Episode 055: Life Update, The Value of a DM, and Focusing on What Matters

Legacy of Monsters an Apple Original series. The world is on fire. I decided to do something about it on November 17th. This place. It's not ours.

Believe me.

The most massive event of the year arrives. If you come with me, you'll know everything. I promise.

Oh my God. Go. Go, Go.

Legacy of monsters streaming November 17th only on Apple TV. Plus.

This episode is brought to you by Michigan Economic Development Corporation. In Michigan, you can have both a rewarding career and a quality lifestyle. With plentiful career opportunities in world changing innovating industries, from electric vehicles to clean energy to biotech, with room for advancement no matter where you are in your career. Plus, Michigan offers a welcoming, beautiful, affordable and inclusive community for all. Live your best life you can in Michigan. Visit themichiganlife.org.

This is the Rise of the Young podcast, bringing you insights from the most innovative entrepreneurs and influencers of this era. Hosted by 17 year old entrepreneur, author, public speaker and branding expert, Casey Adams. Now let's get right into the show.

What's going on, everyone? Casey Adams back on the Rise beyond podcast. And today, episode 55. We're just gonna be going in depth about my last two months, giving you guys a little update about what I'm working on and much more. So as you can tell, the last months I've been doing interviews with Grant Cardone, Andy Frisella, all these guys on my podcast, and I have not been doing enough personal podcasts. Just me talking to you as we speak. So this is gonna be a podcast, just me talking to you, giving you some insights about what I've been working on, letting you guys know what, what my thoughts are on certain subjects such as school, modern education. I know a lot of you guys listening may be in high school, you may be graduated, you may be 25, 35, whatever. But I'm currently still in high school. I graduate high school in about 30 days, actually, June 6, 2018. I'm recording this on April 26, 2018. So we got about a month, month and a half to go. But, but it's so funny cause I just posted on my Instagram story today a little bit about what's in the classroom, what my school was teaching me in my business class and they were teaching me About Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, all this stuff which can be useful, but it's literally from like 2010 and it's literally 2018 as we speak, and there's just no significant value in it. But before we get too much into depth on that, thank you so much for listening to the podcast. I have not been doing as much promotion on it as I'd like to. And I want to say that that's about to change. I'm about to go 10x about what I was doing before. We literally, I think published like 58 episodes about in like 3 or 4 months. So it's been cranking. But I want to 10x it. So that being said, share it with a friend. I'm not sure if you guys listen to the Andy Frisella Podcast, MF CEO Project, but he always says the key thing about getting the word of mouth spread is to literally tell a friend about a podcast that you've heard. So I'm gonna use Andy's tactic and just say, hey, if you could really just share this Rise the Young podcast with one friend, I would very much genuinely appreciate it because it would literally help the message get spread. But that being said, a few things I want to cover today range from modern education, range from this summer, what's happening in my life, and, and obviously some things that I'm doing inside of my agency as well as a new brand that I'm a part of. So to start it off, the first question I want to ask you guys listening and to all the people that are maybe driving, you may be running, you may be at the gym, whatever it may be, is think about what you're doing on a day to day basis. Because I think personally sometimes we all get confused, we all get misaligned with our goals, our visions, our purpose and, and it always is good to take a step back to really say and tell yourself, why am I doing what I'm doing? And how long have I been doing what I'm doing? Because I think a lot of people, they've been doing something for so long and they don't know the timeframe that they've been doing it, they don't know why they're doing it, and it just kind of misaligns them with their goals. So the question for you that I want you to think about real quick before we get started is why are you doing what you're doing? Whether that be it's for your family, for yourself, to make money, to provide value to people, Whatever service, business, whatever venture you're on, just ask yourself, why am I doing what I'm doing? Is what I'm doing today helping people and is it impacting people's lives? Because in whatever business you're doing, whether that be a service or a product, it's obviously helping people if it's selling or if you're getting clients, right? So I just want you to answer that question to yourself because I think it's super vital because to actually sit down and take the time to just ask yourself those key questions. But that being said, I want to kind of just give you guys a rundown. So last week I was in la. I got invited to Tai Lopez's private dinner, Mastermind in Beverly Hills. That was phenomenal. It was so funny because when I got there it was supposed to be like 50 people, but it ended up only being like 15. So it was super cool. It was literally a last minute trip for me. So get this, I'm just gonna kind of give you guys a little storytelling right here. So I was supposed to go to Coachella the week before, but it was super last minute. It was super not organized. So I was like, nah, not gonna do that. So I decided to go to Ty's house after he invited me to it. And my good friends Hayden Ludlow and Chris Euler shout out to them if they're listening. They were like, yo, come down to the. Come down to la. We have this house for the couple nights and you can stay with us and we can go to Ty's house and make it happen. So I was like, alright, I'll do that. So like always I have to miss like two or three days of school. So if you're listening and you're in high school, if an opportunity pops up, just take it, miss the school, sell your parents on letting you go, whatever it is, because literally, and I tell you this from personal experience, missing school to take opportunities, whether that be traveling, going to a meeting, going to a conference, whatever it is, is always worth it in the end. And I just want everyone listening. If you are still in high school, do not cut yourself short by saying, hey, I have school. Because you can always make up the work that is my key to success. If you're in high school and you want to travel and all this sort of stuff, because a lot of people, they let school get in the way. And I'm not saying school shouldn't be a priority. Obviously you have to graduate or you can drop out. Whatever it is for my parents, they're not letting me drop out, so I'm just gonna get through it. Like I said, I got like 30 days to go in high school, so not that bad. But long story short, go to LA. Go to Ty's mastermind. It was on like 15 people there and it was super intimate. We get there, we have an amazing lunch, Ties starts speaking about multiple Avenues of who's making how much money, how they did it, their story. And it's kind of just a storytelling event where everyone just kind of introduces themselves, talks about what they've done, how they've done it, when they started, how they're doing now. So I think it's always good to put yourself in a situation where you're just surrounding yourself with like minded people, because I think especially where I come from, I wasn't able to surround myself with people that I want to share my visions with, share my ideas, share what I'm working on. Because I come from a small town, not many people are doing things. A lot of them are just smoking weed every day, doing drugs, popping pills and all this negative stuff. And for me, previously, before I got into this, about a year and a half ago, two years ago, I never had people to share my ideas with. And I think a lot of what I've done to this point has came from putting myself in a position to surround myself with the right people to go to events, go to masterminds, and literally just have good conversations. Because I think the biggest thing, and if you read how to Win Friends and Influence People, it goes over this. It's just like if you have the right conversations with the right people, the right things will happen. And, and that's just the gist of it because I think the people that are in your life that you're having the conversations with, they may be positive, they may be negative, but it's up to you to decide and you have complete control of whatever that may be of a positive angle or a negative angle. So I just want to say, like, going to Ties, that was like my fourth time there. It's always a pleasure to go there, especially since I'm in the 300 group now, since it's like a private dinner, it was super cool because everyone there was there for a purpose. And. And the biggest thing that I think I took away that I want to share with you is just the aspect of communication, which is a tactic which Tai talks about all the time, which is, guys, you got to surround yourself with people that are above you, below you, and on the same level as you. Ty calls it the law of 33%. I know if you're listening to this podcast, you've heard of it before, but it's pretty much the rule of 33% of the time. Spend time with people that are above you five, 10 years ahead, that can pull you up there and actually educate you, and then spend 33% of the time with people that are around your age on the same level as you, doing things in the same niche or whatever it may be that you guys can just strategize and have ideas with and then always look down to people that you can inspire or help or whatever it may be. Make sure you're taking the time, the 33% to inspire people, to give back, to impact people. Because once you have that formula down, I think it's definitely a game winning formula. I've impacted a lot of people, a lot of people have impacted me and I think it just really comes down to utilizing that principle in the most genuine way. But that being said, a tactical piece of advice that I want you to kind of take away from this podcast today regarding social media tactics is viral marketing. So I'm not sure if a lot of you guys know, but my agency, we specialize in a lot of viral Facebook growth, specifically on Facebook, on Instagram as well. But we literally have some videos, anywhere from 5 to 30 million views on Facebook that are just organically crushing it, growing our clients pages and it's just super cool to watch that. But Ty talked a lot at this mastermind about viral video marketing and just being outrageous with your marketing. And yes, Ty has a lot of people that love him, a lot of people that hate him, but he knows how to grab attention. Whatever your views may be on Tai Lopez, whatever it is, you cannot disagree with the fact that he knows how to get attention, how to monetize it. So that's something I want to lay down on the table before we go forward. But I would say a huge tactic that kind of got from his speech was the aspect of just if you want to create a video, create something outrageous, but do it in a format that can grab attention for a specific reason. So I'm sure if you're listening, a lot of you guys know that here in my garage, the Lamborghini video that he made with the books, he did that to get people to read, but he presented something to them like a Lamborghini so it would overall catch their attention. But I think a lot of people, especially for me, I don't do as many videos as I should be. I do a lot on Instagram, I have my podcast, I don't do as many videos as I should be. And that's my fault. I need to step up my game on that. But I haven't committed to it. And that's something I can just literally tell myself that, alright, I haven't committed to making videos so I can't get mad at myself for not trying because I personally know I have not committed to and I'm okay with that. But that being said, my trip to la, it's always last minute, it's always on the fly and I ended up taking a lot of valuable things away from Ty's event. My boy, Hayden Ludlow. If you're listening, shout out. Hayden and Chris, they're crushing it in real estate. So we were in la, we stayed at a beautiful house in the hills and we talked a lot about real estate. Honestly, they were talking about some deals they were doing. Ty shouted them out. Now, you may be seeing Ty's ads with them, but yeah, I just wanted to say shout out to the homies because my trip to la, it's always a pleasure just sitting down with people, talking with them, chatting with them. And if you're listening right now and you're not having conversations with people that are, whether that be in your niche, you connected with them, social media, whatever it may be, guys, you need to step up to the plate, send a DM in a genuine way and just take the time to connect with people. Literally everyone I know in my network. If I did not have Instagram or if I did not utilize it to build a personal brand, I would not be where I am today. And it kind of just makes sense. If you're using Instagram, but you're not using it to connect with people, you're utilizing it very bad. And I'm just gonna say that flat out, because you can post the most beautiful pictures, you can create the most amazing content, but if you're not just creating relationships from it, there's no massive tangible value. Because I know there's a lot of people that, that are taking the time to maybe message a couple of their friends on it or people that they know. But if you're not taking the time to connect with new people on a consistent basis to just build relationships, then I highly advise you to do that. So, tactical tips for DMing people. Number one, if you're not following them, follow them. If you're not commenting on their pictures and engaging with them, engage with them. Comment on their pictures, comment something meaningful, because over time they will see that, they'll maybe remember your profile picture, they'll remember your username or whatever it is, then comes the most important part, which is the cold dm. So whenever you want to DM someone, it's always important. And I just did this. I had an interview with my man who man that has 3 million followers. We just talked about this in an interview and I pretty much said, if you want to DM someone, do it with a distinctive purpose. Do not just DM someone and say, hey, man, love your content, because that's obviously a compliment and that's good. But. But if you want to genuinely connect with someone, you have to reach out to them in a really slick way that gets their attention, that gets to the point that they will instantly know, hey, he's reaching out to me to connect with me. So the biggest thing, tip wise, I would say, for DMing someone is to number one say, hey, my name's Casey Adams. I've been viewing your content for the last couple of months and I noticed that you had a podcast. I'd love to chat with you about getting you on my podcast, or something distinctive, letting someone know how you're going to add value to them and why. So, for example, I'm not sure if a lot of you guys know who Drama is, but I recently connected with Drama on Instagram back in December. He is the founder and CEO of Young and Reckless, but I literally just DM'd him. I think it was the day after Christmas in 2017. I was like, hey, drama, I have a top 50 business podcast. I would love for you to be in my show and have you share your story with my audience. And that was it. He hits me up. He says, I, bro, sounds good. And that was just something that literally came from a simple DM. He has 1.4 million followers, but he took the time to get back to me. And this is just something that makes sense, guys. It's not rocket science. It's not something that you should be contemplating about all day. Literally take time to send people DMs in a genuine way and people will get back to you. Do it consistently. Those are the biggest things I want you guys to take away from me. And I always say about the value of a dm, I've got in touch with Andy Frisella, Gary Vee, Grant Cardone, Tai Lopez, all these guys that I'm sure a lot of you guys listen to. And I've been able to meet them in person, have them on my podcast, interview them, but it literally came from a DM on Instagram. I had no prior connections to them. Sort of, if you're listening, you may not know and have personal connections to all these guys in the industries, but if you have an Instagram page and you have a personal brand, you have as much opportunity as I did, as Grant Cardone does, to connect with Someone as whoever does, because you have a brand. And that leads into my next thing I want to talk about, which is personal branding. A lot of people know what personal branding is, but they don't know how to do it. And that may kind of sound weird, but I'm saying if you're building a personal brand, you have to be super clear on why you're doing it, what you want to present to your audience, how you want to be represented, and what sort of individual do you want to be known as, because it's all about you putting together the puzzle pieces and crafting your personal brand exactly how you want to do it. So, for example, I started really focusing on my personal brand about, I would say, two years ago. And it wasn't till the last six or eight months that I really started getting traction with it. I really started being able to connect with a lot of people really quickly. And it just comes from the law of repetition, because I always with put out content. I always would respond to people on my DMs and my comments. I would always DM people. And yes, at first I didn't get a lot of engagement. I wouldn't connect with a lot of people because I didn't have a reputable brand on my Instagram. So the biggest takeaway I want you to get from this podcast is I know you're listening right now, and I know you either have a personal brand, want to have a personal brand, or you're working on your personal brand. But there's always tactics that you can learn from people. And the things I want to give to you regarding personal branding are this. It's really simple. If you have a brand, a personal brand, for instance, have three pillars of identity. And what I mean by that is I want, number one, identify how you want to be known. So, for example, me, I emphasize the fact that I'm a young entrepreneur. Boom. That's step one. I'm young. I make sure I let people know about that. That's one of my pillars. A second pillar, I let people know that I value connecting and networking and just really building relationships. Those are my two pillars. And then number three, if you follow me on Instagram, you can see that I post a lot of traveling pictures, that I post a lot of pictures on interviews or whatever it may be. But number three, I like to let people know that I like traveling. I connect with people, and I do this through my content. I send pictures or post pictures of me and Grant Cardone. I post pictures with me and Gerard Adams, whoever it May be. I always make sure that I'm letting people know the value of connecting and that I'm actually doing it and traveling to make it happen. So, that being said, those are my three biggest takeaways, and the three points I want to give to you is that discover your three pillars. Literally, take a white piece of paper right now, write down three things, or maybe in your phone notes, and just say, hey, what are my three brand pillars? Because you may have a brand, but you don't know what your pillars are. You don't know how people are identifying who you are. So it's very, very important that you get this crystal, crystal clear so that your audience knows how you want to identify yourself. So that's pretty much all I wanted to talk about with personal branding. I know that we covered the value of DM valued. We talked about personal branding, and this podcast, this episode, for instance, number 55. I really just wanted it to be something where I drop a lot of tactics, but then share with you guys some stories that have been happening recently. So I haven't touched on this, but recently I traveled down to Miami to interview Grant Cardone. I have not released that podcast yet or the video. Grant Cardone posted the video on his YouTube channel, but I've been so backed up with podcast episodes that I had to release that I have not dropped his yet. So that will be coming soon, if you're listening. But a lot of people were asking me, like, yo, Casey, how did you get in touch with Grant Cardone? How did you connect with him? How did you get the opportunity to. To sit down with him in his office? He's worth half a billion dollars. He's so busy. And I'm like, guys, you're making it so complicated. I grabbed the Future and pulled it to me. So, for example, this is my story about how I got in touch with Grant Cardone. So here's what I did. I sent him a dm, obviously. I just talked about that recently in this podcast about how that's the most effective way to get in touch with someone. I sent him a DM. I said, hey, Grant, I have a top 25 business podcast. I'd love to have you on my show for. For you to share your story. Boom, he hits me back, like, 30 minutes later. He was like, yo, I'm down. Email my assistant Katie. And that's all he said. He has an assistant. So I had to message out to her. So here's what I did. I messaged Katie. I was like, hey, Katie recently talked to Grant on Instagram, he agreed to do a podcast with me. I'm reaching out to you because he told me that you're the person to talk to, period. And then I said, I usually do over the Internet interviews, but I happen to be in Miami. And in the next week or two, and if you're available to do an in person interview with Grant Cardone, I would love to make that happen, period. Let me know. Thanks. Talk soon. And here's the thing. I told them that I'd be in Miami about a week or two from them, but I had no intention or no plans to go to Miami. Number one, that was my first time going to Miami, and I had no plans to prior to that. But I literally predicted the future by saying, hey, I happen to be in Miami. So that if they said I could do an in person interview, I would literally book my plane ticket and then I would be in Miami. So I did an entire Instagram post about this on the picture of me and Grant Cardone. If you have not checked it out, but I had no intention to go to Miami. Grant Cardone, he, I said, hey, if you're able to do an in person interview, let me know, I'll be there. When in reality, I had no intention to be there. And they said, okay, he's available on this date at this time. So I was like, all right, well, they agreed to it, so let me go ahead and book a flight to Miami. And I did. And. And that's that. And I think a lot of young entrepreneurs or people in general, they're not willing to do that. They're not willing to set themselves up for an interview with someone worth almost a billion dollars from predicting it. And here's the thing. If you want to make an interview happen, if you want to connect with someone, literally use the tactic that I just talked about. Tell someone you're going to be somewhere because they happen to be there. And if they say, hey, sounds good, boom, that's your time and your opportunity to go ahead and make yourself and make sure that you are there. So that's a tactic for all the young entrepreneurs that if you want to connect with someone, tell someone, hey, you happen to be in Washington, D.C. me too, let's link up. If they say, okay, and you live in Virginia, for example, like I do, go ahead, drive to Washington D.C. and make it happen. Because there's always, always opportunity in networking with high quality people. So I hope you got value from that. That was a huge lesson for me. That was the first time that I Utilized that principle with Grant Cardone, but literally predicting the future and pulling it towards me. And that was super cool. To see how it worked out, went to Grant's office, had an interview with him for about an hour, talked to his team, had an amazing time in Miami for the first time. And it was just amazing because it was unplanned. I went to Miami with my boy Kieran, Jeff, met up with my boy Moose. And it was just super cool to kind of see how things worked out because I had no intention to go to Miami. End up going there. Interviewed Grant Cardone, meeting with a couple youtubers, Shout out to Moose if you're listening. Shout out to Ariel. And then I just had an amazing time in Miami, but it came from literally a dm. And that's the cool thing because people don't understand, like, use your Instagram as a platform to make real life relationships. If you're not doing that, you're utilizing it very wrong. If you're not. Let me say that again. If you're not using Instagram to create real relationships, you're using it wrong. You can have an amazing personal brand, you can have amazing pictures, you can make great content, but if you're not connecting with people, you need to rethink why you're posting content because literally it's a people game. Your network is your net worth. And I've said that a million times in my Instagram on my podcast, people that I've interviewed have said that, but it's the facts. If you're not connecting with quality people on a day to day basis or a week to week basis, you're taking the L. So pretty much the biggest takeaway I want you to get away from this podcast. Number one, focus on DMing people. Use the strategy that I use with Grant, focus on personal branding. And I just wanted to give you guys an update about what I'm working on because there's a lot of stuff coming in 2018. I know that I dropped it a few times in the podcast today, but I will be graduating high school June 6, 2018. It is currently April 26, 2018. So I got about 30 days or so. And yeah, my plans after high school. A lot of people ask me this as well. Number one, I don't plan on going to college. Number two, I plan to move to la. And number three, you may be asking, if you're in high school, what should I do? Should I go to college? Should I move somewhere? Should I just focus on my business? And this is my personal opinion and here's my thoughts on college. College is not bad. College is not a scam necessarily, but it can be for the wrong reasons. But for example, if you want to be a doctor and you're passionate about helping people go to college, it will help you. But if you want to learn business tactics, business tactics and marketing tactics that are current and what's happening in this society today, I would not go to college. Because you can learn more from literally typing something into YouTube and watching a free YouTube video from a multimillionaire marketer that he's been doing tactics that work in 2018. Or, or you can go to college and learn 2010 strategies like I'm doing in school to learn Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. But this podcast isn't meant to be about college. But since I am graduating high school soon, I want to let you guys know that I'm not going to college. I plan on moving to la and it's gonna be wild. And I want you guys to stay along the journey. And overall, I know I'm young, I'm 17 right now. But my biggest kind of pinpoint that I want you to take away from whatever piece of content that you take from me is, is that number one, age is just a number. Literally, people dignify age like it's a phenomenal thing. But your age does not determine what you're doing. Your actions do. And if you're not creating valuable actions, you won't create valuable outcomes. And I think a lot of people get that twisted. They may say, hey, I'm too old, I'm 50. Hey, I'm too old, I'm 30, I'm 25, whatever it may be. And you see people that are killing it, younger than you. That needs to inspire you, that needs to take you, give you a vision that is like, wow, if they can do it, I can do it. Whatever piece of content that you're intaking on a day to day basis, it needs to inspire you. If someone's posting something on Instagram and it makes you feel bad about yourself, it makes you like feel weird or not feel good, unfollow that person right now because that will not help you. If use Instagram as a platform to intake good vibes and connect with good people. That's it. So that being said, I want you guys to really take the time and I would so much appreciate it, like I said at the beginning, if you could share this podcast episode with one friend, whatever friend, mom, dad, brother, sister, relative, whatever, share an episode of mine, whether that be Your favorite interview, your favorite episode from the Rise of the Young podcast and just let them know, hey, go check this out. Give them a reason why. And I would so much appreciate that because I'm going to be doing a lot more interviews coming soon on the podcast. I'm going to be interviewing musicians, artists, creators, actors, entrepreneurs, all of the above. And I want you guys to be a part of that because we are approaching over a hundred thousand downloads on the podcast and I would so much appreciate it if we could help get that to a hundred thousand. So that being said, I hope this podcast was enjoyable to you. I hope that if you're at the gym, you're having a good workout, if you're walking your dog, you keep walking. And overall, I just hope you got value from this podcast, because the biggest reason I do this is not for me, it is for you and you listening right now. Because I just want to share my insights, share my things that I'm working on, and overall, just give you guys value. Because I know I'm only 17, I've met a lot of cool people, I've done a lot of cool things, but I just want to share my insights. I'm always learning from other people. I always want to share my learning curves with people. If you're listening right now and. And I overall just want to provide value to you guys. So that being said, the podcast is coming to an end. Like I said, go ahead, share this with a friend. Let me know in the Instagram DMS what you got from this podcast. Let me know who you'd want me to have on the Rise of the Young podcast. And overall, keep working day in, day out and just focus on what matters. You know, I think a lot of people, they'll get tied up in multiple different things, but they're not actually focused on one thing. So that being said, put your focus where it needs to be focused, surround yourself with the right people, and always, always, always focus on providing value to the people that matter. So that being said, thank you so much for tuning in to the Rise of the Young podcast. This is Casey Adams, and thank you so much. That's the biggest thing from this. But that being said, thanks so much for tuning in the Rise of the podcast and I will talk to you guys soon. Peace.

Monarch Legacy of Monsters An Apple Original Series the world is on fire. I decided to do something about it on November 17th. This place, it's not ours.

Believe me.

The most massive event of the year arrives. If you come with me, you'll know everything I promise.

Oh, my God. Go, Go, Go.

Monarch Legacy of Monsters. Streaming November 17th only on Apple TV Plus.