#091: Scott Aughtmon on Taking the First Steps to Becoming an Authority in Your Field

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Well, hello there. Thank you for joining me for episode 91 of the High Income Business Writing Podcast. My name is Ed Gandia and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to take their writing businesses to the six figure level or the part time equivalent. As a quick reminder, you can find the details show notes for this episode by going to b2b launcher.com episode 91 and you've heard the advice before. Position yourself as an authority in your field and business will start coming your way. Clients will flock to your door. I think many of us understand this idea conceptually, but it can also be hard to figure out exactly how to become that authority, how to position yourself that way, how to develop that expertise. And then the negative self talk and self sabotage sets in and definitely doesn't help. You know the who do you think you are? You're no expert, you're no authority. I bet that sounds familiar to many of you, because I know it sounds familiar to me. Now this is a very big topic and it's one that I'd like to cover in more detail over the next few months in additional podcast episodes and some additional training. But today I wanted to at least open the door. I wanted to at least kickstart that discussion so we can go ahead and put these arguments to rest and start creating some step by step actionable plans on developing that kind of expertise where needed and positioning yourselves in a way that's going to start attracting more and better paying clients to our businesses. My guest this week is Scott Ogment, a consultant and blogger who writes about content marketing. He's also the author of the book 51 Content marketing hacks extraordinary Lessons on creating content that will help you sell more and gain more customers. Now, let me just tell you right off the bat, our conversation here in this episode may not answer all your questions. In fact, I know it won't. But I hope that it at least gets you thinking in the right direction and that it sets the stage for again, additional episodes on this very important topic. So with that, let's get right to that interview. Scott, thanks for coming on the show today, man. It's good to have you here.

You're welcome, Ed. Thanks for having me.

So you know, our discussion today, and we're going to talk about a couple of different things, but this is something that I think we've needed to talk about for A while in the show. You have an interesting perspective here and I'm anxious for you to share some of these thoughts with our audience. But before we get there, why don't you give people a little bit of context, tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do these days, what you're known for, that sort of thing so people understand where you're coming from.

I'm a blogger. I write about content marketing. I do consulting for people. One of the things I'm probably most well known for is I write regularly for Content Marketing Institute and I can't remember how many years ago now it's probably about three years ago, put together a blog called the 21 Types of Content We All Crave. It's all about writing and the types of content across the board, whether it's movies, interviews, books that people just are attracted to. And that thing, when I put it together, I felt like, man, this thing could be good. And I offered it to them. And I hadn't seen them do many infographics at that point. I had just written for them. But that thing has been shared all over the place in multiple different niches. And so that's probably what I'm most known for. And then I'm the author of a book called 51 Content Marketing Hacks.

Awesome. I think I came while I know one of our listeners recommended I reach out to you. And the first thing I came across was that article at Content Marketing Institute and was blown up when I looked at the number of shares. And I think it was one of the most shared articles that year, I think.

So when they redesigned the site, the tweet count totally reset. So even what it is there is high and I think it has 100 and something comments. They had to shut the comments down. It kind of confirmed what I thought. Certain types of content resonates with people and that infographics sort of proved the point. It was a great surprise for me.

You do a lot of this stuff yourself, which is awesome. And specifically we're going to talk about authority and thought leadership and positioning yourself as an expert and all those things. But let's start here. I know that you have kind of a different way to think through this and you specifically talk about how changing pronouns can change your business. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Yeah, I think most people by default, logically spend all their time marketing what they do. And obviously you need to market what you do. But instead of just focusing all your marketing on what you are, when you change the pronoun and begin to focus on the who of your business and not just the what, that can begin to change your business in ways that you would not imagine. Let me give you a couple examples. Dr. Phil McGraw. He's on TV. Is this guy the best psychologist in the world? No. But because of who he is, he has no problem having bestselling books. He has no problems getting speaking gigs, he has no problem getting clients and charging maximum premium amount for his time because of who he is. Another example would be Bobby Flay from the Food Network. Is Bobby Flay the greatest chef or grill master in the world? No. But his restaurants are packed with people lining up outside because they want to go to Bobby Flay's restaurant. Even though across the street there might be a restaurant that has an equally skilled chef, or possibly a chef that's even better. But because of who he is in the market's mind, he has suddenly attracted these customers and created a completely different environment than before anybody knew who he was. By changing who they are in the market's mind, the results that they're experiencing changed. I don't mean to imply that either one of them are not skilled in what they do. They are skilled, but they stopped just focusing on what they were doing in their marketing. And when they changed their who, the results changed. Even though their skill level may be really. We all get better over time. So I'm sure Bobby Flay is a better chef than he was five years ago, but overall, he's no better than he was when people didn't know who he was. But by changing who he was in the market's mind, his results changed, even though his skills might not have exponentially changed. Does that make sense?

It does. It does. Now, these are great examples because they're extreme examples. We're talking about celebrity figures. These are people everyone would recognize, or a lot of people would recognize. I'm curious. When you say they change you know, who they were or they focus on the who you know, what do you think they did right that freelance professionals can duplicate? Because I want to make sure people connect the dots here. We're not talking about reaching celebrity status, but what they did is replicable here, and I'd like to start talking about that as well.

Right? Yeah. And as I explain my story, I'll kind of explain how I did these things myself. But let me just give Bobby Flay as an example. When he was just a chef and Food Network was just this small little cable network that nobody hardly knew about, they made a call out to restaurant Owners and chefs and said, would you like to come and do a show? Maybe it was even a segment. I can't remember when I read the article what it was. But would you come and be on our network? You had to actually get yourself there. They didn't have the money to fly you there. You had to be local and would you come do a show? And Bobby Flay thought about it and he said, you know what? If I'm on this show, they get to see me, they get to hear my name, and they get to know that I have a restaurant over and over again. So he said, I jumped at the opportunity. And he said, nowadays, all these different chefs that turned it down, that said no, are all, you know, they're all fiending and trying to chase after Food Network and get on there. And now Food Network, you know, has a gate now, you know, you gotta get across the gate and you know, the gatekeeper has to say, yes, you're worthy to come in. When before he could have, you know, they could have taken the opportunity, opportunity to step across and begin to position themselves in somebody else's market. Because these are two things that we really kind of have to understand. These are kind of two facts about the way marketing works in general and in life in general. Who you are influences your prospects and your customers. So if you are an expert, you don't have to be Bobby Flay, you don't have to be Dr. Phil. But if you're just an expert in their minds, whether that's in your little local city or in your niche, if you expert, then you will be more desired and you'll be able to charge higher prices. The second fact is, besides the fact of who you are, but who your customers are and who your associates are begins to influence your prospects and customers too. If you have important people that have purchased from you, important people that you've worked for, if you've worked alongside other people that are important, all of these things increase your value in the market and then make you more desirable to that market. And again, now what may happen is some of your listeners may already realize some of these things have already happened. In my life, I've already worked for certain people or I've done these things, or I am sort of an expert. I've just never marketed that. They've never focused on that who aspect in their marketing. And all they need to do is begin to lift that up higher so that people can see it so it's more obvious. And then people begin to respond to you in a different way than when those things were hidden.

And you're absolutely right. I come across people who don't think they have anything to really just to show. And when we have a conversation, they start realizing, well, wait a minute, maybe I do have some things. And it's. I think we naturally kind of downplay some of the things in our past or in our background or track record that.

Exactly right.

It could rise to the surface and we could craft a very compelling narrative based on some of those factors.

That's right. You know, like if I knew all the things you did and I started to write down, I would probably point out things you would overlook. Like, I don't care. And you do the same thing for me. It's because we're so used to like, oh, yeah, that's just whatever. I did that. Yeah, it's no big deal. But to other people, those things, even if they're little things, they add up to kind of create that authority and that expertise, at least in perception. And I don't mean to deceive people, but it creates the actual perception that should be there because, you know, the person is an expert, whether they feel like an expert or not. Compared to somebody else that knows nothing, you know, they're an expert.

So before. Before we go any further, I do want to clarify something and I hope you can shed some light on this. This word expert or authority. I find that terrorizes a lot of people because the feedback I get when I talk about that, and I just use it because it's very easy to talk about. Right. You need to position yourself as an expert. That's kind of the catchphrase. But I find intimidates a lot of freelance professionals because they really don't feel they're an expert. I think everyone's got a different definition. But my perception has been that for a lot of people, expert means I wrote the book on. I am the foremost authority on. You know, you fill in the blank, whatever. What would you say to someone who feels that way about it?

Well, you know, I thought that for a long time and I can't remember if it's Seth Godin. I read so many different books, I sometimes forget where I come across the idea. But it's this whole idea of waiting for somebody else to declare you as something as worthy. And most of us wait around. Our whole lives, we've been told you have to wait for somebody to say that you have value in this expertise. You're going to get your degree. And again, those things are valuable, important. But this mindset of waiting for someone to tell you that you're worthy before you're worthy and declare you with this title that somebody randomly gives you. And now suddenly you. You're important. It's a fallacy. And like I said with Bobby Flay, his level of cooking did not change from when he wasn't on the network to when he was on the network. The only thing that changed was someone's perception of his expertise. And it creates this new, not just mindset for your audience, but for you. In a recent episode, you were talking about feeling like a fraud. The more you begin to realize that you have value and everybody. These other people we've lifted up and say they're experts, they're huge. You already talked about in the previous episode. These people feel as clueless and as much of a failure as you do. So when you realize that reality and you realize who you are and how you present yourself completely changes how somebody receives you, then you can begin to get that courage to realize, you know what? I actually know a pretty good amount of information. I'm actually pretty skilled at this writing. This business owner. I'm approaching, this company, I'm approaching. They don't have the skills I have, so I am an expert in this situation. They need my advice. We just sort of need to build our confidence up in that level. It doesn't mean we're the most knowledgeable person in all the world on this subject, but we need to not play it down how much we know in our individual arena that we move in.

Well, that's a great point. And I've always said, look, you know more about many different things than your average client. So right away, you know, they don't know that. They just see that there's a gap, that you seem to know more about this particular topic because you're in it every day than they do. Like, a marketing director has to worry about all these different facets of marketing. You know, you're focusing on, let's say, writing white papers. So that's your thing. That's what you're doing all the time. You're obviously going to be much more knowledgeable about that than they will do. You have to be the world leader in white papers? No, the industry leaders. You don't. That's right. The other thing I would say, and I learned this the hard way, especially when I wrote my co. Wrote my book five years ago, was, you know, it's when you create this content, we're going to talk more about that. But when you create thought leadership content when you put yourself out there, that process alone elevates you. That process elevates your knowledge as well. What I had to do to prepare for that book and to put this, get this content out of my head made me better, made me more knowledgeable, made me a better resource for people who were wanting this information.

That's exactly right. And it's not even that you have to go walk around declaring yourself an expert, but by having your name on a book, people already are going to say, hey, this guy Ed is different than this other generic person. And the other thing as you're talking about it made me think of. I have a friend that works with Stanford College students, and I asked him once, aren't you intimidated by these students? They're the smartest students in the world, some of them. He told me something that was really interesting. He said that outside of their expertise, most people have about a sixth grade knowledge of any other subject.

Interesting.

So when you were talking about this marketing director, that person is an expert in what they do. But when one of your copywriters comes in, this person that's the marketing director probably has, maybe because they're marketing a director, they have some higher knowledge than a sixth grader about copywriting. But in many ways they are not the expert on what your listener is coming in to help them with. They just have a common knowledge that's not much better than anybody else that's not a copywriter.

Yeah. And the way I took that is sixth grade in terms of. Within that, in that topic, it would be a sixth grade level.

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah. Where you might have, you know, a bachelor's degree or a master's even.

Yeah. So, you know, so these Stanford students that has, you know, getting a doctorate in engineering, you know, I can be intimidated when they talk about engineering, you know, but when I talk about other subjects, I know they're looking at me like, I don't know anything about that. You're my hero, you know, so.

Yeah, I forget who told me recently, hey, man, to, to a sixth grader, an eighth or ninth grader looks like, you know, a genius.

Yes.

It's always relative.

It's always relative.

Okay, so. So this, that's good. I just want to make sure to address that because I know it is a word that scares off a lot of people. So let's start talking about how you, you can begin to change that perception in terms of your. Your who.

Well, you know, I think the two main things that I would encourage your listeners to focus on is how they or Their business is perceived by their prospects. And then the second thing is where they or their business is seen. By focusing just on those kind of two general areas, you know, how you or your business are perceived and where you and your business are seen, those things can begin to give you a momentum in that area of the who instead of the what.

Okay, so tell us more about that. What does that mean?

Well, let me share a few personal stories and this will maybe even help your listeners understand the whole expert area concept. I first got into marketing and business by working on a music site in a small sub niche, a little genre of music. And I put this website online and I could not care about marketing. I never paid attention to marketing, had the sixth grade understanding of marketing. But suddenly I needed people to come to my website. I needed them to visit. Suddenly I started paying attention to marketing. I'm reading books about it. I'm reading every expert that was. This was back in the late 90s, every expert online guru, I was reading classic books on it. This was during the dot com era and I lived in Silicon Valley and I was a youth pastor at a church and I worked with junior high and high school kids. So I'm not an expert at this point. I'm an expert at working with those students. But I'm not about marketing. But I start this website and I start growing this website and I start getting interviews with these artists in this niche and I start growing the traffic, and I probably got that website to one of the top three sites in that niche. Again, it's not that it was that impressive that there was that many sites, but I began to know marketing in a way I'd never known it. And I was applying it and seeing results. And at this point in time, 2001, my wife and I had our first child and we decided that she was going to stay home with our son and we were suddenly going to survive on my youth pastor salary during the dot com boom. And it was insane. It was difficult. And it was during this time I read one person and in his book he just mentioned if you interview top experts and you compile those experts interviews together, you have an instant book. And if you want to write an intro or conclusion, you can psychologically associate yourself with them and you have a product. I had already been interviewing experts in that little music niche and I realized quickly then if I got the first person to say yes, the second one was easier. The third person's even easier by the end. And people are thanking me for including them. So I decided this was 2001 and September 11th had happened. The recession was kicking in and I had been studying marketing for two or three years at this point. Self study. I realized there's a lot of business owners that don't know how to survive and prosper in a recession. And so I decided to put together this book called how to survive and prosper in a recession. And I send out these emails and I get. I won't go into all the details, but I get these interviews back from these experts and I end up with these top 18. At this point, it was 20 experts in business, sales and marketing who gave me an interview. By putting together that book, it caused me to learn a whole bunch of things about myself and about psychology and about this idea of your who. When I ended up putting the book out, my fatal error was that I just tried to market to people trying to make money online. I didn't actually focus on the market I should have, which was the business owners. But what I did do is by creating that book, and I got all sorts of great testimonials from these experts by creating that book. Suddenly I had two or three years of marketing knowledge. So compared to someone that has no knowledge, I was an expert, but nobody understood that. But by putting together that book and writing the intro and conclusion, I psychologically associated myself with these experts. And that changed my position, that changed the way people thought about me in that market. And so my first little tip for people, I would encourage people in their niche to reach out to experts and to interview them. Pick experts that are known in your little sub niche and take those experts. You can do whatever you want with the content. You can take the interviews and do like you're doing a podcast. You could do blog posts, you can compile it into a book. But as you begin to put these experts together in this niche, you will begin to be lifted up. Because now you're interviewing experts, and now who you are seen as in your market will be completely different than who you were the week before you started interviewing people. Let me just give this, not a disclaimer, actually encouragement, because I know some of your listeners are saying, why would experts, experts give me an interview? These guys gave me an interview and ladies gave me an interview when I was nobody. The reason experts will give you an interview is everybody wants exposure. And the only thing I offered them was a resource box where they could promote what they do to my audience. And there are still experts out there today that need that. And if you know, I would encourage people, when you go out There, get crazy and go for the best expert you can. But if you can't get them, then go drop down a level or two and go for experts that are at not quite that level, but below them. And as soon as you get somebody to say yes, just keep asking experts that are along that same plane of expertise. And as soon as you get enough, you can bounce back up to that top level until you can get those top experts and people will begin to say yes because of positive peer pressure. By the end of that book, I had people thanking me for including them in my book because they were so grateful because they were being included and associated with these other experts that they respected.

Wow, that's brilliant. That's brilliant. So let's talk about how a hypothetical situation, Right. So here's how a writer or copywriter could do this. By the way, I've had really good luck in the past going straight after authors, authors who are about to release a book, just released a book because normally these folks will want the exposure regardless. But if they have a book being launched, they have even more incentive to be interviewed.

That's totally right.

So look, find someone who's got a book, some sort of marketing book about to come out or coming out, reach out to them and see if you can interview them and explain why, what you're doing with it, and let them know that you're going to include links to the book, etc. You do this for a few folks and the reason you want to go to like a marketing author is you want someone who would want the exposure to your audience, which would be marketing directors.

That's right.

That's who's going to buy the book.

Right.

So that's how I would do that if I were a copywriter or a business writer.

Yeah. Well, you know, another idea would be even, you know, to approach marketing directors. Again, you know, see, this is not my expertise. So you would know whether this would, you know, play out the way I'm imagining or not. But I'm assuming there are marketing directors in different arenas that are well known. They're basically a little mini celebrity. Nobody else knows them. But in that arena, they're well known. Now, I bet no one ever asks them for interviews. If you go and begin to ask those marketing directors for interviews, best practices, they're waiting around to be able to tell somebody what they know besides the fact they now know you and like you. And when you approach them later, but you've given them a platform and then all of a sudden you're your site becomes this site where these top marketing directors are sharing their best practices and lessons. And you're attracting marketing directors, which is who you're trying to actually sell to. Right. Anyway, just an idea.

Awesome. What other thoughts or insights do you have from this experience? Because I know we talked about a few earlier.

Yeah, I'll kind of keep going with my story. The next phase. We moved out of the state and I ended up doing marketing for a fairly large church on the East Coast. And I stopped working on my own stuff. But I kept reading, I kept learning. And we came back to the San Francisco bay area in 2008, another recession starts heading. And I realized that this first book I did still has evergreen content. But I started thinking, why don't I interview some more experts and compile those together and add volume two? And so I did that and I ended up with, I think I said 20 experts. I had a blog website, recessionsolution.com, which I still have, which is morphed into a whole different sort of category. But I was writing blog posts. I was writing about marketing and business and the recession. I was getting some traffic. People were sharing it on social media, but it was nothing in impressive. During that time, I started to offer some free consultations to people and I got kind of moving in the area of consulting. But it was during that time that I came across this idea of focusing on the who instead of the what. And I saw it in this marketing book by Dan Kennedy. And then after I saw it there, what usually happens in my life, the reticular activating system in your brain is the part of your brain that suddenly notices things. It's been ignoring its whole. Suddenly I'm seeing it everywhere. I'm seeing Seth Godin talking about it. And so I decided I need to start focusing on my who instead of my what, because I'm still really who are you instead of a who. And so what I did is around 2010, I started to notice content marketing is getting big. And I started to realize, you know what? I've been doing content marketing my whole career by accident, I didn't even know what it was when I had that little music site and I'm doing interviews with people, everything was content and I attracting traffic. And then when I put together that first how to Survive and Prosper in a Recession book, it's content that's advertising me. I'm the product. What I realized is I kind of understood this thing and I came up with this idea for a blog post. This is when Justin Bieber was getting huge. I approached Content Marketing Institute and I just said, hey, I got an idea for post about how Disney used content marketing to make Justin Bieber famous. I said, would you guys like it? This was around 2011, and they liked it, they promoted it, and I began writing for them two or three times a year. I was later interviewed in some of their expert books that they give out for free. But what I realized was by writing for them the same exact type of content that I had been writing on my website, by getting exposure on their site, all of a sudden the results were completely different. You know, I'd post something on my site. You know, let's say I'd get, you know, 20, 30 tweets. I post the same type of content and I just put it over on Content Marketing Institute and suddenly I'm getting hundreds of tweets, all sorts of comments. I can't get, you know, I can't pay somebody to comment on my. On my site. And all of a sudden there's comments galore. The second tip that I would give to your listeners is if you want to change your who is to begin to be featured on other people's platforms, remember I talked about focus on where you're seen. By having my writing seen on Content Marketing Institute, it changed the perception of who I am in the market and it changed momentum in what I was doing. And you can be featured on someone's site by writing a guest post, which I'm guessing most of your listeners would be great at writing. And all sorts of sites need guest posts. And again, start with the highest best site you can try. And if they shoot you down, go to the next level. Do exactly like I talked about with the interviews. But the other thing is you could be interviewed on someone's site because everybody's looking for content. I'm being interviewed by you because you need content and I need content and I need exposure. Everybody needs content. Everybody needs it. And so it's not as difficult as your audience might assume. I think the biggest thing that's ever going to stop them is not that it's not possible, but that we are afraid. The simple thing is that those of us that actually have whatever level of success we have, it's just because we were crazy enough to do it, even though we were scared. And if your audience would do the same thing and just say, you know what, I'm going to try to just see if somebody would take this guest back post, they'd be surprised who says yes. And then things begin to change.

I just listened to an interview with Brene Brown, author of Brene Brown, and I love how she put it. She said, you can have only two things in life. You can have comfort or courage.

There you go.

It's one or the other. Of course, we know what comfort gets you. That gets you more of the same.

That's right.

Or you can have courage and make some big things happen. The other quote I love is the. The everything you want out of life is on the other side of fear.

That's exactly right. And I used to always think courage was that you were not afraid. And what I realized more recently, again, I read it somewhere. Courage is not that you have no fear. Courage is that you're afraid, but you do it anyway. That's what courage is. Because if you're not afraid, then it's not courage. Right. I have to go to the bathroom. I went to the bathroom. That didn't take courage. There's no fear. But whatever you're afraid of and you do anyway, that's courage. Right. So it's not the absence of fear. So don't wait for fear to go away. Just decide, I'm doing this anyway. I don't care even if I fail, then that's courage.

Absolutely. When I started this podcast, I was scared. I was scared of putting myself out there. I was scared of putting this out there and having it fail, but I went for it anyway. Now, this worked out great. Some things have not succeeded, but that's right. You know, you just keep going. So let's talk a little bit about getting more at a tactical level. I'm just curious how. How do you come up with topics to write about, to talk about? I mean, we talked about. One way is right. You can bring in the content through other experts. You can interview them, but even then, you still have to come up with some sort of angle. You still have to come up with questions. How do you come up with interesting topics? I hear from a lot of people who say, I don't know what I could write about that hasn't already been written about.

Right. Well, I'll answer that in two ways. First of all, I think the biggest problem these days that we have is we don't have time to think anymore. We're all going nonstop. We got these little screens on our phones. We never take time to think. If you think about it, 200 years ago, if you and I were alive, we would have so much time to think. There's not electricity. People are sitting under the stars. They're imagining, hey, that Thing looks like a big spoon, this looks like a cow. They're sitting and thinking all the time. By thinking, you begin to have new ideas. When you don't think, your mind's going constantly with distractions. You never have time to think. And I think that's the biggest error in our society right now. And this is just my little side point. I have so many friends that can't sleep right right now, you know, like they have insomnia, it seems like more and more. And this is the problem. I think it is. I'm not a scientist, but this is what it seems to be. We are thinking, thinking, thinking nonstop, or sorry, not thinking. We're going, going, going, letting, you know, just doing all sorts of stuff, not taking time to think. And we finally lay down at night, and you finally give your brain a chance to process, hey, this is how the day went. This is what I want, this is what I don't like. And all of a sudden you're thinking nonstop or sorry, not thinking, we're going, going, going, you know, just doing all sorts of stuff, not taking time to think down at night. And you finally give your brain a chance to process, hey, this is how the day went. This is what I want, this is what I don't like. And all of a sudden your brain has the moment of silence and all of a sudden it just goes. And you can't shut up. And so we can't sleep. So that's a side thought. But if you begin to set aside time to think, you'd be surprised what ideas you can come up with. And I encourage people to begin taking a walk. I think one of the keys to people that were great thinkers is that they took walks. I found this whole infographic about these great experts that in different arenas, but they daily took a walk. And not only is walking good for your health, but don't bring your phone or turn your phone off because as soon as you're walking, you have nothing to distract you. You just have to think. So I would encourage your audience to take a 20 minute walk at least to go think. It's good for you. And then the second thing is I'm always feeding my mind constantly, because I'm feeding my mind, ideas are popping up left and right all the time. You know, like I keep mentioning ideas, I can't remember where they even came from sometimes, you know, So I think they need to be readers if they're going to be writers, they need to be readers or podcast listeners. You know, I mean, again, people that hate reading you know, don't have to feel like, oh, well, that's. I'm stuck, then, you know, they can listen to podcasts. I've been doing that, you know, driving my kids back from school, and it gives you ideas. And so I would just, you know, have that phone ready to record, turn you on your recorder, and tell yourself the idea when you're on the walk or in the car. Don't kill yourself. Don't do anything dangerous, but capture those ideas when they happen, and then you'll begin to have more ideas than you can ever actually write about. If you take the time to think and you take the time to feed.

Your mind, man, I couldn't agree more. And it's interesting that you point that out. I never thought about it that way. You're right. We really don't have a lot of time to think these days. I love my walks. I love my morning routine. I love journaling every morning. That's kind of when I do a lot of my thinking.

Right.

I always keep either a notebook with me or I do, unfortunately, take my phone. But really, for the voice memo feature.

Yeah, exactly.

I can record my thoughts, but I encourage people. Those are some great practical ideas, by the way. I encourage people to mash up with an idea from a podcast or from a book or from some other source with what they already know in their field, because I think those make the most interesting pieces.

That's exactly right.

When you, hey, listen, I came across this the other day, and, you know, this ice cream store, and this is how it relates to, you know, one of the challenges we're having here in B2B marketing, for instance.

Right.

There's just so many opportunities out there to have a unique angle or hook for an issue that's been addressed already. It's really in how you spin it. It's really in how you encourage your audience to look at it maybe a little bit differently from the way they're used to seeing it.

That's exactly right.

That's where the magic is.

Yeah. And, you know, another thought, you know, just came to me as we were talking. You know, most people think of meditation these days, and it's very popular. The Eastern way of thinking of meditation is emptying your mind of things. And, you know, I'm actually against that. But Hebrew, the Hebrew understanding of meditation was a cow chewing its cud. And a cow, I think, has, like, seven stomachs. And when they're chewing the cud, they, you know, they chew the grass, they swallow it to the first stomach, and they Digest it as much as they can, then they pop it back up, chew it some more, pop it down to the second stomach, pop it back up until it's gone through all seven stomachs and by the time it's completely digested. That's what meditation is in the ancient Hebrew understanding. What it means in a practical level is take these ideas, take a simple topic of, let's say prospecting, and just start to. To think about it, just chew it up. Don't just say prospecting is this. But if you begin to chew it up, meditate on what is prospecting, what are ways to think about it. If you go deep on it with that thinking time and you start to meditate on what does this mean, you'll get to deep levels and ways of thinking about it and presenting it that people don't even think about. And all of a sudden when you start to write that stuff, people are like, whoa. Even though the basic idea is the most basic idea everybody's talked about, but the way you present it, the way you frame it, this is what I've lear. If I frame an idea in the right way at the beginning, if I capture their attention and I frame it the right way, I can talk them up. The most basic concept and it'll feel like it's brand new and it'll feel like no one else talked about it because I framed it in my writing. I captured their attention. I framed it with this idea that presents it in a new light.

Beautifully said. That's the key right there. So let's shift gears a little bit. And I know this is a really big topic, but I know you have also a couple of thoughts on this. So you put the stuff out there right now, obviously this could help in terms of nurturing longer term prospects, nurturing dormant clients, and also when new prospects come into your site or they come in contact with you, they can come across these breadcrumbs. And this content elevates you and gives you more credibility. But how can you use this to build an audience?

Well, that's a good question. Again, this is the who factor. Before we talked about on a marketing level. But now the way I want your audience to think about it is in how you actually spend your time. Most business owners are going to spend most of their time on the what, the skill set, the job, which obviously you need to do if you're going to get paid. But what they need to realize is that just doing the work, just being good at what you do is not the thing that's going to lead you to success. If that was true, every great copywriter would be equally successful, but that doesn't happen. In fact, some copywriters are less talented, but they're more successful, right?

Oh, yeah.

And because this has been a truth throughout history, it's not just what you do that brings success, but you need to begin to focus on that. Who. And like you mentioned, you need to make sure that you are focusing on an audience. If I told you three great authors, Herman Melville is the guy that wrote Moby Dick. Emily Dickinson, she's the poet. Most know her. Edgar Allan Poe. If I told someone these here's three authors, what do they have in common? And most people would say they're all successful writers. That's actually wrong. None of them were successful writers. None of them became successful until after they died. In fact, Melville's book, Moby Dick, which we all know these days, was the book that actually began to end his career. His career took a dive with that book. So we think of it as, oh, it's awesome. He thinks of it as, it was the end of my career. Emily Dickinson was so shy, she never left her room. Nobody knew she was a poet until after she died. Her parents. Parents produced her work. So if these people who are obviously amazing writers, greater than you or I or anybody listening, and they couldn't become famous just by focusing on their what, it means that you've got to move beyond the what to the who. You have to build an audience. They were great at actually what they did, but they weren't good at building an audience. And so I would encourage your listeners to begin to focus on the whole of building an audience and what we've been talking about. The good news is that most of what we've been talking about actually builds your audience. When you start interviewing people, those experts start to mention your interviews, and they send their audience to you. When you get interviewed by somebody, when you write for somebody, all of those things begin to draw the traffic that you need anyway. But what I want your audience to realize is we are spoiled these days because. Because at no point in history has it ever been as easy to build an audience. In the past, you had to know the right people. You had to have money to actually get a book published or end up on a radio show or have a TV show. And nowadays, with the Internet, blogging is the digital printing press. Podcasting is the radio in the new form. YouTube is the new television. So we have access to all these things, and for most of the. Most of them, the access is free. But we just need to begin to choose, decide. Am I going to build my audience like you're building it through a podcast, or am I going to build it through writing on a blog? Am I going to do it by video? And then begin to focus what we talked about already to build that audience and to gather those people around this channel, this tool, and around the subject matter that you begin to create?

So what would you advise somebody? Because it's right. All three sound great. Blogging, podcasting, YouTube, and there's others. But how would you advise somebody who could easily fall into this kind of paradox of choice situation where, gosh, I don't know, they all sound good? I'm not sure where to get started. So therefore, I don't do anything, right?

Well, first of all, the key is action. In fact, if they just take. Not even just with this interview with you and I right now, but anything they've listened to, if they just take action on the ideas, I guarantee you. I'm not saying that's going to be instant success. I can't guarantee that. But the people that take action see results. Results don't come from just. I talked about meditating. They don't come from just thinking. They don't come from thinking. You could agree that what we're talking about today, what you and I are discussing is. Is the best information that has ever been. And we'd like to think that. But if someone doesn't take action on it, they will never see results. So my answer to that question would be just take action. So just decide, like, okay, if they all look good, then just pick one, flip a coin, have someone else pick it for you. Obviously you want to be smart. If you hate getting in front of a camera, then you probably don't want to choose YouTube, at least not at the beginning, until you can be brave enough to try it. Even though you're scared. Scared. But pick something and just start moving. Because the people that start taking action are the people that see results. And the people that wait around to take action keep waiting around to see results. And they will keep waiting around to see results.

So true. So true. So, as we wrap up here, Scott, is there any particular thought, recommendation, or piece of advice that maybe we haven't talked about, or maybe something we have talked about that you really want to emphasize here is that people need to take to heart. What would you say?

Well, there's a couple things, but I'll pick one. I would encourage your audience, as they are building an audience, to focus on subscribers not just listeners, not just readers, not just viewers of your videos. And I need to be better at this because subscribers are the thing that makes the difference. Otherwise, it's hard to connect with those people. It's hard to begin to allow them to know, like, and trust you. If you don't build that relationship and someone might come to your site, they might read your article that you did a guest post, you were brave, and you did a guest post somewhere else, they might say, I really might want to work with this person someday, and what's going to happen? They're never going to remember you again. Like, what was that guy's name? What was that girl's name? What show was that even on? I don't even know. But by having the subscribers, by having that email list, you have a way to keep in contact, to keep in front of them for when they are finally ready to make the decision, when they finally have the money. And that subscriber list, again, is where the momentum is, where the success starts to come from. Because you're able to have that audience that. It's almost like it's your little private channel with that audience. And that gives you a power that most people that don't have a subscriber list that just have an audience that keeps visiting and leaving, and they don't know them, they don't know their audience, their audience doesn't know them, you will have so much more power than that person because you built that subscriber list. So it really, again, the number one thing I would say is stop focusing on what, whether it's in marketing or in your life, and start focusing on the who. And when you focus on the who, all of a sudden, sudden things begin to change, even though you didn't really change, Harley.

So, you know, just to give an example there, wouldn't it be a shame if you actually landed a guest post with Content Marketing Institute and people loved it and then they had no way to kind of get in your world, so.

That's exactly right.

The link to your website, they went there, they were impressed. Right. And then there was no way for you to capture their name so you could stay in touch with them until they were ready to hire you. That would be a wasted opportunity.

That's right. And, you know, the way we got connected is Mary Ellen was one of my subscribers to something. She was, you know, she visited my site and we interacted and we had built some more of a relationship, and then she connected us. So, like, it's by building that relationship, that new doors open up that weren't even you didn't even know were possible. New connections you didn't even know you know were out there.

There. Absolutely. This is great, man. This is. So before we wrap up, where can I send people? Where can they learn more about your world? The content you put out there, where can they start a conversation with you?

Two things. Recessionsolution.com that site that I started when it was focused on the recession. I now write about content marketing. I read about business, I write about branding, all sorts of stuff.

Stuff.

Most things nowadays are on content marketing. So they could go to recession solution.com recession without without an S recessionsolution.com and my Twitter handle is ramp R A M P. Like a ramp, you go up ramp. Businesses, they could follow me on Twitter or they could look for my book on Amazon 51 content marketing hacks. Those are three ways they can find me.

Awesome. Awesome. Well guys, check it out. I'll make sure to include links to all of that in the show notes. Scott, thanks again for coming on. This is great information. I really appreciate it.

You're welcome. Thanks so much for having me.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that interview and that discussion and that it got you thinking a little bit more about how you could position yourself as an expert in your field. And I also wanted to remind you that you can grab the detailed show notes@b2b launcher.com so all links a summary of what we talked about is all there. One last quick thing, and this is really more just of an idea. If you're going to be traveling here during the holidays over the next few weeks, I invite you to take me with you. If you have a smartphone, there are many ways to do that very easily. On iPhone, the iOS has a built in podcast app. Makes it very easy for you to subscribe to different podcasts and just kind of keep track of where you left off with different episodes. It automatically downloads new episodes of your favorite shows. It's awesome. And of course you have many different options with Android as well in the app store with different podcast apps. But if you get a lot of driving time, a lot of airplane time, I encourage you to take me with you. And other favorite shows. You know, might as well go ahead and learn a few things and just kind of fill your mind with ideas so that you're ready to go here in the new year when you get back to work. We had one more episode before the year is out. It'll be in a couple of weeks, but until then I hope you have an awesome day and I will talk with you real soon. Take care. The High Income Business Writing Podcast is a production of B2B business launcher launcher. Learn more at B2B launcher dot com.