Episode 106: Transcript

People Focus, Results Driven Branding

— Speaker 0 00:04 Make it right. The manufacturing podcast over the last Speaker 1 00:10 Number of weeks, we’ve been devoting several make it right podcasts to marketing since the start of 2020 a lot has changed around the globe for manufacturers, even to the point where people are saying that the business landscape is going to be transformed separating into BC 19 and AC 19 before COVID-19 and after COVID-19 this week. I’ll make it right. We’re going to look at marketing with my guest, Scott Aaron, who brings his perspective as a business owner, an author, a speaker, an award winning network marketer, and a 2019 member of the Forbes council or Forbes coaching council rather. So welcome to the show, Scott, great to have you on. Speaker 2 00:53 Oh Janet, it’s so honored and grateful to be here and thank you so much for the opportunity. Speaker 1 00:58 My pleasure. So I’d like to cut right to the chase. I know you got into business at a very young age. You were thrown into a leadership role taking over the running and the management of your families. So, tell me about that learning curve at the age of 19. Speaker 2 01:14 Well, it was one of those things where I think it actually played to my benefit because w w when you’re that young and you’re kind of thrown into the weeds, so to speak, uh, I still wasn’t emotionally mature enough to really understand what was going on. So I didn’t really have anything to compare it to. So I think a lot of the success that I’ve been able to achieve, but also the obstacles that I was able to overcome was because they happened to me at such a young age. And I shared this with someone before that I was at that age, 18 and a half, 19 years old, where you want to make your family proud, you wanna make your parents proud. So if there’s something that’s been kind of thrown in your direction, what do you want to do? You, you want to take it on head first and you want to go full force with it to make sure that you actually end up succeeding. And I, I think my, my young age, uh, definitely played a part in the success. Like I said, uh, I was able to achieve from all of this because I didn’t see it as anything more than doing what was necessary to keep my family going. Speaker 1 02:29 Right. And I’m sure that you must have learned some things and people must’ve supported you because you were at that young age and, and people were just like, okay, we got to really help this guy out. But what were the key three key learnings that you gained from that experience? Speaker 2 02:44 Well, number one was you, leadership is not, not taught, it’s learned. So, you know, the, the, the backstory was my father, obviously he got incarcerated for two and a half years in federal prison and that’s what actually got me into the fitness industry and taking over the family business. And I was always a team player, loved team sports, but I didn’t really know what it meant to be a leader. So, you know, the first big thing is I had to learn how to be a leader at a young age because you know, everybody was at least eight to 10 years, my senior. So you have to understand me coming into this and having general managers and managers and instructors that were all in their late twenties thirties and forties I’m a 19 year old kid coming into this and they had to take me seriously. Speaker 2 03:32 So I had to show them how serious I was. The other thing was managing a business and it wasn’t about me managing my employees. It had nothing to do with the, I wanted my employees to be their own individuals. I wanted us to be a team. But you do have to manage the aspects of the business, which are the inner workings, the outer workings, the the members, the, the different dynamics that go into that. So I think that’s something that I also had to learn very early on in this. But the third and probably the most important thing is being resilient. You know when you’re, when you’re in this kind of situation where you don’t know what to expect, you don’t know their perceived outcome. You have to learn how to be resilient because there are going to be things thrown your way. There are going to be things that you’re not really sure. How am I going to overcome this that you, you just have to keep moving forward. And I tell people all the time, whether it’s a, whether you’re moving forward a millimeter or a mile, as long as you keep moving forward, you will get through everything. S — — o I think understanding what leadership really is, understanding how to manage a business, but also being resilient through the process. I think those are the three keys that that helped me through the entire situation. Speaker 1 04:55 where does the establishing and locking in of your personal brand come in? Because I know you’re really big on personal brand and how, I mean this is a manufacturing podcast. So what role does personal brands play in leadership and moving your manufacturing company forward and engaging with your employees and your clients? Speaker 2 05:19 Well, everything. I mean, the way that you do one thing is the way that you do everything. So, and I think you and I talked about this initially, whether you’re manufacturing a product, a good or a service, you’re also manufacturing and environment within that that people work with. You’re manufacturing a culture, you’re manufacturing leadership, uh, and, and chains of command. So understanding that whole aspect. Have you, you know, and this is something we also talked about, you know, when people think the word manufacturing, they think of a production lines. They think of a PR producing something. Manufacturing could be anything. You can manufacture, uh, a product, a good a service, a culture, a community. All of those things are manufactured. So understanding what you want to achieve, but understanding from, from a foundational, a point of view, an aspect about the importance of building that personal brand because your brand is a representation of everything. And, and I don’t believe that you can manufacturer a brand. I think that’s something that actually has to come about organically and naturally. Anyone that’s been following me on social media for the last seven years, I’ve been showing up the same way every single day for the last seven years. So that’s almost 2020 800 days straight of showing up the right way. That’s how you’re going to organically start to build a brand. Speaker 1 07:12 So if, if I’m a manufacturing leader and I haven’t really thought that much about my personal brand, but you know, if business is changing that drastically personal brand as a leader is going to be very important as is your brand as a manufacturing company, how do you get started from the top working your way down, establishing that personal brand that reflects your business? Speaker 2 07:39 Well, I think you have to ask yourself a question. You know, who am I looking to attract to my brand? Because I tell this to people all the time. Even when you’re, you’re, you’re putting your brand out on social media, you’re talking about your company and the products and the goods that you sell out on social media. The problem that most people have, Janet, is they talk about things that they want to talk about. Not actually what the end user, consumer or customer wants to hear. So you really have to put yourself in the shoes of the end buyer. You have to put yourself in the shoes of that company that could utilize your product, good or service that you’re manufacturing. Because when you can start to put yourself in the shoes of that individual of that company, then your brand will naturally start to come across as it should very genuinely, authentically and real where you’re not selling and telling. Speaker 2 08:43 You’re doing more asking and listening because we don’t know what people want until we ask them. And prime example, I posted something on LinkedIn about a week ago and I was talking about the aspects of how to grow a business and how to grow a brand. And I simply finished the video asking people, what is the number one thing that you are struggling with right now in your business? So what do you think that did that opened up the door to these other business owners that were sharing with me what they were struggling. And then what I can do is I can reverse engineer that and start developing content built around my brand that speaks directly to their problem. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So, so for any manufacturing company, that’s the question that you need to start asking yourself, you know, what does my end user, whoever that is, whatever company that is, what do they actually want to hear instead of what do I want to say? Speaker 2 09:50 and then how do you make your personal brand reflect what it is that end user is looking for? Well, I think it’s actually sitting down and I like — — to reverse engineer things. And I also, I like to think of things with the end in mind. So I’m going to give you an example. So if someone or a business has a goal of making a million dollars this year, so your business goal, I want to make a million dollars. So that should be the first thing that you focus on, that the end goal, your end goal is making a million dollars. Now on the other end, where’s your business right now? So what kind of money is your business bringing in right now? Now you’ve created where you are right now and where you want to be. Now all you have to do is reverse engineer what it’s going to take to fill in that timeline before. Speaker 2 10:50 So I’ll get like, so just to dive a little bit deeper, if my business, if my company I wanted to to make a million dollars this year, I know exactly how I can do it because I know exactly how much the cost of my goods and services are. And I basically just write a little timeline. Here’s what I need to sell of this. Here’s what I need to sell of this. Here’s what I need to have of this. And most importantly, I break things down per month. So if someone, if a company wants to make a million dollars a year, that’s $83,300 a month. So now you know how much money you need to make per month, then you break that down to how much money per week, which is about $21,000 a week. What does your business need to create? What do you need to do? What do you need to sell in order to hit those numbers? So clarity is everything. If you don’t know exactly what you want to achieve and you haven’t broken down how to do it, my question to you is, how are you ever going to achieve it? Speaker 2 12:01 and in that, that whole equation too is to make sure that you’re selling what it is that the buyer is actually looking for. I mean, that’s my, my business and the products that I know sell came out of demand. It was never my intent to create the business that I’ve created. I was actually just going about my business building a whole separate business. This, this was, I wasn’t even supposed to be doing this, but so I, I was, I was getting such traction with what I was doing for a business outside of what I’m doing now. I was, I reached out to a friend of mine and I said, Joey, listen, you got to get on LinkedIn and I want you to do these few things that I’ve been doing to get results. And I said, let me know what happens. And a week later he texted me and he said, call me. Speaker 2 12:59 And I said, okay. So I called him, I said, what’s up? And he goes, dude, whatever you been doing, he goes, this really works. You should create something from this. A system, videos, products. And that was kind of like my light bulb moment because the best companies sometimes are created by accident, but really on purpose. But number two, the most successful companies are actually successful. Not because they have the best products in the world, but because their product is solving the needs or a problem that a lot of people have. So the success that my company has been having is because there is a growing problem and there is a void in a lot of businesses that my company can actually fill that void to help them succeed better. One of the things that you talk about, Scott, is the art of human connection. And you say it is absolutely the best business tool, business building tool that is available out there. Speaker 2 14:04 So we’ve got a global workplace out there. Okay. And if you’ve got your personal brand and you know who you are and what you represent, how do you get out there and start making those strong connections. And I know that you’re big on using LinkedIn and LinkedIn’s got this like apparently a 94% effectiveness for content distribution and connection. So talk about how you reach out and touch someone really well. I have something called, uh, it’s the layer cake of LinkedIn and it’s four key aspects. And you know, the way that I, I’m a big visual person. So forever, whoever is listening to this right now, I want you to imagine a a four tier wedding cake where you have the big tier at the bottom and then you have the smaller tier on top, a smaller tier on top, and then you have the couple on top of the cake as the fourth tier. Now everything, the base, the foundation of what you’re going to do on LinkedIn always starts with your profile. Speaker 3 15:14 Okay? Speaker 2 15:15 Always, because if your profile is not filled ou — — t correctly, you’re invisible. What, what LinkedIn, when they were bought, when LinkedIn was bought out by Microsoft four years ago, they did a genius thing. They embedded search engine optimization onto all of our profiles, just like Google or Yahoo or Bing or Amazon, where if you had specific keywords on your profile, because people are now using it like a search engine, you would appear in searches and people would actually go to your profile and they would visit it. They would see what you did and see if they could utilize your service. But if that’s not filled out correctly, you’re invisible. So if anyone, and this is not a plug, but if anyone does go to my website, Scott aaron.net and you click on free info graphic at the top right? I have something you can download. It’s the six steps to perfecting your profile and it’s going to give you the basics and the outline of how to have your profile structured the right way. Speaker 2 16:14 Um, having a professional headshot, uh, what your title should be, the experience section, your, your education licenses and certifications. Uh, any volunteer work that you’ve done, gathering personal recommendations and how that helps your profile. So it all starts with your profile. The second tier is actually defining your avatar, building your network. Because the fact is, I’ve, I’ve built my network from about 500 connections to nearly 28,000 in the last four years and I haven’t done that with any gimmicks. I haven’t done any, any schemes on a, you know, a follow me and I’ll follow you type stuff. It’s been organically growing every single day and it does still, and it’s because you want to invite people into your network, but you also want to be invited into a network where you can actually network with people. I follow the teachings of something called the science of getting rich by Wallace D waddles. Speaker 2 17:14 And what that teaching talks about is instead of living in a world of competition and comparison, live in a world of creation and collaboration. So when you’re on LinkedIn, you want to seek to connect with that mirror image of yourself. Who is that end user? Who is the consumer? What industry are they in? Where I can have that relatable conversation. So making sure that you are crystal clear on who you want to connect with. The third tier is messaging and this is where the wheels fall off because if you’ve spent any time on LinkedIn, I’m sure that you’ve gotten one of those horrendous drunk a log messages where someone has sent you 18 paragraphs long of wanting to connect with you and sell you and pitch you, send you links to go to schedule a call, literally verbal vomiting all over you. That is not the way to bring someone closer to you. Speaker 2 18:16 That is the quickest way to push someone further away. So I have something called the magic formula. It’s a three step process. Step one, if you’re going to message someone, can you just state their name? So you messaged them, Hey Janet, great to connect with you. Step two, you let them know why you’re reaching out without trying to sell or pitch them. Just seeking to connect. So if I was on there, you know, I always look to connect with other business coaches, other podcasts, there’s other speakers, authors. So I would say, you know, Janet, you know, uh, you know, great to connect with you. I noticed that you also have a business podcast as do I, and I would love to connect with you, learn more about what you’re doing, share more about what I’m doing to see how we can best support each other here on LinkedIn. Speaker 2 19:03 Now I’ve done two things there. Number one, I’ve bridged the gap between how we know each other. I’ve bridged the gap of that connecting point where Janet reads that message. She’s going to say, Oh, that makes sense. He’s got a business podcast. I have a business podcast. That’s why he’s reaching out. But I used one of the most important words in the English language. Janet, do you know what that word is? No support. Oh, it’s been proven. When someone just reads the word support and they hear it in their head, it, it causes a release of something called oxytocin, which is the feel good chemical that your brain produces, just like endorphins or dopamine or cortisol. So when someone reads the word support, it’s comforting. It’s actually bringing that person closer to you instead of pushing them further away. And then you finish with something called a call to a — — ction, a CTA you have to ask in order to get. Speaker 2 20:10 So I tell people you have to ask to Gett. So if I was just to say, Hey Janet, let me know when’s good for you. You’re never going to tell me because I never asked. That’s right. Yeah. But if I, but if I said, Janet, when do you have time this week or next week for a call? Then you’re going to respond back with an answer. So you state their name, reason for reaching out and any time to connect because that’s how you create human connection. When you’re not trying to sell or pitch someone, you actually want to connect with them. Now, the fourth and most important part, that little cherry on top is content creation, content creation. Just like you said, 94% of marketers are distributing content on that platform and people are gobbling it up right now. It’s the number one platform to build your brand organically by just putting the right kind of content out there. Speaker 2 21:03 So how often these are the two questions I get. How often do I post content and what should I say? Well, the first answer is you should post one piece of content a day. It’s not Facebook or Instagram where you got to post 18 times a day, one post a day. I don’t care if it’s a post, I don’t care if it’s a video, an article, or a discussion in a group. Just put out a piece of content a day. Number two, make sure that content does one of two things, educates or informs. You’re not looking to sell. You’re looking to educate your audience. You’re looking to inform your audience because this is going to go back to something that Janet, that we talked about way in the beginning. Don’t post content that you want to talk about post content that people actually want to hear. Speaker 2 22:04 And the way that you gather that is just like I said earlier, ask a question, what is your business struggling most with? What are you looking to improve? Then your audience is actually telling you what they’re struggling with, what they need to improve with what’s working, and then you can build content around that. So if I was to break down LinkedIn, very simply and four things, that would be the four steps or the layer cake of LinkedIn that would be best use it. The very bare bone basic way. Hmm. Okay. I’m going to throw this out at you and I don’t know whether they will throw you into the loop or not, but can you share some key takeaways for manufacturers that can help move them along the path to getting into the post covert 19 world, whatever that is going to be from the standpoint of being a manufacturing leader. Speaker 2 22:56 Well, do things that other people aren’t doing. Reinvent yourself. You know what? What is your competition doing? What are other companies doing? Be a thought leader. So if you’re, if you’re a manufacturer and you manufacture a good a product or a service that solves the problem, have someone else talk about it. What does your business do? Educate your audience, and this goes back to what I just said. If you really want to grow your business, you want to pivot, you want to take advantage of what’s going on with Cobra 19 be as visible as you can. Show up every single day on social media. Again, if it’s Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, wherever you are, show up. Educate your audience. Let them know how you can help people. Let them know that you’re available. Let them know what do, how do you serve your clients? Because it’s not about you, it’s about them. It’s about how you can help other people. You want to make millions and you want to make billions. And if you have found a way to serve those that many people, that’s how you can make millions and billions of dollars when you solve the problem of a lot of people. So making sure that you’re visible, you are present, you’re putting yourself out there. And you’re letting people know the problems that you help solve. Hmm. Speaker 1 24:17 Excellent. Scott, that’s pretty clear. Thank you. Thank you, Jenna. Yeah, that’s a, I think, you know, when you put it in a framework like that, it’s, if you can break it down into something that’s that simple. And I think we get running around in our squirrel brains and we’re like, Oh my God, this is what my product does and dah, dah, dah. And you end up trying to sell when the answer is no, my product actually helps people do this and this is what they want to do. And they’ve told me that’s what they want it to do. So I just have to let them know we can help — — them and get out there and get on social media and tell people, even if, I guess you’re the CEO of the company, you should be out there saying we’ve got support and help for you. Speaker 2 25:03 Well the fact is, and I think you started to say this beautifully, as human beings, what do we do best? We’re, we’re best at taking something that’s very simple and making it over complicated. So, you know, nothing I said is, is groundbreaking. It’s just the truth. But what most people do is like, well, there has to be something else to that. Speaker 1 25:24 Yeah. It can’t be that easy, Scott. Come on. Speaker 2 25:27 It’s gotta be more difficult. No, the only, the only thing that’s difficult are the things that you make difficult. So if it’s something that’s quote unquote, too easy, it’s too good to be true. No, no. That’s a scam. It’s too easy. It can’t be that simple. No, it is that easy. Every you have to build your business, your brand, and your impact with ease. You should not build it with force. You should not be putting walls of resistance, uptake the walls down. Take the easy road in, in, in, in that the easy road. It’s not about taking shortcuts. W what’s the easiest road? The easiest road is just showing up genuinely and authentically every single day. Not looking to pitch or sell, but just looking to leave people better. That’s what it’s all about. Look to leave people better. Speaker 1 26:18 And Scott, I think we’ll leave it right there. That is perfect. Thanks so much for your stories and your insights today. Speaker 2 26:23 Well, Janet, thank you again for the opportunity and just grateful again to be here. Speaker 1 26:28 I hope we get a chance to speak again. Scott, Aaron. Yeah. Scott Aaron is a business owner. He’s an author, a speaker, and award winning network marketer, and he is a 2019 member of the Forbes coaching council. You can find his book wherever books are sold. It’s called the book for network marketing, and you can also check out Scott aaron.net every week. The Make It Right podcast is brought to you by Kevin Snoop. He’s a leadership advisor and author of the bestselling book, make it right, five steps to align your manufacturing business from the frontline to the bottom line. You can find us on Twitter and LinkedIn and it’d be great if you’d subscribe and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues. We’re on iTunes, Google play, Stitcher, Spotify, and YouTube. I’m Janet Eastman thanks very much for listening to Make It Right. I hope you have a great week.