#H2HChat Staying Top of Mind with John Hall

Here we are, back to another H2H Chat. We are here. We've been on hiatus for, for the last couple weeks. Everybody had spring breaks, and including us, which was so nice to get away, but I kind of missed work. I know it sounds kind of weird, but I kind of, I kind of missed it a little bit. Did you?

Well, we work and play.

That's

in our whole lives, but we did manage to kill a lot of red Solo cups. And perhaps brain cells.

Just a couple. So we're here and we have a really great friend on today. John Hall is just an incredible person, incredible friend, as I mentioned. He is, he's done some really cool stuff. He's built with a team, I'm sure he'd say, 'cause he's a totally humble dude, but he really has built a really great company, and I'm gonna let him do it, so just so I don't bomb his vision and mission for the company, but I can tell you that they focus on helping people, and that's the best part about their company. They help people grow, and that's what attracted us to John in the first place, was just about the company and how they help individuals become their own thought leaders in their own mind and in other people's minds.

I'm a thought leader in my own mind.

I'm one too. And it's kinda cool because, you know, people, so he mirrors exactly what he, he walks the walk. He's not just a guy that's out there talking about this stuff. And I think it's really cool that he has a new book called Staying Top of Mind. And it just came out, literally just, it's on Amazon now. But we're gonna talk to John, we're gonna find out more. Just a few little things that you probably need to know is that John has a company, Influencer Co. Influencer Co. And it basically, like I said before, they help people, but they've also grown themselves. They're— I think John can correct me, but they're well over 100 employees. They've just received the fastest growing company on Inc. Magazine, I think it was, and numerous awards. He's a Forbes writer. He writes for all kinds of magazines. He's doing such incredible work, and we just like

the Well, we're going to learn a lot about relationships in the next hour, so maybe we should let John introduce himself.

John, how are you doing today?

I'm just going to let you guys keep talking. It's making me feel so good about myself. I just walk around and I tell people I'm going to make them be Bryan Kramer, and that's my sales pitch, man. That's all I do. No, it's really— thank you for the kind words. I appreciate it. I love and respect both of you. And a little more background, you know, obviously we met years ago when we were getting Influencer Co. off the ground. The idea was very simple. It was how can we help people gain trust with specific audiences by generating good engaging content from them to that specific audience? And so when Bryan talks about us helping people, a lot of the people we're helping are people that are business leaders, companies that, that really should be out there more, should be educating audiences, but they just don't have the time or resources or expertise. And so we started with that simple idea 4 or 5 years ago and have grown into— we're right about— I know on payroll we got about 150 or 170, but full-time equivalents is right around 100 or slightly above that. Yeah. Things have been going well. We've grown really fast. The book was actually sparked from the initial idea of when we started Influence& Co. in general. It was talking about When we're trying to work with a client, one of the main goals is you want to get an audience from— you want an audience to look at you through not just their short-term memory, but you want to be in their long-term memory. That's where I became obsessed with top of mind in general and how you remain on people's minds at just the right time and the right moment. All these experiences over the last 4 or 5 years have contributed into this book, is saying I've seen so many people build platforms, engage different audiences. audiences and results from that, but there's certain things that happen and there's certain ways to do it, whether it's through a large content marketing campaign or it's simply by engaging people one-on-one. It became somewhat of a passion project this last year, and it's turned out really well.

That's fantastic, and congratulations on your new book. That is exciting in and of itself that you actually— it's really hard to be able to work through, stay focused, and write alongside running a company and doing the other activities? And, you know, I don't know if you've made this public, I mean, you have young kids. So, you know, you've got family and, I mean, very young kids. So you're really juggling. And how did you get through writing the book? What kind of process did you use for that?

Sure. Well, one, I mean, I'm fortunate I have a company that, I mean, we're starting to look into doing this for clients. And so this was kind of a test run. But What we also looked at is I also create a lot of content. I mean, I hire my own company to do it as well and work through a process. What I would tell people, if anybody looks to do a book, one of the easiest ways to do it is that you kill several birds with one stone. Sure, if one year you're writing for Forbes and Inc. and these places that I do, and then the next year you stop doing that and write a book, you're going to be doing a lot of double work. Yeah. Last year we planned on doing a book and we said, okay, we're going to be doing a book. We know I'm passionate about the topic. Then we kind of knew what the outline was going to be. Then what we said was, over this next year we're going to be creating content that fits into this in my Inc., in my Forbes column, when I write for HBR, when I write for Fast Company. You don't have to write for those places to do that, obviously. You can do that with your own blog, but it's just designing a content strategy that encompasses all of the tools that you can use to build your company brand or personal brand. For me, we looked at it and we said, a book plays an important part in this. It has a lot of this content in it, but we also have certain things that aren't in this writing that we want to add to the book. That's where the holes were at the end, where we looked at it and we said, okay, great. We have this book with these articles that we've written throughout here that relate to it that we can get some content from. But with a book, it's not like a 500-word article. It's chapters. You know more than anybody is that they are— I mean, it's 208 pages what I wrote for McGraw-Hill. That's a lot of articles to put in there. There's all this other information and data that we've been storing over time and putting it in there over this last year. That's why I think that the results were really great because we weren't forced to try and come up with something in 3 months or 6 months to put it together in a book, which a lot of of writers and authors are hustling to get a book done. We were able to do it over time where we only took the most valuable stuff that we thought was important. We also looked at how the content performed online to determine whether it goes in the book. For us, it was a process that went with our content strategy, so it flowed seamlessly into it. That's where I would recommend to people is that if you're interested in doing a book, It should be a part of a larger content strategy, and you shouldn't just be doing a book.

That's great advice.

Well, and I love the fact that you mentioned doing a strategy before you start producing that content, because you do have to have a skeleton roadmap for where you want to go with it. But I also love your point about just create content that is important to you and put it on your blog. Because, you know, I think that we hear this from our clients sometimes, and we're guilty of it too. We think that as soon as you release a piece of content out there, it's sent. And that's absolutely the opposite of the truth.

Yeah. I mean, content is a— if this is good engaging content, it's a magical asset. I always say the word magical just because people are like, what do you mean magical? I'm like, it's magical to me because I've seen one piece of content and core messaging. I'll give you an example of what we're doing right now. The other day, I don't come up with very many brilliant ideas, but I come up with occasionally, once a quarter or something, that's somewhat— we're like, oh, that stands out. I was joking around and I was talking about content in general and what's so important to me with content. I said, you know what's so important? It's industry-leading. I want to know what's ahead of the curve. I want to know what should I know about that other people might not know about, and how can I get thinking that way? The next thing is data-driven. I was like, I wanted to have data background support to show that some of this stuff works, or at least examples that could be considered in a form of data or support. Then I said educational, how-tos, things that actually educate around the idea So you know what you're talking about. And then the last thing I said was amusing. And I was like, I want it to be fun. I want it to be exciting. I want it to be this. And it was hilarious. I was talking to someone and when I was explaining this and they go, you do realize that you just branded a little term there? I go, what do you mean? And I like, in my mind I went through and it was IDEA content. So it's like IDEA. It's like industry-leading, data-driven, educational, amusing. And I was like, this is hilarious.

Acronym. We like acronyms.

So I'm like, that makes sense. It's like idea content, because when you have an idea, you want to share it in the right way. And so I go, let's do a piece. So I did a piece in Inc. and it did really well. And then without even knowing, my staff created an infographic about it, had a white paper about it. We're doing a webinar about it. And I was like, man, this is awesome. And so I think that for me, every single piece of the— and also just the way you communicate. Yeah. If you have a content strategy that is truly good, for example, I learn every day what's engaging and what's not by just listening to people, asking people what was interesting there, what was not. That goes back into that content strategy, and it helps you not only get better content but also communicate better with people. I'm a talker, so I'll go and keep talking to people. My wife will tell you, if I get off the reins, I'll just start spewing off uninteresting shit. And so for me, like, it's important that I have some reins on what's valuable and what's engaging to people. And that's where that content strategy is so important. And then it helped me not go off the reins with my book because it made me kind of stay focused on what was most valuable to people.

Do you want to give like just a pretty high-level overview, like some tips about like best practices for building a really Good content strategy. Yeah,

I mean,

to put you on the spot.

Oh no, yeah, no problem. I mean, honestly, for me, it used to be— so it used to be like, when we did content strategies before, it was the funnel. So you were like talking about like, okay, at the top of the funnel, how are you engaging people to get into it, to whatever, learn about your brand, learn about you? And then what are you doing to nurture them here? What are you doing to close them there? Now I think that's changed. Now I look at it in a sphere or in this kind of circle. And instead it's like you have these places where you're engaging people on the circle at the top of the circle where it's like, you know, that's all the, let's say, thought leadership content, social, PR, things that are going to be coming, that are going to be reaching outside audiences, that you're going to draw them to you. And then that next one is the, you know, kind of nurturing and kind of thinking about once they're to me, How am I engaging them? There's multiple platforms these days and different ways that you have to test out. At the beginning, it's important to, one, identify the— as you're going through, and it's almost like a journey of that buyer and how they're going through. But then you have to remember is that buyers aren't as easily tricked anymore into going immediately down. They're wanting to go down and back up. That's why I like the sphere of it is because they immediately see— They get involved in you, then you nurture them. And then also what you want to do is keep them going around. And then you're once again wanting to hit them outside in third-party areas where they see you again. It's unbelievable how somebody will be in our pipeline to be a client of ours and they'll see us— like, let's say they see a tweet that we put, then they'll go to our blog content, start reading some blog content. And then let's say they download a white paper, we capture their information, and then we try and sell them. Or at that point they're ready to be sold, so it's okay. But then they still don't buy anything. However, when they do see another article that my co-founder wrote in Entrepreneur and goes, oh yeah, those guys, and then goes back in there, that's why it's important to keep doing that and keep doing that. And so for me, it's documenting that process and saying, you know, how are we engaging people at each one of these levels? And then making sure that you're actually being real about what you can implement. We have a very complex content strategy right now because we've also earned that ability to be complex. Anybody who is doing one, it should be very simplified and you should test. Then once you figure out what works, you keep going and you learn from it. Once you get it documented and it's simplified, you just grow from it. Our first content strategy, you would have laughed your ass off. It was like— I should try and find it. Because I feel like my 3-year-old daughter could have put something together that's better. And I apologize for our first couple customers. He's like,

Addy, what's the content?

But now we can— it's okay because you grow and you learn and you get the help and you're honest with yourself and it ends up becoming better. But yeah, I mean, I think that as simple as it is, is documenting it, get that flow in your mind because it starts helping you kind of design even if it's Even if you're only using, let's say, to get people in the top of the funnel, you're using paid ads and you're using, let's say, an email campaign or blog content to nurture them. At least understand how that full cycle works and have it documented because then once you learn from it, you can then substitute things out. You can put something in the top. You can— and also the re-engagement factor of the circle, I think, is super important, is making sure that you're not just giving up on, oh, well, I got some person down the funnel, so I just keep them down there. People are popping out all the time that you need to re-engage with.

Yeah, we found audiences do not like to be held down.

They don't.

That's a best practice just in general.

They're not ready for it either. Sometimes, like, you're just so good at marketing that they get drawn into it. And the key thing that you have to— if you're building a real brand— is trust. You cannot build a real brand and/or grow a brand if you don't have any trust. And so that's where it's like, from my standpoint, is that we, we a lot of times we have an amazing funnel that people will be drawn in. But I know those people, even if they've signed on, they haven't been the best clients. They rush into it. For me, it's like I want to be very focused on how we can get people into engaging with our brand, but the whole time they're feeling that they can trust us. That's what I think is important because no matter what, even if they fall out, they become brand advocates. There's all these benefits of forming that, doing it the right way. It's important to make sure that you don't get too market gimmicky with it and really focus on what's the most valuable information to get them at the right time, to get them in the right place.

So just a quick shout out to Mitch Jackson because he beat everybody else to the punch and already bought your book.

Mitch, you said his name was Mitch Jackson?

He's a wonderful friend and a incredible lawyer down in Southern California. He's one of the most social lawyers I know. And anyway, you know, also just kind of leading that, I dive into some of the philosophies behind staying top of mind or top of mind and what personally, how, 'cause I know I'm throwing you a curveball here, but— I love what you do and I'd love for you to describe to everybody your idea of top of mind and how that comes through in the book.

Sure. Let's not forget about my buddy Mitch. You said Mitch actually— you said he bought a copy of the book early?

Yeah.

All right. We were just talking about this, Bryan, is that you know your real friends because they support you when you buy books or when you do a book. It's unbelievable how at this point I have really good friends that still haven't bought my book. And I'm like, you're kidding me. Like, I buy any of my friends' books and support it. So Mitch, let me know what I can do to help you out, brother. If you want, like, this is an offer. I will— or tell Mitch, Bryan, that I will—

He can hear you.

Oh, he can hear me? Oh, hey Mitch. I will sign copy to anybody you want. Just send me— my email is john@influencedandco.com. Send me an email and say, hey, I know this person would get a lot of value out of your book and I will send it to them as a gift and say, hey, Mitch cares about you. you to have a copy, and I'll personalize it for him. So thanks for the support, buddy. But the—

That's awesome. That is awesome.

That's an HTH moment right there.

Yeah, I think we just had a great top-of-mind moment as well. So let's dive in. What are some of the philosophies that you talk about, and why did you write this book?

Sure. So yeah, so top of mind, when you think about the science part of top of mind, is you're going from short-term to long-term memory. That's what it is, is that you can't go top of— you have no chance of being top of mind on somebody at the right time if you're not in their long-term memory. Because if they meet you, great, you have a great time. The next day, if they forget about you, you are not coming to their mind. It's very simple. And it's a process called consolidation that moves someone from short-term to long-term memory. The science, I can get really in-depth with it, but as simple as it is, neurons are firing because of certain things that are stimulus that are happening that ends up making those thoughts and those things going to the long-term memory. That's the core of what we're trying to do, whether it's anytime we're engaging people, is that one of the goals is that we want them to know us and think about us at that right time. whether it's us as people, our company, the products that we're selling, we want them to— or services— we want them to think. Because there's these moments that happen where— I use it as an example of— when I speak to groups, I use the example when my wife and I, we talked about during our date nights what we can do better for each other. And she said, well, if— and one of our big things is I want to be better for you. And that's where you guys can learn from it. Oh, don't tell her. Okay, so I won't say anything, but let's summarize it in that we're trying to figure out what we can do better for each other, and I didn't listen to the suggestion from her. So she started sending content my way, and it was about cooking, and I didn't want to cook. You kidding me? I don't want to cook. And so she sent me this content, and I kept engaging with it, and it was from Plated, and it was like 7 essential tools in the kitchen. Another one was like about dumb spouses or something that we need to learn. And this moment, at this perfect moment right before our next date, she goes, oh, and she did the question which I'm sure Courtney's so familiar with is, so, you know, we talked about that and so what happened? Did you— have you cooked? And I was like, oh shit. And I was in that moment. And that's where like there's so many moments of vulnerability in our life every single day. Like you just— some are smaller than others, some are— but there's these moments of vulnerability. I talked to someone on the phone today where they go, oh, by the way, we need to work with you guys. We'll do whatever, we'll pay whatever. We saw our competitor and they're all over the place. Legitimately, our CEO saw this article and it was a byline and it completely was something we need to be doing. I don't care what I'll do, I need to sign up for this. I'm like, that's not the right way to sign up for a service, to be honest with you. Because the fact is, at that time you're reactive. But who did they come to when they were in that moment of vulnerability? They came to— it was an article that— they came in from an article that we had written probably 6 or 7 months ago. And they had stayed in touch, followed me on Twitter, followed different of my staff members as well on their content. And so they thought of us at the right moment. And now they're coming to us in their time of need. And that's important. That means there's trust already formed. They're going to be better clients because they value us. They understand it. They've been educated. For me, what I liked about Top of Mind is that there's all those moments of vulnerability. Vulnerability isn't a bad thing. You want to be there for people, but also you want to develop that trust where it goes from the short-term to long-term memory. For me, a lot of the books like the Chapter 2 or 3, 4, and 5, it's about these different trust touchpoints. So just imagine you're on a totem pole with everyone. Now, me and the Kramers are— Kramers and I are like up here hanging out. I'm at the top of the totem pole because we trust each other. But it takes a very long time to form that trust with people and with companies. With— and a lot of times it's a consumer where you don't even have any engagement with. And so you have to always be going up that and have these trust touchpoints which build it. Some of the components on it are, for example, helpfulness. I used to be a very not helpful person. I honestly only cared about myself. I wasn't very focused on what truly is valuable to people. Even if I helped someone out, I really didn't even actually help them. I did it to make myself feel good, which is not the right way to do it. For me, what I learned to do is I ask people, how can I be helpful to you? I truly mean it and I want to. Today I was at the gym in our subdivision and I met a guy who was— I didn't know, he was new to the neighborhood and he ends up being a decently well-known author, wrote a book that's a bestseller. I was talking to him, but I didn't know this at the time, but he had asked me what I did and I told him. I said, well, how can I ever help you out? He said, honestly, my son is just needing some experience, some mentorship. He's a journalism student and I'd love it. I go, okay, great. Awesome. I'm happy to help him out. I go, here's my email address. I go, if he wants to come in and shadow me or do whatever, I'm happy to help out. He was like, oh my God, that means— At that moment, I didn't even know that he was a more well-known author. I was like, wow. It was cool to see that. Those are different things. That's just a simple example of one-on-one communication that you need to learn to actually truly help people. I guarantee you, after I met him, He followed me on Twitter, already engaging, getting an email. There's this long-term memory that was formed there during that trust touchpoint where I was truly just helping him out. Now, there's all these different ways to form trust touchpoints. Helpfulness is one. Somebody just naturally liking you, getting them information at the right time in the right moment. There's all these triggers, and that's where a lot of the book talks about is that— my dad read it and he goes, Shit, John, I was overwhelmed. You think I'm going to do all that right now? I'm like, no, Dad. I'm not expecting you to basically be a master of doing that in a couple days. It's more of over time if you just naturally think about how you can do some of those things. You actually, for example, I try and form habits. I say every time I talk to someone and they naturally are interested by something and they're like, oh, that was a really good point, or that's a good story, or whatever. I immediately go back and I write it down in an Excel doc. And I say, great, this person, here's what they, you know, here's what was interesting. And I track that. And that's a lot of times what forms our content idea— ideation is me like truly listening to people and understanding what they find engaging or what they find valuable. And then I send that document to our team here at Influencer Co. And that's where some of my, some of our content comes from. And so there's all these different things that you can do and habits and strategies that you can form so that you have these trust touchpoints. And the more you do it and the more you consistently hit them at these, these times, the more you go to that long-term memory. And that's what a lot of the book is about, is our journey together trying to get you to your audience on like from one-on-one communication to building a platform to get them to trust you more and get them engaged. So that you do— they do think of you at the right time. And that's the idea behind top of mind.

So, John, lots of high fives, virtual high fives. Dawn is in love with you. She just said, super great, guys, for sharing with us. We're getting Jed Record. We got so many great people on here. Thank you guys for joining in. In 5 minutes, we're going to be taking your questions and posing them to John. So if you're new to H2H Chat, follow us on #H2H, H number 2, H Chat on Twitter. Use that in your hashtag. Make sure you use it so we can follow your question. Start putting your questions out now. I didn't mention that earlier, but make sure you ask your questions. I will take those questions and ask John what's on the top of your mind. See what I did there? So John, I'm curious. You, you and I, we— I'm lucky because I have the contact and Courtney has the contact hanging out. And so I have had some conversations with you. I know that you use different tools to stay top of mind, and I'm curious if you can talk about mixes between, you know, this is called the H2H Show for a reason, the mix of human interaction and technology, and where do you see That mix and how do you use that mix to stay top of mind?

Absolutely. That's an awesome question. And in the book, you'll see that I have a resource library at the end because it drives me nuts when people tell you to do all this stuff and they don't even give you the tools to use it because like nobody should be doing manual stuff these days. And especially if you're going to scale human-to-human connection and trust, you have to have tools that do it for you. And so at the end of the book—

I think that's a new record. We're 28 minutes in. That's not human.

We didn't tell him, unfortunately. But when you use the word human, that happens.

I have it written down here not to say human. I try

not to. He has a note. Don't say human. Man, you almost made it the whole show. That would have been a record.

I was on this thing— I was on this a couple— or like a year ago. I forgot when I was on it last. But I remember I was the record at the time. And I was like 38. So I was going to try and not be like— for those of the people I might have annoyed back then, I was going to try and tone it down this time. But now it's time to talk about it. But yeah, it's honestly a pet peeve of mine where people don't share tools. And that's where I did something that nobody really ever does in their books. And I made a personalized email on it that's called Top of Mind Help. It's topofmindhelp@gmail.com where people can just ask, what tools are you using? I have this problem. How do you think I should scale? And honestly, I've been responding to it personally. It's not somebody on my staff doing it. But for me, it's important to understand that in a world of technology, we have to embrace it. And it doesn't mean you're losing a human connection because you're using technology. It means that you have to interweave, or you kind of need to have them play together. So I'll give you an example. Over the holidays, I sent out probably at least 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 emails, somewhere around there. to different people. And it's because that's a time where I think you can form a human connection and trust. And so for me, I— It's a little delayed. But at those moments, I think it's important to realize that most of the people that I deal with, I'm not just dealing with them just to make money off them. Part of me living and enjoying life is getting and forming real relationships. So I send those emails out. And I use Mixmax, so it's templated. And it is— it's, hey, hope things are going well. And then I'll have a blank and then I'll say, you know, enjoy the whatever the day is, enjoy the holiday weekend. And it won't say anything business related. And in the middle, I'll just put up the template.

What did you say you use?

Mixmax?

Mixmax.

Mixmax. M-I-X-M-A-X. Are you just messing with me or?

Say it one more time.

All right.

Say it one more time.

Hold on. We'll get to this. We're struggling. Mixmax. Yeah.

Mixmax.

Can you see that? Mixmax.

Oh, Mixmax.

Mixmax. Never heard of that before.

They're amazing. It's an amazing email tool, which I'm a huge fan of because you can template. And also, like, it has calendar capabilities. It has like— now I write like code in email because it's this really awesome tool that starts out being simplified of just— it has boomerang tendencies. So you can actually like— you send an email, you can track exactly where, you know, people are reading it from what device at what time. You can do all that in it. But for that specific sending out templates, you can send mass templates that are personalised. For me, I still just use their template software where I can just put like the shortcut and it'll say template. It will bring that template up and then I'll just add one sentence in it. So I'll sit there and I'll be like, if I'm emailing the Kramers, I'm like, hey, I hope things are going with the kids. And I think like, I feel like when you were, you were in like some place in Mexico staying at like one of your friend's place when I last emailed you about it. But I commented, I was like, awesome pictures of the family trip. I hope things are going well. So you know that I'm actually paying attention to you as a person. And so for me, people are like, you send a couple thousand emails out, how long does that take you? And I'm like, typically about— I mean, it can take me probably like 10 hours. And they're like, there's no way you spend 10 hours and you get that many emails out. I'm like, yeah, I just use technology and I personalize them. I actually, with this book, I'm going through contacts again and asking for help for the book and personalizing messages. My co-founder sent a— we use 15Five for reporting. She sent a message to one of my other staff members. She goes, I heard from several people that John sent them a personal message. Great job, marketing. They actually think it's from John. And it's like— but I use technology to the point where, to be honest, like, I can scale that stuff. And that's where, like, Mixmaxx is probably one of my more efficient marketing email and, like, personalization kind of type tools. I love that. But I use a lot of— if you just look at the book, you'll see all the resources that I use and all the options that I've heard of. And then if you're in between them, you can say, hey, like I'm in between this and this and just let me know. And I will— like the response time right now is quick just because the book's new. But just give me a break if it takes, you know, a week or so. But I'll get back to anybody who emails me for help in there.

Awesome. Well, this is a good point. Thank you so much for sharing that. That was really actionable, and I really appreciate that. I know everybody else did. And you have another person who purchased your book, Dawn Renshaw, great friend of ours, wonderful person, just used her Amazon gift card to purchase Dawn's new book. So she's real excited about that. And we've got a lot of people actually asking questions. So why don't we go ahead and switch over to questions? We still have plenty of questions too. Yeah. So

why don't we—

why don't we— yeah, well, first, you want to read it?

Sure. And this is very timely. And I'm very interested to hear what you have to say about this because this is a whole topic of a show in and of itself. So Mitch Jackson asks, tips for top-line people or companies doing damage control? Think #United. Best real-world practices or approaches?

So top of mind for basically damage control and crisis, like AKA United. Is that the question?

Yes. Yes. And let's use United as an example.

Oh, United. They're like— and honestly, there was what, more information about the husband and wife that came out today being kept? I mean, that's once again a lesson to brands is once you're in a shitstorm, it's very hard to get out of it. And that's what they're in. It's unfortunate that Brands do get themselves in situations like that. I mean, for me, and I'll tell you a very honest one that has bothered me in this last year, is the University of Missouri. So you said United, but the University of Missouri one is close to home for me because we have one of our major offices there. They dealt with the racial problems this last year. For me, it was really emotional for me because I live— I mean, that's where my home is. And I— the community is great. Like, I love the community there. And— but there are, you know, anywhere there's challenges with whether it's racial— racism, discrimination, and we have to work together as a group to get past them and to really lead in a way that's good for everyone. And so that example and what the University of Missouri really drove me nuts about is that they just shut up. They shut up. They didn't like— they like legitimately just weren't communicating this last year. And they're just like, oh, we're going to keep sweeping this under the rug. For me, that is not the way to do it. It's like me when I'm in trouble with my wife, sweeping that under the rug. It doesn't get me anywhere. She brings it up 6 months down the road where she's like, remember this? I'm like, yeah. She's like, yeah, people don't forget, John. It's like, okay. That's what drives me nuts about that is that you've got to simply, if you are a good company, which I actually do think United's a good company. People can give them a hard time. Have great customer service too. Did they make a mistake here? Absolutely. Is it a serious mistake? Yes. But it doesn't mean you crawl into a shell and you don't do anything. I mean, like you have to. You lost a crapload of trust, a ton of trust in that moment. And what it is is that you you've got to work hard to gain that again. How like it has to be looked at as saying, okay, moving forward, we have a lot of people that don't trust us. I'm actually actually one of these people right now. that, you know, I've been kind of paying attention. I typically don't. I'm a Southwest fan. But with United, I'm like, you know, I sometimes do fly there. And for me, they've lost trust. So probably when I'm like on the fence, and even if they have direct flights, I might pick somewhere else. They've got to win people over. Yeah. They've got to really think through and say, in our content strategy, how are we educating people? How are we talking about this? How did we address this? Like, and also, How are we showcasing how we really are as a company consistently so that over time there is more positive? That no matter what, a company is going to have negative, but it's just how people weigh the positive versus negative. And so airlines, to be honest with you, are lucky in the fact that they are known for being shitty in different ways and they get a little break because they're going to make mistakes and people kind of know that. So they give you a little break quicker, but it doesn't mean that you sweep it under the rug. So like my advice for things like that is that you are in people's long-term memory as a very bad thing right now. And whether you deserve it or not, let's talk about other, like, not United or like— I'm obviously biased because, you know, I feel like there's— I'm a big customer service person. And one of the reasons why I respect Southwest is that they've, in situations that have been like that, that I've seen them, they've treated people really well. And so that's where, like, I look at that, I'm like, well, I'm Kind of siding with this now, but it doesn't mean that like I'm never going to fly Southwest again. I mean, or fly United again. It just means that they need to start getting some better information. They need to start, you know, getting more positive content out there, getting talked about on some of the unique things they do. I know United supports some startups and entrepreneurs. You know, once you address that, you know, really focus on getting that brand so that people know you still give a crap about people. And be very, very, very proactive about it. Because if you're not, this— the reactive stuff's going to keep coming and you're not going to have any form of— I mean, you're gonna be, you're gonna be in the hole for a while.

So you bring up a really good point because this morning I also read a story on HuffPost about a woman who was telling a story about how her husband, who's a Mexican American And her young daughter, who was 3, got, I guess, racially profiled because another passenger who was inebriated was making comments about the fact that this guy was probably human trafficking this little girl. Because the mom is Irish-American, so the little girl didn't look like the dad. Right? And so what my point is, is they didn't say when this story happened. You know, this could have been 5 years ago or— You know, but right now, because United is very timely and hot as a topic, it could serve as clickbait because people are sort of standing in the wings with their pitchforks and torches, right?

Yep.

So you want—

You're right.

Talk a little bit about targeting those audiences, part of that strategy. How do you tackle that?

Yeah, and it's hard to get out of, like, to get out of that hole is tough. It's the same thing with reputation management. Like once you get on lists for being crappy, people look at those lists and you just— it's a spread effect. People are then bringing up stuff from like— I mean, you're exactly right. Nobody said when that stuff happened and you don't know when it does but no matter what, when you start being on people's radar, it's kind of like you're in a— let's say a fight and you probably got yourself into that fight, let's say. Yeah. But sooner or later, you need to own up and say, like, it's like, sorry, I'm really— and be a person about it, not just say, sorry, I had like— it's like something like my first couple years of marriage with my wife. I'm like, sorry, honey. Like, I'm sorry. Like, I already said it. It doesn't need to be like that. You need to actually come at it from, you know, with some compassion and that, you know, and what you're doing to make things better. But then it's got to be a very big focus on the positive. And no matter what, people are still in a fight, like in that fight. People still might be talking crap to me, but I still need to come at it from, okay, like, hey, I'm sorry for starting this, but moving forward, like, I'm, I'm not gonna fight you back. I'm not going to do this. I need to move and be on— I need to be a leader here, and I need to not, you know, I need to be positive, and I need to stick with this. And so, um, Yeah, I mean, for me, it's, it's simple as, hey, there needs to be a drawn out of what is positive, what are they doing, let's draw attention to that, let's focus on that. But also at the same time is like, you know, don't just branch over that. I mean, like, address those real problems. That's what I— with Missouri, it's that same problem is that, you know, they still needed to do things to take ownership and then also put into play. They hired some— that's where they did do some really good things is that they hired certain positions to specifically focus on that problem. And they had— it actually, you know, took a focus. So they did that. But the problem that I had with that is they barely even communicated it. I never really saw any pieces of content from that person. About the lessons learned and how they were getting through it. And that's where, like, the example that I gave from in the book is Jeff Jones of Target. Like, he absolutely gained a ton of my respect when he when he wrote the truth is the truth hurts. And that article on LinkedIn about how he was talking about how Target really was struggling. Now they weren't in united crisis, but they were in crisis where people were really doubting Target's brand back then. And he wrote that that article where he said we're really struggling, and right now we are. trying to get past it. Here's what we're doing. It was so honest and it was such a good piece of content. I probably reread that probably 10 or 15 times. I give Jeff props anywhere I go. I use him in keynotes. That's a perfect example of Target struggling and saying, you know what? We're going to hit this head on. Here's what we're going to be doing and here's how we're going to rebound from it. He communicated it in a LinkedIn post. I was like, I love you, buddy. Thanks for doing that. It wasn't some memorandum, memo from something that was left on somebody's desk. It was something that he publicly just said, I, you know, I want to earn trust, and so I'm going to share with you actually what's going on.

So, John, I want to make sure that we also dig into other parts of staying top of mind. There's some great questions. I slipped one in ahead of time to talk about what do you— how do you teach your own company To stay top of mind? Because as you mentioned, you have over 150 people that you're dealing with there. How do you teach this kind of top-of-mind thinking to the people that— well, you started as a much smaller company, but how did you instill and breed that and educate people to really think this way?

Well, one, when you're building a company and the people who are your managers that have that spread effect influence, like I'm not dealing with I mean, 150 on payroll. I mean, like, well, 50 or 60 of those are contracted out anyway. But then let's talk about like the other full-time people. I'm only working with probably, let's say, on a regular basis, 10 or 15 of those. And what I try to do and what Kelsey, the co-founder, or my co-founder, has tried to do is we show examples. So we lead by example is the first thing. Nobody is going to believe you. And that's the one thing that people hate is that when you say, do this, do this, do this, and then you're terrible at it. And so that's— you can't do that. You've got to set the tone first. That's the most infectious, like, positive thing you can do because people see that. I see how, like, Alyssa, who's kind of our sales manager, head of sales, I see her engage with people and I know that there's things that she's seen me do where she's taken that. And she's like, oh hey, by the way, this happened, so I'd love to do this to help them out. Like the other day, a publication person who— like I used to manage a lot of the major publications. I still do in a way. But she said she's getting married. I'd love to send her a gift. And I saw her registry was public. And she loves gardening. Can we send a small gift in gardening and I'm going to write a personal note? I was like, oh my God, that's awesome. That's really, really cool to see that she did that because she's like, this is— I mean, she even said, this is stuff you've done in the past. I used to send— I've sent your book out. I've sent Adam Grant's book, Give and Take. There was one of the editors at Fortune the other day. It was a new relationship, a newer editor, and I sent her Give and Take. Awesome. Wrote a personal message because honestly, I was impressed with her on the conversation. She was so helpful, so nice. Not all editors at major pubs are like that. And so I showed that to the publication editor. I said, hey, here's what I wrote. Here's what I think is a good way of basically forming a relationship with them. And so I showed those examples. Now, those are one-on-one examples and they're not the scalable ones as much. But when it comes to the more scalable ones with content, We have our other employees contributing content. What we've instilled in them is saying, hey, this is our content strategy, and this is how we find out what's most helpful to this audience. When you are developing content, you need to think this way. You need to be listening to the content triggers. What I mean content triggers is that when Alyssa writes an article, it better include a real problem and challenge that people that are— she's that our audience is having. It better not just be a, you know, she's doing a BuzzFeed article just to be fun. That's not how we try and teach her. And so for her, she's focused on seeing us leading by example. And then now, like, I don't look at her content or I don't look at any of their content unless it comes in my path, like, unless I'm naturally reading it or I try and make an effort. But I have that trust in them that they're building platforms within the company that is good and it models off of what we've kind of tried to show them. I think it starts out small. Even if you're a big company like GE, you start out with your core group and you say, okay, here's how we can do this and here's how this spreads, and it's infectious. The reason why it's infectious is because it shows results. Once you start getting— I get so many intros every day. I get so many— opportunities where I'm blown away that people want to bring these to my door. I'm like, just like, because as a selfish kid and when in my 20s, this crap, this great— or it's not crap, it's this great stuff never happened. And I was trying so hard thinking I was doing stuff that was so cool. But then when I actually shifted my mindset and said, how can I truly, truly engage people in a way that draws them to me? It changed things for me. And that's where— that's why it becomes infectious is because you end up One of our salespeople, Matt Camp, who we hired, let's say, 3 or 4 salespeople at the same time, he stood out so much because he actually did some of these tactics that we talk about in the book. When you're engaging, he does some content. He just did a webinar with Kissmetrics and some other brands there. He helps people. He sends intros all the time. He'll send, oh great, I know a perfect web designer. Let me help you out here. He's been our lead salesperson. And so that's where, you know, and he's had to—

How do you, how do you deal with the, the— you said you get a lot, and I understand what you're talking about there, a lot of incoming, and, and there's a lot coming at you. So, so top of mind, there's a difference between, you know, there still is a lot of people out there trying to reach out, trying to get a lot from you to sell you something. What separates the sale from the actual, like, real kind of, like, they really care, the care versus the sell?

Well, I mean, I think for me, like, I get a lot of people that reach out and I'm wanting to understand their real challenge. And like, they're like, because a lot of people say, Hey, by the way, we want to work with you. You know, the— oh, let's say we want to get a ton of speaking gigs and only do speaking gigs. I'm like, well, we're not a speakers bureau. And like, to be honest with you, like, why are you trying to get speaking gigs? Let's talk about that. And so like, for me, it's actually understanding what the real challenge and what the problem is when people reach out. And if our solution is a real solution for that, then absolutely, we're happy to sell you because it's a real solution. It's gonna be a good fit. The problem is that a lot of people come to you just because they like or are attracted or trust you, and that's when you have to direct them somewhere else. Like today, my first call this morning, somebody wanted to sign on. We could have got them signed on today, but instead I sent them an introduction to a partner. In 5 minutes, I could understand that we were not a good fit. There was a partner that could be so much better for them, and we sent it to them. Now, granted, did we lose revenue there? Yes. Are we building a brand that's going to generate more revenue? Yes. That's where that person and that— they're going to be treated well. I know they're going to be treated well. I earn their trust because I know they'll be taken care of. I guarantee you, when someone actually needs our service that it's the best fit for, they're going to advocate for us. We're going to get that business. For me, I think that it's truly understanding what's valuable to someone. The people who will win in business Find out how to add the most value for people. Simply put is that if you can do that, you will win in business. And then scaling it is delegation. It's also like, as I've gotten so many inbound, I also put them with— I even tell people, I'm like, if you're interested in learning more about our service, I'm the last person you want to talk to at this point because I'm so far away from operations. If I was on your account, it'd be bad. I'd be the worst account strategist at this point. So, like, I simply say, hey, talk to Natalie, talk to Kurt, talk to some of these other people who are in there, and it's just a quick email. And so, like, I try to keep things brief, but most people do know that, you know, they're coming for me for help or, you know, questions, I'll at least direct them in the right place.

You know, there's another question here from— just before we wrap up, there's another question here from Cindy, and she— I don't know if she pronounced her last name Millette or Millette, but she said, do you suggest self-publishing a book or finding a publisher?

Okay, so that's a long discussion. Everybody has their views of it. I have had a very good experience with McGraw-Hill. My editor, Casey, is amazing. I love her. They've been very helpful. It all depends on your goals. It really does. Because in my case, I think that— I mean, we looked at self-publishing. I got offers from other publishers. I chose McGraw-Hill because I think that given what our company does, and I'm not trying to make a ton of money myself on the book. I'm trying to make money for our company and to build a brand of credibility. McGraw-Hill is one of the most respected names there. I'm happy. I hope they make more money off it because I think they've done a good job and deserve it. But if you're trying to make money, for example, off a book, you can make more money if you self-publish and you can sell a book for $2, $3, or $4, or you can sell it for $10 and your spreads are $2 or $3. With larger publishers, that's just not the case. They're investing in you and sometimes there's an advance that takes place. There's a variety of factors. I would simply say is that if I were you and her name, what was her first name, Tiffany?

It was Cindy.

Cindy. I was way off. Cindy, what I would do is I would talk to people that, some people that have self-published. I would talk to some people that have gone with a bigger publisher. I think that one of the biggest factors with doing a bigger publisher Is to look at, you know, you are fine with not making a ton of money off there. Granted, if you're like Hillary Clinton or somebody who is like really, really super well known, you can make a ton of money off the books. But for me, I'm trying to get as many eyes to view, to see Top of Mind as I can of the right people that I can truly help. And I want to sell a lot of those books to those people and I want McGraw-Hill to win. I want to win with getting in front of those people. However, if I only sell like let's say 10,000 or 15,000 books, that might be fine with me if it's the right eyes. I think McGraw-Hill would be fine with something like that as well. But there's some people that are like, hey, I want to be sending this out to 200, 500 people and I'm going to pay for it myself just to get in front of them. Now that, as you deal with a bigger publisher, you just don't get those, you don't have that spread there. Self-publishing, you could do that for $2 or $3 a book. With a larger publisher, you just don't have that advantage. I would say that, talk to people that have done both. Really think about what you're trying to accomplish. Truly think about, what is my goal here? Not what my ego tells me, because that's what I had to do. At first, I was like, man, I'm honored that these bigger publishers want to do my book. I still am humbled by a lot of these opportunities. Simply put, it was the right thing to do, even without my ego. When I went to Kelsey, my co-founder, who has friends who have published, she said, hey, honestly, they seem very supportive of you. They gave you an advance, which was fair. They also seem to believe in the book. Also, if we did that ourselves, John, we're probably not going— our goal isn't to send hundreds or thousands of books out on our own dime. It's to get people to naturally be drawn to it and and the right people. And so I think that this is the right fit for you. And so it was after I talked to— I mean, I talked to Paul Roetzer, I talked to Joe Pulizzi, I talked to Michael Brenner. I mean, I even probably asked Bryan at some point what was going on. But I— even after listening to me, I would still talk to people that have done each stage with them and truly feel what's right on your goals and move forward. Because depending on me hearing more from you, that's what would depend on my recommendation.

So, um, that's a— I completely and 110% agree. Um, I have just— just if you're listening, I also, uh, still listening, I, I, um, I published both and agree. Um, so I did a self-publishing and, and, um, and, and I think that, you know, again, to reiterate what John said, um, it really comes down to you and what makes sense for you, but I thought that was a great answer, John. So John, just to close it out, what's— give us just a final thought. If you were in a bookstore or a library and you're giving everyone one last thing to leave them with on staying top of mind, what would you like to leave them with? What was that one?

Yeah, I mean, I think that— yeah, for me, the best business books are ones that apply to your personal and professional life. I think that anybody who thinks Yeah. You can separate the two. It's virtually impossible, at least for me. For me, with Top of Mind, what I want people to get out of it is I want it to be not just a professional or just the business side of things. I want it to be a mindset for someone that when you are engaging or talking to someone either in your personal life or professional life, it's truly understanding what is engaging to them and how you can listen, how you can pay attention to those things, and then how you can do things and affect your behavior in a way that builds that relationship, that listens to that, and actually engages with them in the best way. Because simply put, the most value I got out of this book is the relationships I've been able to form personally with people by thinking about this stuff. And so for me, my relationship in my personal life is more important than anything. My wife, my friends, even in business, my relationships with people like you guys and other people I know. And having this mentality of just trying to either help people, give them better content, really focus on what I value, what they value, like it adds meaning to the relationship. And that's where if I can help you build one more relationship with that book, then I'm thrilled. So I want you to just be very open to saying, hey, you know, it's going to be hard to implement all of this, but what are some of these little things that I can do and just take a step moving forward. And maybe I read this book in a year and I say, okay, what did I do here? Did I, you know, I only did one or two of these things. Now let's— this next year I'm going to try and be better about, you know, this example. And so it's not going to be something that happens overnight where you do a bunch of— like, you're just going to be like, great. Like, like, I— over 4 or 5 years I've been able to scale this and do different things. And I also have the benefit of being around people that have done this as well. And I've seen the correlation between their success And doing some of these things. My takeaway is that if you can just take a few things, it's an enjoyable read. It's simple. I wanted to make it— this sounds bad, but a Harry Potter-style book.

Mm-hmm.

Because Harry Potter, you can sit down and read a damn 700-page book in like 2 days. I wanted it to feel the way where you felt like, wow, this was an enjoyable, simple read that I felt like I can have 1 to 2 or 3 takeaways that really stood out to me. that I can change my life in just the slightest bit, and then I can touch base, see how I did, and then add to it. Hopefully in 3 to 4 years, you can be closer to where I've been able to scale and do different things with it. That would be my goal with the book and my takeaway for you guys.

That's awesome. You gave us such an awesome hour. I appreciate it. I can definitely— we both can probably vouch for everything that you just said because we've sat on the other proverbial desk or bar. And so, John, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. We're going to put out a tweet on where to get your book, but I don't think the tweet is actually needed because I think almost everyone here has found it. So we'll still get a tweet out though for you. And the last thing I wanted to say is congratulations because And the content that you brought today helped again trend on a nice consistent run, but we appreciate doing this yet again and trending nationally on Twitter. So thank you so much, John, for bringing all you got and rocking it. Really appreciate that, man, and we'll look forward to some success with your book.

Just one last thing though, I want to call you guys out on this, is that This is specifically an example of a top-of-mind mentality, is that with Bryan, I reached out via LinkedIn and I said, hey guys, and Facebook, and I said, hey, this is a vulnerable time for me because I don't know how well this book's going to do. It could do thousands and thousands. It could be 50 books sitting on my mom's nightstand. But when Kramer reached out and he said, hey, Happy to have you on this. I know you've been on it before, but I'd love to help you out. Just this example right here is somebody doing something that I talk about in the book. Kramer goes in my mind— I was just actually interviewed the other day and somebody asked me, they're like, who are the other experts in the space? I thought about Bryan and I actually recommended him. It's funny that this example of what we're going on right now and Bryan's offer for help is an example of what you can do. And it's— there's a reason why Bryan and Courtney are successful, is that, you know, they do some of these things and they build real relationships. And in reality, or as a result of that, then, you know, they're in my long-term memory. So, you know, just look at this example and what Bryan just did there as, you know, a great example of helpfulness and what you can do.

So, um,

I feel like I want to break—

hey, I had like—

we're gonna all get together and do karaoke soon, I know.

I had a lot of friends not offer to help out, and Kramer did. So maybe I I need to reallocate some of my best friends. No, I'm just joking, but I have really, really good friends. Honestly, I told Bryan, I was somewhat surprised by some people were more helpful than others. You're just like, wow. I was like, this is an interesting process. I'm going to write an article. I told Bryan is that you really know your strong business contacts when you write a book, because the people who are like, Bryan, I'm like, hey, man, how can I help? I'll have you on H2H. It's a compliment to you guys.

Thanks, man. I'm looking forward to seeing this. I know the book will be successful because you are. You're genuinely successful, I should say. Thank you once again. Everybody out there, thank you for joining us for another trending hour. We'll look forward to next Monday at noon, Same time, noon Pacific Standard Time. And we'll see you again next Monday.

Yeah.

All

right.

Thanks for having me, guys.

Stay with us, guys. Hold on one sec.