Micro-Influencers, Massive Profits: Find The Face To Multiply Your Sales w/ Steve Doodian

The question is often asked, how do I get influencers to promote my stuff? And what Steve is saying is they never asked. They just gave and gave and gave and built relationships, wrote notes, sent product to them. They built relationships over the long term and when they had something cool to share with those people, they ended up sharing that. Is that correct?

Totally.

And I remember correctly, that product did 10,000 units like two weeks with no ad spend, is that right?

12 days? Yeah.

In 12 days.

12 days with the number, yeah. 10,000 units in 12.

Yeah. And you had all these influencers talking about it and you had a launch that was profitable, that was exciting, that went from basically 0 to 60 in 12 days with no ad spend, no direct ask. That's how you get influencers to talk about your stuff. It takes one free person to create change. This is the show for them. We are the creators of the free world. This is capitalism.com and we are the 1%.

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How are you?

Good to see you man.

Me too.

I have been looking forward to having you on Wine with Wine for quite some time. Obviously we've had a couple years to get to know each other, but what has been really interesting to me is like your overall, your business thesis and we're going to go into that. But first, are you marked safe from coronavirus?

I went to the doctor today and I am safe.

Did you really go to the doctor today?

What do you make of all this madness, Steve? So you're a family in New York?

I do.

New York, I believe has the highest concentration of coronavirus. So I'm gonna use you as my resident expert. You know, more people close to the action. I believe your mom is a nurse. Correct?

Mother is a nurse of 40 years.

Okay, so tell me from an expert opinion. We don't have Dr. Clement Wan here right now. So, Dr. Steve, what's going on?

No, she said that people are taking it very seriously, but good hand washing will suffice. And just don't be making out with. With the random strangers. Pretty much.

Damn it.

So what am I gonna do this weekend? But according to one of my younger brothers, it was pandemonium in New York City today.

What does that mean? Pandemonium in New York City?

According to him, a lot of people are just literally being sent home midday, and they're not supposed to go back to the office for three, four weeks.

So what do you make of it all?

I don't want. I mean, I personally don't have it, so I can't speak from experience, but.

Oh, your family's okay, right?

They're okay.

And are they concerned?

As of now, no.

Okay. All right. So, Steve, this month, inside the 1%, we're talking about building audiences. Okay. But we know that there's a way to kind of shortcut the process, and it's borrowing somebody else's audience.

Totally.

And you basically moved to Austin to pursue a career that allowed you to take advantage of other people's audiences. And we were talking earlier today that when a message gets tired, you go on to the next audience to build up new followers. So I was just hoping you could talk about your overall kind of thesis of. Of what you're doing and why you're doing it.

You know, so probably about three years ago, I had this idea.

To help influencers build an audience and build products out of that, too, because back, I guess, three years ago, it's a little bit different now, but you didn't have to have nearly as large of a following, I guess, as you do now. And just the engagement, I equate it to buying real estate in New York city in, like, 1900, you know, three or four years ago, where no one was really using businesses to launch products. But there's certain parameters I, you know, kind of looked for, and one of them, the first person who I reached out to, his name is Zach Rushell. I was flexible dieting lifestyle on social media.

He's been on our panel at the Capitalism Conference, if you recognize that name. We've caught him on some videos as well, in case that rings a bell. Beautiful Hair Zach. Beautiful Hair Zach, we call him at the office.

Yep. That's what he's known around town for. So at the time, he had, I think, 30k followers, which is still a good amount. But the engagement was that's really what I look for.

You say 30. 30,000 followers?

Yeah, 30,000 followers. And that number, you know, whether it be 30,000, 300,000, it can make a difference. But there are people who have 300,000 followers and there's no engagement whatsoever.

They're getting 17 likes on their.

Right. And the comments. Comments are a big thing. And his was, you know, through the roof. So really focusing on actual engagement, looking at people's comments, are they commenting? Is that. Do they look interesting? What are they selling? Because they're all. Everyone's selling something. My opinion, whether it be, you know, their time, a product. That's right. They're always selling something. And the engagement that Zach had at the time was, you know, disproportional to anyone else who I'd seen. So I just reached out to him and sent him a dm and I was like, hey, you know, I've launched products online using social media before, but never really partnered with an actual person. I was like, I'll help in any way possible. So the biggest thing I look for really is the engagement. I don't really focus on the actual number of what people have. That can help somewhat, but really, it's the engagement too. And also, what are they selling? If they're selling anything, could this be a person who you could see. Well, you know, that's.

Yeah.

Attractive in a sense.

And Zach didn't have any physical products at the time?

No.

Correct. You went and developed them around his audience.

Correct.

I talk about this in my upcoming book, 12 Months to 1 Million, available now pre order on Amazon, available on May 5, 2020. We talk about the importance of having even a small seed audience. How even if you have just a few hundred people that are really, really ready to buy what it is that you've got, that's an absolute game changer. So it doesn't take tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers to do damage. It takes a few hundred people. And that should allow you to relax into the fact that every, like, every comment matters. Every single one matters in the. In the grand scheme of things. Now, Zach went from 30,000 to like 300,000 over the last few years. Did that have to do with the product launch or did that have to do with something else?

That helped. That certainly helped. But when we first started, it was 30,000, and he was in Florida. I was in New York at the time. We were going back and forth. We had never met. We probably went back and forth for a year before we actually met.

Wow.

But we texted we, you know, texted every day, emailed every day, phone calls once a week, just going back and forth.

But the biggest thing that we saw with growth was he had an ebook. At the time it was just one ebook. It was kind of a side thing. But the way that we really grew it was he is known for food recipes. So he would again, just DM people, other influencers, people who he was attracted to in terms of like minded, that situation, DM them be like, hey, I'll come and cook for you. Because he was making the food recipes. And you know, if you look at the Instagram page, it's really attractive looking food. And let's go along with the hair, obviously. So it.

And by the way, if you want to look up what Steve is talking about, the Instagram handle is flexible dieting lifestyle. And when, when I met Zach, he slid into my DMs cause he had just moved to Austin and had followed my work. And I looked at his page and I was like, this guy does what I do in my kitchen, but professionally, right? Making banana breads out of protein powder and all this kind of stuff. So the food does look amazing.

Did he offer to cook for you? I think maybe that's what he said.

He offered and he never fulfilled it? Never.

Call that a liar.

Tell me more, Steve.

So, so at that point we were going back and forth and he was like, what happened? You know, should I just DM people who have other large followings and offer to cook for them? Like it could be fun. I love, you know, to travel and meet them. So I was like, yeah, absolutely. So we went that route for a little bit and we never, to this day I don't think I've asked anyone. He's never asked anyone, like, hey, can you post this for me or post a collaboration, like anything, it's all been organic. But he started traveling and cooking for, you know, with dm, it didn't matter who it was. DM is in my opinion the best way to reach someone, especially if they're, you know, if they don't have a million 10,000, 5,000 followers, they'll see it, they'll answer. So we started doing that for a little while and gained traction organically.

So he starts, he starts flying to these other micro influencers, cooking for them and they're shouting it out, right? And as a result, that influence is starting to grow and grow and grow. I got to ask you, what do you think was the reason for all the engagement that was different about Zach?

The hair, first and foremost. But Besides that, if you look at the page, normally it was any photo that he would post it you would think would have a thousand, two thousand calories. And when you look at the description of what he was actually selling, it was a fraction of that. So I'd look at the picture and it would be like, wow, that looks really good. And then you look at the description and be like, how is that only 3 or 400 calories?

So in other words, the content was phenomenal.

Correct.

And it was specific to the audience.

Correct.

And that created the responsiveness and the engagement.

Absolutely.

And so you came in and you're like, all right, let's build a business around this. And you wanted to build a brand around this. So tell me about the evolution of the brand. Brand.

So I remember our first call when after I bought his ebook that he was selling.

Yeah.

Dove through it and I understood what he was selling because I understood the nutrition profile, the calories, the proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Sent him a dm, sent him an email, went back and forth, got on the phone with them, and he was like, yeah, I just did this all by myself. I'm like, you don't have anyone else working with you or helping you? Like, he's like, no, this is like a side thing. I co own a gym. Like, you know, I'm running home for lunch, making something, taking a picture on my phone and then running out and then dinner and. And he, according to him, said that people were like, where can I get this recipe? He was first just taking the photos of it and people like, I want to buy this. Where can I get it? So then he put together scrap together an e book. And that's when I met him. He had one or two iterations of the E book, but he was like, yeah, this is just kind of like a hobby. And when he told me he built what he built by himself as a hobby, I was. I literally stood up in my kitchen and I was like, we got something here. Like, we got to take this. It's going to take a little while, but we got something to gain momentum and. Yeah, and progress this forward too. And he was like, really? Like, you think so? I'm like, I know so. I don't want to sound arrogant, but like, there's definitely something here. Look at all the engagement. Like, people are responding. There was an email us at that time of a couple thousand.

So we were off to the races in that sense. And what we had found was obviously when you come out with a product.

If you're innovative, you're going to continue to want to come out with new products. So the new products was his new recipes and he was still posting photos of what he was eating every day. And people responding on social media like, I want, where's this recipe today? Like, I want this today. And time after time it's like, well, maybe we'll come out with another ebook, but it won't be ready for a couple months. People are like, no, give us this recipe. So we ran into kind of like, you know, catch 22. Like, you know, we post this photo but it's not in this ebook and you can't buy it yet. Like, what do we do? So that's when we had the idea to run a subscription model where people signed up for a reoccurring thing and we posted it, you know, behind the paywall and people will get that recipe later that day or the next day.

Yeah. So basically what you're saying is you had a small audience that was responsive and if you're watching or you have a business, you should be encouraged by the fact that there wasn't a huge following, there was just a ton of engagement with the audience. And as a result you started launching some products doing the best you could. It wasn't like you were great copywriters. No, I don't even think you had like upsell path or anything. Like you were just giving people what they wanted and as a result built a full time business for you and for Zach. Have a couple team members, I think one full time team member. And now you're starting to launch some, some physical products and some, some other exciting stuff. So. So I'm backtracking through all that to let you know that I know sometimes we kind of put influencers on a pedestal. We kind of have, they have all this engagement, they have all this status. But the truth is that if you've got any following at all that is responsive, then you having the business, you're the one with the asset. And that small little following, I don't care if it's 500 people can really do damage in terms of moving the needle when it comes to sales. And that should make you feel like, okay, yeah, I can do this now, even if there's not 100,000 people or even 10,000 people, 1,000 people who are responsive is plenty enough to move the needle, to launch profitably, to know exactly what the market wants and to know that you've got something, as Steve said. Steve, now I know Zach isn't the only person you've worked with. And I know you have relationships with other influencers as entrepreneurs and business owners. Again, we tend to put them on a pedestal. Would you give us a little sneak behind the curtain of what influencers are like, how to approach them, how to work with them. Give us, give us the landscape of that.

There's definitely, I would say, a little bit of an art to it in the sense of. Because the influencer has built this loyal audience for a specific reason. So they do know their followers in a sense more times than not. Especially if they care about what they're doing. There are obviously headaches and trying to manage egos. Egos to a sense. But managing talent too is a sense. Is essentially what you're doing.

And it. No day is ever the same with. With you know why?

Why? What do you. What are you trying to say, Steve?

What am I really saying? So they obviously are creative minds. So they have an idea and they automatically want to implement it and go, what?

I can't relate to this at all.

And then they don't realize sometimes that there's 10 other steps behind the scene that take it to get it to the idea. And it can and does sometimes drive people who are working with them crazy.

I have no idea what that's like and my team has no idea what that's like. Ryan has another crazy idea.

Until it works. Until it works.

That's right. So they can be a little bit chaotic as a personality.

Yes.

A little bit unpredictable.

Yeah.

What is it like to work with them and how would you recommend people.

Work with them in the sense of. Because I know a lot of the audience has business ideas for physical products and their question is, do I either build an audience myself or do I partner with the audience? And from what I've found, just as just my experience is if you're not comfortable in front of a camera or putting out actual content and you're more focused on the behind the scenes with sourcing the product and building a physical product or anything, a subscription service, it makes more sense to partner with someone who has that audience.

I agree with you.

There are certain people though who have the capabilities where it's business minded to build the products and also love to be in front of camera and have an audience and build that too. It really depends on what you're comfortable with, realizing your strengths and then leveraging that against and finding someone else who is stronger in the. In the component that you're weak in.

Do you have any examples of how you've structured some of the relationships with influencers, whether it be shout outs or it be sponsored posts or equity deals. I'll share mine too.

So we've never to this. Never paid for a sponsored post ever with, with the fee.

Really?

Yeah, never paid for a sponsored post and really got. Again, just. My background is I'm huge on organic relationships. The, you know, influencers, they're near and dear friends. They become near and dear friends.

First and foremost, I have to like them. You have, you should like, you should like who you're working with and who you're supporting and all that. And second of all, what's their mission? What are they selling? You know, because you could launch a wine company to an influencer or pitch an influencer who doesn't drink wine. Like that's not going to work.

So in that regards, it's like you want to be careful who you, who you support too.

And again, there's a woman named Lori, Lori Christine King on Instagram. When I started with her, she had I think 3,000 or 3,300 followers. She's up to 60 or 61 and her biggest thing was 6,100 or 61,000.

So from 3,300 to 61,000.

And she gets more engagement and people buying than people who I've talked to who have 600,000.

And you're talking about Instagram specifically? Is that your specialty?

I would say it's the focal point. We still with, with YouTube, we've built that out from when I started with Zach, it was 700 and that's at 71 or 72,000 on, on YouTube.

Okay, would you tell us the inside scoop on how these audiences are built?

It's gotta, the main thing is.

With building a loyal audience, you have to give them, the people you're selling to, the audience, a reason to follow you.

Tell me more.

Why do people, why do people start following Zach initially?

Because they want more recipes.

They wanted more recipes because they wanted to fulfill that self need for I want to eat this food that looks amazing, but I don't want the 3,000 calories that comes with it. So they were buying that for a selfish purpose. And he understood that it was for. Initially for selfish reasons. But he, he caught on. We caught on pretty quickly that if we created more of these and put the word out, people were gonna catch on because people are selfishly looking for lower calorie foods that taste great and they don't wanna feel deprived.

So that makes a ton of sense to me on Instagram. Did you follow the same approach on YouTube?

It was a little bit different because at the time when we first started, and he was. He asked me, he's like, you know, I have these followers on Instagram. I wanna go on YouTube. Because he loves being in front of the camera, he loves talking, he's great at it. And he had only sold the recipes on Instagram. I was like, all right, you might not want to hear this, but take a recipe, one of your most popular recipes, make a video out of it for free and put it on YouTube. And we will shuttle the people who follow you on Instagram to YouTube. So leverage one platform to grow the other. And we did that starting, I want to say, three or three and a half years ago. So that was one of the biggest things too. It's like, whatever your strong point is, use that and leverage that on other platforms.

So in Zach's case, the real strong point was the recipes.

Yep.

And he had data to suggest what the most popular one would be. That piece of content now becomes a video.

Totally.

He's able to shuttle one to the other.

Yep.

That makes sense. What would you say to somebody who is struggling to build an audience but wants to. What would you. What would you address in them?

I would first ask, why. Why do you want to build an audience? What's your purpose to building the audience? And again, everyone's different. So some people are like, I just want to be famous. I love being in front of a camera. Or people are, I want to sell things. I want my business to succeed. Everyone has their own different answer. But really, you really have to ask yourself, why do you want an audience?

So let's go. I just want to sell things. And I think having an audience gives me a platform to sell things. Where would you take it from there?

Again, it depends on the person. If it's me, and I'm saying, I just want to sell things and build an audience to sell them to. I would go to influencers and offer them either percentage of the company to promote with me. But again, it has to make sense in terms of, like, you don't want to pitch someone. If I'm on a wine company, I'm not going to, you know, go to an influencer. Influencer and say, promote my wine.

Yeah.

So I would. I would honestly, I own a wine company. I want to sell things on the Internet. I want to grow my phone. I would literally just get in the DMS of people who drink wine, have a social media presence, offer to send them bottles of wine, offer to fly there to be with them, make a connection with them that because they're people too, they're looking to resonate with other people.

So what you're saying is, in that case, it may not be the right move to build the audience. Go love on the people who have audiences.

Correct.

That's your opening move. At least that's what we decided to do. In one of our businesses, foxsprin, we partnered with Chrissa Benson, who is a paleo food blogger. About 70,000 followers on Instagram, decent sized email list, but a ton of engagement. She's on Dr. Oz regularly and so she has authority and connection with her audience. And that's what we did. We formed an equity partnership with her where she can earn points in the company. And the way we structured that was it's a minority deal. It's if. If and when the company grows at a certain size, it'll be a very meaningful payday for her. And she's being rewarded for her bringing that audience and. And our products to the awareness of that audience. So we didn't try to build that audience. We had no one on the team who wanted to have an audience, but we had relationships with people who already had that connection with the audience. I know that you've kind of talked about going more in that direction, like building brands around specific influencers and audiences. I think that is the best idea that no one is doing right now. So would you talk a little bit about that idea or that thesis?

Yeah. So the last couple years with Zach, specifically as we've built the following now, and we're into the physical products world. And one of his most sought after and famous recipes was a cookie butter that he was making. Homemade cookie butter.

Like protein powder.

Protein powder. A few other. He would throw the conglomerate together. Yeah. He was traveling around cooking for other influencers. But he had this selfish dessert treat that he made and in the airport would throw it in a cup and water and mix it around. And he was being stopped by TSA with his bag of powder. Instead of protein cookie butter. People like, what is this? Like, what is protein cookie butter powder? So he put it up on his stories, took a poll. Would you guys be interested? Pulled them and in a physical product. And it was an ungodly amount of yeses versus no. It was like a couple thousand yeses. So he called me from the airport all excited and he's like, we gotta make this. Like, can we make this to sell? And I'm like, yeah, but it's gonna take a little bit of time. And he was like, what's a little Bit of time. I was like, probably a couple months, six months. And he got so angry at me because he didn't realize that, you know, the 10 steps that it takes to do all that.

But we promoted again on social media. We placed a minimum purchase order of 10,000 units, not knowing what to expect in the summer of.

18. And we ended up sending it out prior to launch to other friends and influencers who he had cooked before. You know, he hand wrote letters out. Yeah, I think we sent them out to the 10 or 15 different influencers, the two flavors, handwritten note and whatever. And we again, never asked for anyone to put it on their Instagram, stories on their YouTube channel, do a review, none of that.

So I gotta interrupt here because I want all of you who are watching or listening to get this.

There's often the question is often asked, how do I get influencers to promote my stuff? And what Steve is saying is they never asked. They just gave and gave and gave and built relationships, wrote notes, sent product to them. They built relationships over the long term. And when they had something cool to share with those people, they ended up sharing that. Is that correct?

Totally.

And I remember correctly, that product did 10,000 units, like two weeks with no ad spend. Is that right?

12 days. Yeah.

In 12 days.

12 days was the number, yeah. 10,000 units in 12.

Yeah. And you had all these influencers talking about it, and you had a launch that was profitable, that was exciting, that went from basically 0 to 60 in 12 days with no ad spend, no direct ask. That's how you get influencers to talk about your stuff, by building relationships with them. Now, some people might be listening and say, well, they had a secret weapon. They had a guy behind who was great on camera with great hair, who knew how to cook. Of course it would make sense to do that. What would you say to the person or to the business that doesn't have a star of their business, but is still looking to build relationships with influencers to talk about their stuff?

I'm still, again, a huge proponent of reaching out to people. The worst that happens is people don't respond until they start responding. Until you, you reach out to enough people and that one person responds, or those two people respond.

But have the, the mindset of, all right, I'm going to reach out to a person. They don't respond onto the next and just keep reaching out, keep reaching out. Sure enough.

The only thing that's gonna happen is if you give up that.

Which is, yeah, you get frustrated, you quit the worst.

Which means you're not. You don't care about it.

That's right. The other thing I would add to that is go for the smallest yes possible. Can I send you product? Can we share your content on our channel? Can I introduce you to so and so that I think would be valuable for you? Can we pay you for a shout out on your podcast? Can we interview you on our blog or our podcast? You always go for the obvious. Yes. You give them something that is just an easy obvious yes. That's how you start a relationship. So many people go for the moon out of the gate. Like, I'm looking to start an equity partnership. We've never met before. Go away, Dick. But if you go for the obvious, easy yes. I was telling you about a partnership I'm pursuing right now with a food blogger, with an influencer that I'm really excited about. And I reached out to her and said, I've been a fan of your work for a long time. I think there are some things that you could do with your business that would really help you. Is it okay if I send you an email with some thoughts that I've got about some things, some areas of opportunity for you? Who says no to that?

Bingo.

Right? So. And that set up an email chain, which led to a phone call, which led to a pitch deck, which led to, you know, a partnership that is soon to be forming.

Right.

But all you always. No one, no one asks for sex on the first date. If you do your douche, you like, you.

You.

You take her out. You pay, you open doors, you hang.

Out a little bit.

You hang out a little bit.

Yeah, like we're doing.

Oh, boy. I didn't know that's where this was going. Well, I better get ready, ladies and gentlemen. Steve, say something smart because I'm blushing. That was the point.

No, I have a question for you.

Yeah.

How many people hit you up in DMS asking or. Or, you know, with an idea or going for a huge ask where you look at it and you roll your eyes versus someone who actually presents you with wanting to help?

You have no idea. I mean, it's.

It's.

I mean, I don't even have a huge following. I have a. We got like, what, 23, 22,000 followers on Instagram? Big enough. 81,000 subscribers on YouTube. Like, our audience isn't huge, but I am. I won't say I'm inundated with messages, but I would say the ratio of asks to deposits into the bank account.

9 to 1 would be like an exaggeration. To the positive, it is 99%. Can you do this for me? Can you do this for me? Can you do this for me?

What's your opinion on this? I need your help on this.

Yeah, that's exactly right. I don't know who you are, so if you go the other way, it always stands out. And I always reply, yep, always.

So that is a big telltale sign, if you're reaching out to people, is go to help them first every time.

Yes.

And make sure. Do a little bit of research to look at their profile, look at kind of what they're about, versus, you know, just sending off a blanket statement. Yeah. Even including their first name in the mess, the top of the message goes a long way.

That's actually true. Like, I'm shocked at how many people go in for the ask without even saying, hey, Ryan.

Right. Just no name.

It's just always about them. Always about them. And so people are selfish by human nature. But we're saying this so that you can see there's not as much competition as you think. There's not as many people doing this well as you might expect. And so if you go in and just are cool and treat it like a relationship and you add value to the other person, you'll be surprised at the type of responses that you're able to get. Are there any major influencers or celebrities that you've ever opened up a relationship with as a result of this?

Me, personally, where I've messaged them or DM them?

No, but through Zach and leverage, you know, using his platform to then get into. There's people who we've. Who we've partnered with or have become friends with. Either he's flown out there or they've flown to Austin that have over a million followers. Yeah. So. And it's funny, too, because you hear that and you're like, holy shit, a million followers. But then we'll go and hang out, or hang out with someone who has 30,000 followers, and that person, when they post a photo, has way more crossover and engagement onto our page than someone who has 1.2.

So what you're saying is somebody has 1.2 million followers and they talk about your business. That might not move the needle as much as somebody with 30,000 followers and really high engagement.

Absolutely.

Why do you think that is?

I just. I think it comes down to the audience that's following that person and how much crossover there can be.

So what you're selling, that makes sense. That that's actually really interesting. It's that was my braingasm for the night, which is that the connection and like the synergy between the audiences is the most important thing. It's not about partnering with the influencers with the biggest following or the biggest name recognition. It's about going to the audiences that resonate the most with you. Because the net gain in followers or the net gain of engagement is really what you're after. Or let's just say the number of customers that you get is what we're really after. And if you can get more, what you're saying is you can often get more customers from a 50,000 person page, even less a 10,000 person page than a million person follower.

100%.

Do you get that list? Are you getting this?

100%. There's one woman in particular because when the product, the cookie butter product launched, we kind of had this idea of what we created and where it could go. But there is, you know, three or four other avenues that have now built up to. One of them is we've amassed a huge Weight Watchers following which we never foresaw, ever. But there are a lot of. We've become big in the Weight Watcher community. And there's one woman in particular. I think she has 12 or 13,000 followers. She shouts us out all the time. She bought the product on her own, loves it and now we've built a relationship and the amount of people who buy because of her, we can't. It's. It's unbelievable that a person who you know versus someone who has six. We did a giveaway today with someone who has 668,000 followers, I think, and I was sitting on both of sitting in front of the website on the back end with the traffic of both times. And the woman who had 13 or 14,000 followers generates as much traffic to our website as the woman.

660,000.

That's amazing.

A qualified audience.

So I want to ask, and by the way, I'm looking at your comments, Patrick Fisher, since you're watching live, if you would post your phone number in the comments, I want to give you a ring. We haven't done a live Q and A in a while and I want you to make my first one. So post your. If you're willing, post your number in the comments and we'll give you a ring.

It's risky these days.

You could get coronavirus by calling the wrong person. So what you just said is that the person with 13,000 followers got more engage, got sent more traffic than the person with 600 something neck and neck. So what I want to know is what was the difference in those two pages? That person with 13,000 followers, to me, that's. That's all that matters is the engagement. So what was that person doing Differently than the person with the big following, but not as much engagement.

And this comes, I guess, knowing about your products and how, who's buying them, what they like about it, what they don't like about it. So the one with the smaller audience, she had lost a bunch of weight. So if anyone knows anything about trying to lose weight or dieting, you're trying to still eat tasty food, but it's lower calorie. You have to create a calorie deficit. So this woman who had lost a ton of weight, her followers were trying to. Are trying to lose weight too. So it makes total sense if she posts a food product saying, this tastes absolutely delicious. I use this to stay on track. All this stuff, you know, it's unbelievable. Obviously all our followers or following are going to be like, of course I'm going to buy it. Let me get my hands on it asap. Versus the one for today. And it still generated a lot of traffic. But he sells coffee. His big thing is lower calorie coffee drinks. And we tried to leverage it, or did leverage it with Korean, creating the cookie butter with coffee.

Mix. We did a smoothie recipe with his coffee and our cookie butter. But the crossover.

So it was kind of a crossover, but the other was like, it was more of an identity crossover. One was like a one time cool mix, but the other was like, it was who they were, it was the journey they were on.

It was part of them. Correct.

Yeah. That, that makes a ton of sense. Patrick, I'm still waiting on your phone number here, dude. So if you're willing post it in the comments. I want to give you a call also. If you just joined us live, say hi in the comments. Hey, Austin Dixon. Give me a call whenever you're ready.

Austin.

Hey, Josh. Valentin. That's an inside thing with Austin and me.

So, Steve, I'd like to ask you for some free consulting advice.

Sure.

You're familiar with my audience. You're a member of the 1%. You have been to our events. We have a relationship. Tell me what you think that I, weahcapitalism.com could be doing better to have a more engaged audience.

I would go first. I would ask. I would like to ask a question.

Yep.

If you could put your audience, if you could summarize that in three to four sentences, who would you Say your audience is. What are they about? What are they.

What's the bulk of them looking for from you and from capitalism?

Yeah. They're entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs who desire a life of freedom so that they can pursue more.

And are most of them selling something?

Yes. Or very close to or on the.

Journey to discovering what that is to build a business?

Yes.

I would take it. And for capitalism is. If that's what they're aspiring to do. If I were you, I would go out and show them how you would do that in terms of partnering with an audience, with an influencer. So I would say, all right, Ryan, document everything if you want to, because I know you've been in talks with food bloggers and other people to partner with an audience and then build a brand around them. Document that. Show them how you're reaching out. Show your audience how you're reaching out to influencers.

So basically. Oh, that's interesting. I hadn't thought about it. So you're saying document even the early stages of the relationships I'm building with influencers, the deals I'm trying to sign. Huh. I had not thought of that. So, for example, sitting in this chair a few weeks ago was Courtney Lee, who is the founder of Primal Coffee Creamer. I'm a super fan. I really hope she accepts the. The check that I want to write her. We're still in early talks. We're like, we're in the paperwork stage.

Right.

So nothing's official. But what you're saying is if it was okay with Courtney and anybody else who's involved, that it would be really good content to document why I'm investing in this company, why I'm excited about this company, her story, what we're planning to do with the money.

Totally.

That's the kind of stuff that you're saying.

Absolutely.

Or in this food. Food blogger that I'm building a relationship with, the process of documenting the outreach, documenting the early stage idea stuff, or I've done some work with a big political influencer and we're talking about doing some business together. It's like, even the stuff that isn't doesn't exist yet.

Right. Totally.

Ha.

Because you could say, all right. Because when you.

I need to follow my own advice more often, I would say this. Now that you're saying it, I was like, I would probably tell myself the same thing. Please continue.

Cause you built a company and you sold it, right?

Yeah.

And you've told people that.

Yep.

Did you. How did you do it? How are you gonna show the best Way to tell people something is just show them and document it.

This is really interesting. Thank you for this. If you are watching live, I would love your feedback on what Steve is telling me right now because. Oh, wait, do we have a phone number?

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right. Okay. So I would love your feedback on what Steve is telling me about documenting that part of the process. I mean, see, money and I document a lot. We document. I think we document an absurd amount. We produce an absurd amount of content. But.

If we're being honest, a lot of it is me talking about what we're doing or teaching stuff, not documenting my own journey. Correct. So what you're saying is if I were to do more of the sharing of my own journey, that would probably move the needle more than me teaching or showing what has worked in the past. I would like your confirmation in the comments. Please let me know if you're listening to the recording. Let me know on Instagram. I'm Ryan Danielmoran. I really do read every dm, even the ones who are like, hey, can you promote my stuff? Hey, can I get your opinion on this? I really do read every single one, even the unkind ones. So I'd.

I'd love your. Those exist.

What's that? The unkind dms.

Yeah. Come on.

You'd be surprised. I got one right before you arrived, actually. You know, we're doing this. We're doing this promotion right now because as we're. As we're sitting here, the. The stock market has re. Has come down 25%, and I think the stock market is going to come down more, and it's going to present the. One of the best investment times possibly of the last decade. This is my opinion. Don't take my advice on investing, please. I'm an idiot on the Internet. But my opinion is that. So we put together this report inside the 1% about some of the stocks we're tracking and the naked puts that we're tracking and stuff like that. And I've gotten a lot of emails. It's like, how dare you try to make money off of a crisis? Am I making money off a crisis? We're talking about what stocks we're tracking. So there are always haters everywhere you go. All right, Patrick, we're going to give you a ring.

Can you hear this in there?

Hello, this is Patrick.

Patrick, this is Ryan Daniel Moran and Steve Dudian.

Hey, Patrick.

What's up, buddy?

Hey, man, it's great to chat with you. Thanks for your comment. You said in the comments on Wine with Wine that the audience is absolutely die hard. Thanks so much for that.

I really appreciate it.

Absolutely. Well, I think most of us, what we have done is just followed you throughout the evolution of your career and just really have seen how genuine you are.

Thank you.

You have genuine people that come on with the wine with Wyatt, and it's just absolutely incredible to see that kind of genuineness with somebody that's as successful as you are.

Well, thank you very much. That's very kind of you. I appreciate it. Tell me a little bit about your business and if there's anything we can do for you.

I. I really don't have an ask for the business. I just really enjoy watching your stuff and following your stuff. And so I don't have a product to pitch. I don't have anything to get out there. I just really like enjoying watching these things. And I will say this is how dedicated your fan base is. It was about six months ago where there was a wine with Wyatt and somebody thought it was taped. And I tried to convince them that it was live. And that damn near came through the computer trying to convince them that it was live. I'm like, look, you can't be talking about my buddy here.

Everything is good. And if you say one more thing, I'm gonna stop you.

But seriously, I mean, it was just. It was. I. I couldn't believe he was going through all that.

Well, thank. Thank you for that. Do you have a business, Patrick?

I'm. I'm working on one right now.

Tell us about it with a partner.

It's. It's. It's. Well, I've got my hand in a lot of different things.

Tell us about the one you're most excited about. Let's see if we can find a breakthrough for you to night.

Well, I'm. I'm excited about all of them. I probably just have too many of them going on at the same time.

So, you know, just with the Corona virus and all that kind of stuff that's going on, a little hesitant. So I've already bought into some of the programs. One is the. The Amazing Selling Machine. And so I just kind of pumped the brakes on that one. Another one was Marketplace Superheroes. So I've gotten programs. I'm just really ready to start. To do or start doing something.

Okay, so.

So basically what I'm hearing you say is you don't have a lot of businesses, you've got a lot of ideas and a lot of excitement around a couple different. A couple different paths that you could go. Is that right?

Absolutely.

All right, so write this on the tablet of your heart, Patrick.

Yes, sir.

Opportunity is created among chaos. There are lots and lots of people who are scared right now because of coronavirus or market pullbacks or recessions or presidential election. And so there's a lot of people that are going to be on the sidelines. That's when you strike. Your job is to be the one who is not scared when everyone else is scared. That's called leadership. And if you do that, then you will be ahead of all. These people are sitting on the sidelines scared. Just like 99% of people go into the DMs with an ask so that 1% of people really stand out in business. 99% of people are scared. They're waiting to be led and they're waiting to be told what to do. Your job is to be the 1% of people that takes a stand, that makes a decision and goes. No matter what the economy is doing, no matter what the market is doing. And that's how you will win. I would say right now is not the time to go rest on your laurels. Now is the time to rub your hands together and go. It's time to get down to business.

All right, that's good advice. I like it.

Do you know which direction you want to go.

As far as what?

So you said you had a couple different programs that was keeping you a little bit mentally paralyzed. Do you know which one you want to sink your teeth into?

There isn't one specific. I think on one of them they asked what did you want your goal to be? And my goal in life is to be a professional philanthropist. And I know that you have to reach a certain level to get there. So I'm all about the giving back. You know, I'm 43. I've had a terrific life. I don't want to die anytime soon.

What. But what is your career, Patrick?

I'm actually a. Let's just say I'm in financial services and we'll leave it at that.

You sell timeshares offshore.

Oh God.

So slightly above. More legit than that.

Okay, so. So, Patrick, this would be my recommendation for you. I want you to go all in on choosing a physical product and getting it up and selling on Amazon.com. if you have not gone through million dollarbrands@capitalism.com that'll help you clarify what three to five products you need to bring to market that will make you happy and build a million dollar business. But right now is, is your. Like, this is your window, man. You've got lots of people who are scared to start businesses on Amazon or build audiences. Now is the time for you to go all in. And if you know what those three to five products around your avatar is, then like, like it's now, man. It's ready for you.

I agree. I completely agree. I just got to, just got to pull the trigger on it.

Okay, well, is it.

Yeah. Is there anything holding you back from pulling the trigger?

I honestly, I would say probably cash flow like most everybody else. You know, when you buy into these courses and you do it full on and then the part about promoting them and all of that kind of stuff, it starts to get a little bit. I think my eyes got bigger than my stomach. I think they say that in Texas. Bro.

Bro. I started, I broke. I started Cheer Strength Labs, $600. I sold. I started Zen Active Sports with $5,000.

I sold both of them.

Yeah. And you probably had a better game plan than I did, so.

Yeah, I, My game plan was to get a product and start selling it on Amazon, get a few reviews, get it to 25 sales a day, hustle every review, respond to every comment, every email launch, product number two, recruit a couple influencers.

Let me just, just momentarily segue that back to what you were asking about the die hard fans that you have. Yeah, that is, that's one of the reasons that I became a die hard fan is because you responded to so many of my either questions or comments either on Facebook or Instagram or somewhere else. And that is the way that you can build the audience. Not that I need to tell you that, but that's, you know, take that one person, respond to them, give them the feedback and they will follow you.

Okay? So, so Pat Patrick, I, I love you. I appreciate that feedback. Now I'm going to tell you to take your own advice because the thing that's holding you back, you're like, I don't have a game plan. What you just gave me is the game plan. Okay, so, so you go decide whatever the product is. I don't even care if it's the wrong one, I'll buy it. Go put up, go put, go put the product up. Like, this is what community is about. This is what the 1% about is about. This is what the tribe is about. You go decide what that product is. You document it on Instagram inside the Facebook group, at the one inside the 1%. The community will rally behind you. If it's a good product with a good idea, say you need 10 grand for inventory. See what investors come Up. It's like now is the time for you to create those opportunities that you're looking for.

All right, cool.

Thanks, man. Thanks for chat with me today.

I have a quick question, Patrick. How did you initially find Ryan? How long ago and how did you find him?

Oh, God, it was.

Honestly, I probably saw the video where it was one of his first amazing selling machines that he spoke at where he had the God awful blazer and the God awful shirt.

Don't bring it up.

Yes, this is the guy I want to follow. I want to follow that guy because if he can get on stage looking like that and convince him.

For the love of God, I can do something.

Oh, I've come a long way in.

Your fashion Game down. He still has that blazer.

You're not approachable anymore.

I'm not a big nerd on stage anymore.

Well, thank you very much. Thanks for your time tonight.

Thanks, Patrick.

Thank you.

All right, good night, Patrick.

That was fun.

Yeah, we haven't done those in a.

While, but you haven't. Hey, if you are watching live, say hi in the comments. If you want to to chat with Steve and myself about your business, we'll give you a ring. So just put your phone number in the comments and we'll call you and say hello. A couple comments to your point, Steve. James Rooney says, I think documenting what you've done is useful but I find it less clear on how if you work, if you. And then his comment cut off. So sorry, James, it doesn't make sense without you finishing the sentence. Austin says, I have a buddy who blew up on YouTube in the e Comm space doing a very Netflix, Netflix, Netflix esque behind the scenes video of his business.

That's really interesting. Josh Valentin said he'd really love to see a behind the scenes Jane.

Basically everybody says you're correct.

They would love to see that.

Yes.

Maybe that's the next play.

That is. That is basically it. Yeah. Josh Valentin, I see your comment. Put your phone number in the comments and we'll give you a ring.

Josh also says, this would be really, that would be really fun. Prove the value for fun and find ways to expand it into something sellable. Jesse Shotwell says, Ryan, do a behind the scenes model with a thousand dollars and grow it step by step. You'll only Cleveland in these by the time it's sold.

You know, I sure get. A lot of people are like, that'll get you the Cleveland Indians. I'm not sure that's gonna give me the Cleveland Indians, Josh. But put your comment Put your phone number in the comments and. And we'll chat. Steve, that was really good advice. Thank you for that. Is there anything else that you would do differently if you were me?

Maybe a new blazer?

Other than that? No.

You're doing great. Oh, that hurts, man.

No, I'm kidding. I haven't even seen the blazer.

It's bad.

Do you ask people a lot?

Where.

Where they find you? How they find you? That's huge, too. Again, if someone's looking to grow an audience or build an audience, I would assume or hope that they have at least one person following them. And if not, that's okay. But once you find that one person, ask them how they found you, how they found the product you're selling, how they found you on social media, how they found your email list, because they'll get. They give you the best information.

They literally give you the best information. Yeah.

And if you just think about your own user behavior, like, how do you find stuff? That's usually like, I'm thinking about the food blogger that I'm hoping to partner with, and I was found when Maruxa Murphy tagged me in a comment and said, hey, check this out. And I've been following that person ever since.

And I think we all can point to a piece of content being shared with us that is the reason why we ended up following. So, like, the point is, go all in on your person, Give them what they want, connect with related audiences and be cool. Be good to those people. All right, do we have. Do we have. Are we dialing Josh? Josh Valentin.

All right, give him the buzz.

It'd be funny if I did the wrong number.

That would be.

This is Josh.

Hey, Josh. This is Ryan Moran and Steve Dudian. How are you?

Hey, Ryan. Doing really good, man. It's good to hear from you guys.

Yeah, good to chat with you, too. Tell us what's on your mind.

So I've been wanting to kind of picture Brandon a couple of things just because I feel like I'm going on hyperdrive right now. It's freaking me out because I thought I watched a live stream and then I forget that it's not totally live. So I'm hearing your voice. I'm like, this must be his assistant or something.

What do you mean it's not totally live? I'm talking to you right now.

Sorry. The Facebook livestream is like.

Oh, you mean there's like an eight second delay, that's what you mean?

Yeah, yeah, I just saw you pick up the phone.

Okay, I got it.

So Funny.

I'm loving this conversation because I feel like whenever you did your research thing that was talking about.

The next big thing for the three to five year span, it was super exciting to hear that. And that's kind of been the general conversation. And probably for the past three months, me and my buddy Kyle Steinmeier has been basically doing that.

Good.

And here that podcast got super pumped.

Good, good.

This is the wide open opportunity right now. Going to audiences, partnering with them and using them as the traffic source, and launching products on brand stem. That is the wide opportunity right now for real, dude.

And it's fun to see that like, so a little perspective I'm in. Me personally, I'm in the film space, but also in the photography space. So it's fun to see like that's already an influencer heavy market. And finding ways to provide value in a place where a lot of people are already partnering with influencers has been a little bit tough. But I think it's really started to be a challenge to start figuring out.

Cool things, work cool well, what's going on that we can help with.

So honestly, one of the big problems I'm running into right now, and this sounds hyperbolic or silly, is knowing how to partner with the right influencers. So we have like three or four youtubers who are super interested in working with us. You have like 30,000 subscribers. A lot of them don't know how to do email list and email marketing. So we're talking about helping them with that in exchange for working with them on like working with us on content. But it's kind of like a race now to figure out like we're not a niche. So the brand is improved photography. It's not like wedding photography or like portrait photography, family photography. So we're super broad in that community. So figuring out what influencers to work with has been kind of difficult.

So Steve, Steve, how would you respond to this?

So if you could just go over again what exactly you're selling, what is the end goal here that you're trying to get to?

Yeah, so end goal for me is to honestly move into the film space and do something similar for film. But what we're doing with improved photography is selling courses. So it's digital products, which is a little bit saturated right now, but we're trying to sell courses with a bunch of different niches. And so the strategy that we're going with right now is we're doing cinematic documentaries about photographers and what makes them unique and then using those with audiences to kind of via commercials to launch these different courses with those same photographers. The problem I'm kind of running into is it blew up. We have 21 scheduled by September and it's kind of figuring out like, which ones are the most valuable to partner with.

So let me try and translate. What I think I'm hearing you say is that you've had a lot of interest from interesting audiences, but they're all a little bit different in their niche in the photography space. And you're looking at what is the most valuable relationship to partner with and how do you make that decision? Is that right?

Yeah, that's that out of the 21.

Yeah. Yeah.

So.

So my, my answer is run tests. You do small tests with all of them. You, like, offer your help, just like you're doing to as many of them as you're comfortable helping. But all you do is just run, like, have them talk about you or talk about your product on their page and see what the response is like. And you partner with the ones that have the greatest response. Test as small as possible.

Also, too. It's like, out of the 21, there's a good chance you might like maybe half of them, maybe hate three quarter. You know what I mean? So I would also preface it in like, out of the ones that are gaining traction for you too. Don't just look at the sheer numbers. Try and establish a relationship with them to see maybe if one or two or five of them could work out or you could see it working out potentially in a year from now, two years from now with that person. Because, you know, if you're not jiving in three weeks or four weeks.

It'S a huge difference than if you absolutely love the person. Yeah. And it's going to be a sustainable business down the road too.

Does that make sense?

That's awesome. That's actually really, really helpful. So kind of a question on top of that for, I guess, like cost per view, do you think it's worth partnering with like an influencer with a good engagement but like 3500 followers on their Instagram versus like a okay, influencer that has like a lot of following, like 50,000 subscribers on YouTube. Is it worth leaning toward the one that seems to have more chemistry with us?

Steve, hit him with a hammer.

I would say again, it depends on the person it depends on. I'm assuming you've had conversations, you know, with these people and again, like Ryan said, maybe split test it and who comes back with, you know, better results or who seems more hungry. No one can tell you which way to go.

The numbers won't dictate the decision. You will totally.

That's cool. That's. That's really interesting.

All right, Josh, keep us posted on your progress.

Awesome.

I will be. Appreciate you guys.

All right.

Likewise, buddy.

Steve. Yeah. What's your business strategy moving forward?

Hang out with you more.

I like that idea. I wish you were around more.

For with FDL and Zach and Flex is the physical products brand. It's to continue to launch more. More physical products. We have our protein cookie butter. We're still working on the pizza crust. It's still in the works. We're about to launch a pre workout under the brand name since Zach does like to work out and his following does like to work out too. So we feel good about that. And then down the pipeline, we're working on co. Cookie butter bars. No bake bars.

Cookie butter. Oh, really?

Tell me about that.

It's just preliminary ideas tossed around. We're looking for manufacturers, but we like the cookie butter bar model.

I have a good one U bar in Chicago.

Okay.

They do a really good job and they can pretty much make whatever you need.

Yeah. You willing to go with us to taste test some things?

I'll stay here because coronavirus could kill us all. But I will take.

We'll bring samples.

I will taste test some things. All right, capitalists, thank you for hanging out with us tonight on Wine with Wine. Special thanks to Steve Doudian for sharing his wisdom with us about connecting with influencers, building brands around audiences, starting partnerships with influencers in order to kick start the launch of a brand. Is someone that I wish hung around@capitalism.com more often. So if you enjoyed hearing him share some wisdom, shoot me a message on Instagram so that I can screenshot it and send it to Steve and convince him to hang out with us. More guilty into it or give us some hashtags. If you're watching on YouTube, put them in the comments. With special thanks to Steve. So, Steve, thanks for hanging out with us.

Thanks for having me.

One percenters, thanks for watching. If you watch this on the recording and you want to hang out with us live, we do this inside of our community called the 1%. We'd love to have you inside our community. You can join us over@capitalism.com 1. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Good night.