MicroFamous

Introverts are constantly labeled incorrectly, and associated with a ton of negative perceptions - from being gruff, irritable and dismissive, to hating people and abhorring any type of social situation. 

To sum it up, introverts are accused of being total a-holes, not being able to handle people and being poor communicators, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. 

How do we combat and overcome these misperceptions?  

We have to understand ourselves, set boundaries around our limits, observe the things that cause us to hit our energy wall sooner and mitigate our exposure.  

In business and marketing, we don’t have to be defined by the negative connotations of being an introvert. We can build systems around us that work with our personalities and allow us to achieve the success we want without changing who we are. 

In today’s episode, I talk about how to practically avoid being misjudged and misperceived as an introvert.

Behind the success of any high growth coach and consultant, there are 3 ingredients that show up over and over again. 

Their ability to get massive traction isn’t about doubling down, it also hinges on taking advantage of specific external factors, catching a wave and riding it all the way to influence. 

In this episode, I talk about 3 important external elements that lead to high growth, and how to tap into them. 

Let’s get into it!

You'll meet some amazing people through podcasting. People who might become mentors, referral partners, even lifelong friends. I know I have.

That's a big part of why podcasting changed my life. It isn't just the level of influence built, it's the relationships I formed along the way.

So in this solo episode, I cover a handful of tactics to turn influencers into personal friends through podcasting and personal, human follow up.

Let's jump in!

• Have a deep, meaningful conversation
• Get them sharing their opinions by asking good questions, even if you're the guest
• Ask the Strategic Intro question
• Follow up with something thoughtful - a thank you note, a gift, an actual introduction
• Connect on social media, reach out periodically with a simple, personal message
• Comment on their stuff, make them feel special

These are very simple things we can do to make the business more human. And the results can be life-changing. One of my most important mentors came into my life through podcasting, he followed up by sending me a book, and we had a deep, meaningful conversation that turned into an ongoing relationship.

It’s easy to get caught up in the chase for attention, and the world we live in is very geared toward getting attention. That includes almost all the marketing advice we get today.

So I hope this episode is a counterweight to that obsessive focus on attention at the expense of real, enduring influence.

We’ll explore 3 areas in coaching/consulting businesses where influence makes everything easier, and if you’ve wondered how to get to the next level, make sure to check out #3 because I give a couple specific examples from the world of thought leaders and influencers.

Let’s jump in!

Sales

Influence can completely eliminate any trust issues. If you’re known as THE go-to person for the problem you solve, or if you have a controversial point of view on the problem that the right people agree with, it’s assumed that you have the best solution to that problem.

Influence is a different way to bridge the gap without relying on your sales skills.

Because skills don’t scale. Influence scales. Influence makes it easier to persuade on a mass level, or persuade from a distance.

Any good salesperson can sell face to face, others are better at groups than one-on-one, some sell better from stage, but it’s all face-to-face. When you shift to marketing and selling online, it’s a different game. Influence allows you to persuade from a distance, without having to be there presenting, building trust and answering objections face to face.

The reason people will go out and buy the latest Simon Sinek, Brene Brown or Seth Godin book is because they’re famously influential. They’ve worked hard to build influence and become known in their spaces.

Marketing

When the goal shifts from vague goals like “exposure” or “getting your name out there” to becoming famously influential, it makes your decisions easier. Decisions about where to focus, what to promote, what to say, how to say it.

Without knowing that the goal is building influence, it’s easy to get serious shiny object syndrome and spend our time tinkering. But moving from thing to tactic to tactic doesn’t build influence. Unless tinkering with tactics is part of your brand, all that tinkering can actually lower people’s respect for you and lower your level of influence.

When you have influence, you can even reach people with a clear, but less-than-compelling message. Look at Tony Robbins. He hasn’t had to change his core idea of personal transformation since the 80s. What was once a startling, new idea - that you can change in an instant - isn’t so new and startling anymore. But he’s built enough influence in the space that he doesn’t need it to be new and startling, he just has to be CLEAR.

Clear and straightforward messaging is a luxury of those who have already built influence. They’re not struggling to cut through the noise as much, because they already have influence. They’re already known. People give them the benefit of the doubt, because there’s already a level of trust.

Next Level Opportunities

Often, what separates us from the next level is not an accumulation of small things, but catching some new wave, some new opportunity that comes at the right time.

Tony Robbins is a great example, as his level of influence created an opportunity in a new category called infomercials, right when infomercials were poised to explode.

Another example is Jenna Kutcher, who built her influence on Instagram. Now that she has an audience and has enough influence with them that they listen to her recommendations and take them seriously, she can be one of the top affiliates for folks like Amy Porterfield.

Once we are famously influential in our space, even if it’s a small space, it creates new opportunities. So influence...

This week's episode is in response to a question from one of our email subscribers, "If I am on a podcast or doing a virtual presentation - how do I get people to identify themselves as leads? In other words - how do I leverage that event for lead generation?"

It's such a great question because it gets right to the heart of our marketing system - our message, our point of view and our offer.

So we'll go deep into those 3 categories, pull some examples from folks like Tim Ferris, and hopefully you'll come away with some aha moments and tangible things to work on!

1. A Clear & Compelling Idea that speaks deeply to the right people. The best guests know who they serve, the problem they solve and exactly why the right person should work with them. So on the receiving end of that message, the right person is saying to themselves, “Wow, that’s me! I have that exact problem!”

Look at Tim Ferris. He has an amazing post where he and one of his team breaks down the launch plan for the 4 Hour Body. He talks about his guest posting strategy, which often featured content written specifically for that blog that wasn’t included in the book, but was consistent with the Clear & Compelling Idea of the book.

Tim understands his core audience and the many sub-groups within that audience. He will write specific chapters of his books with specific sub-groups of his audience in mind, and then use those chapters to market to that subgroup with laser focus. But it all serves one idea - the Clear & Compelling Idea of the book. It’s not just random content thrown in to get attention. It all leads to the same place.

1. Unique and sometimes controversial point of view on the problem. As Chris Lochhead says, if you can reframe the problem - describing the problem in a new and different way, it’s assumed that you have the solution. For anyone who now sees the problem the way you do, you are now the natural choice for the solution to the problem.

But if you describe the problem in the same way everyone else does, you’re starting from a disadvantage. You have to work uphill to establish that your solution is different, because it comes from the same foundation as everyone else, the same perspective on the problem.

Work to uncover and refine your opinions until they become razor sharp and positively polarizing, then build your interviews and presentations around those opinions. They lead to your Buying Beliefs, and the more Buying Beliefs people agree with you on, the closer they are to becoming an ideal client.

What does it mean to be positively polarizing? A good example is a client, Lars Hedenborg, who coaches real estate team leaders. They are often overworked and feel underpaid, and many have teams that actually take profit out of their pocket while adding work, but they’re trapped by the ego drive of the top line numbers that their team does.

Lars has a polarizing message, which is to focus on the bottom line, including the actual lifestyle you’re living as a team leader, and rebuild the business on a model that’s actually scalable and sustainable. We’re playing with the messaging right now, but we’re tentatively calling it the Scalable Team, a new model for how teams are built and structured to maximize both profit and lifestyle of the team leader.

Now that could come across as a very negative message - especially if he put all his focus on the smoke and mirrors and ego in the team world. But in the end, any message, no matter how negative, can ultimately be a positive message, because it’s not about trashing everything that’s out there now.

Lars is on a mission to help team leaders create a better lifestyle and more profit. It just happens that letting go of the ego is one of the first steps in building...

The algorithm has changed the rules of the game so drastically on social media that we’re literally playing a new game. But our mindset towards social media has not caught up to the new game.

Followers and friends have become vanity metrics, and it skews all of our decisions in our marketing. We need to adopt a new mindset and treat social media according to the reach they’re actually giving us, not the vanity metrics.

There are 2 directions we can go.

1. Give the social media companies what fits their ever-changing description of “engaging content” - even if it means pretending to be something we’re not.
2. Focus on other forms of marketing where there is no algorithm OR where the description of engaging content fits our personality better. 

The biggest fear in launching a podcast is that it fails to attract an audience and falls flat.

In this episode I’m going to pull back the curtain and share the biggest mistakes I’ve uncovered in 5 years of launching podcasts for super niche business coaches and consultants.

There’s no theory here, just real mistakes real people make in launching their podcasts and how to avoid them. Enjoy!

I sent out an email asking for some tough questions for the podcast, and I got some amazing ones. I wanted to answer a great one today in the show. 

The question comes from Jim, “How can I be recognized and paid as an expert, without calling myself an expert, guru, genius or other nonsense.”

So I want to give some practical examples where it’s easy to stray into puffery and hype without even realizing it, because we see so much of this everyday in the coaching and consulting world.

When it comes to puffery, I learned a great rule of thumb from Frank, my mentor at my last agency, who I had on the show last week.

Here’s the Rule: Make Zero Claims the Reader Could Disagree With.

This means we drop any adjectives or other types of language that don’t keep the reader shaking their head Yes as they read. Anything that makes them go, “I don’t know about that..” needs to be examined and potentially removed.

As Seth Godin says, the web is incredibly distrustful. People don’t know what or who to believe. So showing up and claiming that you’re more of an expert or guru than others isn’t helping you like you might think. It’s creating resistance and raising suspicion because you’re saying something they can’t verify. Why are you having to talk yourself up?

I want to give you some examples because this can be hard to grasp at first, but once you see this kind of puffery, you’ll see it everywhere. Let’s look at John Maxwell’s site, where he is described as “#1 New York Times bestselling author and world-renowned leadership expert.”

Sounds fine at first, but look closer.

Out of the 3 elements in that statement, only ONE is a verifiable fact. The other two elements are opinions at best, and one is definitely puffery.

What does “world-renowned'' mean, and whose opinion is that? What about leadership “expert.” Certainly if you know John Maxwell and have read his books on leadership, you’d agree that he’s a leadership expert. 

But if you hadn’t heard of him and were reading this for the first time, would you nod your head along in agreement? Of course not.

So if we do this in our marketing, especially in the things people see when they come across us for the first time, we’re just creating resistance.

So what would I put on the website if I were in charge of John Maxwell’s marketing?

“#1 New York Times bestselling author and International Speaker on the Subject of Leadership”

You could also say something like “America’s Leadership Expert” as long as there were other forms of proof nearby. We’ll touch on that later. 

The point here is that John Maxwell gets paid for what he IS, not what he claims to be.

One way I follow through on this is that I call myself an author, not a “bestselling” author.

What does best-selling even mean? Best-selling according to who?

That’s become so abused in this space that I don’t use it. I call myself an author. I have a book on Amazon, you can literally see a picture of the big on the front page of my website. It’s not something a reader can disagree with. Now, if you hit #1 on the New York Times best-seller list, feel free to tell us. That’s a verifiable fact, and it leads us to another rule of thumb.

If You Must Make a Claim that the Reader Could Disagree With, Let Someone Else Say It. 

When the New York Times says you’re a best-seller, people say, “wow that’s impressive.” It’s a credible third party saying you are a best-selling author, not an unverifiable claim coming from you.

Another example of this is with expert or ninja...

The best and most effective copywriting is good because it’s authentic, genuine and extremely one-to-one personal and effortlessly generates trust. It’s completely different from what comes from copywriters selling information products online, who rely on cheap tactics like puffery and hype. 

There’s a big difference between the psychology of selling products and marketing professional services. Using the wrong techniques and tactics is costing us sales every single day. 

Sales pages, emails and follow up campaigns that use puffery might actually be turning off the very people you are most driven to serve. 

How do we eliminate puffery from our messaging, and craft an approach to marketing rooted in consultative selling? 

In today’s special episode of MicroFamous, I’m joined by CEO of Vyral Marketing and one of the best copywriters I know, Frank Klesitz. He shares what makes his approach to copywriting so unique and effective. 

3 Things We Learned from Frank Klesitz

• The deep psychological place where puffery comes from and how we fight the urge to use it 
• How to generate authentic urgency without using time-based incentives that have no basis in reality when you’re selling infinite info products 
• The psychological difference between selling services and products 

Getting pitched on podcasts is the foundation of the MicroFamous system, and the key to becoming famously influential to the right people. Podcast hosts are flooded with pitches every single day, and anything that’s poorly written, researched and executed will be ignored. 

By pitching yourself, you’re asking to be featured in a very valuable slot on a podcast. If you add any friction to the pitching process, you hurt your ability to get featured on podcasts that could make a huge impact on your business.

What questions do you need to ask yourself before you go out there and get someone to start pitching you? What level of quality are podcasters looking for? 

I surveyed some of the best people I know in the business podcast space and asked for their pet peeves when it comes to the pitches they’re getting right now, they didn’t hold back. Here are 9 pet peeves of podcasts hosts, and how to make your pitch an easy yes.