on the podcast today, I've got Ryan Garrow with us who is going to help us determine our side hustle, talk about goals, figure out that whole stage. So this is going to be really valuable, especially if you're just getting started and looking for some advice before we get too much into it.

Ryan, how are you doing today?

Have him do an awesome Blake. I'm excited to be here.

Ryan just started his own podcast that we'll get to at the end as well. So we're, we're going to learn a lot here. I want to get some quick context on you before we dive into the technical subject matter of side hustling. So if you could just run, walk us through really briefly the story of your career from how you got started to where you got or how you, how you got to where you are now.

Okay. I don't think our podcast is long enough to cover all of it, but we'll touch on some high points. I've, been in the digital marketing space for about a decade, was CEO of a company that got acquired. I'm now working with the company that acquired us. And so my focus is primarily in the eCommerce space.

most of my days advising businesses on how they can grow their e-commerce, what they can do in strategically. well how they can compete better. But I also have five businesses with my wife outside of that. So I do have the side hustle game going where I have a brand selling direct to consumer. I also have a wholesale division on that.

My wife has a retail store that also sells online. I have a wine and beer retailer. I have a marketing company that tests new products into markets. And then we have a, an investment organization for e-commerce technology. So I am literally all over the place.

I have so many questions, but I, I can't dive in just yet cause I have one more contextual question I ask everybody there. So I'm curious what you would say is your professional superpower.

Strategy. Seeing where something can or can't work.

I love it. I can already tell. We're going to get along great. You're so, so simple. Direct, straight forward. It's going to be fantastic. My first question, because I do this every bit as much for me to learn as for the audience to learn so. You've mentioned you've already got several side hustles, especially some e-commerce stuff.

I'm really curious. First off, we can go into how you get the ideas for that, but then I also want to bring up, before I forget, how do you actually get the system in place to like get, somebody to manufacture it if you need that or how, like how do you build those relationships as well? So let's tackle the idea first, then we can get into the more technical side.

for me, the ideas are generally easy. And the problem for me is, is refining. And figuring out which ones are bad and which ones may have potential. so my wife is usually my best filter. She, she shoots down most of my ideas and tells me they're dumb. And so that's my step one. Like, all right, what do you think of this?

Oh, I think it's bad. Okay, let's maybe table that and I'll try to refine that. But I usually, when I'm advising, cause we have 800 employees here, I'm advising on a lot of side hustles internally for people under 30 but what I like to tell people too is if you're going to make a side hustle work, you've got to be passionate about it or have some interest.

Otherwise it's just going to become another job or a grind and you're not going to keep going and pushing when you're not making money. Cause most side hustles in the eCommerce space. You're grinding now and hoping for pay late, or whether you're working to become an influencer or whether you're working to set up an econ business for success and to scale and pay for generations of wealth type thing.

So I think passionate interest is one of the biggest things I would filter an idea through. And then I think secondary below that is. What kind of con connections do you have or what kind of opportunities do you have to...

Welcome to the podcast. Today we have Peter Schroeder who is the head of growth at Onna, and we are going to discuss growth. Maybe it's maybe some other things as well, but first and foremost, let's just get some context on you. It's kind of a weird time that we're living in. So, Peter, how are you holding up with all this Corona virus stuff going on?

Hey Blake, thanks for having me and thanks for checking in. it's a crazy time, in tech. I say to my team and I say to everyone every day, we're very fortunate to still be working, and I think that we get the lighter end of everything that's happening. So yeah, just staying positive, saying grateful every day.

and I think we should, we should all do the same on a daily basis.

yeah, definitely. hats off to everybody out there, all the nurses and doctors and everything. Obviously right now, a weird time we're living in. Yeah. The show must go on and let's. Let's give some people some ammo that they can take right now is a great opportunity for side hustlers and people working online to either start a project or continue building it and having a little bit more time at home to do that.

So let's help them grow a little bit. But, but before we get into the details and getting ahead of myself a little bit of context on your career, if you could just give us a snapshot of your career so far, where you've been, where you're going, and where you are, how you got to where you are now.

Basically.

Yeah, absolutely. So, coming out of college, I very much so had that entrepreneurial spirit where, I was inspired by startups. I was inspired by tech companies. and I started, I tried starting a company that was essentially a messaging unification platform that brought all your text messages, your emails, your social media DMS into one place.

and it really gave me that startup feeling that startup hustle and kind of grounded me on what it takes to get a company off the ground. So did that for about a year. didn't end up getting the traction that I wanted. but I used that time and experience. owning a project and trying to build a company to, make my way into the tech world.

So ever since then been at a couple of tech startups, which has brought me to my current role at Oana where I'm heading up growth. And essentially what we do at Oana is where the central information layer for most tech companies. So if you think about the average tech worker and how many different enterprise applications they use on a daily basis, there's just.

Tons of data getting created, especially at this time as we work from home. All this data that lives in Slack, Microsoft teams are emails, a sauna. It's just data getting created everywhere. So Ono helps you bring all that data together, right? and do a couple of different things. We help people do, like eat discovery compliance.

So that's like GDPR, CCPA, enterprise search, knowledge management. So just really taking control and understanding your data. .

What would you consider to be your professional super power yourself?

Yeah, so am I professional superpower, at least to this point in my career, has been. Building and standing up and moving on to the next, repeatable, growth engine that companies, so just going into new channels, building repeatable processes that's driving leads, driving pipeline, driving repeatable revenue, and just moving on to the next thing.

And I think that's very much. A growth mindset that a lot of growth marketers and people who work in marketing should have is everything needs to be built up to be repeatable and scalable. and then after you work on one thing, and it's very much like a testing. Framework that you should have with everything that you're standing up, but come into it with a hypothesis, test that hypothesis, and also have a definition of done.

So, in most experiments, actually, every experiment you need, like what that definition of done is to be able to...

All right. On the podcast today, I have Stapho Thienpont who is here to talk LinkedIn with us. Somebody that is not only a consultant about this thing, but he's, he actually acts on his own advice. You can go check them out on LinkedIn and we'll get to that later on. First off, Stapho, how are you doing today?

Ah, I'm doing great. I just came off my own show and you know, I'm just enjoying talking so much on the nice thing like this. Nice to be like here in Europe.

Do you like hearing your own voice?

Not really, but I do enjoy talking.

I'm the same way. Hearing my own voice on on microphone. It's kind of weird, but you get over it cause it's

fun to talk to people.

Yeah. 100%. Awesome.

Well, before we get into the details of LinkedIn, I know you're going to give us a ton of advice on how to grow on LinkedIn, but first and foremost, I want some quick context on you so that the audience knows who they're dealing with here. So first and foremost, just curious about the story of your career so far, where you got started and how you ended up where you are now, as briefly as you can.

As briefly as I can. Okay. So I lived in issue to Jim and Stockholm, even though I'm originally from Belgium, which is the other side of Europe. one day I realized, you know what, by beating up my friends all day, I'm not really providing much value to the world. I figured I have a knack for both language and systems.

And then. What I figured out was that, marketing is right on the edge of that. I started a Facebook group, got to start working with my favorite author, all this kind of stuff. and before I knew it, I got started with LinkedIn cause I wanted to learn a new platform. I somehow got into a super secret group of people that were basically the best to ever do it on LinkedIn.

And I just started picking their brains and I started learning all this kind of LinkedIn stuff. I did it for myself, and then I figured, you know what? this is so helpful for myself to generate leads and also generate awareness and build connections and network. I'm going to do this as a service for other people.

And since then we've been turning our people into LinkedIn thought leaders and generating leads for them. some highlights were when the multibillion dollar multimedia Titans started reaching out to our clients purely based on the content, but also getting some of our call bites on sales calls with Microsoft Lyme and the like.

So, yeah, it's been a, that's my journey so far, I guess.

And you're still going, okay. Yeah, the beginning right.

Definitely, definitely. I don't know if I'm going to limit myself to LinkedIn forever, but I'm definitely still growing strong every day. Awesome.

And if I were to ask you what you think your professional super power is, what would you say.

That's a really good, a really good question. I'm actually a really good networker. I would say, even though I don't spend much time, I'm really good at building relationships fast and somehow I don't know what it is, but it's when I talk to people, they walk away with the idea that I really know what I'm talking about with makes, it makes it easy for me to sell, but also to get buy in when I'm working with people, which ultimately lasts me to get good results.

But the networking of personal impact is for sure the key, I would say. Well

that's, that's good because that's what LinkedIn is all about. So let's dive into that and just start talking about how this group of of listeners that are bootstrappers and micro-influencers can actually grow on LinkedIn. My first question really would be, if you are starting out with zero, you're a micro influencer, you are an entrepreneur that's just starting out.

How can you actually get anybody to take your thought leadership seriously?

Well, first and foremost, you gotta have at least some skill and some area, so you've got to be good at something and...

it's just me as usual on a Friday, and the subject today that we're going to be covering is headlines, bios, titles, whatever, across social media. Okay. On LinkedIn, it's your headline on Twitter, Instagram, it's your bio on Facebook. It's your whole profile.

Basically. You don't really have a title on Facebook, so. Let's talk about how to optimize that. Um, I have a couple of tactical tips that you can implement. Ultimately, I think it goes without saying that there is. No perfect formula for everybody, but there's a general universal formula that will usually work and do better than what you at least have.

Tweak it over time. This is the kind of thing you want to AB test, so don't just do something about it right now and then forget about it forever. Constantly be AB testing things. There's no penalty for doing that. It's not going to hurt you in any way. You're just going to learn more and more about what drives clicks on your profile.

And in the case of LinkedIn, which unique because you actually see your headline across the entire platform in the feed and everywhere. So that's really a conversion tool for you across the board. That one's particularly impactful. So here is my number one tip for you that I want you to go and try right now.

This is very easy to do. So whatever you're in right now, whether in LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, go into the search bar and type in conversion copywriter or copywriter search. Any copywriters that are in your network already or that you're following or that are following you, check them out. See what their bio looks like.

Now, keep in mind that these are people that for a living to make money, to support their families. Right copy that converts people to take action and into customers. So I think it goes without saying that the, of all the groups of people that you could probably trust to write a good bio, this is the most likely, I'm not telling you that every copywriter has a great bio.

Okay? You're still gonna come across people on LinkedIn that don't use it enough. And then their title just says copywriter at, you know, Acme org. So. There are going to be people like that, but for the most part, as a whole, more than any other group, these people are going to give you great patterns to follow.

So whether you're on Twitter with, with your bias, so let's use that as an example. Look up. Conversion copywriters look up copywriters for B2B, for B to C, whatever is unique to you. If you're in an eCommerce store, look for B to C conversion copywriters, or if you do SAS technology, look that up. B2B copywriters look at these people and try to compile a list.

Of all the elements that you notice from this search, you're going to start noticing like they're more descriptive. They don't use a lot of fluff. They're straight to the point, but in a way that's really fun to read. So it's not just like I do marketing for businesses, it's, it's not necessarily always clever or.

Punny or anything like that. But it conveys the point in a little bit more of a story and it makes it a little bit more exciting, but there's no fluff. So there's a really good balance. Usually when you, you'll find with, with these people's bios, so write down a huge list and almost like a math equation, like add them all up in terms of their patterns.

Take the average of those patterns and what does that usually look like? So what I've found for LinkedIn, for example, when I do this exercise, aside from the elements of using your personality and things like that, just a general universal formula. If I took the averages of conversion copywriters, headlines, it would usually be, I help.

X group of people accomplish Y task using Z tool or for Z purpose. That's usually the general formula. And you've heard that before, right? You can add onto this a little bit to add a little bar and then you know, you can still state your actual job title. You could still state if you have

Blake: [00:00:00] today on the podcast you have Stef Caldwell, who is going to tackle a bunch of different subjects with us. Today we're going to be discussing things like side hustles and authenticity and customer experience, kind of the, the whole gamut.

[00:00:11] But I'm really excited about this one. But Stef, before we get into it, I do want to give you a chance to give some context about yourself. Basically, if you could just tell us, first and foremost what your career path has been to this point, where you got started and how you got to where you are now.

[00:00:28] Stef: [00:00:28] Happy to do that and thanks for having me on the show. So my career path, if you just looked at it on LinkedIn, might be confusing to somebody who doesn't know kind of where I'm headed. So I started, , my first internship was in recruiting, right? I worked at a staffing firm where I was recruiting people and, and helping place them in jobs.

[00:00:48] In my professional career, I moved from being a business analyst to working in a sales and marketing role, to then working in a product management role and a channel development role to now where I sit, which is in customer success. And so again, , any person would look at that experience and be like, huh, this girl's really, , been all over the place in terms of her variances.

[00:01:08] But the way that I look at it is I'm collecting the experiences necessary to make me the most ultimate general manager or CEO of a business. And I think that, okay, really, really incredible leaders can empathize with their people in any department. And so I really navigated my career path. Bye bye.

[00:01:28] Creating opportunities to have those experiences so that when I do become, you're the leader and I am, , and my side hustle that I can really emphasize and create good experiences across departments.

[00:01:39] Blake: [00:01:39] Oh, that's a, that's a pretty unique. Viewpoint, I guess because most people when they go into a side hustle are basically just looking to make money.

[00:01:47] That's, I mean, that's the facts of the matter, and I love that you're really more like people focus your people customer centric. That's going to bode really well for you down the road, and it's gonna be great for our audience as well, because I think it's a really important message to hear. And before we dive too much more in detail, I do ask everybody, what do you consider to be your professional superpower?

[00:02:13] Stef: [00:02:13] I think adaptability and tenacity. So whatever the baby is, of those two words, that's me.

[00:02:20] Blake: [00:02:20] It's a necessity.

[00:02:21] Stef: [00:02:21] Untapped tenacity. Yes. it's, . I believe and truly like live out every day that everything is figureoutable and having that mentality and then also having the willingness to get up everyday and take one step forward, even if that step is very uncertain, I think is what sets me apart in my professional career as well as in my side hustle.

[00:02:44] Awesome.

[00:02:44] Blake: [00:02:44] Well. I know that you do work full time at narrative science. Correct. So you've, you've already got the full time job. Now you also have the side hustle thing going on. obviously the word side hustle itself is self explanatory. Do you understand that it's something you're doing on the side? You already have a full time job, but it's another thing to actually help people understand how you can do that.

[00:03:06] And so you're in a unique position where you can discuss that a little bit with us. I'm curious right now, what does your day to day look like? I mean that, that may be a bad question because right now we're going through all this coronavirus stuff and everybody's normal is completely out of whack, but normally how are you balancing having a full time job that's, that's demanding where you're trying to learn skills and grow and you're doing a side hustle at the same time.

[00:03:31] Stef: [00:03:31] That's a

Blake: [00:00:00] on the podcast today, I have Brian Bosche who is here to talk all things tick tock. He's the first person to come on here and strictly discuss this with us about tech. So Brian, how are you doing today?

[00:00:10] Brian: [00:00:10] Doing well, Blake, thanks for having me. I am

[00:00:12] Blake: [00:00:12] super excited selfishly because I need to learn more about tick tock.

[00:00:16] My, my fan ship is really, really low and I do not get a lot of views, so I'm excited to learn how I can flip that around and I'm sure that the audience is going to do just the same, but before we get into it, I do want to get a little bit of context on you. Just basically your background. If you could give us a snapshot of your career so far, where you got started and how you got to where you are

[00:00:36] Brian: [00:00:36] now.

[00:00:37] Sure. So right now I'm on the product team at Smartsheet, which is a collaborative work management tool. it's a public company used by tens of thousands of different companies to help them manage their workflows and really managed our work as a team. And my company, my startup actually was acquired by Smartsheet last year.

[00:00:54] So I was previously the CEO and co founder of a company called slope, and we really made it easy for creative teams to manage their work. So we largely focused on content review and approval, so images, videos, photography, design, and that's really where I got to know more about the creative field, where I worked with lots of different marketing creative teams or trying out.

[00:01:15] Any new channel that would come up that we're trying to, you know, deploy their social media strategies at scale. So that's what really got me interested in tech talk when it first launched, is a lot of the customers that I work with and help build products for. I started asking questions about tick talk and how do we do this vertical video and how do we take advantage of this new channel.

[00:01:32]so I've always really been interested in the marketing creative world. I'd even run a video production company previous to, to slope. so yeah, this is a really exciting space for me. And if

[00:01:41] Blake: [00:01:41] I were to ask you what you think professional superpower is, what would you say?

[00:01:45] Brian: [00:01:45] creative workflows. so, you know, for the last eight years, I have.

[00:01:51] Worked really deep with marketing creative teams, helping them manage, you know, anything from, how do you request a project to planning it out to assigning. So going through the entire feedback and review and approval process all the way to getting something published. So, really the expertise on how companies, teams, people should, Build out their creative workflows. Well,

[00:02:13] Blake: [00:02:13] let's, let's dive into it as it pertains to tick tock then. So for anyone that's not using it currently, can you give an idea of what makes it different from what's already out there. Sure.

[00:02:23] Brian: [00:02:23] So tech talk is really powerful for brands and also for individuals or really anyone that's trying it out, because it gives you so much engagement and reach with no following.

[00:02:33] So I'm sure many of you have been on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter for years, and engagement's really tough. You know, I've had a Twitter for the last 10 years at 10,000 followers. I'm lucky to get a few likes, you know, they engagement is pretty low. And then once you actually. A tweet, something, it's gone, you know, within hours.

[00:02:50]so it's really hard to get that engagement and really hard, you know, on Instagram to get hundreds of thousands of likes. If you have 500 followers, we're on, tick-tock, you can literally have your first video published, get to a million views. So it really a, is a powerful channel because it gives you that engagement and reach without having to establish that following and really rewards great content over someone who's...

Hi there, welcome to the Micro Influencer podcast / video series now every Friday this is going to be

on video as well.

Hopefully this is going to be helpful for some people. This is new for me.

I've got a new set up very excited.

So today I want to get right to the point.

I want to talk about why the worst advice you're ever going to get is to create quality content.

That sounds counterintuitive. I get that hear me out before you get out your pitchforks

and try to burn down the house.

Let me explain what I'm talking about.

So. If you think about it,

you hire a consultant you want to start growing on social media Instagram Twitter LinkedIn

wherever it is you hire a consultant.

Okay, they can give you technical tricks.

They can tell you what works

and what doesn't how to please the algorithm they can give you practical things that you can

Implement that will make your content perform better most likely

but usually the number one piece of advice are going to have for you is to create quality content.

They're always going to say that it's not wrong.

I'm not saying that this advice is incorrect advice I'm saying it's bad advice.

And the reason for that is just think about how absurdly obvious.

That is everybody knows that you shouldn't be creating terrible content.

Everybody knows that if you want to succeed at blogging with your websites

copy with video with podcasting with social media,

whatever your medium is even graphic. Design,

that's a way of communicating as well. Anyway,

you're trying to communicate everybody knows that you're not supposed to be terrible at it.

If you want to attract attention and grow a following.

It's blatantly obvious anything that is that obvious is not advice.

And if you have ever paid anybody to hear those words,

you should try to get your money back because it's such bad advice.

Of course, we should be creating quality content,

but Never give that out as advice

because it's not helping anybody advice by definition is trying to teach somebody

something they didn't already know that they can actually Implement.

So I want to try to give you some things you can actually Implement

instead of telling you create good stuff,

which is true. I'm going to tell you what you can do to prepare yourself.

So that what you create is inherently going to be good.

It doesn't take a mastermind to create good cause good content online.

It just doesn't all it takes is your own unique personality and try to be helpful.

Try to add some kind of value.

Now what I want to say add value that's another one of those things like weld,

of course, I want to be valuable to somebody I'll let me explain a little bit of what that means.

It doesn't just mean that you are breaking news

and that you're telling people something that they've never thought of before.

It's really rare that you're ever going to communicate with

thought that somebody else hasn't already.

Not that you're stealing that idea. It's just that there are so many people on this planet.

So many people that have already existed that have had really good ideas.

You're not the first person that's ever thought of your idea.

I guarantee it. So with that said,

how can you actually create good content?

If all the good ideas are quote unquote taken.

Well, it's not just about coming up with brand new ideas.

It's almost impossible. You can add value by being funny.

You can add value by being a little bit obnoxious of people are into that you

could add value by expanding on ideas that already exist

or yeah,

you can try to come up with new ideas and expand on those as well.

Definitely don't I'm not recommending against that it's just you're always going

to have some kind of idea that's similar out there already.

So instead try to find ways you can add your own personal LD to it.

That's the best way to go about it.

So that's number one for prepping yourself to create good stuff online.

Number two. You need to be...

Jason Vana

Blake: [00:00:00] All right. On the podcast today, I have Jason Vanna, who we're going to talk about branding and side hustles and how you can actually create content that leads to gigs. But before we get into that, let's get a little bit of context on Jason. So first off, Jason, how are you doing today?

[00:00:20] Jason: [00:00:20] I'm great, man. How are you doing?

[00:00:22] Blake: [00:00:22] I am fantastic. I'm ready to get this going. And I'm curious if we could just get a little bit of the history

[00:00:28] Jason: [00:00:28] of your career so far, just so we

[00:00:29] Blake: [00:00:29] know, where are you being and how you can help out?

[00:00:33] Jason: [00:00:33] Yeah, so I actually started out in sales doing, advertising sales for a local newspaper. and I like to tease all my, salespeople friends that I upgraded to marketing after that.

[00:00:45]they don't like that so much, but I like to say it. but yeah, so I've been in marketing for roughly about 13 years, if you don't count the five years, where I focused on advertising. And so basically done everything from designing ads to helping small local businesses, no how to market it. their company.

[00:01:06] Two, I'm marketing for a community college marketing for a church marketing for now. A food processing equipment, the manufacturer. and then I have my own side hustle where I help, personal brands. And. More small businesses really understand their branding and, developing marketing strategy. So basically I break the rule of find a niche and focus on it because I've done, I've basically done it all.

[00:01:37] So yeah, that's, that's kind of a, my career in a nutshell, I would say.

[00:01:43] Blake: [00:01:43] And if you had to pinpoint like one professional superpower that you feel like you encapsulate, what would that be?

[00:01:50] Jason: [00:01:50] Oh man. I would say the biggest thing, and this is why a lot of people will, will hire me, is the, the ability to really help, A business helping individual understands their identity as a, as a brand or as a company. and be able then to communicate that quickly and communicate that well. and so really what I've done at the current job where I work. Is taking a brand that no one knew in the industry and turned it into a globally recognized, Globally recognized and really desired brand, to work with. And so that's kind of the, I can do a lot, but that's my super power is, here's the messaging. Here's what we need to focus on. Now let's do this. So yeah, that's, that I would say is my super power. And

[00:02:40] Blake: [00:02:40] that. So that's, that's on a bigger scale.

[00:02:42] And then, and if we take it down, I'm sure that we have a lot of principles that we can cover for side hustlers and people that are trying to do something, build something that's meaningful to them, but they're kind of starting from scratch. So let's, let's just dive into that, because if I'm early on in my side project, I kind of know my, I know my product, I know my audience a little bit.

[00:03:02] How early on should I actually be worried about branding?

[00:03:06] Jason: [00:03:06] So actually a lot of my side hustle, my personal side, hustle cuts clients are personal branding and kind of that very small business. I have an idea, I have a product and I want to move forward. And really what I, I advise them is, you really need to start working on your brand right away.

[00:03:25] And the reason I say that is. A brand is not just a logo and colors and fonts and all that. Those are brand elements. But really what a brand is, is understanding your identity as whether that's an individual or a company. so it's your identity and how you communicate that and get people to understand that very quickly.

[00:03:48] So psychologists say that we have seven seconds. To make a first impression that within seven seconds you will make a judgment on any person, product, idea, company, whatever it may be,...

Aaron Patton

Blake: [00:00:00] Perfect. We are live on the podcast today with Erin Patton, where we're going to be talking about prospecting and networking, but through some different channels that maybe we haven't discussed here on the podcast before. Before we get into that, Erin, how's your day going?

[00:00:15] Aaron: [00:00:15] Fantastic. Blake, thanks for having me on and hello everyone.

[00:00:18] Blake: [00:00:18] Super excited. I would love to get some context on you as a person, as a professional. Before we dive into the details here. So just to give the audience an idea of who they're, who they're working with here, could you just give us the story of your career so far, briefly as to where you started to, how you got where you are now.

[00:00:35] Aaron: [00:00:35] Sure. Absolutely. So myself and just a regular guy, I, I went through life just a regular path like most of us do. I was just accepted to go to high school, try to get good grades, go to college, get a job, right. The normal path that we're all used to and accustomed to. And I, my parents, had done that.

[00:00:52] They were. Good students. And that was the just accepted way. So I didn't really have any thoughts to do anything else like entrepreneurship wise or, or any other path that was, that was my journey. So went to college, got a job in sales, and worked at about four or five different companies in sales and software, software's a service companies, and then really just hit a wall in my later twenties, and decided that I don't want to do this long term.

[00:01:16] So I essentially started over. I quit my job. I did a little traveling, was playing a little poker. That was a serious hobby of mine. So, trying to chase the dream of not really waking up and go into an office every day, like someone you have a dream about. And, I quickly realized that I don't want to spend all my time at a casino.

[00:01:37] So I decided that I wanted to take some of the reasons why I did love that game. And parlay it into a more productive and business oriented manner. so I came up with podcasting, content creation, first and foremost just to learn how to do online business, but also to be creating content at the same time.

[00:01:56] So kind of learning with the audience. And then it's been about 15 months now, and I feel like I'm in a place where I can. You know, actually launched something decent on my own and help people in their endeavors for what they want to do online. So that's the route that I'm going for this year, and I'm putting a hard focus on building up a little community and membership group to enable people to do just that.

[00:02:18] Blake: [00:02:18] And what would you say your professional superpower

[00:02:20] Aaron: [00:02:20] is. Professional superpower for me is definitely prospecting. It's, getting in touch with the right people, excuse me, the right people, the decision makers, people that, are actually going to be able to either purchase a product or service, like in my sales job or in this case for podcasting, be a guest on the show.

[00:02:41] And part of my show for new age influencers is to try to get people that are really living a true online. You know, dream based lifestyle, and sometimes it's really hard to get in touch with these people, but I felt like it was my duty to, to try as hard as I can to get as high quality guests as possible so that they can give back advice and lessons that they've used in their lives to attain success and give it back to the audience.

[00:03:07] So that's what I try to do every single week, week in and week out. Well,

[00:03:10] Blake: [00:03:10] let's dive into your superpower then and start with the very foundation. I'm curious how you would recommend going about starting to establish herself. So if first off, how you can identify the proper niche for you and then beyond that, just establishing yourself as somebody that anybody should listen

[00:03:29] Aaron: [00:03:29] to....

Blake: [00:00:00] All right. On the podcast today, I have Cecil cross who's going to help us understand the ins and outs of a imposter syndrome. We're going to go into this in detail, but before Cecil, how are you doing?

[00:00:16] Cecil: [00:00:16] I'm doing great.

[00:00:19] Blake: [00:00:19] Yeah, so it's almost the weekend. I'm excited.

[00:00:22] Cecil: [00:00:22] That's right. And,

[00:00:23] Blake: [00:00:23] and I would love to get just a little bit of context on you before we dive into the topic at hand.

[00:00:29] So if you wouldn't mind just giving the audience an idea of, w just a brief history of your career so far, where you got started, how you got to where you are now, and everything in between.

[00:00:39] Cecil: [00:00:39] Sure. I'm a graphic designer slash creative director. And, I currently work for a software company, Around the Dallas, Texas area.

[00:00:49]but I was born in Michigan and I came up drawing like a lot of, a lot of young people, and I've been a designer for about, huh, almost 20 years, about between 18 and 19 years at this point. And I've had different roles where I've served as the designer and art director, one for school districts. That was my first major job.

[00:01:11] And, after that, a, a direct mail marketing company that was right around the time of the recession. And so that became a difficult time. And that was around the time that I really started kicking my fire of a up in third year because I had to provide for my family. After that, I worked for the Fox affiliates, from my hometown.

[00:01:34] And, just a few years ago, I moved out to Dallas and up in here. working in different positions, as increased responsibilities, touched a little bit of everything in the graph, buying industry from retail education, government technology. So that's kind of where I am now. And, and I also run a freelance brand consultant, brand consultancy and that creative direction.

[00:01:58] Okay.

[00:01:59] Blake: [00:01:59] So I think it's safe to say with all the different areas that you've worked that you've probably dealt with imposter syndrome before.

[00:02:05] Cecil: [00:02:05] Absolutely.

[00:02:06] Blake: [00:02:06] Yeah, we'll definitely get into that, but before that, one final context question, what would you consider to be your professional superpower? Connecting with

[00:02:18] Cecil: [00:02:18] people.

[00:02:19] Just connecting with people. Everything that I do from a creative standpoint, I try to find the human element. There's so many. Acronyms and businessy terms and jargon that can get in the way of that last scene it happened. But once you find that human connection, it's easier to tell a story no matter what, no matter what the industry is.

[00:02:42] So I think it's finding that human connection and treating people accordingly. This is my simple palette.

[00:02:47] Blake: [00:02:47] I love it. All right, well let's, let's talk about imposter syndrome and let's get into it because the audience is going to skew more toward people like, like me, where. Just trying to do side hustles cause that's what I like to do more at the beginning.

[00:03:01] That the end of my journey trying to build things that that means something to me. Yeah. Kind of starting from zero. So with that in mind, I think most of us at some point are going to feel imposter syndrome. I think it. When we think of that, it's often more of like a Silicon Valley kind of term where these big founders of big companies have imposter syndrome because they don't, I think that they're up to that task.

[00:03:22] But do you think it applies to a much smaller scale when you're like freelancing and things like that?

[00:03:28] Cecil: [00:03:28] Absolutely. from my perspective, imposter syndrome, has, has come up in the form of, I think I belong here, but for whatever reason, I feel like. I don't know, really belong here. Like I didn't really earn my way into the position that I am today....