How to build your brand by borrowing other people’s knowledge

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This week has been an interesting one for me. Two of my four kids are in a summer camp that lets out at 3pm as opposed to 5:30. As a result I’m “losing” about 13 hours of work.

Fortunately, I got to spend a lot more time on the playground with my kids and it forced me to be even more focused with my work.

Which brings me to my next point, best practices for controlling your attention is also the topic of this week’s episode of the Launch Your Business podcast. I interviewed Nir Eyal, author of Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.

The interview went great, but what happened next gave me the idea for a super valuable tactic to share with you this week.

So, let’s get started.

Today at a glance:

Thought: What can you fix?

Time-saver: Why you should trust your gut.

Tactic: Build your brand by borrowing other people’s knowledge.

Read time: 4.5 minutes

Thought: What can you fix?

“If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” is a valuable proverb when it comes to many aspects of life, but applying it to your business is the fastest route to stagnation or failure. To continue scaling, you’re better off taking an “Innovate or die” approach.

Fortunately, you can innovate your company and scale your revenue by asking former clients one simple question.

“Based on your experience with my company, what could I have done to make you gladly pay twice as much?”

That’s it. That’s all you need to gain valuable information on how you can improve or expand your service offering. I’m not saying you should take every idea. But that one question can reveal blindspots and opportunities that help grow your business and innovate faster than your competitors.

Don’t have any clients yet?

This same approach can be applied to other aspects of your business as well.

What can you fix about your daily schedule?
What can you fix about marketing your services?
What can you fix about your reaction to failure?

You don’t have to wait until things break to fix them.

Proactively looking for innovative ways to improve any aspect of your business – or life – is how we continue to evolve and ascend.

So, what can you fix?

Time-saver: Why you should trust your gut.

As you may already be aware, saying “no” is the ultimate timesaver. But do you already know what clients and opportunities you should say “no” to? I refer to this as a negative customer persona, the traits and characteristics associated with people or organizations you don’t want to work with.

Back when I was a Digital Marketer I decided to stop working with eCommerce companies that didn’t already have customers. Reason being, I wasn’t sure if anyone actually wanted their products and I didn’t want to get blamed for their internal challenges.

Later on I decided I didn’t want to work with alpha-male hustle hard bros. It was exhausting and annoying at the same time.

Remember, even as the seller, you should always be the buyer. Trust your gut. Never enter a contract with someone if you’re not 100% sure you can help them and will actually enjoy working with them.

Your turn. What’s your negative customer persona?

Tactic: Build your brand by borrowing other people’s knowledge.

Last week one of my videos was featured by the LinkedIn News team. As a result the post got more views and one person reached out in regard to working with me.

Here’s where the story gets interesting. I wasn’t even in the video. It was a clip of an interview I conducted with Nir Eyal for my podcast.

And to be honest, I meant to be in the video just to show my face but I forgot to turn my camera on.

Why is this important to you?

Because you can do the exact same thing.

Record video interviews with experts → Share the content on social media → Attract leads and opportunities

The process is ridiculously simple and I highly recommend trying it out, especially when you’re new and still need to establish your credibility and network. I’ll focus on LinkedIn for this walkthrough, but you can use the same approach for other channels too.

So, here’s how you make it happen.

Step 1: Jot down 10-15 people who are experts in your industry that you would like to interview

Ideally these would be people who are active on social media and already sharing valuable content with their audience.

If you have people in your network that would be a good fit, start there. You’re more likely to get a “Yes” from someone who knows you.

However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use this as an opportunity to connect with other experts as well. You just may need to be a bit more patient and strategic with your approach. Start by engaging and commenting on their social media posts, then reach out to them once you establish some rapport.

When it’s time to reach out, send them a simple message:

“Hi Tina. I enjoyed your recent post about Neuromarketing and I’m wondering if you’d be up for a brief Zoom interview about the topic? It should take about 20 minutes and I’m happy to work around your schedule”

Most people should respond to this, even if it’s a no.

Of course, you’re much less likely to get a celebrity or well known influencer to respond so you’ll need to keep that in mind when determining who you’ll reach out to.

But, if you want to swing for the fences, the best time to ask a high-profile expert for an interview is when they have something to promote. For example, they’re releasing a new book or podcast.

Step 2: Ask the right questions

Once you get an expert to agree it’s time to set yourself up for success by asking the right questions during your Zoom interview.

There are two goals with these questions.

Allow your guest to share valuable information
Position yourself as a subject matter expert

The first part is easy, the second involves you asking questions that you can chime in on as well.

Here are a few examples:

What’s a question that almost nobody asks you, but they should, because the answer is so valuable? (You can then chime in with another question people should ask)
What is something that is commonly misunderstood about this industry? (Now’s your chance to mention something else that’s commonly misunderstood and explain it your audience )
What are some of the trends you predict for this industry? (This is a great opportunity to share your predictions as well)

Step 3: Select clips from your interview to share

This part can either be super simple or a bit complicated. For your first post, aim for super simple.

Find a valuable clip from your interview. For example, you asked a smart sounding question and your guest gave a brilliant answer.
Then, edit out that specific clip using a video editing software.

This is where you might get stuck. Don’t.

Worse comes to worse you can find someone on Fiverr to do this for less than $20.

But if you want to do it yourself, aim for simple tools such as iMovie or Descript. You can also edit your videos with YouTube’s tools. (Instructions here)

All these options are free and you can get the hang of it within an hour.

Step 4: Share the content on social media

Now it’s time to reap the rewards of all your efforts.

Start by writing a caption that encourages people to watch your video. You don’t have to go over the top with it but just assume nobody cares until you give them a reason to. You can see how grabbed my audience’s attention with the first line below.

Next, be sure to tag the person you interviewed. This way they’ll get notified and will be more likely to comment on or share your post.

Want a better shot at them sharing it with their audience? Send clips of the videos their way as well.

Remember, this is a great opportunity for them to share their expertise too, and you may end up connecting with members of their network as a result.

Step 5: Focus on the outcomes not just the process
And I’ll have to stop here for a moment.

This is one of those tactics that can be very lucrative for your business, but you’ll need to push through some of the initial challenges in order to reap the benefits.

Specifically: