Secrets to Influencer Marketing & Brand Engagement

 What's up, guys? Welcome to Write About Now. We're always talking about how to make you get
 right and in the moment. We can talk about yesterday. We can talk about last week. We can talk about
 a month from now. We can talk about the future, but we're here to talk about now.
 This is Write About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production.
 We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month.
 Taking the BS out of business for over six years in over 400 episodes. You ready to start
 snapping necks and cash and checks? Well, it starts right about now. Talk to me about the raising
 money thing. You talk about it in the book, by the way, the handbook for an entrepreneur.
 It's, you know, it's a muscle that you have to develop and you get better at it the more you do it.
 So there's a lot of fear that you build up, right? Like, oh my god, I don't want to ask this
 person for money. Oh my god. And at the end of the day, you know, it really is about your own
 fear because all they're going to say is yes or no, right? It's like they say no, just move on.
 And that's something, I think, for me, Mike's much better at it than I am. But for me, I think I
 just realized, oh, like the worst thing can happen is they just say no, right? That's it.
 So I think that what you've done, Ryan, what like a friend who are talking about Gary Vee and
 others, that's raising money, right? You don't go to investors. You go to customers. You win
 the business. You generate the revenue to then generate the profits to plow back in the business
 to grow. And so our heroes are the people who not that have the safety of venture capital,
 right? But it is those entrepreneurs like a lot of your listeners who don't have the safety net
 who are running restaurants who are running service companies who are running agencies.
 And they need the revenue to survive. And that's how you fund raise. And if you do a good enough
 job on the customer side, then maybe you have the ability to raise money to do an acquisition
 or to take some money off the table or to do to make some moves, right? We've always been in
 businesses up until now that requires building software and a lot of upfront costs. And frankly,
 it's just easier for us than I think what you and a lot of others have done, which is hard.
 I appreciate you saying that. It is hard. But at the same time, though, there's brilliance in both
 sides. I think, you know, like depending on what works for you, like, because I'm I ask even
 for my own self, I mean, because I'm developing something now that's tech heavy. And you know,
 it's like, and I've never had a partner. And I'm like, or I've never had a dollar for anyone.
 I've no debt in the bank. So protect that. Yeah. It's not easy. And it's not that people that
 that's very rare and awesome investors are great. Some are best friends. But you're bringing a
 partner on board. And so unless you're ready to communicate and report and listen, it's work.
 You know, it's work. It's a relationship. I do think it's fascinating for you guys being a
 husband and wife founders of companies and investors together. You talk about in the book,
 if you are going to have a partner and a founder, those skill sets that work, what like, you feel a gap.
 Like I have a certain number of skills. You need to work with another person or group that
 fills the holes you have. And it sounds like that word. Maybe that's why it has worked. I know
 it's been work, but for you to, because like you said, Mike, you know, you've got the operator.
 And then the sales and marketing and, you know, maybe I did. I don't want to say you don't have
 ideas cast, but I'm just short. You displayed is totally there and you're dead. Yeah, you nailed it.
 Yeah, you nailed it because that's exactly what you need. When you have co-founders, you really do
 need to figure out like how to balance out the skills. And if you overlap, there's going to be
 just absolute micro management and like paralysis of decisions. So the best thing you can do
 is have a co-founder or more than one co-founder that had different skills. And that's when things
 really gel and you build this like implicit trust and you can move very fast. I love how you've
 sort of embraced the, you know, part of me, I think some people might would ask, well, why
 tops chrome and why this and why the perils and all that? Oh, I get it, man. You, I feel like
 you've created something uniquely original while tapping into sort of the hype and interest that
 already exists with some of these products. Talk a little bit about that. Yeah, I think to your
 point, obviously, you're a little bit deeper and you're knowledgeable, like there's a lot of
 inserts and structure to this checklist that honors the chrome model, the, you know, the red
 refractors to five and 50 gold and the super fractor one of one. And then there's uniquely new stuff.
 We did something really smart. Our main character, the very, very, very, very lucky black cat,
 has yellow eyes, but we did an insert a variant where you could get them with green eyes or blue eyes
 or white eyes or red eyes. And that's a little head nod to Pokemon's original set with the
 Pikachu. And so there's, there's a lot of really clever things. There's one in every nine cases
 insert called erupt that I'm very fond of that is a hat tip to the kaboom inspired by that great
 insert. And we found the original artist of that kaboom set. And he designed the character. So it's,
 it's, you know, I think it's been fun because even people that, let's say, are cynical to this
 project or even me in the hobby of trading cards because it's a very insular kind of protective
 community, which I respect and love have been giving flowers to how thoughtful the checklist is.
 And that has been rewarding. Yeah, man. Smart is what I'd call it. Where does,
 what gets me, you know, you brought up the NFT thing, but we live in a digital world. And
 you're an attention arbitrage guy. Yep. Where does V friends fit and, you know, two parts for you
 in attention arbitrage and building your long term, you know, legacy. Where do you see V friends
 in that? And then part two of that, you've got to, we live in this digital world, but physical
 cards are still booming. Yeah, I mean, it's, I'll do the second part because it's so easy six,
 seven years ago, eight years ago, people were like, Gary, why do you still write books? You're so
 Mr. Digital. And my answer always was because people read them. Like, I don't know why the world is
 obsessed with or yeah, right? People love or people are like, even in politics, blue or red,
 right? Like, you know, digital or physical, you know, like the life is gray. Everything is the
 middle. So I, I of course physical cards and comic books and I'll do toys like because the world
 is physical, but the world is also digital and the world continues to become more digital,
 not less digital, right? So, you know, all those hours today that are being played on Roblox,
 40 years ago, were kids that were outside playing physically. So, you know, things are changing,
 but not to zero. We're not in ready player one full time yet. So, true, thankfully. That's why
 keep doing those things. Where do I see V-Friends sitting? Really at the center, you know, I think V-Friends
 is probably gonna end up being the biggest business I ever built. You know, I feel like it's a very
 substantial intellectual property collectible business. I think the characters represent the things
 I most care about in the world. So, I think these 250 characters are gonna allow me to extend all these
 things I want the world to know about. And so, patient panda will take the baton in helping people
 learn that patient's matters, not just Gary V's content, the one that you've been consuming for
 20 years. I've done a lot as a human and put myself on the map, but I'm not gonna reach all 8
 billion people. Meanwhile, a V-Friends cartoon that talks about tenacity and hustle and kindness
 can be dubbed in Italian and be running on Netflix Italy in five years. And I'll be accomplishing
 the same ambition, which is my whole life has been about really a framework of selfish and
 selfless behavior, right? Selfishly, I'm an entrepreneur. I want to build things for me and my family.
 I think I'm allowed. I think you're allowed. I think everyone's allowed. However, I do like leaving
 a positive impact. I want other entrepreneurs. I get pumped when entrepreneurs come up to me that
 basically make more money than me taking my learnings and applying them. I'm like, good for you. That
 makes me happy. That doesn't make me unhappy. So I think that's kind of the goal with the framework here.
 I always think there's knowledge and trends and numbers. And so when you get asked a lot of the same
 questions, when you deal with a lot of the same challenges, I tend to think that brings knowledge
 to our listeners. What are some of those key things that you're always sort of tackling or working
 with clients on? Great question. And what's interesting is since COVID, we've had the great
 formation, we now have almost, we're pushing up to almost 45% of working Americans have a side hustle.
 And people, that's a, that's a small business. That's a gateway drug. It's not a burden. We should
 look at as an opportunity to use those funds to get out of debt, build wealth, create assets,
 and one in five Americans own a rental property in some form or fashion. So if I've got a rental
 property in a little small business, people, you're not quitting your day job. Let's just tap into
 that. And so a common common theme and what we do every day is meet with that community. Those
 people that are the backbone of this country that are starving for simple answers to get their kids
 on payroll, save some taxes right off the rotto, but you know, whatever it is. And I love that bread
 and butter stuff. And so it's just there's no mystery. It's not like there's this secret thing
 like, Mark, how do I say tax? It's just, it's just doing the basics and knowing it, understanding it,
 owning it. And that's, so there's no sexy secret there except that you, you really can build a wealth
 that you maybe, maybe never imagined with just those simple base hits. It's not about getting
 rich quick. It's not getting rich slow. I want to get rich slow. Yeah, adding them on and saving the
 most with, with that extra time, right? If you're going to moonlight over and above the day, the
 daytime job, it's keeping as much of that as possible, correct? Oh, yeah. See, you give me a day,
 you know, and there's nothing wrong with that W two day job work corporate America. That's cool,
 which is great. Let's go to your taxes, bend over. I can't do anything. I mean, you're screwed.
 But if you got that small business, ho, ho, ho, ho, now that little 1099 some of you were getting,
 that's like, that's a golden ticket. Now I'm riding off home office, auto, dining, computers,
 electronics, your cell phone, family members. I'm funding a Roth IRA. You can set up your own
 damn 401k. Now we're going to take all that money and start deploying it. And we're going to be
 efficient. We're going to be delineate and mean. And that, I can, you can pay 30% less in taxes on
 that money than your day job, your day job, your screw. Let's go get this other money. That's a lot
 cheaper to get. Everyone wants to talk about making money. Why don't we talk about saving money?
 It's easier to save money than make money. Yeah, it is. That's true. It's a very simple statement,
 but it's very drugs in here. They're like, yeah, that's true. It's because it's not always
 easy to make it. Let me talk to you about this, Mark, you know, they talk about tax brackets,
 right? Okay. I think some of this terminology, you know, W tws in X bracket,
 if you're self-employed and small business owner, like, that's the lead. And there's always
 the talk, you know, like, especially like three or four years ago, like Trump plays like an
 effective 8% tax rate, like, or whatever it was, you know, but, but for the average small business
 guy, and even the W two, because we have people that are both, they're listening to our show,
 that are small business owners and that maybe are W two thinking going small business.
 What's the least you could truly get away with, like legally, you know, doing it the right way,
 but like, what kind of tax brackets should the average small business guy be in?
 Well, very, very perceptive question. And I'm going to try to answer this simply.
 So everybody, there's seven tax brackets out there. And the highest being 37 and a half. Okay,
 cool. No one pays in total 37 and a half percent in federal taxes, because it's graduated.
 So when we have brackets, that's our bracket on the next dollar after a certain limit. So
 once everybody kind of gets that, that this is a graduated bracket, that's point number one.
 So then what we want to look at is what is your effective tax rate? So like, after we take all the
 killer writeouts we can think of, lots, lots of options. What's that effective rate? And for
 some people, it could be zero. For others, it could be 35%. Now, it is generally true, the more money
 you make, the more tax rate you're going to pay, more, a larger percentage of your income in taxes.
 But then we've got strategies and tools. For example, why Trump was such an anomaly and he really
 wasn't, it's just the Wall Street Journal wanted to point this out, is that he is a real estate
 professional. I've got his tax return here on my laptop. I got Joe Biden's and he has from 2016.
 He was a real estate professional. Now, you've talked about here on your show all the time. If you
 want to invest in short-term rentals, long-term rentals, do real estate and deploy money in real
 estate, it's not for everybody. Corporate megastores are spending millions lobbying DC politicians
 on one-sided policies that send small businesses tumbling. They want to enact harmful credit card
 mandates that take resources away from your local credit union and community bank, leaving main
 street businesses with less access to credit, making it harder for your family to pay for everyday
 goods like gas and groceries. Tell Congress to guard your card and oppose the urban martial credit
 card mandates. Paid for by electronic payments coalition. But we have depreciation strategies and
 investment strategies that can offset my income over here. Trump had so much depreciation from
 his hotels and real estate investments. He was able to wipe out his income from the apprentice
 and his retail. So, his effective rate at the end of the day was very low. Now, someone else
 who just works a day job has no ride-offs makes 500 grand a year at Verizon as a VP. Okay, you're
 going to be paying 30% or more in effective rate because you're not using the strategies in the
 best way. I do hear people all the time because I'll tell people because they'll ask,
 well, how do you, you know, guard your pockets or how, you know, something that, you know,
 we all have our strengths. And so people will ask you like, how did you do that? And it's like,
 I just followed the formula and like, and consistency and showing up and like doing it, it's like,
 yeah, you got to get, you know, you learn and you get wisdom to make things better. But it's
 amazing how few people are just willing to sort of put one foot in front of the other every single day.
 Yes. Yeah, absolutely right. We actually tested out being coaches with that same mentor because he's
 like, I want to take you and travel with you and you just tell them you did exactly what I told you
 to do and you were successful. So we did and we started a coaching program and that's where I found
 lack of fulfillment because truly people are handing over $10,000, $23,000 and then not doing what you
 tell them to do to be successful. And I thought, huh, that's interesting. What is that? Like,
 what is that roadblock? Is it self sabotage? Is it, I mean, I'm going to call spade spade. I'm
 going to learn that. And that's me. I mean, is it laziness? Is it self sabotage? Is it? What is it?
 Yeah, that's a great question. I really think it's probably different for every single person. We
 all have our limiting beliefs. We all have our traumas. We all have our blockers. And I think every
 person is probably a little bit different. But I think, and you can tell me if you agree or not,
 I'd be interested in your opinion. I think more than anything, it's lack of belief in their ability
 to succeed and or their fear of actually succeeding. Yeah, it's an interesting thing. Like, I always
 thought it's feel a fear of failure, but fear of actually succeeding. That one always gets me. I
 hear people say that. I'm like, wow, why would you be scared to make the damn thing happen?
 Why is that? Is that what we want? Yes. I think it turns into the what happens now, right?
 Yeah, like duplicating it, repeating it, or, or is it the responsibility that comes with it?
 Sometimes. Yeah, all roads back to, I don't know. It took me a long time, and I don't know
 how much you, Danny, like in your journey, like, it's not that I thought people were the same.
 Like, I, we all have our differences clearly. And there's definitely different attributes.
 But there is a level of drive and initiative and want that I just always assumed everyone else had.
 Like, I think in my, even until I was almost 30 years old, I'm a little past that now. But I thought
 that that was sort of universal. We all had different traits. Okay, you know, different looks,
 different things, like, but I've learned that's not always the case. Or there's just different
 motivations, you know, like, and I don't know, especially as you've learned in
 he to hire people and do different things, talk to me about how you've seen that.
 Yeah, so I'm going to relate it to actually building the companies. And one of my probably
 epic failures was thinking that everybody was like me. Like, they all have this drive. They're
 always going to do exactly what they say they're going to do. They're going to never give up.
 They're going to push, push, push, because they want to win. And they refuse to lose. And
 I didn't care about hiring the Ferrari who had proven success because I thought, I can meet
 anybody and just say, Hey, I'm going to take you with me. Let's go. And we're going to drive
 together. And ultimately, I learned really fast. And I learned this lesson over and over and
 over again that people aren't like me. And they really just want to follow directions. And you
 have to go find that elite, maybe top three, two, one percent to be able to lead the companies
 so that you're not stuck leading all of them with a bunch of followers.
 Yeah, that's true. Well spoken and well learned. And maybe you and I would have worked well
 together back today. Obviously, you followed the steps and the 12 things, but now that you've
 done it long enough, what is it that it takes other than following the steps? Is there intuition
 wisdom beyond that? Here's what I've learned. A lot of people understand that there's power and
 wealth behind real estate investing, but it's not what they're passionate about and it's not what
 they're going to do full time. So they think they can become an active investor because that's the
 door that most people enter in. I want to be a landlord. I'm going to buy and hold or I'm going
 to fix and flip this property and make $40,000 and they lose a lot of money. They lose a lot of time
 and they're not doing what they love. And so ultimately, what I've learned is active investors
 get miserable, lose a lot of money and ultimately turn into passive investors. And that's
 what they find joy because they get to pursue what they wanted to do anyway. And then they get
 to invest their money with other people who love doing the active side of real estate are really
 good at it. And they just get a passive income and they get to build their wealth.
 If you want to be one of the few things that people actually pay attention to, no matter what
 platform you choose, no matter what kind of content you make, it's hard. It's a really hard deal,
 but that's also kind of the fun of it. And it's freeing how to make things they're actually valuable
 for people that they want to spend their time with because I feel like people don't suffer
 through mediocrity anymore. They don't have to, which is nice. Yeah, I mean, choice is amazing. And
 back, you know, 15, 20 years ago, maybe even 25 years, I'm starting to age Steve. I don't
 know about you, but my years are still ticking. I can't seem to keep it in pause. But, you know,
 you had so many channels to watch on TV, you know, being a guy sports for me for the most part,
 but yeah, you have your other cable channels and smartphones barely existed and definitely
 didn't have the video and data bandwidth that we have now that enables all of these things.
 I tell people all the time, I was a pioneer of enablement. You know, where you go on smartphones
 in 2007 and 2008, but the throughput. And now, like you said, you got so many choices. You can,
 you either, I've been playing with this notion Steve, and I think you'll get it. It's somewhat
 yours. It's kind of like, either you're getting turned on or you're turned off as a brand and
 it is content because people get to choose. And that's really what you're talking about, isn't it?
 I think it's a great way of phrasing it. I may have to borrow that. I mind is usually,
 I'm like, you're either earning attention or you're getting ignored. I have literally, I'm
 a creative guy. I mean, I have it sketched the on button for our, like, relaunch of our company,
 radical, like, on the brand with an on play button. And you either get choose to, you know,
 like, gets that so far, right? Well, we were talking earlier about this idea of sampling, right?
 Like, I think you brought up, you know, like, the goal of everybody is to get sampled. And then
 it's the job of the show to keep people listening afterwards or, you know, the video or the newsletter
 or whatever it is. Just getting sampled is the on button, right? Like, it has to be so interesting
 that out of all the different options, all the Netflix tiles, all the Spotify podcasts,
 all the TikTok creators, but they're even willing to give you a shot, to give you a second or two
 to get in there. That's a hard on button to get into, right? Yes. Oh God. It's so hard. It's crazy.
 How much competition there is. There's just unlimited content. And that's what I love about your
 book and the tenets of it. You got to earn it, baby. I mean, we all, it was, hey, back in the day,
 TV commercials, there's nothing else to watch. There's no phone distracting. Because now I make the joke,
 the TV, if you have one, 18 to 34 girls may not even fall in this. We've ever talked of 35 to 55
 or 35 up. The TV's the radio and the smartphones to television. Like, that's where I think audio is
 actually more important in TV. Like, because your head's down. That's funny. Even in podcasting now,
 the video stuff is fascinating. I have a, I have a 22-year-old who loves podcasting.
 Never listens. It's always on YouTube. And she knows, it's like, it is like podcasting is like the
 new television on YouTube where it's, she knows exactly what shows, she watches, what days they drop,
 what time they drop, all of it. It's amazing. And to be able to get to that point where people know
 that about you and look forward to you, like appointment viewing or listening, that's really hard.
 Also, you have to be pretty awesome or pretty valuable to a very specific group of people to get in
 there. I'm fascinated by all of it. We gave you gold and you treated it like silver. Like, it's
 why, why didn't you use it all over the place? It's like, it doesn't need to just live within
 the influencer's channel. You got to amplify it. That's such a miss, isn't it? Sometimes.
 100% and this is why, you know, we talked about it slightly when we were kind of chatting before
 that we started off, you know, I created open sponsorship with my co-founder as the LinkedIn,
 the Airbnb, the match.com of the industry, you know, we were like, right, we're going to help you
 find the person connect, boom, done. And then we realized in the journey that if you're on like
 a dating site or like a job recruitment site or something, if you get the match, that success,
 but we were, people were coming to us and they're like, great, you're great, but what the outcome
 wasn't, the ROI wasn't there. And I was like, shit, I need to start thinking about the ROI on these
 deals because otherwise we're just going to see all of these guys like trying at once and leaving.
 And then we did what you did. We started trying to build into what you were saying. We tried to build
 into the platform. Have you thought about doing this? Have you thought about doing this and share
 this? And then we realized people just either don't have the time, the knowledge or whatever
 else. And so that's kind of why about three years ago, we were like, you know what, we're going to
 get rid of the self-service, we're going to be completely full service, we're going to be like
 an extension of your team, and we're going to like make you, we're going to do it for you.
 Great examples, like a few months ago, I was speaking to my team. I didn't even know that they
 did this, but like they'll go to like a tool like CapCut and they'll put music overlay and the text
 overlay onto a video. And I was like, you do that for our clients and they're like, yeah, but it's
 just like it's harder to get them to do it and teach them and say, oh, this video would be so
 much more effective, they're like, we'll just do it for them and it'll take a few seconds. And so
 I think like what I realized is it's whatever the brand's reason is to not do, it's ultimately
 our problem. And so there's no point doing these partnerships if you're not going to make it happen.
 Yes. And what you realize is the total, I don't know, it's the total filling the entire circle in,
 okay, it's not just connecting brand to to influencer, it's all the magic magic in between,
 making sure the content gets done, making sure the content gets used, make it, you know, all of
 you got to leave them to the water and make them drink it. Yeah, honestly, yeah.
 It's true because ultimately it's what makes it work and the only way for it to keep happening
 and to have success is if it works, right? 100%, 100%. Yeah, I love that. And it's an interesting
 pivot. I mean, I've definitely seen with like the athletes, especially, you know, they can
 get all these deals, they want the deals, but, you know, creating contents like the hardest part,
 isn't it? How many emails have been sent with? We got to get content for this brand.
 Yeah, I'm making it not look like it was like read off the script. Oh, yeah, exactly.
 To do it. Definitely a challenge that still exists. I think you can go back to the point,
 what are you using them for? So if what you want is content creation and great UGC to put in ads,
 don't use that guy who never does reels and like, is a little bit stiff, but if what you want is
 to be able to say that you sponsor the quarterback of Clemson, then great, then, you know, or whatever else,
 then, and I think that's the other thing is I realize that a lot of times when you, and I do
 this as a CEO with a marketing budget, you conflate everything, you're like, you start off going,
 I want, I want a testimonial and then five weeks later, you're like, oh, but it didn't produce
 sales and you're like, well, that was never the goal. And so I think it's really important,
 again, the benefit of being hand in hand is like you can keep saying, remind that this is the
 goal of this campaign. This is the goal of this partnership. If you want to change the goal,
 we've got to change the creative, we might need to change the person, we've got to change the
 deliverables. So it's like, if you, like a great example is if you want sales, reels doesn't
 allow you to have a link. Yeah, it's not going to produce sales, but if you want a brand-new
 NSP stories and disappear after 24 hours, very, very different, which one do you want?
 This has been right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit
 RyanisRake.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship
 opportunities. Thanks for listening.