a creative person to. So, Chris, and he's like 54. Tell me how you do this YouTube thing again. And I'm like, welcome to my world, my friend, right? I can make content from my house and reach a lot of people. And it's pretty much virus proof. In fact, maybe search volume increase because people are at home. So think about that. All right, so whatever luxury space you go into, just think about, will it be impacted by whatever else is happening, how the world is trending? Mm-hmm OK, thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Yes now, having said that, I just read in cnet, do you guys know that what the fastest selling car in America is right now? This will shock you shocked me when I found out what is the fastest selling car, not the highest volume, but they calculate this based on when the car is on the lot. How many days it sits on the lot. So the fastest selling car is on the lot for nine days. There's a shortage, a manufacturing shortage right now. So this is impacting lots of different industries. But I'll give you the answer in two seconds, is anybody want to guess in the comments? Good guess, good guess a lot of people are saying, Tessa, that's what my boy, said guest. Not Tesla, not yet, not Jeep. Right, right, OK. Yeah, you would think, right? So what's the make and the model? Don't just give me the manufacturer. OK cybertruck's not even out yet, so it's 0 time on the lot. All right. Thanks for trying, Chandler. OK here it is. The Mercedes G wagon with an average price of 170,009 days on the lot, they cannot keep them in stock. The second fastest selling car in America right now is the Corvette. OK the demand is so high, so even in the luxury space, some things people are nuts. Maybe they're thinking, man, if all I can do is sit-in my nice car, I'm going to buy a really nice car because I can't go anywhere else, right? I'm just going to drive. So, yeah, OK, yeah, get out, it's true. 170,000 It's a status symbol. They used to have one. It was pretty nice. Kill the planet, that's why I had to get rid of it. But all right. Other questions. OK, here we go. Phyllis let's cook in. Uh, hey, Chris, it's funny that you talked about the restaurant industry because, you know, that's the industry I want to serve, and for that reason, what you said, I believe a lot of their problems start with branding because a lot of people that end up in the food industry end up because they have a great recipe. They don't think about the business side, they don't think about the branding. And my thing is, I want to disrupt this whole system. I want you to be able to raise your prices to a fair price. So you can pay your people decently. But I also want you to brand from the inside out. So you build loyalty from your staff that then turn around and build loyalty with your customers. So that's my thing. And then when you told me to niche down to the barbecue places, I'm looking at that and it's like, OK, I can see where I can help. But as you say, I get violent on occasion. Yes, you do. But is because I'm so passionate about this, because this needs to change. And one of the things that I did, I went to a place called Tia Bettis and I asked the cashier about the story behind Tia Bettis. She couldn't share that story. And so all of this and I guess I'm saying all of this and you're saying, pick my industry, I've chosen it and I know it's hard. So does that mean that what? I need to approach it from a different way? Or do I need to rethink what I'm? Go ahead. You know, when I was talking about audience? Are they actively looking for a solution? Are they going to seek out coaching, consulting masterminds, live events, workshops, conferences and products? Do they feel like they have an urgent problem with the dire sense like, I got to do this or die? The biggest problem that you'll hear restaurant talk about is I'm trying to get butts in seats. Yeah, but do they realize that that's the problem? No lack of crossovers on it. Yes so you're going to be doing a lot of the heavy lifting. So according to this book, that's the resistance that you're getting right now is because they don't see that they have a problem. They see that there's not enough customers, but they don't realize that branding or doing whatever it is that you're doing is going to be the answer. So you're going to spend all your time getting them to come to the answer, and that's a lot of time. Generally speaking, I have some thoughts on this, though. I mean, every restaurant during the pandemic needed help really quickly on transitioning to an online ordering system and a curbside pickup. The fact that so many of them were slow to implement this and implement it horribly, it's just a miracle they're in business and most of them are out of business right now. So if you partner up with a technology partner to say, you know what? Get it pandemic right, we're going to get your menu a streamline, we're going to cut this thing in half. I'm a business expert. We can have a new sales page that functions like an app, but it's not an app that people can order from. And then you can track and monitor the progress of your order. It gives you great feedback. And then as soon as they pull up, it's going to ping us, notify us and you're going to have your meal brought to you at the curb. They would have killed it. Mr beast, you know, Mr. beast is Yeah. Well, you know, he started, put him on their menu. Yeah so, you know, Mr. beast started, what did they call us? Smash burgers? Yeah and he partnered with somebody. I don't think he was even his idea, just putting his name against it. They open up like a couple of restaurants in America. You can only order it via an app. And what they did was they bought up surplus capability from restaurants are going out of business. He just bought their Kitchens, basically he or he rented them, so he had all these places who could make food, had zero customers. And he connected it to customers. At the end of the day, your client cares about making more money. Figure out the fastest path to that, sometimes branding is a detour. It takes too long, and it's not proven, I to it's proven, but to a business owner, it's not proven. So if you can develop a plan to get butts in seats and you don't even talk about branding, you just talk about the mechanics, how are you going to do it? Or you can say, you know what? What I do is help restaurateurs like you get their products into Trader Joe's into not Trader Joe's. That's terrible to the supermarket. You want to be the Wolfgang puck, you know, that's what we do and have a plan. I have a plan and how to do this. And so you need to create your signature process. I want you to think about it. I'm not going to solve the business problem right now, but a lot of us in the branding space, we're so passionate about it. We know it makes a difference. But it's hard to prove. And the results that they want to see, their expectations are going to be a lot faster than what a branding project can do for them. OK OK. Think about what you can do to impact the bottom line, like I said in a different call, what you're doing is you're selling money. Don't sell creative services, sell money, which is sell the results they care about. OK but I love the barbecue space because it's so rich with design that so many creative, fertile ideas that once you're able to establish a foothold, I think you have a beautiful body of work that people are like, wow, she is the barbecue queen. This is who we talk to. She's the person, right? OK OK. Right, Sadie, thank you. You're welcome. All right. Next up is Alex. Can you hear me? Yes all right, cool. How are you doing, man? I'm doing good. Good to see you. Good, good. Good to see you as well. So my question is I have this big vision of how I want to unfold, how I want my brand to unfold. And I've spoken with Sana and she actually turned me on to the shorts idea about three weeks ago, almost a month ago. And so she had me do a list of things that I want to cover. So I have the content that I want to cover, except what I want to do is present it in an animation style. So the whole idea is to pretty much prove that there's, Ah, that we're higher dimensional beings, right? That we're not just this 3D thing, but that we're also connected to this reality. Like this reality directly affects who we are. So do you recommend that I start with writing content and just doing illustrations that kind of lead people into that? Or do I start with cool animations that draw people into it. And so that they can, like, support the idea? I don't know. Yes yeah, it does. Alex, I would just encourage you to do the MVP. There's the nice to have, and there's have to have. Right, and don't let perfection be the enemy of done. And so, you know, Peter had asked or no, it wasn't peter, it was Tim who asked, like, are you concerned that your feet is going to be junked up by these shorts that are not aesthetic? But no, I hear something I care about something more than that. And so for you, if it takes you another three or four weeks to make something, then let's strip it down into its essence and could just be your voice. Just saying something, right, and it could just be filming some, something that's like natural. Like a tree swaying in the wind, just hearing your voice and putting a chill hop album, you know, track on, I don't know what it is. What you got to use, he's got to make it. So have you made anything yet? Has it been launched or you still in the ideation process? I mean, I've been stuck in IT process, nothing launched is just me going through my own journey and finding out exactly what it is that I wanted to say. So I like expressed all this through my art, you know, but but nothing in a professional or even a like, no actual service, no actual business, though I have that all kind of set up. I have the name of the business and all of that lined up. But I hear what you're saying and I'm definitely stirring some ideas. It just lines up perfectly with what sonority recommended, and I appreciate it. Thanks yeah, I'm sensing some emotion from you when you're talking to me. Am I reading this incorrectly? No, you're reading it very correctly. For me, it's been a long journey for me to figure out exactly what it is. I want to say I've been a part of the group for a long time, so it's like, I'm kind of at that point where it's like, I've already missed so many opportunities to show up, you know? So it's kind of I almost feel shame for still not without having things to show, you know? Yeah, I know, I know, and I know that I hear to shame you, my friend. Yeah, yeah, no, I know. OK, I know this community is like constant support, you know? So I always come back to it when I'm feeling that, you know, at. Urge to keep going. Yes, and I'm basically at that point now where it's like, OK, he needs to come out now. Yeah you know, I think what you can do is a couple of different things like, do you like to write or do you like to speak more? I feel like my speaking capabilities kind of fumble a lot, so I need I need more practice and I'm not the most communicative person, but I do enjoy getting my thoughts together and then presenting them. So that's why I have this whole idea of doing it in video and long form and all that. Yeah who's your triple piece on it? I don't have a Triple P I've spoken with Sana. It's because I'm inconsistent. So like, I don't. OK OK no, no, no, no. Not here to blame. OK andras, are you still here? I can't see everybody, but I'm here, you're here. Let's find Alex a Triple P ASAP. OK, cutting it down. Thank you very much, so we're going to get this resolved right now. OK, Alex. And if somebody is connecting with Alex spirit and his energy right now, you could just see him him right now and say, look, I don't know what you're doing, but I want to be part of it. So we can help each other. Ok? if nothing else is what we need to do today, I have an idea for you, though, Alex, and I'm saying this to you, but I think it's going to hit a lot of other people. It's very hard to make content by yourself. I can feel your energy right now. I could feel a whole bunch of different things from you and I. And I want to help you through this. So if you can put yourself against somebody zoom, call, you know, and say, look, do you mind I'm just going to talk to you for 10 minutes and tell, tell them about this whole spiritual, multidimensional thing that you're talking about, right? Which I don't understand, but I'm like, OK, I feel it. And just explaining it to them and make sure that call is recorded. The act of articulating your thoughts, another person like a real person versus just like the internet. Just talk to that person and then record it and listen back to it and see what the Nuggets are and then create a quick outline, really fast one. Just some bullet point, things like the things I like. And then sit down and write. And record and just be OK that it's not going to be good. In fact, it's going to be terrible. And it's going to suck. Everything about it's going to suck the way you hear yourself, the way you like, maybe fumble through words, as you say, the way that you change together, ideas and you might go off and where tangents and just be OK with that. And if it doesn't make you totally want to vomit, release it. Then do it again and again and just keep doing that and eventually, it doesn't become easy, it just gets easier. And if you keep doing that. You'll you'll just be surprised at where you wind up. I think to me, the act of creation helps us to figure out what the hell we want to say. So when we're stuck, we just need to get into creation mode. Um, in the book. The subtle art of not giving an F. He talks about usually we wait for inspiration. Yeah, everybody, we wait for inspiration. Then we build up the motivation to do something and then we take action. Then we take action, we see what we do. It's really motivating like I did that it was pretty good. And then I get inspired and I do it again. So he's like, just cut out the inspiration, motivation part, just take action. Just do it. Take action and then you're like, whoa. That wasn't as bad as I thought it was. Let's do that again. Let's do it again. Just keep doing it and don't look back. If you don't have the stomach for the trolls, I know a lot of people here do not do not read the comments, it will wreck you. If you're insane animal like me, read all of it and play with them. Yeah, I'm not worried about that at all. OK I've gone through the whole journey of like finding my light and stepping into my power, so I don't worry about that, but I hear you. I appreciate it very much thinking. Thank you, Alex. Alex is driven out. You're are you in arizona? Where as vegas? Vegas, like when we have a meet up, he drives for hours and comes out, so I'm like, I really appreciate, man. All right, Alex. OK, so Ashwin. Hey, I want to say, first off, Alex, your stuff is really cool, like your conceptual stuff. I think if you spend a little more time cleaning up the work, you'll start making a larger impact on Instagram. My question was about staking claims. There was two things that you stated in the current presentation, which was high value content and new perspective to an existing idea. Are there any other ways to stake claim in expertise or these are the key areas you stake claim by having a lens? There's nothing new under the sun. So what is your lens, your POV and. That that is attitude in style. A lot of it. And just being clear about who you want to be and what market you want to show up for, then comes into the actual content itself and whether or not it's going to be valuable to anyone. So you have a very distinctive style like we could see you guys see as artwork back there has a very distinctive style. It's like big, chunky, it's very friendly and hand-lettered. And he does sketch notes that are also super beautiful, engaging because a human being created. So there's a humanity to that, to the way that you work and your style. So I'm already vibing on your style. So now what is it that you want to be an expert in? Do you know? Visual thinking, and I suppose in mindset, these are the two areas that can focus on, can you go narrower than that visual thinking and. And mindset. I mean, not yet. You've got to think about it. Yeah, I do. Yeah I think you also want to teach a course on illustration for creative people, right? Yes anyone can draw like maybe your niche is something like want to empower people to feel like they're an artist because that's also a mindset. Yes, like anybody can draw, right, and that's really empowering. And I think Sir Ken Robinson talked about this. He's like, we don't grow into creativity, that we grow out of creativity, that we're all born creative and that we're taught that this doesn't work and it's not practical and it's not good. So people forget how to be creative. All you have to do is spend time with young children. They're all very, very creative. Yes Yeah. Share, share a quick story with you. Like my wife's, when our kids were younger, we would go to this place called Lake shore and Lake shore is a school supply store for teachers. And so you can't just buy one of something. So she bought like one of these animal making kits, right? When you have a little Popsicle stick and like a tiger, a bear, an elephant, and then you have googly eyes and whiskers and things like that. And so you make the animals, like the way you're supposed to make them. And then my wife said, designer, so she's like, let me mix the parts up, let's put the monkey face on this. And she got really creative, like really fun things. And I looked at them like, wow, you're really creative, honey. And she goes, that's nothing compared to your son. Look, why would he do so? My son looked at the shapes and he's like, this is very limiting. So he turned to shapes all backwards to decide which had no prints on them. And you glued a bunch of shapes together and made a caterpillar. And it was like, that is nuts. That's the power of creativity for kids. And she goes, it's not, you know, so she's making faces the way that the rules were made, but he's like, I don't like rules. So he turned the faces into body parts. I made a crazy looking caterpillar, it was just awesome. It wasn't perfect, but it was amazing. So I would love for you to be able to spark the inner child in us, the ones who think we can't be creative anymore and use the power of drawing. I know therapists who use drawing as part of art therapy. And so you see, you just need to bring in something a little different, a little weird. And you can empower people, keep the message really simple and very focused, and then just keep executing on that until you figure out. There it is. I found my voice. I found my audience. OK, ashwin, I hope that helps you. Thanks, yeah, that really helps clarify what I'm already doing, just putting into words. Yeah, I like that sparked the inner child. It's fantastic. OK, thank you. OK, thank you. I'm realizing now I've got a few more minutes to talk to you, so I'm going to ask that no one raises their hand after this, so I'm going to move it to Bryce and then lineal. Or is it denial? OK, well, those are the last two hands, and then I just want to do a quick summary reflection with you before we get out of here. OK, so Bryce, you're up next. All right. Hi, Chris. It's my first day here on the call, and also I just joined today the future program. Good timing. Good timing, my friend. Welcome Yeah. Thank you, everyone. So my question is I remember speaking to you on Clubhouse and I still haven't done any lead generation marketing yet. And here you are talking about content creation. And my question is actually, who do I actually create content for because I am trying to work with people overseas, globally instead of just where I'm from singapore? Yeah and my conflict is because if I do it for singaporeans, we I have that level of familiarity and people can. I don't know few easier or comfortable with me as compared to if I speak to a global audience. That might be that disconnect that I'm afraid may not help me convert as good as I think it would be. OK, I'm going to refer back to something that Blair said to us during a clubhouse call, which is the market is bigger than your target. I don't know if you guys know this. The singaporeans, like english, is your first language. Many Singaporeans speak English better than Native Americans. You know, I was interviewed recently for a podcast, and he was dropping some crazy words. I'm like, she, let me look that up in the dictionary here. Well, talking to him. So you have the added benefit that you can speak English perfectly. And so you can speak to Singaporeans and you can help. And Singapore is a very rich country, right? So there's enough money there, obviously. And then from that, hopefully you can build a more international presence and your influence will continue to grow. It's OK to focus for you on a smaller market. If you don't want to serve the Singaporean market, that's OK, too. So then you can just target. But then you would make that your primary focus of the two. Would you rather focus on the Singapore market and then go broader later? Or do you want to focus on a different market altogether? I think there's a bit of a conflict because Singaporeans don't really pay for branding services as much as my overseas clients do. Yes Yeah. So I actually am trying to move out of Singapore and target other countries instead. But I can't really. Well, I am looking at America because. Yeah so yeah, I guess my what is your reservation then focusing on america? we might be too far away. There might be that disconnect, like if there is ever a need to meet up in person, or maybe if I suggest meeting up, I mean, meeting up has that level of impact and being at the office has that impact and especially when doing branding or discovery. Yeah, Yeah. I think I'm going to say this. It's been my experience that face to face meetings are overrated and overinflated. I'll tell you why I've run my business. For 25 years, the number of clients have actually met are in the low double digits percentage wise. So if I have 100 clients, that's probably going to be less than 10% or 10 of those clients that are going to want to meet me face to face. Most of this is done through telephone. Then more recently, through Zoom I in the last year and a half, I think we've all been trained how to work with people remotely. And so they face a face barrier. Isn't one right? All I can tell every single one of you and I'm not for this. I get it. But if you can improve your Zoom quality and your audio, your speaker, your microphone game, you will feel like you're right there with them. That's why I invest in high end gear and my lighting and all these tricks that I use because as soon as the camera turns on or they can hear my voice to the microphone like, Wow. Maybe this is even better than in person. I just try to overwhelm them with the amount of production I put into these calls. You know, once you have it set up, it's super easy. So I would do that, right? Some of you have virtual backgrounds like Jennifer. I see that you have one. But if you can make it feel like a space, so you're not just a cut out head. I think that would help. All my clients compliment me on this. I know look at it, it's a street, it's a 3D rendering I made for anyone who hasn't seen before. It's not real. It's aspirational. Yes now, if Jennifer took it to the next level and propped up a green screen and lit, so everything is perfect, you could, you wouldn't even be able to tell. You wouldn't be able to tell, right? So just think about that. OK I think like I said, I've been doing business now for 25 years. I think it's been less than 10% actually meet me in person and only one of them ever said to me. Your space matters. OK only one client, because they walked in there, they sat down and looked around the room like, OK. And I asked them, what are you looking at? So I'm looking at your space. And he says I would expect nothing less. If it was different, I would start to get cold feet. But what I was thinking in my mind is, you already wrote the check, my friend. It's like, I don't do money back guarantees at this point. Here, he wrote me to check before you walked into this room. So I happily accept your money. OK, thank you. I'm going to move on. Linea is it linear? It's a day now, whoa, OK, Dinesh, well, OK. Hi hi, thank you so much for all of this. I do branding and I am trying to pick a niche. I've also been creating content for three months relatively consistently, and I found that my audience is actually a lot of South African designers and creatives. So I post about what I'm learning as a solo branding entrepreneur in South Africa, and to me, that's a niche. And my question is, would it be better for my content to be about the people I do design work for because I'm obviously not designing for the designers that are following me, but they're there. So Yeah. That's my question. I think I understand the question and this happens and correct me if I don't understand this, right? So you create things on branding and of course, designers look great. You're you're teaching us and we want to follow you. So if that's the case, I would say, just keep doing what you're doing. Just keep doing it because you're going to be seen as the expert and eventually one of these young designers works for a big company and says, oh, you need to bring Niro to teach us to do this as a corporate trainer, or that's how the doors start to open. It's a long game, though, I will tell you, because it's going to be a long time, but once it gets good, it gets really good. Because I'm in that gravy train moment right now, but there was a lot of just shoveling, you know, sweating in the back in my face dirty. But the gravy train is here and I'm just happy to slip it up. It is amazing. So I will continue to encourage you to do this to do whatever you're doing because it's attracting an audience and just, you know what, though? There's one person I want to point this out. One person does this really well, and I think Heather knows this person as well is Brian Collins. Brian Collins creates content for CEOs. He doesn't create it for mortals. The things that he talks about is designed for him to get a CEO, a CMO or chief branding officer to hire Collins. And he is incredible at doing this. But that's who he is. He's a well educated person who's worldly, has a lot of experiences, and he's able to talk about Beowulf and he always talks about Beowulf and he talks right now. You know what I'm talking about? He talks about culture and what's happening. He's like he studies history and science, and he has full time riders and researchers who are super smart people writing these things with him and for him. You know, he talks about the a cell, I think it's called inside caterpillars and how we have to reform ourselves. He talks about big ideas. And I can tell every time he and I talk, I'm like, you're not talking to me, are you? You're talking to people with money. That's what he's doing. He has the money conversation. He gets the money. So there's two levels. If that sounds like you. Delight, but I would suggest you guys all study Brian Collins because he does not create content for us. He creates content for the people at the very, very top. And he looks the part. It's got this kind of big Pompadour hair and like his suit and you can Cape Cod or whatever. No, he's not on Cape Cod. He's in the Hamptons or whatever. You know, he just lives that life and that's who he wants to attract. OK but I think you're doing a fine job if you're already drawing a lot of young designers towards you. Was that helpful to you? Maybe helpful. Thank you. OK all right. Here's what we're going to do. I said we're going to do some work together, but we may or may not want to do that at this point. Do you guys want to do work together or do you want to do a breakout room at the end here? Let's do this. Well, you know what? Whoa OK, OK, hold on. I see. Irving wants to do. He's like, he's like, ready to jump out of his skin. Let's do this. If you guys show me enough, thumbs up on your emoji right now, we will do a breakout room. All 64 of you. OK, I guess it's happening. All right, so what I want to do is. I'm going to export this worksheet, OK, and we're going to do the worksheet together. Export is. His images. I think so, Yeah. Give me two seconds, I'm going to export this and I'm going to send it all to you. Um, pro calls. Emily, can you just help me fill in the time right now, so I don't feel like there's all this dead air? Can you just talk to the people for a second? Entertain people a little bit. Yes, please. OK OK. Hi, guys. Yeah, what we're going to talk about. I can say Hi to a few new people. Maybe and I see a Kyma Hi. You knew? Hello how are you? And annalee, how are you? Hi, nice to see you. Anyone else? Can you wave a little bit of your news? We can say Hi to you. Irving, it's not new, I didn't know you OK. Oh, Dennis, hi, Dennis. Hi, Bryce. Bryce, yeah, I'm so glad you found the call. We did have. Yeah hi, Keisha. Hi hi, Bastian. Anyone else wanted wave? OK, I'm ready. I'm ready. OK all right. Thank you. Thank you very much, Emily. So I'm going to drop this in the chat it's uploading. OK since successful, you guys, you guys have seen the worksheet. Now Everyone, OK. It's in the chat. You need to download that right now. And unless your screen captured it earlier. So I want to see if we can make some progress here today if you guys can start to identify what niche you might want to head into. I don't want to make you over commit at this point. Everyone got it. OK, his mobile, I see I see, OK. I see, yeah, OK. Sana Sana is asking for it to be on circle. I can do that for you. What I'm going to do is I'm going to create a. Breakout room. OK and when I send you into the room, I just want you to work through the worksheet and you guys can just chat. I'm hoping that you come back and it's like, oh, thank you. You did it, Jennifer. Thank you. OK, I'm on it. OK, somebody on it? Thank you very much. OK, so let's say that we went to break this room up into groups of 3. An odd number. I know. Let's try that. And if only two people in your room, that's fine too. So what we want to do is people are like running out of the room now. See, I knew it. Look, you all disappear. OK, here we go. Go to your room and I'm going to leave you in there for seven minutes. OK, and I'll warn you when it's over. So open all the rooms. There you go, and you can even work by yourself. It's totally OK. All right. Just go to your room and. Try to work on this. Welcome back, everybody. OK, we lost a few people and a few people were busy tied up or weren't clear what the heck they were supposed to be doing when Irving came back and asked them, how did it go? He said, oh, it was a complete disaster. Because he didn't know how to answer the questions. So that's a sign in itself. So let's make sure we understand the question. So the question that he is like, wait, what? So the question was, are there others who have successfully monetize this niche regardless of their business model? Right so he's going to find that out. So he's interested in doing cafe racers. I don't even know what that is. So I said, go to buzz sumo, which was part of our conversation today, and you can see who the authority is, who's driving the most traffic on social media around cafe racer. Did you find the answer yet, irving? It's making me fill out some stuff. Uh, give me one. All right, just so anybody else have a question about the questionnaire? Go and raise your hand, and then we'll try to do some orderly fashion here. There was anybody getting a little closer to kind of eliminating a possibility, maybe so, Phyllis, what's up? Um, the question where you asked, where can you establish yourself with the least amount of effort? Are you talking about like, how do we set up on social media or how do we set up in the industry like I can? I can solidify myself as a barbecue expert because I had to barbecue restaurants and all of that kind of stuff. So are you talking about it in that sense or are you talking about, like you said, how you market yourself, like whether you choose a certain one platform over another? It's a platform question, I believe. OK Yes. So where your audience gathers to find news and information around barbecue? Can you establish yourself there? That's where you're looking. Yeah, Yeah. So it could be a trade show. It could be on grilling with Bobby Flay wherever you need to be, where people in your industry. Look to, that's where you would start to like, yeah, OK, that's the plot for me. Yes OK. OK all right. Thank you, Irving, back to you. Oh, my mic is hot here, I thought I was on mute. Where where am I going on here? Am I kicking on influencers and then clicking on, let's say, facebook? That what I'm doing? Well, hold on. Hold on. So Irving saying, I'm interested in cafe racers and I want to know who the experts are so I can look up their business model. So right now, it sounds like he's very much an R&D phase, right? So he doesn't know if the market can sustain itself and who the players are even. So either it's a very new market and it's not established, or he just hasn't researched enough to know who the players are. So I suggested going into buzz Sumo and typing in cafe racer to see who's driving the most traffic around this search. And is it telling you who it is? I was just looking at. So you want me to look at keywords then? Yeah, I thought I was clear about that. So you go to buy sumo, you type typekit. Did you get distracted by a pop up? No, there's just there's discover content, influencers, monitoring and projects. Yes keyword search. Right and then I think you then can filter the result by maybe influencers. Or something like that in a little while since I've used by Sumo. OK Uh, let's see here. Let me pull up my keynote here. Let me. Let's do influencers. Yeah you're just trying to find your expert. OK, so I'm going to put you on pause here for a second. Let's move on. Right? that's all good. OK, cool. Rice Yeah. Hi, Chris. So I was thinking about my niche, and since I do branding services and much like a lot of people here do, I couldn't really narrow down and I wasn't sure if my niche was narrow enough. So I'm a targeting growth stage businesses, and that's my niche. That's how narrow. I'm going. Yeah, Yeah. Bryce, since you're fairly new here, I want you to watch the journalist specialist niching. I think we've at least produced three videos on this. The service is branding. The industry is for growth stage companies, and I don't know any company that would not identify themselves as growth stage. So you're saying branding for everyone? It's not narrow enough, not even close. Find an industry. OK, what industry is growth stage? What industry are you thinking? Right now, I think most of my clients have been B2B businesses, so it's still not an industry, you're like. I like to work with people who make money and are growing. That is everybody. Pretty much. Yeah OK, maybe finance. OK what kind of finance? A accounting firms. OK, there you go. Here you do branding for accounting firms in the United States. In the entertainment industry, see, it's like that. OK that's a. Otherwise, it's not a niche. My my second question would be then how do you do for other industries because like you, I've seen your stuff and you work for multiple industries. So how do you get to that? Don't follow my plan. My plan takes 25 years to do, you know? So that's the thing that people will often say, well, I see that you're speaking to a lot of people. Well, you want the 25 year plan. I'll tell you the 25 year plan. It's a lot of heartache, a lot of missteps. I'm trying to get you to jump past some of the mistakes, ok? So don't look at what we do. Don't look at what Collins is doing. Don't look at all that kind of stuff because it's like, wow, they do everything. Yeah, because he's been doing this for 40 years. But he didn't start out that way. Focus, OK. All right, so branding for accounting firms in the United States and the narrow it down one more time. That is what a niche is because now you can write content. Here are things that your accounting firm needs to do around branding that you're missing. Before that, you came to write the headline. All right. OK Yeah. Watch those videos before we see each other next time and then tell me, click OK. All right. Thank you. Yes, let's move on to cash now. Hi Hello. I'm listening to the advice of giving him and seeing if that applies to me. Is he your birthday yesterday was? Well, happy belated birthday. Thank you. Yes all right. I typed in children's book illustration into buzz Sumo. Yeah and would you come up with? For the past six months, I'm looking at the view content and it's saying mocca, the magic music maker children's book by Shannon Scott. Uh-huh I don't know if that's like a book. I don't know. You'd have to click on every one of those links and see, right? OK, so like, how should we go about navigating school? Well, the market for children's books, illustration is well established. We're not concerned that that's a big enough market. It might be really too big. And the shortcut here is to talk to Ashwin and Ari Chung because they're both children. Book illustrators and find out like who the big dogs are. Mm-hmm And see if they're doing well. So that's part of your market research. So you're going to be a children's children's book Illustrator. Is that what you want to be known for now? I don't know yet. OK, that's fine. So we're doing a little research. I want to tell you guys something. The sooner you could figure out what the heck you want to do with your life, the more success you have. That's just it, because other words are going to be moving laterally. And it's OK to pick something. Not forever, but for the next five years. OK OK, thanks, Krishna. I was going to wait out the silence, ok? Darren, your next. Thanks I was just wondering, can I get clarification on two of those questions? Absolutely what I do? OK, Thanks. The first one. Where can you establish yourself with the least amount of effort? Are you? Is it referring to, which social platform to use? OK Yes. And the next one was, are you able to reach your audience? What does that actually mean? Oh, OK. Let's say your audience is going to be mostly at a trade show or an event or a conference. The question is, do you have access to be in front of them? Because part of the worksheet says if everything is working out but you can't reach your audience, you're screwed. Because how can you how can you establish your expertise, for example? Not that long ago, the best way to establish your expertise is to write a book. And if you don't have a connection within the publishing industry or you try that many years and nobody accepts your proposal for a book, you're kind of screwed. Thankfully, that's not the case anymore. So can you reach your audience? That is a critical factor in whether or not this should be your niche. OK, but if you could measure some directly via LinkedIn, is that? Yes, absolutely. Then you can reach your audience. Mm-hmm OK, so and if they're not responding, that's OK, that's a different issue altogether. That's a content creation challenge, right? But if your audience is on LinkedIn and you have a LinkedIn account. OK, here's the classic example let's say your audience is on YouTube, but you're in China and YouTube, and a lot of social platforms are banned in China. So the audience is there, but I can't reach them, so I have to use a VPN or something else. Right so that creates a natural challenge. So if you're like, well, why don't I just create content for the local Chinese market using whatever apps are available to china? So you can create the content. They're there, the next part of the challenge is to figure out how you can create more engaging content. And I think we'll talk about that more in the next call. OK OK. Yeah, thank you. I see the gears are turning. What else are you thinking about, darren? No, no, no. That's it. That's fine. OK, sir. Thanks all right. Beautiful so now we'll move on to male. All right. So my question is about the question, is there a big enough marketplace for it? So what do you mean about the marketplace? I just want to get clarity on that. Yes, I think the marketplace is. Do you see that there are other people who are successful in this space? What you can do is you can also check the keyword search volume. So what is it that you're concerned about? What's the market? Did you want to be in the vegan market? Of course, that's gigantic. Yes and so I've been coming to that, I really want to open a vegan restaurant in my town. Yes, because there is none, there's none. And it's really hard for me to go eat that have caused even fights with me and other people in my husband because it's really hard for us. We have to hop through restaurants to get, where do you live? I live in Lake Tahoe, in Tahoe. Oh, Tahoe, ok? What's the population there? Oh, oh, man. I think it's like around the North Lake. I would say maybe 8,000 plus truckie. I don't know. Basically small. It's small, very small. Yeah, but we do have we are international destination tourists. So we have it's packed here in the summer. OK, so I'm going to I'm going to just give you some things to ask yourself and then you'll find out if the market is can support it. OK, so population, number of restaurants, revenue of restaurants as it's trending over the last three to five years, it could be trending a horrible place because of the pandemic and what your peak seasons are, what the profit margin. You can figure this out pretty quickly. So within Lake Tahoe, with a local resident population of 8,000 with heavy influx of tourists, if there are 15 restaurants, we might not be big enough for you. Mm-hmm If there are 200 probably big enough, depending on kind of volume that they experience. OK OK. All right. All right. Even when you become the only one, isn't that a good thing for you, too? Because I know there is the people, that's what the market. Yeah, the people want it. Yes Yeah. Hold on. So to answer your question, I don't want you to look for like confirmation bias here. If you're the only one. There's two things that are going to be one or two options will happen. You'll be amazingly successful or no one will care. It's a big gamble because you're thinking, like, why hasn't anybody else done this right? I ask myself that all the time. Right? so with a little research, you'll find out. And so what I would do is probably do the MVP version of your vegan restaurants not to have a full restaurant, but do maybe do order only. And then you could deliver it to their homes and see like, how many people want this and just test it. Like what is the least amount that you can do to see if there's you're looking for market validation at this point. Right now, people want this and you could literally print out 500 fliers and leave them on the door. It's like we're offering a delivery takeout for four vegan food and go to this website. And then they can order it, and then you can fill the orders and see how many orders you get. Mm-hmm Don't open up a full kitchen and a restaurant and do the interior design and sink hundreds of thousands of dollars, only to find out. No one wants it. OK, that's a good point. Start small and try to see if is meant, yeah, MVP is what you are looking for MVP. Yeah OK. All right. All right. Good luck with that. Yes all right. I'm going to say that Stephanie is going to have the last question because I'm pooped. OK, so Asha, your next. And Chris, how are you? Good Hi. I have a quick question follow up on this. Is this a niche that is poorly served by competitors or existing players in the market? So my and branding and packaging for wellness industry. So definitely there are lots of competitors. I'm not able to get clarity. How do I find the opportunity of gap? Like what is the best way to research the gap? And how do you do that? Ok? you remember that website answer the public's. OK are you going to go there you go. Are you going to find a question everybody is looking for. So something has high search volume. And then you're going to go see the answers that come up. And if the answers are inadequate. You know, there's an opportunity gap right there. Does that make sense? Yes Yeah. So you do, what did you do packaging for wellness? I do branding and packaging as wellness, and yeah, people know me more as a packaging expert or designer, but I'm shifting and I'm seeing my own three to five years next as a branding expert. I love building brands. So that's what I want to niche down to. Packaging is a part of brand. So that's what I'm trying to find the reposition your reverse niche. You're broadening. So branding, packaging, logo design. You know, like we used to see the direction you're heading in. I was packaging, but then I learned brand strategy and I increased my knowledge, so I think I can build good brands. So that's what I think. Now I want to do that. That's my shuffle for what industry, food and wellness, food and wellness? OK so I mean, if you take a rock and you throw it in a Zoom call, you hit a brand strategist in this room. Random, you know that. But maybe because we're all in the same tribe, so who knows? So you're going to have to figure out like, OK, so so brand strategy for food and wellness, did you say? Um, because why do you call it strategy only I want to provide the service of the entire thing, it's called some brain, right? We'll just call it branding. Sorry, I'll just. What is the right word? I'm not sure that I want to create a brand. I enjoy the process of strategy, discovering and building the brand. So that's what I want to do that. OK, so branding, food and wellness? OK Yes. Type that into Google and see what comes up. OK and put that into YouTube and see what comes up. Put that in to answer the public and see what comes up. And so like I said, the example I gave you all was I searched for branding period on YouTube and everything came up with garbage, except for one video. Back in the day, so I'm like, ooh, I know people want to know more about branding. But what's coming up is terrible opportunity gap right there. So when you search for something that's high search volume, but the answers are inadequate. That's your opportunity gap. Question Yes. So I'm getting on branding for food and wellness, and I'm saying th4 health and wellness brand ideas or wellness and nutrition branding, logo design, Pinterest five strategies. So how do you exactly scan through? Like, what are you looking into it? Ok? click on each one of those things, click on each one of those things and see if it's a good article or not, and then see who's writing it and follow. You just go down the rabbit hole, right? If it's a crappy answer, then it's an opportunity gap. It's really good and it's an in-depth study and shoot. It's going to be hard for me to break in here. Not impossible, but at least now, you know. Mm-hmm does that make sense to everybody? We're looking for something that has a lot of search traffic and crappy answers. The more traffic and the crappy of the answer, the more you're going to hit pay dirt. OK, and then you OK, I got my first answer that how to find the opportunity in gap. My second question was those three key words you find in the Sumo. I want to apply in my SEO search. My site doesn't come on Google naturally, so I want to make my messaging very clear using the words what Google understands. So how do I find those three words branding and relevance? Like, what do I research or finding those three keywords? You do literally what we just do right now, which is just try keep typing until you find the three words that everybody is using to find what it is they're looking for. It's not always intuitive. It's just. And what I would suggest that everyone do is slow type. You guys know, slow typing in Google, you just don't let it. Auto completion will do most of the work for you. By virtue of auto completion, it will tell you what the most popular search phrases are. So if you type in branding wellness and you'll see a bunch of options there. And pick the one that sounds right for you. So slow type Google help you and then you click on that and like, wow, here it is. These are the words. Now it could be that there are garbage, and then you'll find an article that says some different word health and wellness branding. Let's just say that's what it says. Then then you search that, and if that gives you the results that you want, then that becomes your three keyword search. Does that make sense? Yeah, the slow search is helping, it's showing lots of bold type. Mm-hmm Gotcha thank you, Chris. You're very welcome. OK Irving, back to you. So I got six people here. Uh, I got Jeff Baldwin, Wesley. I have no idea. You say that renacci. OK, hold on. Hold on. Go, go. Search you up all now. Let's see what he's doing. Oh, all I get is like the main website, I don't actually get him, I get return of the cafe racer. OK, so this is not going to happen in real time since I don't know anything about cafe racers. So what you want to do is you want to go down the rabbit hole, you search on an Instagram, you search everywhere and you see what is being said by whom and you. Then you look to see if there's a viable business model there, as far as you can tell. There are other sites that can help you determine what kind of business or how much advertising they're spending. Then by virtue of how much money they're spending advertising, it can give you some insight into the possible revenue that they're making. And then you can see like, OK, there's a market here. Look, I didn't even know what a cafe racer is, so this is a very narrow market. What is the cafe racer? It's a type, it's just a style of motorcycle. Mm-hmm If you give me two seconds, I saw it. They look really cool. Oh, OK. Yeah, if you just type in cafe racer on Google, you'll see like, I actually I bailed them out of my garage. OK, so it's just something I can't talk about well, with people, hence why I chose that niche. But before then, I just only talked to real estate agents, but I really couldn't care less about anything in real estate. Yes so are there clothing brands and accessories and manufacturers that service the cafe racer industry? Yes and manufacturing like parts and all that components, that's who you want to work with, right? I was primarily trying to target the people like I pay the garage to build this bike for me. So I was trying to get those garages to help them attract more clients that want to build as opposed to doing it themselves. OK, so there's a whole ecosystem here, right? Like if you do it yourself, you could buy parts and then there's clothing and products related to this and the people actually build the custom bikes for people. Yeah, so when you go to a custom shop like this, is it a big shop? Do you see a lot of people there? Does it look like there's a lot of money moving around? And the two that I know that are big, that is, Yes. And if you were to guess how much volume or business they would do in a year, what revenue do you think they're making? Are from the research I've done in the area, we're looking at $4 million a year in revenue. OK, how many of those businesses exist in the area that you're targeting? How many businesses do I know that exists in that area? Yeah in the $4 million range? I probably. Shoot 10. More than that. 200 Less than that. I don't I don't remember the exact number, I think it was less than 100. It was like less than 100. It was less than 100 like 90. Yeah, we'll see. So there are 90 businesses that do $4 million of business you could corner the market for million business. Isn't that big of a business to be hiring people? Right, so you've got to think about that, too, because if you use a simple formula, 10% is spent on marketing right for the entire year, so their entire marketing budget branding budget might be 400 k. Mm-hmm And that's for the entire year. So initiative for them might be how many different projects are going to do the year, maybe 10. Might be like, yeah, maybe my math is right here, it's 400 it's 40 k, I don't know, I'm not. I'm not so sharp right now. 10% of a million is 10,040 ks out 400 k, so it's 40,000 that they're going to spend a year and they can do 10 different projects, possibly so their budget might be 4K. Can you make a living doing projects for k at a time? Yeah OK. Maybe it's still viable then. But I would focus on the entire business ecosystem and not just the people who build them. Yeah, because I was also going to do something very similar to Jennifer and like this one company, all they do is make leather gloves for motorcycles. And in that style, like in all their ads and stuff that they make like they have cafe racers. It's like I was going to like best gloves in their category and then just go down the line, make some sort of badge or. And then put it out there, see what happens and then step four however long you can create content around you reviewing different products and talking about it so that people in the cafe racers like, you know, we've got to work with Irving because his audience is ginormous. And that's how you build your authority. Right? Yeah. Yeah, you could do that. See, OK. All right. Just can I just say that the way that I'm thinking about the award since you were talking about doing that too? I do not count on making any money or return and even getting maybe not even getting leads on it for like probably like a few years. It's a long it's really a long, long, long kind of play. It is a long term place so that maybe when my hands give out and I can't really do the design, I can do brand audits or something like that because I would love that. That would be fun. So I'm just positioning myself for the future. So if you're looking to get leads now, it's not going to might not do that. So I'm running out of time, everybody. You guys can go back, channel on me and then just do that because I got to get through Stephanie. But I want to point out something. So Jennifer, this idea is really big and it's a lot of work. What I heard from Irving and his idea is a lot more tangible because you could just review and talk about things and share his informed opinion as an end user and everybody listening can be in between. So Jennifer's first minimum viable product of her award show is that she just rips apart packaging like one package at a time and talks about it, talks about the beauty, what it does, the sales and researching in a very short amount of time, Jennifer can be seen as a top 10 leading expert in beauty packaging. Without even doing the words so so you can ramp up really fast, right? So I think there's a point of entry for anyone from where Irving was talking about it to all the way up to where Jennifer is talking about, which requires a lot of effort and energy to get there. So think about that, Stephanie, you have the last question. OK, so thank you. So to Mary, this whole strategy with your previous call that you didn't back in June. June 2nd. So would you suggest that we do the whole incognito mode? Google search first for our three things, then from there, but Sumo to even get to like, OK, who's the top people? Yeah so I just wanted to ask that, yeah, it's almost like these calls are connected. It's kind of weird. But Stephanie, yeah, this is your first call. You might want to go back to the last call, call 1. You're like, wait a minute, didn't you just talk about this? Yes, I did. I connected. OK, so that's a good strategy. OK, all right. Yes, you got it. 100% So we want to develop, at least in the eyes of our prospects, that we're the experts in a particular category. We want that. We all should want that because then you don't have to compete on price. That word of mouth advertising will work for you. You'll be sought after and it'll be much easier for you to convert and sell. Could you guys just imagine for a second? I just want you to imagine something. Imagine yourself on a TV show. All of you just play with me here. Let's say it's on the Food Network. If you're in food packaging or you're an analyst or something where CNN calls you all the time to talk about beauty packaging. Just imagine what that would be like Anderson Cooper is like, so yeah, we're bringing in Jennifer. Jennifer, what do you think about the latest launch of this thing. Is there such an uproar? Well, Anderson, Jennifer says, well, based on the studies I've produced xy z, this is what's happening and this is why millennials are responding to it and this is what they've tapped into. Imagine that what that would do for your business. All right, so Phyllis is like sitting there rubbing elbows with Bobby Flay and everybody else in the world, and she's just synonymous. She's on Oprah talking about barbecue and what barbecue? That's where you guys all want to be. So there's some challenges coming, by the way. It's right. Once you identify your niche, I'm going to challenge you to be on three podcasts talking about this. Get yourself invited to three podcasts. OK, and before you can get invited to the podcast, you've got to get your mic game on. OK, so there's more steps here, so we're going to do some work. So when OK, with that deep breath, ok? Yes OK, let's get it. Let's do it. Let's get this bag. It's not going to do it by itself. I'm telling you right now it's just not waiting to get help with my mic setup. Chris, I apologize. Yes from you. Yes, I will try. Who also then offered to help who? Then I have to drop the ball again. So yes, to answer for you, I had to wait for Cody to tell me what the mid setup is, and I just got so busy. I'm sorry you harass me. I give you permission to harass me until I've been able to satisfactorily answer the question. OK, OK, I'll take you up on it. Yes yes, Yes. Let's just say he said podcast. And I'm like, Oh yeah, right. Audio audio. You got it. OK if you are currently feeling like I'm an expert at something I would love for you to do live coaching on Clubhouse. Not a lot of effort, just practice. Phyllis, if you have a friend who's in the restaurant space that's doing barbecue. I would love for you to have a conversation with this person. Interview them and just ask lots of questions you interviews on Monday. Bravo Bravo. There you go. OK, I want you guys all to go out there and practice and demonstrate your knowledge. There's nothing. That establishes your expertise better than doing real time live coaching. Small group doesn't matter. Do it. In a movie up there. OK are you trying to pull a fast one out of me, did you? And I did. Girl, you get it. Go ahead. And I'm only asking because I see my question resonated with other people in the chat. And the question is, where you serious about damning you about the 1,000 Ig followers? If we don't have one to DM you? Yes here's what we're going to do. I shouldn't have said it. I'm a person of my word. Here's what I'm going to do on circle. You're like, hey, do you have 1,000 followers yet? Chris is going to help all of us. I will do a call just with you guys and we'll figure out how to get there. It is not that hard to get 1,000 followers. I need you to start telling yourself that every single day. It is not that hard to get 1,000 followers. I do have to show up. I have to be myself and I have to do it consistently. It's all it'll take. And I'll tell you how to do it. OK, I'll tell you how to do it. Not not right now, but I will tell you, so we'll do a special call, help all of you. OK And the secret right now, secret, I'm going to tell you right now if you write a really good carousel that's well designed, if you send it to me, it's good. I will post it, and I'll get you probably a couple of right away. Yeah OK, I will do it, but it's got to be good. And it's got to fit the audience that I speak to. So if you do something like it's too weird for my, for my market, I'm not going to post it, ok? It has to be good. All right. OK Yeah. Yeah all right. All right. Let's do this. OK, that's it for me. I'm going to hit Stop Recording here, Craig.