Fame Engineering and Brand Positioning with Valor Media

 You're listening to the red cast if it's radical. We cover it. Here's your host, Ryan
 Alford. Hey guys, what's up? It's Ryan Alford. Welcome to the latest edition of the
 rad cast. I am joined today by a fellow advertising marketing PR. You name it at the hyperbole
 bad ass that is Michael Valor. He is the CEO of Valor Valor media. I love Valor
 Valor by Jesus. It's like one of more perfect name for marketing and media, but Michael, what's
 up brother? What's going on guys? How's it going? How are you? Hey man, we're we're living the dream
 here at Radical and here in our podcast studio and you know, I'm just excited to talk to you.
 Been good getting to know you over the last couple of years. Yeah, I'm excited. Yeah.
 Has there ever been a better name podcast for Michael Valor than the fucking rad cast?
 When you get in there, it says come to the rad cast. It's like perfect, perfect.
 There was some strategy in the naming. Obviously, our agency is radical, so it fit right in,
 but I was like, it's going to be real hard as we're growing this thing. And now, you know,
 we got a pretty good following and you know, I think we've I wouldn't say we've made it,
 but we're getting easier with guests. But at the beginning, you know, who doesn't want to be
 on the rad cast? It feels free. It feels free. I love it. Yes, yes, yes. So it's been great
 getting to know you last couple of years and appreciate your assistance with some of my personal
 branding and some of the things that we've done for a PR perspective, been watching you grow.
 And really take Valor media to new heights. You work with you at Hans and others on the team.
 But let's talk about Michael. I mean, let's just start. Let's give everybody a little
 perspective, you know, where, you know, we'll give them the, uh, the background, uh, the ones
 or two. So tell us a little bit about Michael Valor. Uh, in business, since I could remember,
 I mean, my first, first and foremost, it's like, I should tell probably automatically. I mean,
 if even if this is the first time you've ever seen me talk and you're watching the rad cast,
 I talk, you know, I got, I'm from New Jersey. I'm from New Jersey at that, that, that tang to me.
 I got some Italian blood going on. So it's like, always been a little bit, um, uh,
 rambunctious. It's probably the best way to do it. So, uh, you know, the traditional public
 schooling system of, and wasn't my best friend. It wasn't loving me, you know, it was a lot of
 stop talking, sit down, you know, and I'm great at talking and standing up.
 Yeah. It wasn't really rewarding my gifts. You were that kid in my class, weren't you?
 I was. People wanted to get class with me because you knew it was about being fun. I wake up
 like this. I wake up like this. It's a blessing in a purse, you know, you, you come out in the
 morning and people are like, dude, are you always like that? And it's like, yeah, hi.
 So, um, it's crazy. And, uh, we got started. I was 18 in business. Um, two, two guys came into my
 business class, just randomly in high school. I mean, this is old school stuff, right? And they put
 a sheet and they were like, we're going to train you guys on how to start a business. And we're just
 a bunch of kids, you know, I'm thinking this is a group activity. I'm looking to partner with my
 friends. Maybe we maybe we get a good grade, you know, whatever. And, uh, dude, it changed my life.
 I mean, that one was 17 probably when that happened. And, uh, it was like, you could start a business.
 You could just start a business. You could just go out and start a business. And that blew me away.
 Like, you could just start a business. You could just, you know, whatever you say is real in business.
 You know, I read a festival, you know what I mean? But like, whatever you say is real. And so,
 I just started realizing that and like that, you could just go out and make things and create things
 and build things. And, um, I was naturally pretty good at sales. I moved down to North Carolina
 from New Jersey, which was a culture shock, as I'm sure you can know what's up with the South.
 I love the South now. I've been here a while. Um, and yeah, I mean, I've just just loud kid from New
 Jersey and it was like, okay, really good at sales. I learned a little bit about business. And I was
 sitting there in a coffee shop and I was talking to Hans. He's my partner. And I was just sitting there
 talking to Hans. And this lady was overhearing me in the coffee shop. She's just hearing me talk.
 And she was like, turned around. She's like, do you want a job, young man? And I'm 17.
 Yes, please hire me. I'm just saying yes. I'm just like, yes, I do. And she actually ran
 the local newspaper of Wake Forest, North Carolina, South of Raleigh. And she was looking for a
 newspaper ads salesman. Okay. All right. And so I didn't know anything about this, but it's
 sounded official. First of it had the at the beginning of it. If it had the at the beginning of it,
 it was definitely official way better way better than the pizza hut, man. So I'm like, yes, I want
 this job for sure. Didn't realize how hard it was about to be because it's newspaper ads. And
 but you know, 10 years, like nine years ago, 10 years ago, I mean, that was still reasonable.
 Small businesses were still spending money on news outlets. Talk about something, the dinosaur
 that is newspaper now, but yes, then it was having spent my time growing in the ad agency business
 sitting thousands of newspaper ads out. You know, at one time, it was the cash cowl of advertising.
 Right. They had budgets for it. But this is a time as well. I mean, this is 10 years ago. So
 it's like Instagram's barely a thing if anything at all. I mean, it's like an artistic platform
 at best. Facebook is young people are thinking social media as a fad. This is within our decade,
 which every time by the way, I bring that up. It blows my mind. That blows my mind. You know,
 like 10 years ago, I just sit down with business owners and I was pitching them to get into a
 newspaper and they were selling ice cream. And I thought, how much ice cream does this guy
 got to sell to recap any amount of investment from this newspaper ad? This small block that cost
 $2,000 in the weekly in the week, weekly. So that's where we got started. I did phenomenal.
 I did phenomenal. I did really well. I built a lot of good relationships. There's a lot of cold
 calling, a lot of cold knocking, just walking into businesses and just beating my face against
 the payment, really. But that teaches you a lot. That cold calling, I think everyone should have
 to go through that, you know, whether you're an introvert or extrovert, obviously, you're more of
 an extrovert. So you're good at it. It suits your personality. But I feel like that really like,
 it gets you ready for business, like having to have those discussions, having to understand and
 kind of just put yourself out there like everybody should go through that. The good thing about it,
 and this is what I always say is it makes you bulletproof. You know what I'm saying? You
 go sit down with a bit. You're about to get shot. And after a while, you're like, okay, pass that
 up. And then you get shot over here. And you're like, oh, pass that up. And you get shot over here.
 Like they're asking the hard questions because it's money and the money matters. And especially in
 the small business space, in the small business space that I was, but I mean, that's where we were
 started. And so the every $100 matter, $500 is a big expense. That's money out of their kids'
 mouths or food out of money. They better not be, don't anybody put money in your kids' mouths.
 Yeah. I mean, dude, it really came down to it. Like it actually affected families. So it was like,
 I'm selling newspaper ads. They don't work. You know what I mean? And the readership wasn't there.
 And it's just like, I'm building awesome relationships with all these small business owners sitting
 across the desk from pitching them on a newspaper ad, telling them how important advertising is.
 And they're losing money out of it. And that's when I made a decision. I was 18 at this time.
 I was doing well. I was doing well for myself. I mean, we increased the revenue by a couple
 thousand percent. I mean, they didn't have a sales force prior to. So I'm put, I'm pushing
 $2,000, $5,000 packages once or twice a week. You know, I'm bringing in decent revenue for the
 wake weekly. You know what I mean? Yeah. This is good revenue for them. So yeah. And I just started
 feeling bad about I went to my mentor at the time, who was my math teacher. He changed my life
 on business books, self-development. He kind of introduced me to that whole thing at 18 pivotable
 time for me. I mean, that was huge. I needed that. And I went to him and I was like, hey, I'm quitting
 the job. And he was like, what? You're quitting the job? And I'm like, yeah, I'm about to quit.
 He was like, Mike, that's um, we're like, that's unreasonable. My family wasn't wealthy. Like nobody
 was making big money. Like for me to even be making $50,000 a year salary as a 17, 18 year old,
 like hell, yeah. Like that's great. You know, that was like, that was like big time. I had a
 button down. I thought I was legit. You know, and all my friends were like, wow, he's like a man
 of a newspaper. You know, like they think that. So I went in. I was like, I want to live an
 unreasonable life, reasonable decisions. My decisions cannot be reasonable. I can't always make
 reasonable decisions. If I want to be what I want to be, and I definitely want to be that,
 you know what I'm saying? And I knew like Napoleon Hill is a really big influence. You know,
 that was like one of my first big books. Yeah. And he says, you want to have a burning desire.
 That's like step number one. And I'm like, I, I've already got the burning part down. Now we just
 got to make it a desire. Yeah. Your your boys on fire, you know. And so just got to make it a,
 make it a desire and get very clear about what I wanted. And so I ended up quitting that job
 and starting my first marketing company called average Joe promo at 18. And that's what that's
 where we are. And it is just evolved and grown and built. And it's like a megazoid from Power Rangers.
 It's a beast now. You know, it's arguably I would say in the top 20, maybe top 10 PR marketing
 celebrity firms in the country. Yeah. It's awesome. And now we're recognized name from average
 Joe promo. I will see we used to build a website pages on businesses on Weebly back in the day.
 You know, it's nine years ago. Yeah. Host their links and get them like little back links and
 social signals. I was pretty big into SEO back then. Yeah. I mean, that's that's where we got
 rolling. Love it. Well, that, you know, a couple of things there. They do say that growth and comfort
 do not coexist. Sounds like you kind of lived and breathed that, making that transition. You know,
 people always look at you. They're like, what the hell are you doing? But, you know, if you want to
 take a leap, if you want to get to where you want to go, it isn't always going to be comfortable.
 No, it's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable. I mean, it has to be like,
 I wake up this morning and I've been gone. You know, I've been in Miami. I've been I've
 been traveling. We were in LA. We're in Las Vegas. I was with you recently. We had T.O.
 to Rowlands. We had Wolf of Wall Street. We had Bradley. We've got more coming up.
 So I've been on the road. I wake up today. And like, most people would be like, okay,
 it's Monday, like, cross the nice and slow, you know. And for me, it's like battle time, baby.
 You know, let me behind the desk and start sending me some problems. I run an agency, right?
 So it's like, I've got finance problems. We've got operations problems. We've got marketing
 problems with, you know, some ending problems, infrastructure problems, sales problems, you know.
 And I just, I mean, that's part of being a business owner, right? It's just solving these issues
 all day. And they just get slapped in your face over and over again. I love it. And I love that
 part of it. Let's talk a little bit, Michael, about, you know, some of the core of what you guys do
 and maybe talk about some of the trends in PR and influencing and all of those things.
 It's just become so high-ported as people are trying to build their personal brands and they
 aren't naturally or currently a celebrity, you know, how they leverage that. But talk about some
 of those core services that you guys are providing that you see work, you know, trends and things that
 were needed in the marketplace. Let's talk a little bit about that. Okay. So we're at this point
 now where social media is a must. You can't avoid it. You need the profiles. You need them to look
 good. They cannot be shitty. You cannot, you cannot hire a random religion turn anymore for $400,
 you know, and have them run in your show. Like that's what the, we're transitioning out of that
 because that's what business owners are like thinking, okay, well, I'll just hire like my niece
 and she's going to come in and, you know, if you're building a big business of any sort,
 you need thought leadership, you need brand positioning, and we call that fame engineering,
 impact marketing and fame engineering. And so we've kind of coined that term. I'll use one of my
 clients for as an example. Johnny's pizza, okay? Johnny's pizza. Local pizza joint. You would say,
 you would say, why does this guy need to be famous? He's a local pee. He should be spending money
 on paid ads. He should be spending money on SEO. He should be spending money on better landing
 pages, right? Like what? Maybe some mailers direct mail. What does he spend money on that turns
 him an ROI? And I sit down with this guy three or four goes to show you like how well we've done it for.
 If you're a marketing company and you're working with a guy for four years, what's up? He was like,
 I know you can grow social media platforms, okay? At this point, I'm like 17,000 followers. Yeah,
 but I'm just big in in Royal North Carolina. 17,000 was a lot that it's like, I'm a micro influencer.
 So he sits down with me and I was like, listen, you don't want to just run a local pizzeria.
 It's not just that for you. You want to be the pizzeria. You want to be positioned as the
 legendary pizzeria. The one that people take their family to when they're in town. Hey,
 you got to try this place. It's famous. And a lot of times with the restaurant industry,
 that's positioning over a long term, right? It takes years, decades. Oh, this place has been here
 since 1892 or something crazy like that. You know, everybody goes here. This is the local shindig.
 This is the spot, like the familiarity. So you've got to know like trust funnel. I got to know
 the business. I got to like the business. I got to trust a business. I want to add a step to that.
 I want them to adore the business. I want them to I want them to
 that brand ethos. I want them to feel and experience that the pizzeria is legendary.
 How do we do that? We frame some of the language. We start to create content and nobody else is doing.
 And then we take. Okay. And so what that is for us. And this is always our process when we work with
 people, whether it's a small business and you want to do individual targeting and try to pull
 in local customers or you want to frame yourself long term and we're building a brand
 for in longevity. He goes number one. How many followers do you have? And then every business owner,
 this is where I hear this every single day, you know, it's like, well, I want followers that turn
 into money. Oh, yeah. That's what they say every time every time you talk to me, well, if my
 followers aren't buying anything from me, then what's the good of the follower? And I'm like
 Kylie Jenner's followers are all not buying from 200 million followers. But Kylie Jenner's getting
 paid a million dollars to post on Instagram one time. You know what I'm saying? If you look at the
 best of anybody in your space, what are plumbing? I don't care if you own a boating company. I don't
 care if you've got a painting. I don't care if it's pizza. There is a peak and there are people
 who are at that peak. They are managing their social media. Well, they are investing in it. They're
 spending time on it. They're making it clean, clear and under control. They're building it up. So
 my first step is always to get you to 100,000 followers for the local businesses you go,
 maybe 10, 20, 30, you know what I mean? But really, the main identity here is how can we get a lot
 of people buzzing about this business? How do we do that? A lot of people, a lot of people on every,
 I want every view I can get. And then we start to look for, okay, credibility. So now it's like,
 all right, let's say personal brand because that's something I specialize in, okay? Personal brand
 comes to me, 2000, maybe 10,000, something like that. I say, okay, step one, let's get you more
 followers. So we'll get you on a growth plan. There's a lot of ways to grow right now. There's a lot.
 You have a DM method where, I don't know if you've seen this, but like they take thousands of
 child accounts and they get sweeping an entire state or a hashtag and just DM everybody. And
 that's good. It's pretty targeted, but it's expensive. Look at it this way. You've got to, you've
 got to scale. Obviously, the lower the quality follower, the cheaper it's going to follow the
 follower, the more expensive it's going to be all the way down to like, let's run paid ads and try to
 get you followers that way, but you're about to dole out some cash. You know what I mean? So whatever
 your ratio is budget wise and however long and however aggressive you want out of followers,
 we can make that plan for you. All the way down to I could target your sister who is at a
 restaurant down the street. I can get her, but you're paying for those, you know what I mean?
 And it's harder. It takes longer. You got to enter relationships and do follow and follow and
 talk to them and get them in the DMs and send them the right stuff and, right? So we take care of
 the growth. Now you're growing for whatever degree that is. Then I say, okay, now we want you,
 that's the next big thing. And that's the question, man. I'm telling you nobody knows how to do it.
 It's always changing. It's been changing for eight years. I've been doing this. The blue
 check is infamous. Everyone wants the blue check. No, but everyone's questioning. It's hilarious.
 It's hilarious. It's actually, I feel bad because it's an industry. It's its own product and
 industry by itself, the blue check. I mean, that has made me so, so many people, we've walked hundreds
 of celebrities through the process of, okay, you got to get some press. You know, that verification
 badge is huge. We got to get some press. We got to Google index that press. We might need a
 Google knowledge. We might need an IMDB. Well, I don't know what we're going to need. You know what I'm
 saying? And it's not up to me. I'm not the judge maker there, you know? And it keeps changing, but
 and I'm sure you can attest to this. It can change as your business. Your response rate goes up
 30, 40, 50%, maybe more. You know what I'm saying? If you comment on a famous person's post
 and you are verified, get ready to get some. If you apply that $1.80 strategy from Gary Ve,
 right, where you're commenting on people's posts in your niche, okay? You run whatever type of
 business, a medical spa. I don't know. And you start commenting on other medical spa posts,
 verified, and you have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousand followers,
 you're about to get some responses, brother. You know what I'm saying? And that's when people
 look at you and they're now you're credible. And now they want to do business and they want to
 interact. Cool. So now you're verified. You have hundreds of thousand followers,
 100,000 followers, whatever. You look clean. You look like a good profile. This is all on
 Instagram first, first and foremost. Facebook's awesome. It builds a really close tight-knit community.
 I've built groups on there. It's great to interact and have hand-to-hand touches. But
 where's the social credibility there? Because you can just boost your posts if you really want
 more views, you know what I'm saying? So Instagram is your Instagram. That's your main
 stay right now. And that could change. But that's right now. It's currently that's that's your
 web page. That's where people go first. Okay. And you better have your highlights set up right
 and your highlight cup. We do all this for you, you know? Yeah.
 I clean. So now you're verified. You got hundreds of thousand followers. We go to step three.
 Now we want to start interacting and collabbing with people in your space. So personal brand comes
 to me and they're in the fitness space to reach out for them. And we'll start setting up
 collabs in the fitness space one after another. He's working with this guy. He's working with this guy.
 He's working with this guy. He's working with this guy. He's working with this guy. You know?
 And guess what? They want to work with you. They want to work with you now.
 Then you are somebody to them. You apply them value. And that's the thing. People are so crazy
 to me. They're like, well, why don't I just reach out to them now? It's like
 from a place of weakness instead of a point of leverage. Yeah. But that's what it is though. I mean,
 everything you're talking about is that attention. And that's why, you know, literally, I mean,
 we created t-shirts says attention is currency. And that's what people don't understand. It's like,
 this isn't about being famous to be famous. This is about famous for
 activating business and currency monetization through whatever you do. Whether that's, you know,
 a psychologist or a, you know, truck guy. I mean, that's what's crazy is like, people don't
 understand, like you said, like, this isn't like, oh, I just want to be famous, you know, like,
 and I know every 15 year old now wants to be famous. But it's a business though. It's just,
 this is about having leverage because when you have attention, you have leverage period.
 It's a must. It's a must. It's a play the game. You're about to be on the platforms. Other people
 are in your space and they're doing it and they're killing it. Why are you not? And you make it look
 like you're killing it real quick. And when you are, it's like, you look like you're killing it real
 quick. You are killing it real quick. Because now you've collabed with everybody in your space.
 You've networked with them. You don't even know what comes from that. You know what I'm saying?
 Like some people I've set up with, like, I'll introduce them to Jordan Belfer, Wolf and Wall Street,
 Maraj, leave from Drop Monster. They start shaking hands. They start talking about their problems.
 Now there's a name to the face. People know each other. It builds a community. You know, like,
 there's value. There's value in meeting those people, but they don't even want to meet you
 until you have value. The way that you do is when you walk in like a big boss with a blue check,
 a hundred thousand followers and kick ass content. They're like, this guy, I could take this guy
 seriously now. You know what I'm saying? And that's fame engineering brand positioning. And the
 bigger you are, this is interesting. I love Bradley. Okay. He's, he's a, where I would consider us
 friends. I like the guy a lot. I love how he does business. I love being around and his
 energy is contagious. He's one of the best. Let me be clear about this. One of the best
 framers and positioners of his brand. Okay. You walk up to him and you feel like this guy's cool.
 Like this guy. He's got it down. You know, he's got it down. You want to work with him. You trust
 him automatically. You know, he's only got three. What is it? You know, he's not a celebrity.
 Yeah. He holds himself like that. And, and I, I, I got to commend him for it. It's huge because
 it really does change the game. People give him stuff. I've watched it just because of who he is.
 And that's the thing. And then so the next question is, okay, now we're collabing with all these
 people. Okay. And they're in your space. And then everyone comes out and they're like, well, I don't
 do content. I don't, I don't know how to do content. I don't know how to get on on camera and
 make content. Like how do you make content for your space? Are you specialized? Like when you're
 collabing, you're making content automatically. It does like the Gary V. Thing like document don't
 create. You know, I tell people, my clients, you sit in front, write me. Just a couple of
 topics. Things you know about things that if I asked you, you would say, oh, it's this, this,
 this, this, this, this, because everybody's got a specialty. You wake up and if you get out of bed,
 if you get out of bed, you got a specialty. Well, I don't care if you're just getting out of bed
 and making toast. That you making toast, you're good at making toast now. How many times have you
 done that? You know, so all these people got jobs and they got a specialty. And so I just say,
 put a camera on. Get yourself a little mic. And let's write down some topics and you talk about it.
 You sent it to us. We'll cut it. We'll clip it. We'll make it cool. And then we'll throw it up
 there. Okay. And it just, it just rocks. I mean, it just rocks. Now send it in like step four.
 And what is step four? Now it's like, okay, they got a big account. It's verified. The account has
 value. Okay. They've collabed with just about anybody in their space. They know all those people.
 They got tips, tricks, that works all from that. Then we say, okay, who do we want to target to
 bring you to the next level? Grant Cardone did this. Why do you think he had John Travolta? Why
 do you think he has Kevin Hart on 10? You know what I'm saying? It's positioning.
 Cage Rubin's shoulders with celebrity. He's been out. There are guys. There are guys that I have
 worked with and talked to that have portfolioed close enough to the size of Grant Cardone. If not
 bigger. And they are not respected nearly as much. And it's because of the positioning that
 Grant has put into his brand. You want to respect to him? He is, he is idolized. And it gives him so
 much more opportunity. Obviously, real estate in investing is his thing. I'm sure that's his bread
 and butter. It's always going to stay the center path for him. But he's got leverage to go beyond
 Bravo. He's got leverage to go be billionaire behind the scenes, whatever it was. But he has
 leveraged, he's an undercover billionaire. Billionaire is something. But he's got leverage to
 choose his paths. He's not stuck in one in one lane. It gives you that because even even the
 networks, like Discovery Channel approaches this guy and says, okay, we got to put
 Scott a personality. You know, he's got this big brand. He's worked with celebrities. You know,
 and it comes back down to fame engineering. How do you position your brand to the point where
 people want to come to you? And eventually, where you're so big, sometimes my clients,
 like, they're so big after a while of just working with me that it's just like, they don't need,
 like, who, why do they need me? You don't need me to, you know, to get introduced to big guys
 anymore. You're a big guy. People are trying. I've had that. Like, we're clients. Like, we're
 paying for podcasts placements. We're paying for TV slots. They're paying for Forbes and
 Entrepreneur and we've done the fame engineering. We built their content infrastructure and I help
 them with the brand, the media. And I don't know how scalable it is. I don't even know if I want to
 scale it. You know, I like the fact that it's super boutique and everybody I work with gets best
 friend customer service. That's huge on an agency scale. It's like, you could text your best friend
 at 11 p.m. on Sunday, a brand new idea or something. We'll work it out. We're going to work it out
 together. You know, I'm your best friend. You know what I mean? I got your back. It's like that.
 So keep that door open when I'm working with a client. It's like best friend customer service.
 You can talk to me at any time. We're going to consult. I am rocking with you on this.
 This isn't just buy a product from a 1-800 number.
 We're about to meet people when you work with me. You're about to shake some hands. We're about
 to connect. We're going to build a relationship. And I have for the last decade kept my ear to the
 ground on whatever product comes out to the market. Or it changes. That's the thing. Business owners
 don't have the time, especially if they're making cash, especially if you're making a bunch of
 money and you're doing well and you got this big organization, what are you going to do? You're
 staying on top of all the new products that hit the market.
 Someone's got a new marketing Jim Jam scheme thing that they've got out. My job is to beat those
 guys down, test them, volumize that price to nothing and then charge my clients and work with
 them every step of the way. Step, step, step, step. Every time something new comes out, they hear
 about it. They get it first. And then they're like, okay, Mike, what's my next step? What can I do,
 Valor? Next step, I would do this. I'll write it down for you. I'll get into your email.
 Come on. Who's doing that? You know what I'm saying? Because people are so obsessed with building
 this large. Our business is weird. Because when you build an agency, unless you're doing it,
 and I know about this, it's like some of the marketers who are just dollar for market, dollar for
 market. You know, it's like, that's fine. You could scale that, but it's a dead horse. I mean,
 it's just a big fat dead horse. The clients only care about the KPI. That's all the matters.
 You know, and to me, they're so lifeless. And my business, I feel like mimics the leader.
 Businesses always mimic the leader. The culture, all people are handled mimics the leader.
 And for me, I'm not a lifeless guy, obviously. And I like the connection. I like the connection. I
 like the warmth. I like handholding and walking them through it. I like building something when
 1000 followers and then really would love to meet Bradley or Jordan Belford or Grant Cardone or
 whatever, you know, and or the Miami Heat or the UFC we've gotten to work with, which was so
 awesome. Or NFL players, whatever. Our lifetime accomplishments for some of these people.
 They did well in business, sure, but they would have never met a Hall of Fame NBA player.
 You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And now their kids, their kids are like, oh my God,
 you're on tea. That's awesome. Love it, man. Talking with Michael Valor, CEO of Valor Media,
 at the Michael Valor, he is the Michael Valor on Instagram. So Michael, talk a little bit like,
 I'm getting to this point now, you know, been in marketing for 20 years, but I actually am coming
 to this point of recognition that PR might be your first tactic. I mean, like it,
 and I think that's what we're talking about. It's public relations is so broad now where you
 personal branding, you have all this press, but an earned media sounds a little disingenuous
 because you do have to pay to play with some of this stuff. But PR is just, it's like it might be
 step one. If you are a successful business and you're doing well, it is step one.
 Like if you're already doing well, because people aren't coming to me,
 typically struggling to get their next bill, you know what I'm saying? Because then it's like,
 go focus on your sales force. You know, go make it easier for customers by from you. I need a
 higher revenue count. You know, you need to be doing well. Yeah. But there are way work with me at
 like $300 a month sometimes. How about that? Yeah. Yeah. And they get the same attention of someone
 who spends a hundred grand a month with me, which habits often. So it's like, I really try to like,
 it's just, it's just to pay to play for how fast you want. People always say earn,
 funny. It's like earned media. But like when you pay to meet the wolf of Wall Street,
 that shit's kind of chunk of change. Yes. When you talk to them and to connect with them,
 you get a, you get another level of service from them a lot of times. You know, like there,
 there's a level of accountability there that that is really important to your legit. And that's
 important as well. When you're paying, they know your legit and they know that they want to work
 with you and they know that you do well in business. So they should try to connect with you too.
 And the networking aspect of it has made some of my clients hundreds of thousands of them.
 Well, you want to be talking with these guys. I mean, they're there and where they're at for a
 reason. These are the guys you want to be rubbing shoulders with. You know, like this is,
 this is the influence you want to be having. This is the discussions. This just, you know,
 it's funny. Like you see certain quotes and nearly sometimes it's like, all right, I'm kind of
 over that. But the air in the conversation is just different. It just is, you know, having recently
 been on Bradley's podcast, sitting out of the table with Brad. It's just a different conversation.
 Yeah. With their winners, their winners. How do you think they got there? They did this. They did
 this. They did fame engineering already. That's the only reason we're talking about them right now.
 That's why it works. People are like, I want to be like Grand Cardone. I want to be like Bradley.
 I want to be like Dave Meltzer. I want to be like Lewis Howe's. I want to be like whatever.
 They already did this. They've been doing it for 10 years. You know, they've been doing the fame
 engineering before. Not just not what they called it. You know what I'm saying? Kyle Lopez,
 fame engineered when he came out with that YouTube ad. I'm here in my garage. That was fame
 engineering then. You know what I'm saying? He had rented that huge mansion. He rented
 whatever. You know, he's paying 30,000 a month for this shit. It's crazy. You know what I mean?
 Yeah. Why fame engineering? It was credibility. But now it's Ty Lopez. Now it's Ty Lopez.
 And that's what people need to understand and get to. It's like, I mean, imagine how much money
 Grand Cardone has dropped trying to make 10x the position, the brand position that it is.
 You know what blows me away? To be honest with you? Big companies don't do it. No.
 AT&T, you know what? You know, if a fortune 500 through a budget at me, I'd make their
 fucking headspin. Sorry. Yeah. You want to throw a fortune 500 budget at me? I'll boots
 ridiculous. It'll be ridiculous. You'll be everywhere. It's called omnipotence. I mean,
 you've got every celebrity under the sun making creative content left and right. And everyone's
 like, oh, I've been hearing about KFC because they're popping off on TikTok because KF3's throwing
 these influencers five. KFC five grand. You know what I'm saying? What is 10 grand to KFC?
 And how much from now market cap are they getting? The influence in the millennials and Gen Z by
 attacking. You've got all of these other marketing departments just millions, hundreds of millions
 of dollars. And they're just sitting in these offices, just talking about nothing. It's like,
 what are you guys discussing? No, they're so big. They're so big. They can't move. Like,
 they're so big. And I've used this analogy a lot lately, like from swingers, the movie,
 when Vince Vaughn's talking to his buddy, they got these fangs. And you don't know what to do.
 You're batting around the bunny. And you don't even know what to do because they're so big and
 they're so slow. And they think they've gotten better. They're still putting 32nd TVs on social media.
 And they're like, all right, I want to have a let's have a micro influencer plan. And they're
 like batting around the bunny when they've got these claws and not figuring out like how to do
 this shit. It's just like, what are they doing? It's like, and I worked with a lot of them like 10
 years ago. And I was just like, I got so tired of it now. I like work with small to medium business
 better because you know, we can we can move marketing at the speed of now. You know, not yesterday.
 They can move the needle. You could pivot a business when it's when it's when it's that size.
 And there are false of going super fast. I'm not saying that you want to be, you know,
 but I'm saying at the same time, it's like, dude, with the budgets that these guys have,
 they could just dominate. They could dominate. Like, why is there not a Coca-Cola podcast? Why aren't
 they having celebrities on it? Why aren't the Coca-Cola chat? You know, like if Coke hit me up
 with a budget of any kind, it's game over. It's game over. People are going to talk about it.
 No problem. You know, and so I think the big race right now is how can big companies like that
 ease up on the reins, give it to a small agency that can fucking kick ass and just go out there
 and slam it against the in a really cool way. And that's impact marketing. That's why I love that.
 I'm all about it. You know, and it's just like really dominate every single piece of content
 creation for an organization. You started the podcast. I mean, you were talking about this.
 Yeah, yep. Now you got a bunch of a bunch of clients, revenue, extra business opportunities
 from the podcast. From the podcast. I have a podcast. I talk about Legos. I talk about Legos.
 And I still get business from it. I'm sitting here for an hour and a half talking about has nothing
 to do with with Valor media. You know what I'm saying? I'm talking about the Lion King.
 Has nothing to do with Valor media. But I get business from it. People like, oh, this
 and this guy like, he makes content. He builds a brand. And um, but they get to know you before
 they have to work before working with you. Like, that's what people understand is you,
 you've softened the beach head before you attack. Like, you don't even have to attack. They're like,
 they're laying their guns down before you even come on to the beach because they're like,
 man, we would have gave you a hug. We want to work with you. You know, I like this guy.
 No, like trust. No, like trust. No, like trust every day. You
 got me. Then you like me. You're like, wow, this guy's kind of cool. He's a nice guy.
 Smiling. He's having a good time. A couple of jokes, you know, whatever. And then it's like,
 I trust him now. I've seen him so much. I've seen his life. He does Instagram stories every day,
 which I'm doing. You know, I got my face up now. And uh, people come to me with the weirdest
 problems with Instagram, man. Like, I mean, I am the wizard. I'm Gandalf of Instagram.
 Okay. Like I got messages today from influencers. They have millions of followers. And like
 Instagram customer service is terrible. And you need someone in your corner who can handle the
 crazy problems that are like no one's even seen some of these. These are glitches. But it makes sense.
 It's a, it look how big of a system it is. How's it not going to have glitches, you know? Yeah.
 Benefit of, of having an agency that knows what they're doing. You know, it's like
 having that protection side of things because it gets crazy. It's the internet. Yeah.
 The internet. Why? Like why are people still confused? It's the internet.
 I love her 420. I mean, you know, there's crazy things on here. It's not supposed to be clean.
 Isn't all about West for sure. So Michael, where's it all going? As we kind of wrap things up,
 we could talk for days and we will. But what's, where's this all going for you guys?
 For me, I think I think the next step for Valor Media is going to come down to. I work with some
 of the biggest personal brands. Period. I mean, you name a person. They've either bought products
 for me or buying products for me or are planning to when it comes to personal brands.
 So we're doing a lot with celebrity clubs right now. That's been huge because it does actually
 in the celebrity clubs churn an ROI, believe it or not. You know, you see a celebrity working
 with a product and they use that on ads. It actually does move the needle and change the game for a
 product. You know, for me, it's like, we're like, we're we're going to try to double. I think I can
 my current infrastructures. We got like a team of 16, 17 people. All here in the US,
 then we got our admin team, obviously, that handles all like administrative tasks, pack off
 this stuff. And then it's like five mill a year to five mill. And I'll be happy there. I'll be
 happy there. Five mill a year for sure. You know, I'm a, but who knows? You know, when I get there
 and then I'm like, oh, it could be 10. Yeah. What about 20? Yeah. So we'll see. But I think we
 have the current infrastructure to handle five mill, which is good. Um, it's just about getting some
 of these businesses who are just old dinosaurs who have a bunch of cash on hand,
 who in our innovation, the new space, because they're not even ready. The metaverse is coming out,
 bro. Yeah. It's like the area is about to change the internet and you're still struggling
 to make an online presence. Like you're about to get left behind. I mean, you need some rocket fuel.
 That's all my kids say is that so met a dad. I'm like, I know what you're talking about,
 kid. You don't, you're not going over my head. Yeah, I think, I think a couple of these big,
 these big boys eventually will hear about me, um, bring me in as an outside consultant.
 And I'll walk them through the walk to fame. The path to fame will make creative content. I mean,
 if you go look at my page, you'll like, I don't, I mean, I don't want to do my own horn,
 but there's, I mean, the top one percent of creative content out there. I mean, I don't even see
 stuff like what I put out, you know, it's crazy. It's just crazy. But it has a brand ethos and I'm
 going to, I'm really good at that. I'm, isn't it real? And then formatting it so that everybody
 wants to be like it. Make things cool. I'm going to make it things cool. And I've always been good
 at making things cool because I was kind of weird, you know, you can tell. I was kind of weird.
 So it's like, make something weird, cool, make being colorful, cool. And we're going into a space
 into 2021 and beyond where being, being weird and being a little different is good.
 You know, and that's awesome for guys like me and Brad.
 So we'll see, we'll see how it goes. I'm, I'm really enjoying building the business right now.
 I'm meeting all the people like you, like Brad, like, I mean, anybody, I mean, every,
 any and everyone we shake hands with is so cool, man. I mean, for traveling the world, we're
 making really cool things happen. Business in a space full of a bunch of jokers. And I think that's
 another big piece that people are worried about when they work with social media agencies. So
 agencies, you know, it's like two, two guys behind a lab top in Bora Bora. And all they care about
 is they're, they post their images of their Lamborghinis that they bought with their clients' money.
 And, you know, and they're just stacking sales numbers. That's all that matters. And they just
 build these massive sales organizations and pump out products and infrastructure. It's legacy.
 Some of the people I'm building with, you know their names. And I'm saying I'm a part of that
 over and over again, which is so, so sick. So yeah, find more part of making more people famous.
 Do post. I love it, brother. Well, really appreciate you coming on. Really appreciate
 getting to know you and Hans better and working together. And I know there'll be more
 collabs down the road and really appreciate it. And where can we find you, man? Working
 everybody. Keep up with you. I know it's Instagram. I mentioned it earlier, but tell everybody
 where to keep up with you. Dude, it's at the Michael Valor on Instagram. You can click contact.
 It's got my personal phone number on there. You want to give me a ring? Go ahead. Shoot me a
 text phone number on there and everything. Shoot me a DM. I love voice messages. I love connecting
 with people. I'm so down for that. And yeah, dude, I appreciate you for having me on. The
 Carolina boys got to stick together. Exactly. South Carolina, North Carolina. We'll have to meet up
 for a Hornets game or something is, you know, up and sorry. We got a boat out here on Norman.
 So you got to come up and just chill with us for a little bit. For sure. We'd love to. We'll make
 it happen. We'll really appreciate Michael Valor coming on today on the Radcast. He just told
 you where to keep up with him. And you know where to find us, theradcast.com at the.rad.cast on
 Instagram. And I'm at Ryan offered on all the platforms. You can find me on TikTok. Ryan
 offered on tic tac. I'm verified there. You will see me doing all kinds of cool shit. We'll talk
 to you next time on the radcast. Yo guys, what's up? Ryan offered here. Thanks so much for listening.
 Really appreciate it. Do us a favor. If you've been enjoying the radcast, you need to share the
 word with a friend or anyone else. We'd really appreciate it. And go leave us a review at Apple
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 another minute. Let's get your business going. 864-729-3680. We'll see you next time.