113: John Hall Discusses How to Remain Top-of-Mind… Always

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done? I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent, and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have talent. Talk to Doxatalant and you won't be disappointed. Go to doxatalent.com Bill G Again, that's doxatalent.com BillG One more time. Docsatalant.com Bill G Check it out today. So being top of mind is maybe on your mind. Being known for something is part of our seven strata of growing up. How do we be known for something? How do we be top of mind with the people that actually matter to us at the most moment that matters to us? That's what today's show is all about. We're talking today with John hall, who's the head of a rapidly growing content marketing company. He wrote a book, Top of Mind, Use Content to Unleash youh Influence and Engage those who Matter to youo. We're going to talk with John hall on this show about how to become top of mind, how to capture that attention, especially with the people who matter most to us. So listen in. Hello and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business Podcast. I'm your host and growth coach, Bill Gallagher. On the show with me today is John hall and we're talking all about being top of mind. How do you be top of mind? How are you going to be remembered at the moment when your potential customer or current customer is thinking about the kind of things that you need and want them to think about? How do you come to mind in that moment? So our guest is John hall and he is he'll be speaking at our next Scaling Up Summit in Denver. And he's a terrific speaker. He's a Midwestern guy and he has a company that does a lot of work in this field, content marketing. So I'm just excited to have you on the show. John, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me.

So we're going to talk about how to be top of mind, how to get known for something and unleash that influence. Well, the title, right Top of Mind is your book Use content to unleash your influence and engage those who matter to you. So we're going to get into that in just a minute and give them some secrets on how to do that. But before we get into all that, why don't you just tell us a little bit about your background. How do you get into this world? You know, where does this begin?

Well, that's a. Yeah, that's a long story. I'll try and keep it short. But I've always been an entrepreneur at heart. I started in third grade buying and selling my lunch or lunches around me and being a lunch broker. So I would talk kids into getting Gushers and Twinkies from their parents. And then I knew I could get them, you know, get them for a decent amount of money on from the sixth graders at school. And so I always had, and I did get suspended for it. But it was my spark of entrepreneurial kind of see opportunity and seize it. I was, I was, it was a good experience though. And then I got into. Actually my first legit company that I didn't get suspended for was in real estate when I was 18 and started buying and selling houses while I was in college. And then what ended up happening is I knew that I needed to learn more just specifically in the real estate field. And so I ended up working for a very successful entrepreneur, real estate investor in the Midwest. And what happened was when I was meeting with companies like ge, JP Morgan, he did some very, very large deal. I saw. I walked in this room and I got a very early start. I was 23, 24 at the time. But I had been doing real estate and deals for, you know, five, six years. But I walked into the room of these meetings and there was this natural trust barrier just because of my age. And it was, people have been in the business for, you know, 20, 30 years and they look at me like, who's this kid? And so I hated that feeling. I hated it because I mean, honestly, I could do a deal, right? I knew how to put that number together. I knew how to put the right thing together. And so what was kind of the perfect scenario is when I met with a couple other entrepreneurs. Kelsey and Brent were my co founders of Influence and co. And we all had these barriers in some way that we saw and we said, hey, let's actually just figure out a way to help people in this way. And the best way we knew how to was through education. When you think about it, the most trusted people in the world are teachers, advisors, parents, friends who help you become better and educate you. So we said, let's develop a service around creating content from key employees at organizations. And let's distribute it out in places where large amounts of these people are reading and consistently get in front of them so that they become these trusted leaders and industry leaders in this space. And so that was kind of the birth of influence. Co ended up taking off and doing a lot better than we even anticipated at the beginning. And so that's kind of the natural. Now it's six or seven years later, and we've scaled quite a bit and things have gone very well.

You know, it's funny. When I was 25, I just struggled to get taken seriously, too. And I remember that my new boss, actually. Who was it? I don't know. Somebody suggested that I wear prop glasses.

That's awesome.

So they were just. They were like clear glasses. And I forget exactly how it came along, but I put them on and then my. My new boss is like, oh, my God, those are perfect. That is exactly what you need. Short of a few gray hairs. That's it. Just wear those glasses. And I said, you know, I don't need glasses. Although I would almost immediately after that. And she's like, no, no, no, wear the glasses. So I started wearing glasses, fake glasses. And then almost immediately I started needing real glasses. But maybe that was a bad thing. Today I've had my eyes fixed and I'm much older, and I don't have that trouble being taken seriously.

Well, it's. It's as funny. I mean, it's. It's funny, but we all deal with things like that. And what I've learned as a person and just as a. As a leader, whoever, whatever role I'm in, is that people tend to perform best when they're most comfortable, when there's an authenticity. Authenticity and good connection there. And I've been forced to do the same, like prop glasses. It's funny that you said that. Just because I've been forced to do certain things, things to fit some mold, and I'm not truly comfortable. What I've just learned is that the key is that if you. If you build trust with an audience or another, you know, person, that stuff doesn't matter. I've shown up with flip flops and a. And a pair of shorts and a T shirt to people that if the people in the room, they. There's trust there. It does not matter. They're going to listen, they're going to respect. And that's why trust and building that and something in the book I call trust touch points. Anytime you get a chance to consistently build trust touch points within an audience that matters to you, you want to consistently do that because then everything else matters less because all the sales barriers and all those normal barriers are down, and they can truly figure out what is a good relationship with you and how you guys can help each other.

You know, it's interesting. So we both have kids, right? Mine are grown and yours are young. But in the process of raising kids, we end up learning and teaching ourselves. And I think a lot, like, we're talking today about what do you want to be known for and how do you be top of mind and stuff. And there are moments where your appearance, the clothes that you chose to wear for today's meeting or this evening's event or whatever, project something, they're part of that overall message. There's a tone. What am I going to wear when I take the stage and give a talk at a conference? What am I going to wear when I show up for an interview? What message am I sending? Am I distracting, detracting, or whatever? And we see kids go through this. They, like, decide they're going to identify with some group or something, and then they put on a costume. They become goth kids, or they become punk kids, or they become rappers, or they become like, whatever it is, and they sort of join a community, and then they're like, well, why don't you accept me? Like, yeah, you need to either have a very deliberate intention with the tone and the form of what you're doing, or have a neutral one where it sort of blends in the background. Right?

Yeah. And it, like, for me, I. I change, Like, I changed all. Most of my view, even in speaking, like, those of you who are listening to the podcast that are gonna see me speak in Denver, you'll see I wear a pink shirt. And everybody always is like, why do you wear a pink shirt? And I. And. And for me, I started doing this about six months or a year ago, but I was at home and my daughter said, daddy, like, she's just turned. She's just turned five. And she's like, daddy, I like, why do you leave to travel so much and to speak and to do these things, like, don't you like hanging out with me? And it killed me. I was like, oh, my gosh. I was like, tap her to the heart.

Yeah.

So, but at the same time, is that, like, when. When I talk about being top of my. Like, who's most important to me? My daughter is one of the most important people in my life, and I need to engage her and know that that remind her That I am thinking about her. So her favorite color is pink. And she sees me speak on video, she sees me speak on. She saw me on MSNBC the other day. She saw me on cheddar the other day. She sees that, she sees the pink shirt and she knows that I'm thinking about her and it reminds her of our relationship. And so for me, that's where you'll see in Denver is that, you know, my daughter will probably see that video at some point. Every time it makes her feel more connected and she's like, wow. And she thinks of, wow, daddy's, you know, thinking about me. And so for me, like, it's not just like having a mindset where you're truly engaging people is not just about gaming the system of how like I want to game and just connect to so many people so I can get so many sales. It's about how you should actually live your life and how you should engage others. And that's my family, my friends. Sometimes, like, I've realized that I've been so engaging and add to like different customers and it's such a strong relationship that I forget about even my wife and friends. And so I think that if, you know, you read the book Top Line, you get the point of, you know, when I'm saying that you need to become more engaging as an individual or leader, it's not just professional, it's across your whole life.

Yeah. So talk to us about the book being top of mind. What's the idea here and how do people become top of mind? What, what are you proposing or, or teaching?

Sure. So the idea, there's kind of three parts. One is, is one on one engagement, how you engage with others to build trust when you, you know, meet in person, when you have see them at an event. One of the key things I always say is like, you gotta try and be as helpful as possible. So for example, I always ask people at the end of a conversation, how can I be helpful to you? Just like, how can I keep an eye out for your best interest? And a lot of times people are like, oh, is he selling me? And I'm like, no, honestly, I travel a lot, I speak, I meet a lot of people and so how can I keep an eye out for your best interest? And a lot of times there's people that are like, well, I need this, I need a great front end coding design. And I'm like, wow, I actually don't know anybody, sorry, I'll keep an eye out. But I don't know how I can be, but other times somebody will be like, hey, we're really looking for this resource or I'd love to speak in an event that has this audience. And a lot of times you can connect the dots, you can help others. And I think that's like the first part of changing how you're engaging, how you're looking out for others around you. Because if you truly help people, truly do help them, you're going to get, you're going to get from their short term to long term memory very quickly. And so when there's an opportunity to, you know that they're out there. Like John Rulin, who's the one who introduced me to Vern here, I've helped Rulen out in many, many different ways just because like he said, hey, keep an eye out for me, you know, for this. Like the cheddar example was one, I just did their interview and I connected him because they said, who are other people? And John had said, hey, I'm looking out to do a little more video. And so I gave him the intro.

And that's by the way, John is a former guest of the show and a friend and a former speaker. Also he talks about gifting, strategic gifting. Giftology is his book.

Yep. And so that's an example of how you can have trust, touch, voice in person. Now, however, over time there's only so many people you can meet with. And so that's where we go into more of the scaling that. And the number one way of scaling trust is through content. You can't, I don't really know in any other way other than through some sort of creating content and distributing that in a place where there's people listening or an audience there that you, that matters to you. And so for me it's slowly like the starting point is are you for the listeners, are you consistently getting content from you to your audience? I don't even care. It could be in a third party publication like I write in Forbes and Ink and Entrepreneur and different places like that, but just starting to create and get thoughts down so people can engage with the company and humanize it. Because ultimately people don't want to just deal with brands these days. They want to deal with the people within the brands. And so the more you can do that across the company, it's not just going to improve sales, like that's a key thing of the book, but it's going to improve your recruiting people who want to work with you. One of the things that someone recently got hired and they said they Came up to me in the hall and they just said, hey, I just want to shake your hand. It's good to meet you. I feel like I already know you. And I was like, interesting. So why is that? And they go, well, we've read so many of your articles and I know about your. You wrote an article about parenting here. You wrote this. And it was unbelievable, the lack of trust barriers that were there and how this new employee was so much more engaged in working. And so I think that that's a part of. You know, it's scary at first. Like, I. Five years ago, my, nobody really even knew me outside of Peoria, Illinois or Columbia, Missouri. But we took steps to invest in my brand. And now I'm speaking to large audiences and I'm helping the company engage others on a national and global scale. And so it's intimidating, but it's very, very beneficial for not just you, but your company.

You know, this is really interesting. So the next couple weeks I'll be in Barcelona and in London. So I started reaching out to. I have some free time while I'm there, a lot of free time, actually. And because I was going there for business and I thought I should book a little extra free time. And so I put a lot of free time. And then I reached out to some business people, ypo, EO type business friends and, and friends of friends and people I don't know. They're out to those communities, said, hey, I'm going to be in town and I'm staying here and, and love to connect and meet people and that kind of thing. And one of the immediate replies I got actually this morning was, oh, hey, I was just listening to your podcast right now, and I'm not going to be in London when you're there, but would love to connect. Right? Like, wow, that is a validation of the consistency of doing this kind of work. Right? Like hosting a podcast, putting out some regular content now to have followers all over the world. Then when I randomly reach out. Now, obviously YPO and EO are communities that I target, that the message, the content here is specifically designed for, so there's a high probability of reaching it, but exactly like validating the decision to have done something like this, right?

Yeah, yeah. And you're like, that's a perfect example. Thank you for saying that. Because you're very consistent with your content, which is amazing. And that's good content. I wouldn't have been on the show if I didn't think it was. And it's unbelievable how consistency plays such A role like us as entrepreneurs and leaders. And we jump all like, I see a butterfly across my screen, so I want to jump off and do something else. But in reality, that consistency in content is so important. And this is something that there is actually. I don't know if you've heard of the group Small Giants, but it's ran by a guy named Paul Spiegelman. And Paul is a friend. He's a great guy. And he's like, man, it's really important to me that I want to be on people's minds globally, because I want to truly help them. And I told him, I was like, paul, it's key is that you've got to be consistent. You've got to move from short term to long term memory. I'm like, it's so powerful. And we got in this discussion on how powerful that is. And he goes, so what do you mean by it? I go, paul, an example of me is when I was five years old, I remember the Cabbage Patch Kids song like it was yesterday. And he goes, what? That's a weird thing to bring it up, but I was like, well, I said, well, my, my sister just got married and she had a lot of her childhood friends at this, this wedding. And one of the things that came up was this Cabbage Patch Kids song is because I was a party favorite for her when I was five or six years old. And I, for once a month, I engaged them in singing the Cabbage Pat Kids six times. It was six times in a row. It was consistent over that month span. And I engaged them now, now 30 years later or something. We're at a wedding where every. There was three out of the six people that were in that room there at this wedding, and they said they all can remember things about it. And they go, there's no way that little hall would remember that. And I got up in front of the whole wedding reception and sang the Cabbage Patch Kids song just like that. Sang it. Boom. Just like that. And it shows you how powerful when you get engaging, continuous, consistent. It created a connection. They remembered it. I remembered it. And like people like, I had not practiced that in 30 years, and I remembered it. That's how powerful memory is when you get, when you do consistent content. And that's a goofy one. But if you hit people in the right way with the right type of content, the right time, it's so memorable and it sticks with them.

So, yeah, there's like, I noticed the results that we get now from the podcast or the content stuff are greatly multiplied because of the consistency. But we've been doing it for a few years, right? And we do a new podcast every week, and then we create a blog post from it, and then we email our subscribers, and then we post it on Quora, LinkedIn, Medium, and then we create some social posts, some tweets and things like that, and we put all those out, and then that all gets recycled and gets reposted on a regular basis using. I forget what that tool is, but so anyway, it goes out on all of these different things and then is put out again and again. And then we do a new show every week, right? So we're doing the new show and then we're. We're reusing that. And it's all things to help you scale. Now people are like, wow, does this generate clients for you? I'm like, yeah, it does, but I. I only really work with 10 clients at a time, right. And then I also do some workshops and keynotes and things like that. But if I only work with 10 clients at a time, I'll take on maybe one, maybe two more clients this year as we close out another client. So that's just not a lot of people that I'm looking to do business with. So more than anything else, I refer potential coaching clients scaling up companies to other coaches. But this does provide that reinforcement. Does make me top of mind. I do love to be, you know, thought of first and to be of service. The whole purpose of running this business, of being in the work that I do, is to help other leaders, to help leaders do what they care about, to help them build a better world.

Yeah. And what I like about what you just said is that, like, there's a lot of people that are like you, similar, that go, I don't need to be doing this stuff. I have 10 clients. I'm happy with these 10 clients. And I go, that's a terrible way of looking at it. You like, what's nice about you, you're consistently doing this, But I would guarantee you almost get to choose who you want to work with. And that's a really powerful thing for someone in your role to be able to choose who you work with because you have that natural inbound coming in. And then on top of that, you're able to help others through that. And that's where, like, when somebody's like, oh, I'm good. Like, I only. And they play that I'm too cool for school, I'm like, I don't need this. And I'm good. Like, and I'm like, well, you don't know. Like one, are you happy with all your clients? And they're like, well, there's two that are pain in the ass. I'm like, well, then why aren't you consistently engaging people more so that you get to choose who you work with? And so I think that you're exactly right. The first point on leveraging content, that's one of the key. They used to say content is king. Now leveraging distribution is becoming the new king or queen, whether they're playing well together. Because. Because if you look at, we're going through the stage in content where in the 80s in advertising, they used to spend $5 of creation for $1 distribution. Now that switched to $5 of distribution to $1 of creation. And I think the same thing is going to happen with us where there's a certain amount of time that it's going to be used on creation, but the value is in how you're using it, how you're leveraging that content. You just gave a very good example of how you're naturally leveraging it. And that's what I would encourage the readers is that think about all the things you can do to leverage this content. Do you put it in your recruiting material? You say, hey, by the way, it's great to have you on board. Would love you to check out these podcasts or these pieces of articles before we start or something. There's different ways you can include it in different processes in your business where it builds trust, it helps connect you to people, and ultimately it's going to result in more money, more referrals, more opportunity to you. There's a lot of people that send my content out to others and say, you should check this guy out. Check these articles out. Now, that's a lot different than saying, hey, you should reach out to John Hall. It's a lot easier for people to share out your content than to feel like they're selling someone on you. And so it's a very powerful thing to leverage the content as you're doing.

You referenced this, that there's other uses for it. It's not simply promotional. You talk about being in interviewing, but as I coach people, I was talking with a client last night and he's got some work to do with their board or with a board member. And I'm like, oh, just go to the blog and go grab the painted picture show that we did with Brian Scudamore. Brian is the founder and CEO of 1-800-got-JUNK, who you probably see in just about every neighborhood and all that. There's great questions in there that you can use for this strategic exercise you're going to do with the board member. So just go grab the questions, the painted picture questions from Brian's show and like, good, I'm done. Like, as a coach, my effort is reduced because there's little snippets of this. I might come on to somebody later who's working in content. I'm like, oh, go listen to John Hall's thing. And I can just point him right back to it. And I don't have to repeat everything or they've got a nice reference, right? Yeah. So I think there's lots of utility for it. The other thing that you said that I noticed is. So you got on stage and you sang the Cabbage Patch Song, right?

Oh, yeah. Oh, I've done it multiple times. I've done that to audiences of 5, 10,000 people.

So you've gotten good at that. But that's not like a normal thing, right?

Oh, no, no, yeah, that's. That was really weird when I did that for the reception. And like, it was hilarious when I stood up like, people and like, I think my family was even in awe. My sister was like, I can't believe this kid remembers it. And so. And then what I did was I told that story. When I spoke, I think it was at trying to think what bigger event it was at. But I was keynoting and I said that example and it was actually improv. I just brought it up in a Q and A. And they called me out and they goes, they go, then sing it. They said, let it. Or they said, we gotta see it to believe it. And I sang it and I think that stick it. Like, I ran into someone who saw me do it the first time, like a month ago, and they said, you know what? Every time I think about, like investing in content and doing this, like, I remember you singing that on stage. And I'm like, well, then, you know what's nice about that is that I moved from short term to long term memory. And that's. I think all of our goals with people is that we want to move into someone's long term memory in a positive way, in a trustful way. Because if we can accomplish that, then they're going to come to us for partnerships, for opportunities, for different things that can come to us. And it results in growth in a variety of ways in your business.

Well, and you talk about this in the book. You talk about the authenticity, the importance of that. Right? And authenticity we also know if you follow Brene Brown, read or heard any of her work. We all know that. And we have this general sense that authenticity is powerful. Right. But what's the access to it is less clear how do we be authentic? And what I notice about that, it's clearly an authentic moment. Right. And this is something I. So this is a focus area for me is accessing authenticity or instant authenticity. What do you say about this?

For me, it's something that I've struggled with my whole life. I was as a high schooler, I acted cooler than I thought I was in college. I acted a Persona who I thought I was. And it was something that honestly was a struggle for me until like, I really like kind of decided is that like, you know, really I want to treat people, I want to engage people, I want to work, I want to do things the right way. And honestly, I need to be confident enough is that, you know, I need to be comfortable that it's okay to show vulnerability. That's certainly okay. And so, for example, there's been inspirations in my life that I've seen examples of. And one of the ones in one of my speeches is Jeff Jones, who actually, ironically is somewhat of a mentor, at least going to be at this point. But Jeff is the past CMO of Target. He was the CEO or the president of Uber, and now he's the CEO of HR Block. And something Jeff did when he was at Target was really inspirational to me is that he wrote a blog post that was called the Truth Hurts. You can type it in as truth hurts LinkedIn. It was on the influencer channel there. And it was about how Target was really struggling and how they were actually, they were failing in different ways. It was actually very surprising. It went viral. A bunch of news picked it up because it was such an authentic piece. And I felt, honestly, I felt myself in a Target or like, like connected to the brand so much more. I found myself in a Target a lot more after that. It was very interesting to hear that vulnerability that she inspired me to write an article in my Forbes column about how I'm a terrible writer and I know how I don't like writing it or I don't like writing and I run a. Like, that's crazy. Why would a CEO of a content marketing, one of the fast growing content marketing companies in the US talk about how he struggles with writing? And it's like, honestly, I just said, you know, this is something that is a big challenge for me and I'm working with the team And I'm doing different things to get better. But I had so many CEOs and entrepreneurs and people to reach out and they're like, wow, this was. We really engaged with this. And so I think that the lesson that I've learned through those moments is that when you share authenticity, and I think Brene Brown, she has a quote, if you really want to be seen, you have to be truly seen, or something like that, it's about really seeing yourself. And so, so I think that for me, I tried to get more comfortable in saying it's okay to show failure, it's okay to show vulnerability, it's okay to openly communicate things that ultimately you are somewhat embarrassed by. Because I think what it does is it draws people to you. Because as crazy as it is, people have those challenges all the time. It's not just in your professional life, in personal life. I have a lot of friends that struggle with having kids. And you hear all these parents talk about, wow, it's so easy to have, like, kids. This is great. This was great. There wasn't many parents that talked about struggling with that. And one of my friends started openly communicating about it. And then all of a sudden these other people come out of the woodworks that you didn't know how these challenges having children and they're connected with that. The one friend that was open about it. And I think I see those moments and like, wow, like, it's a good reminder that when we have a chance to show up, to connect with someone in that way, show vulnerability, authenticity. As long as it's not necessarily hurting someone, it's a good situation to try and connect with someone.

So this is a key area of, like coaching expertise for me is having people learn how to be instantly authentic. And you talked about getting comfortable with and getting ready to be vulnerable. And we'll save for another show, our 10 minute mojo process, or how to access instant authenticity. But there's something definitely there that requires either comfort and time or courage. And of course, courage requires strength. And so vulnerability is actually an expression of strength, not weakness. But it feels, feels for people more like weakness right in the beginning.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's what the barrier is that you. I think, at least for me, it was to have people look at me in a way that shows that I am weak in different ways. And so, yeah, I think that you're right, it shows. And to be honest, like, it's not just about success in business, it's about my own strength and mindset. Like, I want to be mentally strong. And if I'm being fake and being somebody who I'm not, like, honestly, it's hard to be mentally strong there because, you know, you're kind of full of it, even if nobody else knows it. And so for me, it's like I think I just enjoyed and I had a smile on my face more and I enjoy life a lot more when there's some realness behind it.

You know, we talk about and I really hear a couple things. So the first one is that I hear you saying is we're engaging people in our style, from our one on one to our, to our messaging. Messaging. You're looking for engagement. That's a conversation that's listening as well as speaking, that's being helpful, that whole kind of thing. And then your third point was about the consistency and scaling the message. But in the middle there was the content which we're speaking to now. And there's something really surprising and like we want to get that message right. So whether it works for you to wear a pink shirt. And for those of us who love pink, speaker authors in pink. You'll also love our show with Dave Rendle on Freak Factor. And Dave's a freakishly tall guy who wears pink all the time and talks about embracing the unique you but figuring out that thing that makes that message compelling and not just more filler. Right. There's an awful lot of filler content out there that makes no difference, that nobody cares about, that's undistinguished in any way. And then there are those surprising moments that we're speaking to where an aspect of authenticity and something a little bit risky or courageous comes out and you talk about going out there and singing the Cabbage patch. And I similar kind of thing. I gave a talk in front of about 400 people and I decided I wanted to. I had a short. It was like a TED length talk. So I'm like, I have just a couple minutes to grab them. So I'm going to tell kind of an uncomfortable story in a business thing. So I opened with the story of my father's suicide side in front of 400 people, a business audience. Right. And you know, and I cried. I cry all the time and I'm. But I also make people laugh. And you know, there's a big range of emotion in that whole thing. But as a result of that, people knew me as someone vulnerable, willing to be open and share and, and do it in a, you know, responsible way. And I probably got, got maybe 30 additional bookings around the world as a result of that talk.

Yeah, I mean, that's. I mean, one, thanks for sharing that just because, like, that's. That obviously is something that's hard to talk about for most. But yeah, I think that that's where we're in this generational trend where people like my parents, like, it's the same way my dad like, saying, I love you. It took him like, years to even be, like, to have an openness about that. Just because. Because it was not what you did. Like, it was funny. I wish I had a recording of my dad ending phone calls. He'd, like, in college, he'd be like, okay, so great. School's been awesome. Okay, cool. Oh, so is this the end of the call? Okay, cool. Love you. Bye. And like, it had to be like a really, really quick one. And so I think we're in a different generation where people. We're in this trend. And so, like, for those of you listeners that are gonna be stubborn, which I was stubborn, trust me, I was like, nah, man, I don't need to act like that. But I mean, I think that the overall goal is to connect with people, is to have to improve your relationships with your co workers, with your family, friends, with customers. And, you know, the more you do that, the more people are going to want to work with you. And so my steps out of this, I guess, podcast would be like, you know, just sit down, write a few, like, baby steps. Because I start by being like, okay, I'm going to immediately just become this version of myself. It was like, I mean, if you read like I actually write about in the book of chapter seven, it's my personal journey of life, like, taking steps towards everything. And for people who are stuck in their ways, it's very hard. And I was somewhat stuck in my ways. And so for me, like, on the writing side, I just started writing down different things that I saw. Like, I listened to people. I was like, wow, I used this case study or this example, and this person laughed or this person engaged with me in this way. So I call those moments content triggers. And so, like, for example, when you share a story that a ton of people engage with, that's a content trigger to me, that is something that you immediately need to write down because, you know, that's something that's truly engaging to an audience. And what happens over time is that as you do content triggering, you realize what's engaging and what's not to people. And so I would challenge, you know, the listeners to do that, because for me, like, I was the one who told. I know you guys probably have friends that tell the Same story like 20 times, and it's not funny. I was like, that person. Like, I tell like the same story 30 times, 20 times in a row, and I'm like, it's funny to me. But in reality, it's like, if you know why, like, why just amuse yourself, like, try and engage others. And so I started listening and then I realized I'm like, man, that story's not funny. Like, that's not a trigger. And so I think over time, you'll find out what's engaging the Cabbage Patch Kids 1. When I did that, like, the first time I did it, the audience was just like. I mean, it was like people stood up and clapped. And so I was like, that's a content trigger. I know that's an example that, you know, people engage with. And so there's different sort of content triggers that you just need to pay attention to. And even if you don't write, it will help you how you talk to people and how they look at you, because it makes you more of a listener. Because then you're listening, you're looking for reactions, you're more engaged with them. And I think overall, that's the start of developing a really amazing content strategy, because if you can do that and the team around you does that, you're going to come up with some pretty engaging content that really connects with the audience that matters to you. You.

That's really great. So I hear in this. So one, I think folks are going to be looking forward to hearing you speak at the Scaling Up Summit. And you can hear a world of things more here. Certainly an opportunity to improve your business results and so on, to leverage content and be connected and influencing, but also to have fun and to make a difference in the world in the process. The people that you touched with that got access to something, the people that I shared my story and the story of my father with, all got access to something to do with their parents or children or dealing with difficult times. There's a contribution beyond the direct business result in that that's deeply gratifying as well. So, John hall, thanks for being on the show. And the book is Top of Mind. Use content to unleash your influence and engage those who matter to you. John will be speaking at the Scaling Up Summit. If you would like to go to that Scaling UP summit in October 2018 in Denver. We have a terrific slate of speakers at all our summit. Some fantastic things. If you've never been to one before, if you don't have a Coach. Go to scalingup.com, register for the summit. Indicate me as your coach there. I believe you'll get a discount for doing that. So there's a little gift from us and introduce. Say hi. I'll do some nice things for you. You can sit with us and sit at my table and talk with me and some of our clients. So you can do that. And then John Hall. So if you want to know more about John hall, you'll find john hallspeaker.com his company is influenceandco.com and I think people are going to love to hear more about you. Thanks again so much for being on the show. I think, though, we should go on limb here and invite you to sing a line or two to close the show.

All right. Well, if we're going that route, actually, I was going to say, say you should wait. You should wait in person to see. But here we are, Raimi. Stuck in this old gold mine just as sad as we can be Feels like a long, long time and we left and played together you and me and I wish and I can actually wrap it if we go far away. Oh, Raimi. So, Sadie, you know what you mean. Felt say when a two want to get back home again just as much as you. There's no one here to find us. We have strength. Simple signage over Amy. I guess it's up to you and me. Yep, it's. It's real. Don't stick with me. So next time, man, next time you're thinking about not being consistent, just see the power of Cabbage Patch Kids. Just think about that. All right?

Every week we're back here with another speaker, case study story coach, CEO. All things to do with scaling up, growing your business and breaking out of the pack. So you'll find us here and every week on itunes. Stitcher. Wherever you get your stuff, your podcast, you can also go to scalingupbusiness.com, subscribe there. We'll send you an email reminder every week. We've got loads of free tools and things there to help get yourself scaling up. You can register for one of our Scaling up intro workshops. There's lots of stuff there for free and otherwise. So scalingupbusiness.com thanks again, John hall, and we'll see you guys next week.

Thanks for having me.

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