Mastering Personal Branding | Liam Darmody

Hey creative, are you ready to discuss profits, the money, the ways to make it happen? The Profitable Creative Podcast is for you, the creative, how you define it. Videographers, photographers, entrepreneurs, marketing agencies, you get it. CEO of Core Group and author Christian Brim interviews industry experts, creative entrepreneurs, and professionals alike who strive to be creative and make money at the same time. Sound like you? Tune in now. It's time for profit.

Welcome to another episode of The Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in Brewster, New York. I don't know where Brewster is, but it's a great name. I hope they have a bunch of breweries and I hope to visit sometime. Joining me today Liam Darmody. Did I get that right?

Nicely done.

Yeah. All right. With Liam's Brand Stand. This is— I was struggling with that. Liam, welcome to the show.

Sorry. Thank you so much for having me, Christian. I appreciate it very much. Looking forward to chatting.

I like the Brand Stand. That, that, that— I don't know if you're trying to evoke bandstand. Was that your intent or no?

It was sort of. I don't know. I think, yeah, I just— it rhymed. Bandstand, grandstand, newspaper stand. I don't know. I just kind of went with it.

I love it. So why don't you start by telling the listeners who you are and what you do?

Sure. Thank you. So my name is Liam Darmody. I am a personal brand strategist and business innovation coach. I spent the first 20 years of my career in Sales Ops and Revenue Operations at startup companies. And then I had an opportunity to pivot my career into brand marketing, uh, largely based on the personal brand I built for myself on LinkedIn. And, uh, so I, um, did that and was, uh, recruited into a, a position, um, and, uh, the company was acquired and I decided to start my own business teaching other people how to manifest serendipity on LinkedIn using their personal brand and social sales strategy.

Okay, so you got 20 years in the bag here. What prompted you at that point to want to start your own gig?

Yeah, great question. So, you know, I had always been in operations because I worked at startups and I was the sort of guy who got stuff done. And so that just is where they put me and I just, I had a go-to-market mind, a very strategic mind when it came to sales processes and operational processes. And so it was a good fit, but I always felt like something was missing. Like I meant, I'm meant to be in marketing. I've always been a marketing mind. I've always loved looking at ads and thinking about how brands connect with people. If I could have gone to school again, I probably would've done consumer psychology or consumer behavior because to me, that's the, most fascinating part of business is how do you get people interested in buying from a company or being loyal to a brand? And, um, so I started posting content randomly in, in 2020 on LinkedIn. Um, you know, it was the pandemic. I was in a small house with an infant and a toddler and my wife, and I love all of them dearly, but I missed a lot of the water cooler conversations at the office. So I started having them on LinkedIn instead. And 2 years after that, A CMO at a big technology consultancy came over and said, I'm putting together an employer brand and talent marketing team, and I'm looking for somebody to stand it up and run it. And I think you'd be the perfect person. And I was really flattered. I said, you know, that's amazing. Thank you. But I don't even have the words brand or marketing on my resume, right? Why are you reaching out? And he said, I've been following you on LinkedIn for 6 months. If you can do what you do for yourself here for our company, and, uh, you have the sales operations and sort of process automation skills that I assume that you do, I think you're a shoo-in for this position. So interviewed for it, uh, wrote the job description, and away we went. And then 2 years later, uh, we were acquired, um, for a little over a billion dollars. And so I, I got a little bit of money from that, and then 6 months after that I was let go, which I was expecting, and they did right by me on the way out. So I was at a crossroads. Do I go back into startups and work in operations? Because that was my background. Do I go work in employer branding at, you know, larger companies where employer branding is more prevalent? Um, or do I start my own business and teach people how to manifest serendipity and create opportunity for themselves by leveraging this powerful platform known as LinkedIn? And, uh, with the help of my wife, uh, who, you know, sort of reminded me that I've been talking about this for years and thinking about, you know, could I make a consultancy work? Uh, she said, look, now, now's the time. You've got the runway. Uh, I've got a job. Let's go. Let's see how it goes. And that was 2 years ago on August 7th.

Beautiful. So having a little coin in the bank helped with that decision?

Absolutely. Yeah. I would say, you know, having a spouse who had a full-time job that, uh, covered all of our expenses and, uh, having money in the bank definitely helped give me the confidence to do it. But my pride, my pride and joy of, of the last 2 years is that I haven't had to touch savings. Um, so paid all the bills, haven't missed a mortgage payment, and haven't had to touch savings. So I feel good about that.

Well, that is a win. Uh, 100%, it's a win. So, so what, what were some of the challenges that, that you encountered in the last 2 years that you didn't encounter? I mean, you know, working in startups, you get to see a lot of similar things that small business do. Yeah. But there had to be a couple of things that maybe you weren't aware of.

Oh yeah, for sure.

What were some of those challenges?

I think the first challenge was expectations, setting expectations that were rooted in, you know, uh, data or concrete data. I, I didn't necessarily know what to expect. Uh, I had a relatively large audience on LinkedIn when I launched my business, and I think I sort of naively thought that, ah, once I set up my own shingle, you know, they're just gonna come flooding in. And the truth is that it took a lot longer than that. It took, you know, probably 3 months before I really felt like people were thinking about me in a different way. Because for years I was just the guy who showed up and shared content and didn't really have any type of ulterior motive. I wasn't doing any business development. Um, and so that shift in perspective, I think, took a while. Um, I also think that, you know, making sure that your expectations are aligned, uh, is important, right? Like, coming out of the gate expecting droves of people because of the size of my following, uh, sort of set me up for disappointment. I was, I was like, oh, does this mean there's no, does this mean there's no viable market here? Does this mean that it's not, you know, and, and it was just sends you for like a whole roller coaster of emotions, which is entrepreneurship, right?

Right.

Um, so that was one, uh, challenge that I think I had. I think the other challenge is the fact that I'm not on a team, right? I, I'm, I'm a, I'm a business of one, and I'm a hugely social animal. Um, you know, Woo is my number one StrengthsFinder trait. I love people, I love conversation. Uh, I miss a team dynamic pretty pretty much daily at this point. But, you know, you learn how to fill those gaps with community conversations on LinkedIn helped me a lot, conversations with clients and things like that. And then I guess the other thing is not having people to do it for you, right? You know, I'm like, you know, my calendar breaks. I'm like, oh, that's on me, right? My finances, my, you know, questions about accounting, questions about bookkeeping, like all these things that I have, I I'm used to surrounding myself with other people who know that inside and out. And when you're an entrepreneur, you're just figuring it out all yourself. So I think those are the top 3 things that were the most challenging for me to get over in my first 2 years.

Yeah. And I, I, I would say that echoes most of what I hear. Um, it's just the volume of stuff that you don't know, but it, but it is the mindset. I think the mindset shift of responsibility. Working with a team as an employee, you have a narrowly defined role. Even if you're someone like yourself who was someone that was known as a problem solver and could get things done, ultimately not everything was your responsibility or your decision. And as an entrepreneur, it is. And that can lead to gridlock a lot of times because people don't know, right? Like, Okay, the technology, the technology breaks. Well, I don't know the technology and I don't know who to— there's no one to call, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. I want to go back to what you said about how you had this network following, but that didn't result in immediate traction. What did you have to do or change to shift your content? And what different, what did you talk about, start talking about in different things with different tone, different intentionality? Like what changed from just being the guy that put content to I'm trying to sell something?

Yeah, it's funny because I, when I started posting on LinkedIn, a lot of people that I was spending time talking to were people who had sizable followings who were doing business on LinkedIn. And so their content was pretty consistent. They would pretty much talk about something, some flavor of the same topic in a couple different ways every single week. And many of them used to say to me, like, what are you even doing here? Like, your content's all over the place. And I remember my response was, well, I'm not, I'm not doing anything here. I'm just here for vibes. Like, I, I like talking about business and building relationships with people. And so I definitely had to shift my strategy from a content content standpoint to start talking more about what I do and how I do it and who I help and how I help them. Um, and, and that took a little bit of getting used to for me as well because I am, as much as I think that everybody is in marketing and sales now in some capacity, uh, I have never really been one to self-promote. And so it's hard for me sometimes to put content out there that is promoting something because I want to give my audience the, the trust and the benefit of, you know, they're adults. If, if they wanna work with me, they'll look at my profile and they'll come and drop a message and set up a call and we'll have a conversation. But people's minds are very short. And so you have to always be in front of them and you have to always be reminding them of what you do and how you do it. And so that was a big adjustment for me, uh, rather than just waking up in the morning and being like, this is what I feel like writing about today. I had to start thinking about Okay, here's some of my core content strategies. Here come some of my core pillars. Uh, I'm leveraging AI pretty heavily because AI is a fantastic thought partner and it helps with efficiency. And so that was probably the biggest thing.

Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that full commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now. Yeah, and, and the, the idea of being a salesperson— I mean, you obviously are, are someone that, uh, enjoys people.

Yep.

And enjoys conversation, so it probably came easier to you than some. But there is an aversion to selling that I think most people are just like, they don't want to be sold to, so they don't want to sell others, right? Like, there's something that feels dirty about it. So how do you approach that with yourself and that change and then with your clients? Like, what— how do you get over that sales phobia?

So I think it's— for me, it's the sales phobia, uh, it's always there a little bit because I don't necessarily want to come across as salesy. Um, but I shifted my perspective, and I encourage others to do the same. You know, personal branding is very powerful. Social selling is a very interesting concept because the idea is you build an affinity for who you are as a person, right? And you add people to your network strategically so that they can start consuming the content you create and they can see how you think and how you communicate. The objective of building a personal brand is get people thinking, oh, this person seems like somebody fun to work with, right? That's kind of the top, top of funnel thought that you want them to have. And then eventually they'll, they'll start reading through your content and one content piece you put out might get them to reach out to you and strike up a conversation. And that's obviously the ideal scenario because it's all inbound and that's how the majority of my business, uh, operates. But, um, the other side of it is that, you know, I, I view sales in the, the sort of traditional sense of like old school relationship building sales, not what it's become in many industries, which is, you know, an SDR making 100 calls a day trying to get somebody on the phone and having sales math try and calculate out, right? Uh, for, for me, it's about cultivating relationships with people, um, where there's not really any expectation. Um, I'm also very honest, right? If I connect with somebody, uh, that is, you know, in my ideal client profile, I might say to them, listen, you know, I create content that helps founders get discovered and do business online. Um, I'm, I'm never going to pitch you. I, I will not pitch you because so many people are apprehensive about messaging in the DMs because they're worried about getting pitched. And so I just address it head-on and say, I will never pitch you, but I will create content that is very interesting and hopefully useful for you. And if I can ever be of service to you, let me know. And that makes me feel okay because I'm not feeling like I'm intruding on them. I'm simply stating who I am, what I'm here for, and I'm addressing the elephant in the room, which is, is this person going to hit me with a pitch in the next 5 seconds? And so that's the way that I've typically approached it. And I just look at social selling as socializing as opposed to selling.

Yeah, I mean, I like the term you used, old school and relationship, because Sales 101 is people do business with people that they know, like, and trust, right? 100%. And there's decreasing levels of that in the virtual world. Right. And it seems to me that if someone has a need and you can help them, that conversation will occur naturally. Once the relationship's there, right? But if you lead with the pitch, especially if it smells of desperation, which a lot of entrepreneurs are desperate in their selling because they're like, I need to pay the bills and I get it. But that comes across, right? And what happens in sales psychology is your defenses go up. Right? And now you've got to chip away at the defenses and like overcome objections and like, you know, explaining like, well, no, that's not what this is. This is really what it is. And if you don't have that relationship to start that conversation, then it's likely to go nowhere. But if you have a relationship where you've established with this person, even if it's just virtually, then you have that trust built in that the defenses, one, are not going to come up as quickly. Or as strongly. But when you attempt to overcome an objection, you know, someone says, well, that's too much money. You have some place to come back from. You're not just saying, oh no, let me explain to you the value. No, you're like, Well, I must have misunderstood what you said. Like you said you had this problem. I, let's go back to that and start there. Yeah, because to me, sales is, it should be very natural if you're approaching it from the standpoint of I want to help you solve your problem.

That's right. That's right. Yeah, I think that a lot of people Uh, a lot of people struggle with letting sales conversations happen naturally and on the, uh, on the, on the prospect's timeline, right? Because everybody wants to move as quickly as possible and close business as quickly as possible, but it's not about you, right? It's about the prospect, it's about your lead, and it's about the idea of Is this person somebody that could find my services useful and is now the right time for them? Because if it's not the right time for them and then they spend a bunch of money, then they're not gonna invest the time that they don't have in it. And that becomes problematic for the outcome of the partnership. And so you want those things to be aligned. Now, I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't feel comfortable saying, you know, well, is there anything preventing you from wanting to start sooner? Right? Like fact-finding questions, like just try and get as much information as you can. And if somebody was to say, oh, well, you know, I have a bonus coming in the next 2 months and that's when I, you know, think I can pay for your services more readily, you know, maybe you start sooner and then you have them, you bill them half of it now and half of it later. Like you kind of come to the consensus, but the idea of selling somebody something on your timeline is the wrong motivation. You have to sell to their timeline.

Yeah. And to your point, you don't want to sell them something they don't need. Correct. You know, unfortunately, that's where sales gets a bad rap is— Yeah. Because, you know, you talked about psychology and I too am fascinated with the sales process because I'm an accountant. I gravitate to the pricing. I find pricing fascinating. And the idea that I can't determine the value of something as the seller— only the buyer determines the value. That's right. And trying to squeeze a square peg into a round hole benefits no one. But the flip side of it is, you know, people make buying decisions— they make all decisions, but buying decisions emotionally, not rationally. Right. And it comes from this. I've got this pain. I've got this desire that I want to fulfill emotionally. That's what it is. And if you're good at reading people's emotions, it's easy to manipulate them in the wrong way, right? Like getting them to buy something that they really shouldn't buy. And that's where the negative reputation happens. The used car salesman that's really good at manipulating. I go back to an older movie, Ruthless People. I don't know, Bette Midler, and I can't remember who all was in it, but there was this— it was an electronics store, right? And, you know, I think like a Rent-A-Center or something like that, you know, low-end electronics. And the guy that was the salesman, he had this horrible conscience and like he just couldn't sell things because they didn't— he knew they didn't need them, right?

Right. Yeah.

But they came in with a want because they wanted something. And this, this couple comes in and, um, he starts pitching the, the, the husband and he goes full bore. He goes, he said, if you can't fucking finance— well, he said, if you can't fucking afford it, you can fucking finance it. And it's so goddamn big that when you die, they'll bury your ass in it. And then his wife comes waddling up with a toddler in tow and she's pregnant and he just drops. Like he's like, no, man, you don't want this. Go. But the guy was jazzed. Right. And that, that to me is, is the problem with sales is like you can take that emotion and you can ramp it up where you can, you can manipulate them into the sale because they're so excited, so desperate, whatever. But then, you know, you see the reality and it's like, God, that this is not, this is not what they need. Yeah, um, and having that conscience, right?

Absolutely. The worst thing that I think could happen to me is somebody agreeing to do some work with me and then regretting it. Like, I think that is the, the thing that would be the hardest thing for me to— and unfortunately I haven't had that experience yet, at least not that anybody's told me. Um, and I know some people who say, well, we just get them on, get them on, get them closed, get signed the dotted line, let's get this going, and then they'll, they'll realize the value later, which may, may happen, I don't know. But for me personally, I want somebody to be jazzed to start working together. I want somebody to be like, yes, I decided to work with Liam Darmody and it's a great decision. I know it's the right decision. That's why I'm doing it, right? I don't want to say, well, we'll see how it goes. I want them to be confident. So for me, uh, you know, I try and keep a lighter touch approach when it comes to that kind of stuff because people are adults, you know.

Yeah, and there's this thing, and this is what I struggle with a lot of times, is the idea of selling them what they want versus what they need, right? And you know, you can sit there and you can say, you know, this is really what you need, but they don't really want to buy that. They want to buy something else, right? And sometimes you can't sell them what they want until they buy what they need.

Right.

Right. Yeah. And in our instance, I use it as an example is nobody wants bookkeeping. Nobody. Absolutely nobody wants bookkeeping. Nobody wants to pay for bookkeeping. Right. Really? Yeah. Like, well, if you want bookkeeping, you're a rare exception.

Yeah. I'm like, I don't want to have to think about any of that stuff.

Right. And so, but they do want some of the higher level, more valuable things to them. I say higher level, but I don't want to denigrate bookkeeping. But like, okay, you want tax planning or you want Profit First planning and you want to make your business more profitable. But we got to have the bookkeeping to know where we are, right? And so you have to convince them sometimes. And sometimes it's, you know, like, okay, well, the bookkeeping is free. You're not paying for it. Yeah. Right. Well, of course they're paying for it because you're paying somebody to do it. But sure, it's, it's, it's how you position it. And I wonder if you run into that where you have to, you have to nuance the need versus the want.

You know, I think sometimes people don't really know what they want or need. And I do my best to suss that out and provide them with a recommendation based on what they're looking for. And so, you know, in some cases, if somebody says, I'm not really ready to commit to, you know, a 4-week or an 8-week one-to-one partnership, but, you know, I would like to jump into this segment and start working on this thing. Then I'll meet them where they are and say, okay, well, let's start with an hour. You know, let's do an hour one-to-one and see how it goes. And then if you decide you want, you know, to know the rest of the tricks that I have up my sleeve, then you can always come back and do something more robust down the line. And oftentimes I find that that helps, you know, because they don't feel like I'm just trying to sell the highest ticket item and I'm not throwing everything but the kitchen sink at them. I'm saying, let's meet you where you are. And then hopefully they find the one-on-one session really useful and they say, okay, yeah, you know what? Like I need to spend more time with you. So let's talk about, you know, your more robust packages. And that I find works. And I think— Sure. I also think that it's important to educate people about really what you offer. I think a lot of times people, when they get excited about sales and they want to try and close somebody, they sometimes will almost speed through it and not really help people understand exactly what they're getting for their money, right? And that I think can be detrimental because you want them to be super comfortable with the decision once they make it. And so I lay it out very clearly. I have, I have a digital course that's self-paced, that's much more affordable. I have a cohort-based learning experience for people who like to learn in groups. I have, a one-to-one coaching offering. And so I want to basically meet people where they are as much as possible. And I try and have a solution for anybody that is looking for it within reason.

Yeah. Yes. And as the infamous entertainer P.T. Barnum said, always leave the audience wanting more.

That's it.

Yeah, absolutely right. Because it is— it's much better to leave them wanting more and having delivered something exceptional and they see value in it than it is they bought it and they were disappointed because it didn't line up with their expectations. And I think that is key when you're dealing with services in general, like, is aligning that expectation, you know, what, because to your point, a lot of times they don't know what they want, right? They have this emotion, I need something. I want something, but they're not real clear on it themselves. And so one of the most powerful sales techniques my business coach actually teaches other coaches, and you listen to his calls, it's fascinating because he doesn't talk at all about what he does. Not a bit. All he talks about is what the person wants. And clarifying it and then moving them into, well, what would it look like if you had that? And so, you know, it's very powerful when that person understands the transformation that they're going to receive and they're clear with it in their head, like that there's the process and then they can envision it and they're like, okay, I'm all in. As opposed to, well, pitching, this is how the process works, or this is what I do, or, you know, and, and I, I listen to his sales calls that he shares with me, and I'm just like, that, that's just incredible.

Yeah, yeah, no, there's an art form to it for sure. Um, and, you know, typically speaking, I think the, the best artists in sales are the ones that don't really talk about themselves that much or what they do. They're the ones that are able to make it completely about the person they're speaking to, and they can think critically about, you know, how to change their responses on the fly and really make, make a compelling position as to why that person would want to work with them. But it's ultimately about the person you're talking to, not about you.

Yes. And I find that inexperienced salespeople tend to, uh, talk through the sale. Like, you know, a salesperson will know when you hear these emotional— when you read the emotion and the emotions there and they're giving you buying signals, you stop. Like, because the more you add to it at that point, the more you're decreasing the emotion and decreasing the chance of the sale.

100%.

Yeah. And Yeah, yes, don't talk through the sale. Um, shut up. As pretty much, I mean, I think that's our sales, uh, advice we're giving jointly, Liam, here, is shut up and let the other person talk.

Yep, totally. Yeah, I mean, give, give them as much information as they need. Give them— hopefully they've been following you for a while and you've been really, you know, generous with sharing what you know online so that they have a good sense for your qualifications to provide them with a service and ask them questions and make them feel like you're listening to their answers and invested in helping them solve something, even if it's just on that initial call, right? Like I open up Sales Navigator and I show people all the time, like things in Sales Navigator while we're on our first discovery call, because I don't wanna hold anything back necessarily. I'm, I'm gonna show them that I'm interested in helping them from the minute we first start speaking. Uh, whether they're a paid client or not. And then my assumption is if they've learned something valuable in that 30 minutes and they, uh, like the person that they were speaking with, and they'll wanna learn more. Uh, and, and I trust that that will happen. And sometimes it happens immediately and sometimes it happens 6 months or 8 months from when we had our initial conversation. But that's okay because the idea again is, you know, when they're ready, you wanna be in the forefront of their mind. And the way to be on the forefront of their mind is not to pressure them and not to jam a sale down their throat. Their throat. It's to continuously add value and build relationships and connection that show that you're somebody that they can trust with their hard-earned money and, and their learning.

So, you know, a lot of, a lot of listeners to this show are in, um, like the videography space or cinematography or content creation where, um, that, that may not feel like the way to sell what they do, right? As opposed to a coach where it's maybe easier. I don't know. So how would you translate what you said and what you recommend to somebody that say is a videographer? Like how would that conversation look different?

Yeah, I mean, from my perspective, you know, a videographer has a set of skills that a lot of people don't have. And so that videographer should be showing those skills all the time, right? They should be putting out video content a lot on the LinkedIn platform. They should be doing how-to sessions, right? Like maybe they create a, you know, how-to for using AI video clipping tools so that people that want to learn how to do their own video can do it. The reason that that's advantageous is because it's still a labor-intensive process. Even editing video on with AI still takes time and it still takes really close attention to detail and it takes being able to sort of weave a story together. And that's a lot of time that a lot of people don't have or want to, to, to spend time doing. And so in teaching people how they might be able to do it, but then also putting out this content that's way better than what they could do on their own. You're teaching them something, but you're also showing them that by working with a professional, it's a much better experience. And so they start to trust you because you're somebody who is showing them something new. Uh, and then they're also impressed with the work that you do because they can compare and contrast it. So I would be saying to somebody that's delivering a service like that, you need to be showing them what you know and showing them the quality of the videos that you can create and how it can help people and talking about that at least, you know, 2 times a week on LinkedIn and, you know, preferably whatever other social channels you're on.

Would you recommend that they like break down or diagnose an existing video that somebody else produced to say like, Here's, here's, here's what's wrong with it, like a critique.

Yeah, I think you could do that. I think, you know, you want to be mindful not to be viewed as negative or, you know, mocking somebody, right? Uh, but you could definitely, uh, break down something created. I think creating some— breaking something down that's created by a brand, for example, uh, and then saying this is how I would have done it, you know, and showing that compare and contrast. I think that makes a lot of sense. There's actually somebody on Instagram that I follow. I think he's on LinkedIn too, but he's a brand logo designer. And so he'll take logos from, you know, big companies and then he'll just redesign them. And when you see what he does versus what they do, it's like, wow, like that, how did that guy do that? How does he think that way? And so anything that can kind of just show your creativity and show how you differentiate from something else, I think is a worthwhile activity.

Yeah, I mean, that's interesting you mentioned that because we recently relaunched our rebrand. Oh, nice. And when my head of revenue came and said, I want to do a rebrand, I was like, okay. I mean, like, I didn't— honestly, I didn't see the need. I didn't see the value.

Yeah.

But when she brought back what she had presented, it was like, or what, what she and the creator had come up with, she didn't do it herself. She used actually one of her clients to do it. And I was, I was really kind of shocked, to be honest with you, because I'd never really thought of it at that level of like, and so then I'm having him rebrand my personal website and work on my, my personal rebrand. And his intake form for a logo, mind you, asked me questions about like— there were like 10 different questions, maybe 12 questions, uh, scale of 1 to 10. Do you, do you, how do you want your logo to, to reflect this, this aspect? And I'm like, I, I didn't even know that was a thing.

Yeah.

Right? Yeah. You know, like, if your logo could be a person, who would it be?

And I'm like, that's a good question. Okay.

Right. And yeah. And so it— going back to your point, I didn't know what I didn't know. Yeah. But, you know, I thought you just hired a graphic designer on Upwork and, you know, they— right. Which you can certainly do. But there, you know, it kind of speaks to the— do you want, do you want something just because you want something new? You want something to change? Or do you really understand what it is that you want changed and why?

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think the— I say this a lot, like, my favorite products on the market are typically products that show me a problem I didn't realize I had until I experienced the solution, right? So like, Uber is a perfect example of that. When Uber came to Washington, DC when I was there in 2013, I was like, what, like a mobile app for black town cars? Like, why would I do that? Like, it sounds expensive, blah blah. And I had a buddy who was like, just try it, just order an Uber. And from that point on, I never went in a cab again, you know, because it was such a different experience. It was so convenient. And I think that small business owners have the same ability to wow somebody and get them thinking differently. If you can get somebody to think differently about a problem that they have through an exchange with you, and that gets their wheels spinning about like, wow, I hadn't thought about it this way before. Yes, that in and of itself is a tremendous value add to that person. And it puts you in a different light than other people that are just, you know, randomly going through the pitch, right? If you're actually giving them some thoughts and some actionable advice or some actionable ideas that they haven't thought of before, then they're gonna, they're gonna see you in a different light than everybody else.

Yes. And, and I think that a lot of creatives are feeling the pressure of technology and AI, and of course they, they hear all of the sirens wailing that your job's going away. Um, and I understand that. I understand that fear. And I understand that some people are going to say, well, you know, I don't need a copywriter. I've got ChatGPT. I'll just do my own copy.

Yeah.

Um, and, and you can't, you know, the thing is you can't change what people think in, in the sense that like they, they believe what they want to believe. Until they go and they use ChatGPT to write their copy and realize that it's a regurgitation of everybody else's copy and there's nothing unique about it, and therefore it's not compelling. And, you know, to your point, they have to experience themselves before they realize that that's not going to work. But it's a novel idea. Oh, well, I can just put it into ChatGPT. ChatGPT. Um, the, the, the creatives are all locked up in fear about like, this thing is going to replace me. No, it can't replace you. It can help you do your job. Yeah, more efficiently. But it, but it can't replace what you do. So tell me about your experience with that.

Well, uh, it's funny because I am As much as I am a humanist and a, you know, I'm a people's person. Like I love human relationships ever since I was young. Like human connection was the most important thing to me. And so I love engaging with people. I love working with people. I love collaborating with people, but I'm also an operations person. And so I think about efficiency and productivity and, you know, scalability and When I think about how to leverage artificial intelligence in our day-to-day, I think there's some people who are looking at it from the perspective of this is going to eliminate opportunities in my life. This is going to take my jobs. This is coming after my livelihood. And there's other people who are going to say, okay, well, how am I going to harness this technology to do whatever's next in the evolution of my business or my service offering? And I think that the people who are, are in the latter camp, yes, you're changing the way you might have done things prior to the past, but you're also exploring new horizons that you didn't know existed. So if, if I think about, you know, the videographer or the creator or the copywriter, um, you know, I'm thinking about it in the sense of if they can learn how to master using AI to quadruple or 10x their productivity, then all of a sudden they could take on 10x the number of clients, or maybe not 10x, but like at least 5x the number of clients. Uh, and they're just harnessing a new technology to think differently and, you know, to, to, to give the client what they want ultimately. But how you got there, it just changes a little bit, you know? And, and I always tell people, if you're leveraging artificial intelligence and you've taken the time upfront to think about really what you want that to be and how you want to use it and how you want the outputs that it gives you to look, uh, and you've put in that work up front, you're basically promoting yourself from a writer to an editor. And editors have far more bandwidth than writers because they're not having to go through the full creative process. So, um, you know, I, for example, have 4,500 LinkedIn posts that I've put out in the last 5 years, all of that lives in Claude and ChatGPT. And I have projects with very specific instructions, and I say, I want everything you put out to sound like this sort of amalgamation of content. And is it perfect? No, I always end up tweaking something here and there, but it definitely makes it easier for me to put out content at scale that still sounds like me and still is my words, right? But it's just, I arrived at that at a different, in a different way, in a more efficient way. And I think that is one of the things that those creatives need to start thinking about. How can you take this technology that could take something that took you a week to create before and create 10 times that in the same amount of time? And their skill and their eye for beauty and their eye for detail and their eye for, uh, and their, their ability to understand what the subject or what their client might want. That human element never goes away. What's changing is just the process by which they're creating their output. And I think that is one way to look at it that is not as negative and more so, uh, no, I think you're, I think you're exactly right.

And, and it goes back to something fundamental that I, I tell people in creative industries is that it's it's not— you have to stop thinking in terms of the skill set you have and be thinking in terms of an entrepreneur, which is how are you solving problems? Right. I use the example when I started this business 28 years ago, my business. Amazing. QuickBooks was not even a thing. It was Quicken. QuickBooks has created this multi-billion dollar company and ecosystem. And back when Quicken and QuickBooks launched, my colleagues were like, it's going to kill accountants. There's not going to be any need for an accountant anymore. And the reality is that, and I'm not really bagging on Intuit and QuickBooks, that, you know, whatever. Although I do kind of refer to them as the evil.

Yeah, I don't mind it. I don't mind if you do. One of my best posts on LinkedIn in the last year was taking a direct jab at them.

Well, what's really annoying, it's awful actually, is they on one hand say they want to cooperate with accountants and then they turn around and do everything they can to sell against them. Right?

Right.

And it's like, it's like getting in bed with the devil. It's like, why would you do that? But in any case, my point was that, you know, 25 years later, I don't know if that's exactly how long QuickBooks has been out there. I'm going to tell you, and this is just my opinion, I don't think they've solved a damn thing. I don't think their customer, their customer, the business owner, has any more clarity around their finances, um, than, than they did 25 years ago. I really don't. And, and I, I say that to say, um, you know, people in creative industries that are dealing with this existential threat of, of technology, slow your roll a minute because it, it's not going to work out the way anybody thinks it's going to work work out.

Yeah, 100%. Uh, it's so funny that you mentioned that because I— when I— that could have been one of the things I said at the top of the call when you asked what my 3 biggest challenges were. Uh, learning QuickBooks and the Intuit ecosystem, uh, was absolutely one of them. And, you know, I was thinking, oh, well, I'll just go and use one of the other tools. There's another tool that, uh, is out there that I can't remember the name of.

Top of my mind, Xero.

Yeah, Xero, right, from Australia. Mm-hmm. But like, there's so, there's so few people that are actually experts at Xero. Like QuickBooks is just the industry standard. And, and yet, like, I had 5 different companies that I had set up on 3 different plans. And I was like, this is, this user experience is horrendous. Anyways, I digress. Um, but yeah, you know, yeah, I think that in terms of AI, we are just scratching the surface. Like, we don't even know what it's gonna look like 5 years from now, 2 years from now. Like the, the potential is huge. I think that creatives and entrepreneurs should just be doing exactly what you said. How can I get better about solving problems in, in a quality way as quickly as possible, right? And AI is going to help us with the quickly as possible part. I think the rest is still on us. It's our judgment, it's our skill, it's our thinking, it's our knowledge, it's our understanding of clients and what they want. Um, I think the human element is going to continue to be incredibly important in business, and perhaps more so now that we've got AI. I agree. Uh, and so you always want to lean into that. Like, people generally want to work with other people for the most part. Um, I think there's an element of trust there that is important and worth the investment.

Yes, I, I— the way it was described to me, and I, I was an early adopter of chat, and I struggled for like 2 years. I was like, I still don't understand how I can use this tool. Like, I, I, I just couldn't get there. And I tried and I kept trying and I kept trying until Scott Chang, he said, he said, think of it this way. Think of it. Think of it as a hard drive with all the knowledge of human history on it. And a million different processors. And, but you're the computer, you're still the brain, right? And somehow that visualization clicked for me. And I'm like, okay, now I can see how I can use the tool because I was still trying to find a use case for like, how is this going to make my life easier? And I couldn't, but I had it backwards. I had to be thinking in terms of, of this is just an extension of my brain. Correct. And how can I make— how can I make my brain more efficient?

Yeah, it's so funny that you mentioned the computer analogy because I have literally used that exact same line of thinking with people. I'm like, think about your brain as the computer. And the more stuff you store in your brain, the, the slower it operates, the more, you know, the, the less random access memory can be retrieved, right? And so I view ChatGPT as like the cloud for our brain, and we store everything in there, and then we can go back and find it whenever we need it, right? But that frees up our brain to move more quickly and be less cluttered. And, you know, to a certain extent think more clearly because we have this powerful sort of tool at our disposal that keeps us in check and makes sure that we don't lose anything. Um, so I'm, I'm incredibly— and I, I was the same way for the first year. I probably didn't use it anywhere near the way that I should. I heard a lot of people say, oh, if you want to learn how to use ChatGPT or AI, just talk to it normally like you normally would. I'm like, but what am I going to talk to about? Like, I don't know, you know.

I don't need a friend, right?

But, but, but now fast forward 2 years from now, I mean, I will literally go on a walk with my dog once a week and I just talk to the business coach that I've built in ChatGPT. And I go back and forth about what's the future of my brand and where am I going with my company and what should I be focusing on next? And that might sound a little bit odd, but when you're a solo business, you don't have anybody else to talk to, right? So, you know, it's like Talking to a powerful tool like that, there's a business right there.

Like someone could go do custom business coaches, um, for solopreneurs. Uh, I mean, it doesn't replace, it doesn't replace Liam. No, correct. It, it, yeah, no.

Yeah, when ChatGPT created, uh, their custom GPTs, I created a personal brand strategist. ChatGPT custom GPT, and that's been used 11,000 times since then. Um, and it was just me like being like, well, let's, let's see what, what is it? Let's see what happens. And I actually now get clients through ChatGPT because they're using that specific custom GPT. So, uh, you just have to experiment and keep an open mind, you know, like there's, there's just so much power in these tools. And you can customize it in so many different ways to make your life easier. It's a shame if people don't want to do it that way. Yeah.

And they're ridiculously cheap. I mean, they're getting cheaper. It's crazy. Yeah. Absolutely insane. I think the statistic I was given earlier this year was the capacity in AI in general doubles every 6 months.

Yeah, that's insane.

That is, that is insane.

So wild. Yeah, it's so wild.

Liam, how do people find you and Brandstand if they want to learn more about what you do?

Well, the best place to find me is on LinkedIn. I pretty much live there. I fit in with the furniture now. And there are only 3 Liam Darmody's on the platform and only one in North America. So that's how you know it's me. You can also go to liamsbrandstand.com to learn more about my services of my business. And, uh, yeah, that's pretty much my online footprint right now. I'm also on Substack at liamdarby.substack.com.

I'm— I, I wish I'd known that earlier because I would have gone down that rabbit hole.

Oh, really?

I, I'm new on, on Substack in the last few weeks, and I'm like trying to figure out exactly again how to use the tool. Like, what am I going to use this for? So—

oh, I love Substack. What's your Substack?

Christian Brim. Cool.

I will go and subscribe now.

Yeah, I had a very good article I put out last week. I'm interested in your feedback. I'll take a look. I think I've got 4 followers, so you may be 5. In any case, listeners, we'll have those links in the show notes. If you like what you saw— heard, not saw— if you like what you heard, rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like what you heard, shoot us a message, let us know, and we'll replace Liam. Until then, ciao ciao for now.

That's awesome. I love it.