Episode 157: Social Media Marketing with Nicole Davidson Williams

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting and advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation. Check them out at club.capital. Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have Nicole Williamson. She's a branding and digital marketing expert currently serving as Chief Brand Officer at Zilker Media. They're an Austin-based agency dedicated to building people-driven brands. She oversees and creates digital strategies for brands in Austin, thought leaders, and even bestselling national authors. If you've ever wondered how do you balance between paid and organic with social media and specifically within LinkedIn, I think this episode is for you. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Nicole Williamson. Have you ever tried online marketing before and weren't sure if it was working? Maybe your rep talked about all the impressive features and stats and said things were going great, but you didn't know how all that tied into raw new policies written. Well, that's not the case with DirectClicks. DirectClicks is the premier Google Ads and SEO option exclusively for State Farm agents. Why? They're 100% results-oriented with an exclusivity guarantee. Every review call you have with your account manager focuses on what really matters to your business, and that's leads and call-ins received. Everything will get broken down to cost per lead received. By investing with DirectClicks, you're going to free up time and energy to focus on what's most important in your agency and doing what it is you do best. This will be the best investment you make for your team by spending confidently and scaling your agency today with exclusive online marketing partner DirectClicks. Visit us at directclicksinc.com.

Nicole Williamson, welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Super excited to have you. So we had someone else from your team, amazingly, 2 years ago come on the podcast. I'm excited to be able to have you guys come back on. Why don't we first always start with kind of background and origin stories? I'd like to talk— start with your background and origin story and just kind of how you got to where you are today with Zilker.

Yeah, so, um, I've been in Austin for— I think it's getting close to 12 years now. Went to the University of Texas, um, diehard Longhorn, so always have to get that out of the way. But, um, I have been with Zilker for 5 years, um, and basically since they began, they began in April, um, that would be 2017, and I joined, uh, in October of 2017. So came on right after they started their digital side. Um, but before that, I had been very interested in social media since I high school and got into college and just saw the benefits of how it could elevate brands and do a lot of good in the world too. I know it gets a lot of bad rep from that, but It can make such a positive impact if you use it the right way. And I really wanted to dive in to see how we could do that. And then I was in kind of in the political side for a little bit with social media and doing digital campaigns, and then transitioned from that to Zilker, where I've been ever since, and started as a strategist with them and was brand strategy director for a few years. And now I am the chief brand officer that officially came out in July. So been a really cool way to just kind of grow with this really fantastic company here at Sultry.

We could have turned this into a sports podcast. We should have just hit record about 20 minutes ago.

I'm always good for that.

We were talking about the Texas coming into the SEC, so I hate for all of you that like to see us riff on the podcast, we should hit record on some of those conversations.

But yeah, I'm really your next side podcast, a sports one. I'm always happy. I'll come back for that one.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Um, so I'm actually excited to talk to you about strategy. I love strategy. I think about brand strategy and we're going to dive a little bit today, kind of deep into social media. Um, I heard this actually on a podcast or a recording yesterday, and it was how Zuckerberg is kind of in back into wartime CEO mode, uh, with Facebook because of all the changes that have happened from the Apple side. And so they are going to continue to make changes to the algorithm, et cetera. And so what I think is, if you go back to 2017, what was true in 2017 is not necessarily true in 2022, and it's certainly probably not going to be moving forward. So that being said, and we could apply even that logic across the lines in business, period. Right.

Just right.

But given that, what are some of the just really super high-level things? And then we'll kind of get down to the tactical stuff. What are some of the things that have really changed in that 5 years, specifically from with social media regarding with business owners wanting to be able to get their brand, their recognition, even, even in some cases their personal brand out because there's so much noise in the marketplace? What's changed?

Yeah, you know, 5 years ago, well, anything with the algorithm and Facebook and all the things, it changes almost weekly. You know, we're always kept on our toes, which is the exciting part of what we do as well. Um, but I remember when we started and there was a Christmas where, uh, we were closed for the holidays and we came back and it was like, wow, nothing really is performing. What's going on? And the algorithm, they launched a whole video, like they flipped it over the holiday break. And so we had to re-strategize the moment we got here, uh, back from Christmas. Wow. Um, and that happens pretty often. You know, I would say back 5 years ago, we were able to do graphics and pictures and, uh, that would perform pretty well. And you didn't have to pay a whole lot to get things out there. The pay-to-play was starting to take a pretty big presence on the, on Facebook specifically. Um, but it did, it's, that's changed. You know, Facebook is pay to play. If you want any kind of traction and momentum, you gotta pay for it. And that's why you've seen businesses and executives really change the different platforms that they're using, even for your personal brand. Um, you know, Facebook is great to have, especially on a company side. It's great for reviews and to have that presence. But it's probably not going to be the thing that you're driving unless you're retail. You know, we've seen LinkedIn really take over on the personal thought leadership, a platform that when I started, you know, with Zilker 5 years ago, it was something that we kind of used here and there. It was a hiring tool. It was something that you would post on, but it hadn't really taken full speed momentum. And that changed very quickly. And today it's, one of the top platforms that we use consistently to get results. And Twitter shifted too, you know, Twitter was one you could tweet and still get some pretty good interaction. But Twitter's really now where you're building a community around a certain topic and you have to be very active to grow. Very, very active. Yeah. And then Instagram, you know, that has changed a lot. It, started as a picture platform, and now they kind of have gone off the TikTok thing, and it's, it's video. If you want any kind of growth or momentum, it's video content, and Facebook is kind of doubling down on that too. So every strategy we started with 5 years ago has been wiped off, but that's been really exciting just to see, you know, how we can adapt and, and change with the times.

Couple of high-level questions across all of the platforms. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. I mean, obviously those, those two under Meta, but LinkedIn, Twitter. What, how should a business owner approach it just from organic content and then paid content? Because obviously very, very different things. The platforms are changing in terms of how they look a lot of lookalike audiences targeting, et cetera. And so there's a whole lot going on with that, but even just really 30,000-foot view, paid versus organic, and how do those two things kind of work together?

Yeah, you know, I'm a big believer in a good organic strategy and making sure you are working smarter, not harder. So creating content that can be utilized across every platform, especially if you're doing video, taking the time to film good content, to provide valuable, meaningful pieces to your audience, that's where you wanna really focus in on, on the paid side, you know, that's where we're seeing more for either lead generation. So growing your email list is one of the biggest things that we all are always trying to do. That's a good opportunity to integrate a paid side. So we do a lot of quiz marketing at Zilker, and that's, we love to advertise quizzes to our different target audiences and grow that. Lead magnets, what can you give away to provide value to get that email address? And so the paid side's changed quite a bit just with the Apple changes. And, you know, I don't know the, the number, but I know most people are probably Apple users and, and owners. And I know a lot of people opted out when the, the tracking became a question that if you could opt out of that. So there, there's still a lot of things that everyone's kind of figuring out on that. Um, but I would use the paid side to generate the results you're looking to. And if that's growing an email list or getting, you know, leads for a different product, that's, that's the best way to use that. But when it comes to your personal thought leadership, it's developing really high quality content and it probably needs to be video. Um, actually it does need to be video cuz that's what performs the best on every channel. And that should really drive more of that organic strategy there.

Okay, so I'm actually curious about this because I have heard— this is where in business in general, we're having to apply this to social media, but I've heard almost conflicting thoughts about this, this next question. And that is, whatever the platform— here's one side of it— whatever platform you are the most comfortable on, the one that you are the most active on, that's the one you should focus on first and foremost. That's one, that's one comment. Most people hear that and say, well, that makes a lot of sense. I personally love Instagram, so therefore I'm going to do that. Now, for me, I actually really love Twitter. I really love Twitter. I, I, I love Twitter for sports and news and business. The, the threads that are on Twitter are fantastic. Okay. Now then there's the idea, no, no, no, no, no, don't do that. Whatever platform is going to host your ideal clients, even if you're not super comfortable on it, that's the one you need to be on. And so it's like for maybe my one of my companies, LinkedIn, it's like, well, you know, you could be on TikTok, Bradley, but probably better for you to be on LinkedIn. Okay, that makes sense. So where do you guys stand from that perspective? Because there are just so many doggone platforms out there, it's hard to know. Right now I got to be on all of them. And we haven't even mentioned YouTube specifically, right?

Yeah, well, I definitely am not the believer that you should be on all of them. That's not a reasonable thing for anyone who owns a business or running a business. That's just not feasible. And it is nice to finally hear someone say they like Twitter. I feel like I'm the lone, the lone soul on it. But anyone who loves sports usually loves Twitter because they've created their community, especially college football season. I am We really operate on the side of your target audience and how do you reach them. So if you're going to spend the time being on social media, developing quality content to either drive business growth, drive leads, and build this brand of a loyal audience, you gotta go to where they're at. And so, you know, we get this question with TikTok a lot. This is the one that everyone's like, well, I need to be on TikTok cuz everyone's on TikTok. And I'm like, well, If your target audience really isn't the Gen Z or, you know, the millennial—

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You probably don't because that's not where they're at. That's not where they're buying from. And, you know, it's probably not the best use of your time. And so we see that a lot, you know, if you're in healthcare, uh, LinkedIn is great. Twitter is also great. We see a lot of healthcare professionals on there and anyone who's doing active PR. Twitter's always amazing because that's where a lot of journalists are and spend their time. We're seeing that a lot of them transitioning to LinkedIn though, where they're engaging more on that platform where you can tag them. So. It's, it's going to where your audience is and making it easy for them to find you. You know, Instagram is heavy female if that's where you're at, especially if you've got a brand where you're selling retail, you'll see very heavy on Facebook and Instagram. It's a female dominated platform that we see for the most part. So Facebook is the one that if you're just like, oh, doing personal thought leadership, it's not probably worth your time. A company page is great, but don't really focus on like your personal Facebook should be for friends and family. And so don't feel the need to invest in that side of it.

Yeah. For me, the, the biggest value that I see with Facebook from a business perspective has been Facebook groups. The grouping has, because it becomes from a community aspect of it. That's, that's what I have seen. I don't know your just thoughts on that before we turn position off into more LinkedIn-specific things.

Yeah, no, I love Facebook groups. We work with a lot of authors, and Facebook groups are fantastic for that. You build such a connected community of people that, you know, are excited about your message, who want to talk about it, who want to build community with other people in that space. It's not the right fit for everyone. I know people are like, I just use Facebook for, you know, my neighborhood and to see everybody post in there about their neighborhood. Um, but it is a very beneficial thing, especially if you're doing like an e-course, building a Facebook group around an e-course where everyone can network. That's a great thing that you can do. LinkedIn has that feature as well. Um, and now you can also monetize from Facebook groups. You can charge people to be a part of it where you're giving exclusive content. You can host lives within that community. So if you don't wanna build this crazy platform that people are having to sign up and portals that can get just very tedious and very expensive. Facebook is a really great way to do that, to help generate that networking, uh, community sense for an e-course or another side of your business.

Yeah, that makes sense. Well, let's transition to LinkedIn, uh, because I, I think that everybody that's listening to this, um, is, it said, okay, I'm a business owner, I have a business, I need to be on LinkedIn. And then they, they, they put their profile, they put the profile together, and then that's about as far as it's gone. Because I think to your point, I don't know whenever I set up a LinkedIn profile. And then I honestly was, if you'd asked me several years ago, I don't know, 4 years ago, I would have thought the platform was just kind of tanking.

Yeah.

And then all of a sudden it's really had a much bigger resurgence. And just, just talk about what is the platform prioritizing. So each platform you've happened to mention, like Instagram started to kind of follow the TikTok path. And I, I don't know if you've seen this. I've seen a much closer tie to Twitter and LinkedIn where people are creating threads in Twitter, and they're becoming carousels in LinkedIn, etc., around business thought leadership or whatever that may be for them specifically. So what is LinkedIn prioritizing, and what are some of the, like, 101 best practices around our personal profile and even business profile?

Yeah, um, well, you definitely wouldn't be the first who sets it up and is like, I did it, and runs away from it forever. Um, you know, the good thing to remember with LinkedIn is it's one of the best SEO platforms that exist. Um, for some reason it just looks really great. What I mean by that, um, for search engine optimization, LinkedIn always ranks really high on page 1 of Google. So the more you spend time on it, the more you put into it, the better the result's gonna be. And it's gonna help you own that, especially if you don't have a website. Um, which I would imagine most people do, but, um, if you don't, that's a really great thing because it can just hold so much of who you are on that page. Um, with that, they are pushing LinkedIn newsletters very hard. So, um, it is an incredible tool. They rolled it out to a couple of people here and there over time, and now it's fully launched and it's really great. So they have the publishing feature. And while you were able to kind of have your own blog on LinkedIn, they're kind of pushing that to the side. That used to be their number one thing. And now it's really this LinkedIn newsletter where people can subscribe. You get push notifications, it goes to your email as well. Um, you get the notification in the app, all of those things. That's, that's direct access and straight to your audience. You can't ask for that and pay for that even better, which is great. So you wanna drive that more. And then video content, that's, you know, those are the big things that LinkedIn still loves video content. And it really depends on who the audience is. Sometimes just all text posts work, sometimes they don't. But the things that we aren't seeing work as much is, you know, just like a quote graphic. That's kind of, that's kind of not really part of the plan anymore. And a big shift that we've seen is personal content. You know, it used to just be this very heavy professional, very kind of serious in tone platform. And that's kind of changing. People are, I think COVID probably changed some of this as well. But it wasn't as, you know, kind of cold. It's definitely more warm. You see people posting their families. You see a more fun side to it, and I think that's helped get people back on the platform. That's really ramped it up, which is fun. So don't be scared, you know, to share family pictures and Thanksgiving, you know, all together. Those things do work really well, and it just shows that humanizing side to you as the business owner behind the brand. And that's what we love to see. You asked on the kind of best practices. Mm-hmm. The thing that people usually forget or may not know that you can do is changing your URL. And so when you set up an account, it's gonna have your name and like a bunch of numbers and characters behind it. Uh, you can change that to where it's just your name.

Yeah.

Um, and if someone already has it, you may have to tweak it with a middle initial, um, full middle name, whatever that may be. But do that. It also helps with that SEO piece. Good headshot, like a high-resolution headshot. Make sure it's not grainy. Make sure it fits the, the profile circle perfectly. And then that top banner, people usually are like, oh, that's not necessary. That is prime real estate. It is the first thing people see other than your headshot. And you wanna have a picture of you speaking. You wanna have logos if you've been featured in media. Logos of quality, incredible brands that you're working with, whatever it may be, you want to use that as an opportunity to credential yourself and make that quick first impression.

Very good. What else? Because on the profile itself, when I go in there and begin to kind of look, and I don't know the exact section, but it's like recommendations and all these things. It's like, oh my gosh, you know. Yeah, I'm not as— I'm not a big writer myself personally, although that's a skill I want to be able to prove. There's just a lot of areas like, man, I have to fill out this entire thing. I mean, and maybe so, maybe if you said, yeah, absolutely, look, it's worth the time investment, then that, then that's great. And I also just want to say that for some of the people listening, you may say, well, I'm going to discount LinkedIn because the people who I'm selling to— so if you're, as an example, an insurance agency owner, you may say, I'm not I'm not going to connect with people who are trying to buy auto insurance. Well, maybe not, but there are centers of influence that you do want to connect with, and that they could then send you the business that you're looking for— mortgage brokers, real estate agents, apartment complex managers, etc. I mean, a lot of people know about that. So I just want to say, for some people that may be discounting the importance of going on to LinkedIn, It can be, it's, it's obviously an, it's, it's a growing platform.

It's the number one referral driver by far. So if you're looking for referral partners, uh, if you're looking to connect with, you know, other experts, you know, maybe it's not the same exact industry, but you know that your services are a fit for their industry. Mm-hmm. That's a great way to do that. And having that presence and thought leadership again, You want to network. It's a great networking platform. Um, it's sometimes easier than going to a very cold networking event. While I am glad we are getting back in person again, LinkedIn is kind of that constant way to do that and set yourself up for these building these relationships online.

This will really be a really stupid question, but I'm asking anyway. People always say there's no such thing as a stupid question. I'm like, well, I've heard some stupid questions. Uh, when I get— when you get a connection request, should you just accept them all? You know, so it's like, I'm just building my network.

No, no, no, no. Only accept who you know. Um, we get this question a lot, so it's not a stupid question at all. It's actually probably one of the biggest questions we get asked every time we do LinkedIn with someone. Um, no, only accept who you know. You know, you're gonna get a lot of spam sometimes, and, uh, connect with who you are, at least have some kind of affiliation with, don't, don't feel like the need to accept everyone. You can actually change that connect button to follow, which is a great tool. So people have to go a little bit extra to make that connection, but that way you're still building followers. People can still follow you for your content and expertise and thought leadership. but they're not having to connect with you to see it. So I love that change. I love that that button can be switched. Um, we, we change it for everyone, uh, to kind of reduce, um, just unnecessary connections with people that they don't have any kind of relationship with.

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So there's a— there's— what is your thoughts around the automated generated, uh, responses that come? Because there's just a lot of that. I've seen some that are pretty good where the person is, hey, I'm— it's great to connect with you, etc., and there's not a push of anything. And then I've gotten some that are absolutely horrendous. You connect with them and the very first automated message is, um, is they're trying to pitch you something, you know. And, and then some of them are so automated to where I've actually had to like unfollow the person. But I'm like, gosh, you know, whoever is advising you, you need to get rid of them. It's terrible. Just your thoughts around that.

Yeah, you know, I I am a firm believer in personalization, especially when it comes to using this type of platform for sales. A lot of these individuals are probably using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which is built into the platform, um, and you can generate and put a lot of things in that are kind of cold. Um, but yeah, personalize and make sure you spell people's names right. Like, that's the first key to me. If you're introduced, like, don't Don't misspell someone's name. And just try and, you know, relate to them and, and personalize it to as much as you can. Those very cold, very salesy, that's a quick delete for probably everyone that's getting those.

Yeah. How many platforms do you think for the typical business owner business that they need to choose and be active on? Because I don't, I don't even, I mean, we haven't even mentioned Pinterest very much, etc. So in a service-based business, not a retail business, that's not typically my audience. How many platforms should they really focus to prioritize on?

We like to say 2, you know, do 2 really great. And if you want to integrate things, you know, you mentioned YouTube a minute ago, YouTube, and that's a little less maintenance, actually. So that's a great one just have, it's great for SEO cuz Google owns YouTube. They like to prioritize their own platforms that they own. But I, we, we usually focus on, on two and, you know, if you have built up audiences everywhere, well then it's kind of focusing in on giving the best quality to two channels, but keeping the other ones active as you can. If you've already built them, it's, it's good to keep and maintain versus shutting down. Them down. But yeah, you don't have to be on everything. You don't have to manage 6 channels. It's, it's so time-consuming. I know. So we like to say do 2 really great and be where your audience is. Because if you're, if you're not where they're going to be at, it's not worth your time.

So here's what I've heard. If you're going to focus, focus on, focus on a couple channels, be active on those channels, go to those platforms where your ideal audience is really located and be active and have a paid and/or organic platform, or excuse me, paid and organic strategy on those two platforms. And what else? Talk about maybe just an overall social media plan. So if I was going to do Twitter and LinkedIn. Okay. You say, okay, these are the two platforms. Some of these could be cross-platform, right? We, we do one piece of content, we could repurpose it over to another, et cetera. But what would be the recommendation for someone to begin to kind of put together a social media plan, both paid and organic?

Yeah. Yeah. I would, for LinkedIn and Twitter, I would focus on organic. I wouldn't probably pay for Twitter. I don't see a lot of the return in that. So unless you're Facebook, Instagram, there are paid, you know, there's, there's good advertising on LinkedIn. It's very, very expensive. You are, you have to spend at minimum $4,000 a month to generate results on LinkedIn per their recommendations that I've talked about. To with someone from LinkedIn. You know, I, I would say some of the best tools we really try to integrate are what we call interview series. Podcasts are very similar. If you can do an interview series style, that newsletter is a great tool on LinkedIn to publish that. It can be email. That's very easy. If you're looking to build out referral partners, if you're looking to close a big deal with a potential client, and you wanna have that organic conversation, invite them to do an interview series where they are really elevating their own brand and they get to talk about themselves and you become the media outlet with your personal channels to do that, to showcase who they are. That's a natural way to take that next step, next step in that business partnership versus just kind of posting about yourself. So we really wanna make sure that we're integrating that relationship-driven piece to social media versus what we call you-driven content, where it's just about you, your business all the time. People aren't going to want to stay involved unless you're providing other perspectives and values, um, that value that someone else may have as well. So interview series is the biggest thing and it can drive so much content for you, especially if you video that. Um, you can break things into clips, you can do video clips, audio clips, share it across multiple channels. Um, and at the same time, if you don't wanna run like your own, um, email marketing newsletter, you don't have time for that, that LinkedIn newsletter can operate that. I will challenge you to maybe shift to doing both eventually cuz owning emails is by far the most important thing that anyone should be focusing on. But it's a great way to drive that. You know, if you're on LinkedIn, I would say LinkedIn newsletters, video clips, and just some really quality thought leadership posts are really the beneficial, beneficial pieces. For Twitter, it's a little different. You know, tweeting outside articles where, you know, you can provide your expertise. So if there's industry news, we will say like, different newsjacking opportunities where you can take a piece and agree or disagree. You don't always have to agree with it. Those are great for LinkedIn and Twitter both. And then just find where the conversations are happening on Twitter. You know, it's— we always refer to it, it's like a giant cocktail party on Twitter. You need to go find the conversations that you need to be a part of, where you're engaging with the right audience in place. So, you know, that's very different for obviously everyone in every industry, but you have to be active, you have to talk directly to people on Twitter. Otherwise, it's just gonna— it's not gonna grow very fast. And, you know, but LinkedIn, I would say out of the two, should be the priority.

Makes sense. Okay. Nicole, we're gonna go into E9 rapid-fire questions. But before we do that, is anything, anything we missed? That you feel like is important for, for you to be able to share with our listeners.

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The only other thing I know you mentioned, filling out a LinkedIn profile, is that important? And yes, it is. You want to have that work history. That's everything. And you want to have awards. That's so important. And you want to have an about that's filled out in third person that really has all of your qualifications and credentialing. That's all what we'll say, what we can say is indexed. And Google can take all of that information and those keywords and just help attach your name to the keywords in your industry. So all of those things are really important. Take the time to do it. Spend the 30 minutes, the hour of just building out that platform to as much information as you can give it. The recommendations are a little different. That's not as— that people will fill those out. I have not seen where that really makes a huge difference, but the information you can provide, especially when it comes to work history, awards, and a bio, that's super important.

Awesome. All right, you ready?

I'm ready.

Last book that you read?

Oh gosh. Oh, it's been so long since I've read a book. I know that's horrible. I think it was called The Idea of You. A friend gave it to me. I read it on vacation in Florida.

Podcast or book that you would recommend to other small business owners?

Book? I would say The One Thing, the book.

That's good. Your favorite travel destination?

In the States, Scottsdale, Arizona, but I love London. That was just a little bit harder to get to.

One place you want to travel that you haven't been able to travel to yet?

Italy, hopefully going next year.

One thing you learned about yourself during the pandemic?

That I really need more quality time with my family, and I have done that since, thankfully.

What do you love to do when you're not working?

I am either at Texas football games or baseball games in the spring or golfing. I golf when I can get out there.

Awesome. Yeah, me too.

Yeah.

I'm going to ask this next question. Will Tiger win again?

I hope not. I'm the unpopular opinion that doesn't like Tiger Woods. I know, I know, but— I know he's done great things for the game. I just, I'm not a fan.

Not a fan. She's a Jordan Spieth, she's a Jordan Spieth person. 100%.

Jordan and Scottie Scheffler, my, my Longhorns.

I get that. I get that.

I know.

I expected that. We could just go down the list. Ben Crenshaw, Brandel Chamblee. I could say all of them.

Yep.

Yep.

All right. Uh, you can sit next to anybody dead or alive on a 10-hour flight to Italy next next year, who would it be? And you can't say family. You can't say family.

I wouldn't say family. So that's okay.

Somebody would say my, my father, my— okay, that's great. Outside of family.

Okay. Oh gosh. Um, wow, that's hard. Uh, I'm, I'm like so versatile in my loves of sports and music and everything, so there's so many people. And they all go out your mind the moment someone asks. This is going to make me sound juvenile, but that's okay. I'd probably say Harry Styles.

Harry Styles?

Okay.

I was expecting Matthew McConaughey. That's what I was expecting. I was expecting McConaughey.

I feel like that'd be a weird flight. I think the conversations might be strange.

It could be, could be, could be. I actually, um, I've, I've listened to something, not, not a podcast, something else. And he was— he's a really eloquent speaker, you know.

I'm gonna get—

I'm gonna get some people comment on this, but he's a really eloquent speaker. But I listened to him for like 5 or 8 minutes, I was like, I have no idea what he's talking about.

I have no clue.

I have no idea what he just— what he just said. It was great, it was beautiful, but it sounds inspirational though, right? But I was like, I don't know what to take away from that.

But anyway, actually, you know what, I'm gonna change that. It would be Darryl K. Royal because I know that man would have some incredible advice, and for 10 hours, I— it'd be, it'd be DKR. I'm gonna let my, my Longhorn roots shine through a little bit on that one.

All right, last question. It is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. What is the best piece of leadership advice you've ever received?

Listen. Listen to people. Don't be the one to dominate the conversation. You can learn a lot from people when you just take the minute minute to listen to someone.

Awesome. Nicole, somebody wants to reach out to you and connect with you on social media, but also reached out to somebody on, on their team to discuss how you guys are able to support them and their business. What's the best place to point them for those?

Yeah, you can always email me, Nicole, N-I-C-H-O-L-E, at zilkermedia.com. Happy to have a conversation with anyone. My Twitter handle is Nicole Davidson. I have my married name or my maiden name still, just because I would lose every tag I've ever been in if I changed it. But Nicole Davidson, I'm on Twitter pretty frequently. And then yeah, connect with me on LinkedIn. Just say that you're from the podcast and I'll accept it.

Awesome. Awesome. Nicole, it's been great having you on.

Yeah, thank you so much. I really enjoyed it.

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Yeah, I really enjoyed that conversation with Nicole. Here are 4 key takeaways. Number 1, figure out who your ideal clients are that you want to be able to target, whether it's people that are going to buy your insurance policies, service, etc., and figure out what platform is going to be the best, which one is housing those people there and really focus on 2 to begin with. And then if you're, you know, you build a team around more of the platforms and you can obviously expand from there. Consider point number 2, consider an organic and a paid strategy and then, and have a plan. Number 3, I think for me, updating my LinkedIn, going on there and saying, okay, I've kind of pushed that platform to the side for a while and I do need to go in and update that. And then number 4, I would just add, look at social media as being a creator, not as a consumer of it. So a lot of time, I mean, I think we're all guilty of this. If you're on any of the platforms, you can really begin to kind of consume content. If it's on a Saturday, um, I'm, or even yesterday, I'm recording this on a Tuesday, uh, I'm going through my Auburn list feed on Twitter, looking at comments from, uh, Coach Harsin's press conference on, on Twitter versus actually listening to the press conference itself. Um, so I could do that for 4 or 5 minutes. Okay, I'm being a consumer at that point. But if you're wanting to be able to grow your business utilizing social media, that's where we need to be a creator. Make sure you connect with Nicole. You can email her at nicole@zilker.com. ZilkerMedia.com and, uh, obviously connect with her on Twitter and LinkedIn. And, uh, they have a really fantastic website. They're able to help build your business and personal brand a lot of different ways. We had Paige Velasquez, buddy, uh, 2 years ago, actually, uh, from Zilker Media. So it's great to have them to be able to come back on, make sure you connect with them. Hey, big shout out to our podcast sponsors and our newest podcast sponsor Autopilot Recruiting. Make sure you go to autopilotrecruiting.com and use the code, code CLUBCAPITAL to get started. You know, we were talking to Nicole about LinkedIn. Well, I tell you what, one thing we did not discuss around that, but is how valuable it is, LinkedIn as a platform is for being able to get your name out there, um, to be able to kind of showcase what you do from a recruiting perspective and culture, etc. But you know what? Recruiting is difficult and is one of the most important things that you have to do as a business owner, is attracting, retaining, developing A-players, those rockstar team members. It just is not going to be left to chance. And I've personally done this and I've I've spoke to so many people that really do understand I need to be recruiting on a regular basis, but for all kinds of different reasons gets pushed to the back burner. And that's exactly where Autopilot Recruiting comes in. It is a continuous recruiting service, and you're going to be assigned a specific recruiter that's going to recruit on your behalf every single business day, which is what you obviously know that you need to be doing. But it's incredibly, extremely affordable, and it's really a no-brainer for taking your agency to the next level. If you know you want to be able to grow and you know that the biggest lever for that growth is your team, then it's so important to be recruiting on an ongoing basis. The shifting that's happening, um, in the recruiting landscape is something that you have to stay on top of. So make sure you go to, again, to autopilotrecruiting.com and use the code CLUBCAPITAL to get started. And then of course, once you get them on board with your team, what do you got to do? You got to be able to, to, to train and develop those team members. And that's another thing, that's another hat that you know that you need to, to wear. So I've got to recruit all the time. I've got to make sure I'm training and developing my team. It gets overwhelming, right? And that's exactly where Coach P comes in. So make sure you go to coachp.com. Coachpconsulting.com and let him know that you heard about him on the, on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, and he'll give you an entire first month off. Go to coachpconsulting.com. You know, I mentioned many times this podcast would not happen if it wasn't for my team, and utilizing Rock Solid to help me to be able to find an executive assistant has been critical. Utilize Autopilot Recruiting for developing, for helping you to have a process to look for those sales team members, to be able to look for your customer care account managers, etc. And then for Rock Solid, that's who I use to be able to help me find really fantastic assistants. Go to rocksolidassistance.com. Tracy and her team are amazing, and they'll be able to help you. And even if you're kind of uneasy about, you know, I don't even know what an assistant will do, would do, that's exactly where they come in. Go to rocksolidassistants.com. You know, Nicole mentioned that LinkedIn has one of some of the best SEO. Well, if you, uh, understand SEO, it's important to realize that you want to be able to make sure that your website is showing up in SEO results whenever people are searching for whatever it is. That you sell. And if you want to be able to know, okay, well, what are people actually searching? What are some of those keywords? I don't really know what those keywords are for my SEO, let alone for my pay-per-click. That's where DirectClicks comes in. Go to directclicksinc.com. DirectClicksinc.com. They'll kind of help you to make sense of all of that online digital marketing world. Finally, couldn't do it without my partner in all of this, Club Capital. You know, you want to be able to take your business to the next level. And as I've just been saying in the last couple minutes, I mean, it's so hard to be able to be great at wearing all of the different hats in your business, whether it's recruiting, whether it's training and developing, whether it is managing the cash in your business to make sure that you're maximizing the profit and being able to take home as much money as as you hope to be able to do and to be able to reinvest in the business. Making those key distinctions, making those key decisions is so critical as a business owner. And you've got to have good data to be able to do that. So you're not making emotional decisions. You're looking at it. You're saying, this is what I want to do. I've been inspired by somebody else to do this. And Alex, let me, let me see if it quite literally makes sense for me to do so. Go to club.capital and book a no-obligation demo. They'll kind of figure out your situation, what you're doing. They know that you have an accountant, but Club Capital is way more than just a CPA firm. So go to club.capital. All right, everyone, it's a great episode. Great to, you know, we've talked about social media many other times with many other guests along the way, but at the same time, it's really important to bring it back up. And because we all understand the— where social media kind of comes into play with business and utilizing social media to grow it. But sometimes, at least for me, it's kind of felt like a little bit of a— I'm not really sure what to do. Um, and so I thought that was a great conversation with Nicole. All right, everyone, till next episode, lead well.

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation. Check them out at club.capital.