Episode 9: I’m a Celebrity You’re a Celebrity

Hey, welcome. This is Alex Branning, and this is the Your Marketing Coach podcast. Today, we’re talking about celebrities. I’m a celebrity. You’re a celebrity. We’re all celebrities. Wait, what? Let’s go into it after the jingle.

All right. Here’s one of the biggest problems, the biggest obstacles that we have as entrepreneurs that are trying to sell our services. Nobody knows who we are. When we first get started, we might as well be a stranger to people, because we are a stranger, and if they don’t know who we are, they’re not going to trust us. There’s that … right away, they’re wondering, who is this guy?

I remember when I first started my business, one of the questions that was asked was, “You just look like a kid asking for money.” I was 17 years old when I started my business, and that was the general impression that I was giving off. I was just some new kid trying to make it in the world. Now, here I am. I’ve been in business for a long time, so that helps, but most of the people that I am getting as clients actually reach out to me because they know who I am. I’ve become familiar to them. How did I do that, why does it matter, and what can you do to establish yourself as an authority?

Well, first off, let’s just talk about what is an internet celebrity? This term has been thrown around so much lately in the internet marketing space. How do you become a celebrity, and why do you even care if you’re a celebrity? Well, the way that I define someone who’s a celebrity in my world is somebody that I’ve become familiar with. I mean, think about it. How do you define a celebrity? It’s someone that you see, maybe somebody that’s famous. Maybe they’re on the TV that you watch. Maybe they’re in the magazines that you read. Well, how can we … Let’s reverse engineer that, then, and let’s figure out how we can create something similar.

When you’re a celebrity to your ideal client, you’re showing up on their phone, Facebook, Instagram, et cetera. Wherever they go, you are. You show up in their inbox, so they start to become familiar with you. You show up on the other shows and podcasts that they listen to or that they watch, and so now you’re popping up on other people’s media. Now you’ve kind of achieved this celebrity status, right? Now you are familiar to them. They recognize you.

What happens when they recognize you and they start seeing you a lot is that this thing happens where we start to trust people more when we recognize them, and we feel like we know them, even if we’ve never met that person before. To give you real life example, Eric Lofholm, he’s been my business coach for the past four years. When I first was introduced to Eric, it was because I read his book. Somebody gave me his book. I just was engrossed in it, and after I finished, I flipped it over, looked at the back cover, and I saw the name Eric Lofholm, and I was like, “I don’t know who that is. I’m going to look him up.”

I found his Facebook profile, and I sent him a message. I just said, “Hey, man, I think your book is awesome. Thank you.” Well, we started having a conversation. I felt safe in a conversation, because I read his book, and I felt like I knew him, and we were able to, over the next couple of weeks, talk a little bit more, get to know each other. He closed me on hiring him to do some coaching for him, and here we are.

Now I’m partnered up with Eric, and I mean the last four years have been such a fun ride, but why did I feel safe talking to this essential stranger on Facebook, and why did I do business with him? It’s because he was an authority figure in my life, because he was an author. He was somewhat of a celebrity, because people were talking about him at the meeting I was at. They were bragging about how amazing he was, and so that elevated his status in my eyes.

So, how can you reverse engineer that? How can you become a celebrity or an authority figure to your market? There’s people in my world right now that just seem to be showing up everywhere. One in particular is a guy named Ryan Stewman. He runs Hardcore Closer. Absolutely brilliant. He’s got a great podcast for sales tips, wrote some really good books. What did he do to get to that space?

Well, it started with just him dominating the air time and the news feed time for me. I started listening to his podcast, and then I started seeing his YouTube stuff, and then I joined his Facebook group, and then I started seeing his ads, and I got his emails, and I listened to his podcast, and it’s like, all of a sudden, Ryan’s everywhere, right? He’s a celebrity in my world. I see him all the time. He’s an authority figure.

Now, granted, his stuff has to be good or else I don’t respect him, but his stuff is really good, and I’ve seen him everywhere, and it makes me feel safe and comfortable with him. So, he is now a celebrity. Now, how do you go from obscurity to authority? How do you get from nobody knowing who you are, which is where I was at, how do you get to a place where you start being recognized at networking events you go to, people reach out to you, and they trust you, they listen to your stuff? How do you get to that place?

Well, it really all starts with publishing. It starts with publishing content. It starts with getting in front of people with video. It starts with blogs. For me, I’m a published author. I’m on Amazon. Got a book out there. I’m working on my second one right now. I have my podcast, and I’m just loving this podcast. I’m loving all the feedback that I’m getting. I have a blog that I write to regularly, my website. I have a strong Facebook presence. Working on my Instagram. I’ve got a decent Twitter presence. I mean, if you follow me, if you’ve connected with me at some point, you’re hearing from me every single week, or at least that’s my goal, is that you hear from me every single week.

And not just that you hear from me, because who cares if I pop in and say, “Hi.” You get value from me every single week. That’s the important thing. My goal is to bring value to each one of the people that are in my audience so that I can better support them and help them achieve their dreams. That’s it. But how do I get from obscurity, where nobody knows me, to authority?

It took consistency. It took a lot of consistency. It took me starting one thing at a time, really perfecting the process, or at least getting it to a point where I felt comfortable with it, and then building.

A lot of times, what happens is, we are just overwhelmed with opportunity. We have a really hard time focusing on one thing. So, I would encourage you, find the one thing that you’re comfortable in, focus on that, and then build. For me, that started with just being relatable and everywhere on social media. I would post in Facebook groups, and provide value there. But my first step was Facebook, and I really started to build up my network. I commented, I just was engaged, you know? I literally set aside time in my calendar to engage with people on Facebook.

I got a good benefit from that. People started to recognize me, even though I wasn’t necessarily positioning myself as an authority, just by me being present helped. Then when I understood that by me creating value, I was able to elevate myself in their eyes, I really focused on providing consistent value to my Facebook audience by posting tips and advice and sharing success stories, and connecting with people, and trying to be a connector, really elevating myself as a networker first. Now, you don’t have to do it that way. That’s just the way that I chose to do it.

Once I had the Facebook stuff down, then I went to blogging, and I started blogging on a regular basis, and again, providing value. For me, my goal is to blog once a week. My team posts how-to articles and other advice on my blog on a regular basis, so we’re just constantly creating content to put out there into cyberspace, so that people can find me and be introduced to what I’m bringing into the world.

Once we had the blogging stuff down, we’re like, “Hey, this is pretty cool. Let’s introduce video.” So, what’s happening, I’m creating a massive amount of content and I’m making it so that the people who find me are able to get that same type of content from me on a consistent basis. If they like my blogs, I release a blog on a regular basis. If they like videos, I now release a video a week. If they like podcasts, I do that, and if they just like following me on Facebook, I have a really strong Facebook presence, and I’m constantly growing my Facebook groups and creating fun communities there. I only published one book. I’m fixing that. I’m publishing more books now. I’m just continually creating value for the people in my world, and as a result of that, I am generating the trust. I’m building it up. I’m earning it, and when I have the people’s trust, then I’m able to do more business.

Now, I don’t go out and create a podcast like this, and I don’t go out there and say, “Okay, I’m hoping that this podcast generates X number of leads.” Maybe I should, but I don’t. I just do it simply as a value add, because I want to show my audience, I want to show you, I want to talk to you, and say, “Look, I know what I’m doing. I can help you follow my lead,” and you can do the same thing to your audience, and it starts with taking it one step at a time.

Now, what are the benefits? Why even bother becoming a celebrity or an authority figure? Well, when people know you, they trust you. When they trust you, they do business with you, and when you start to create a large network of people around you that trust you, value you, follow you, and want to be around you, you have a lot more opportunity, right? You have a lot more opportunities that jump into your lap.

I know for me, every single week I’m approached by somebody who wants me to team up with them, join their team, become a part of their downline, you know? I get some really cool opportunities that fall into my lap. I’m not saying that to boast, I’m just telling you, these are some of the benefits that happen. I just spoke with someone today and they’re looking to build a pretty cool business serving real estate investors, and they reached out to me because they see me, they recognize me, they know me and they trust me. They reached out to me, and they wanted some advice.

While I was on the phone with them giving them free advice … I always like to start with value. When I was on the phone with them giving them free advice, one of the things that they mentioned is that they are looking for ways to generate affiliate income, and so I had an opportunity to not only share with them a couple ideas with specific products for that, but I was also able to mention to them that if they talk to a real estate investor who does not have an online presence, that I would love to work with them and help serve and support the clients that they’re attracting into their world.

Then they were pretty stoked about that. They liked the general idea. They liked the concept of it, and they know that there’s investors out there who just need simple landing pages, and I was able to take the first step in creating a good referral relationship, where they go out, they’re finding clients, and they’re working on building their business, and on the side, they could also send some of these people my way. I could provide value to these real estate investors that they’re connecting with, and potentially do business with them, and really, at no cost to me.

I mean, these two gentlemen, they have a really solid marketing plan. They’re going to be executing it. I’ll be there to give them advice as they do it, and if they see a fit for me to be introduced to some of their clients, they’ll do that, knowing that they’re going to get a monetary benefit for doing so, but I’m getting clients placed in my lap, at no cost to me, because they know me, and they know me because I am an authority figure in the space, and I’m an authority figure in the space because of my consistency in producing high value content.

That’s why you want to become an authority figure. It’s all about setting yourself up for success. As I said on episode two of my podcast, you want to put yourself in a position to win. This is one of the ways that I do that. I want you to do it too. I’m not driving all of this so that you can see what I’ve done. This isn’t a pat Alex on the back episode. I want to inspire you. I want you to see what I’m doing, how I’m building.

Right now, I look on the internet, and my influence is much larger than many people out there, because they’re not building, but when it comes to the internet marketing space that I’m entering into, I’m a teeny little peep, you know? I’m small, but I’m not out there comparing myself to others. I’m building, I’m doing what I know is right, providing constant value, and I’m having fun doing it. I love doing this kind of stuff.

So, my number one action step for you … Eric Lofhom and I, we just finished recording this awesome webinar, and we talked all about how you can become the go-to person in your niche, and I want you to watch that webinar. It’s about an hour long, and it is powerful. So many good ideas. I mean, it’s amazing what kind of stuff came out of that webinar. I mean, even I was taken out, so I’m one of the guys who’s in the webinar. Go to AlexBranning.com/episode9, and check that out. I’ve got links there so that you can watch the webinar. It’s totally free, and like I said, it’s an hour long.

And we are launching a brand new celebrity branding service at The Branning Group, where our goal is to make you into a celebrity, so if that sounds like something you’d be interested in, reach out to me. I would love to work with you on that. It’s all about monetization, so we’re not building something just to make you famous, we’re building it so that you can make your money back plus a lot, lot more. Reach out to me if you want some help with that. If you want to learn more, go to my website, AlexBranning.com, and reach out to me on the Contact Us.

My one thing, if I was to say, “Put this on a Post-it note, and stick it on your monitor,” it would be, become familiar to your audience. I want them seeing you everywhere they go. I want them to become familiar with you. I want them to be comfortable with you. I want them to, when they see you, to be excited to see your stuff and go, “Oh, that’s so cool. There’s Jim. There he is,” and that’s a good spot to be in, right? That’s what I want for you.

I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it. I would love for you to leave a review for me. It helps me out so much. It helps me get the word out. It helps people understand that this podcast is delivering value, so I’d love it if you could do that on any of the platforms. I’m on iTunes, Google Play, Sound Cloud, and a whole bunch of others. We’re having fun building, and I would love to connect with you. Go to AlexBranning.com. Connect with me. Hit me up on Facebook. Just introduce yourself to me and say, “Hey, this is where I need help.” I want to help you. What I get passionate about is helping people like you that want to grow, and I want to help you out. Take it one step at a time.

Thank you so much for checking it out, this podcast. I enjoyed it. I will see you next Monday.

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