How To Incorporate Story Into Branding To Build Your Business And Make A Bigger Impact with Nick Nanton - I Love Marketing Episode #325

Would you like to know how to trigger the trust chemical inside anyone's brain and cause them to want to do more business with you? How about the secret to getting people deeply and emotionally connected with you and your business? An Emmy Award winning director and producer, Nick Nanton, Esq. Produces media and branded content for top thought leaders and media personalities around the world. Recognized as a leading expert on branding and storytelling, Nick has authored more than two dozen best selling books and including the Wall Street Journal bestseller Story Selling and produced and directed more than 40 documentaries earning five Emmy wins and 14 nominations. If you would like access to the complete presentation, the show notes, the links and the special resources for this episode, please visit ilovemarketing.com 325 that's ilovemarketing.com 325.

I'm Dean Jackson, he's Joe Polish and.

This is the I love Marketing podc. Our presenter is Mr. Nick Nanton with the Celebrity Branding Agency. He's the author of Story Selling. Here's one of his books. Okay, Story Selling. Because marketing is all about telling a story. He's an Emmy Award winning director and television producer. Nick Manton is known as the leading agency to celebrity experts around the world. Along with his business partner JW Dix, he is the co creator and executive producer of the television series Profiles of Success currently airing on the Biography Channel. Representing more than 1800 entrepreneurs and professionals in 33 countries around the world, Nick helps his clients get the media, marketing and PR that they deserve. Nick is recognized as the nation's leading expert on personal branding, as Fast Company magazine, expert blogger on the subject, and lectures regularly on the topic at major universities. He's also an attorney, but don't hold that against him. So he's going to talk about branding. Isn't BS just the people that are selling it to you are full of it.

So give it up for Nick Nanton. All right, so my name is Nick Nanton. I'm originally from the island of Barbados. My family's been there for 300 years. They came as Welsh pirates in the 1600s. So as I was growing up, my dad kept asking me what I wanted to be. I kept telling him I wanted to be a pirate. So the older I got, the funnier I thought it was. You can imagine, the older I got, the less funny he thought it was. Until one day he came up to me and said, hey Nick, I figured out what you're gonna be. I said, what's that, dad? He said, you're a lawyer. That way you can still pillage that's my only bad lawyer joke of the day. But I really am from Barbados. I started playing guitar at 6, started songwriting at 16 because I liked girls and they liked songs. And I put out my first record at 18 of which are still 800 copies under my parents bed. Why? Because all the things I'm gonna teach you today I knew nothing about. Now that I know all these things, I want those records to stay there until that place burns to the ground. So I did all this stuff. I went up the University of Florida at 18 years old. Go Gators. And I figured out there's 50,000 students there. And they had a thing called a student activities fee. Every student put a little bit of money in this fund, which was a big fund. They let a bunch of 20 year old kids run it. So I figured I should get involved. So I got involved and I helped bring in lots of talent. I brought in Bill Cosby, President Bush, Don Shula, Bobby Knight, the cast of the Real World, New Orleans. And I figured out that these people were really just like you or me. I'd been producing records, I had been working with, I still work with a drummer from Tom Painting, the Heartbreaker. I was working the band Sister Hazel. I was making music videos. And I realized that really all these people had certain things in common. So I did what any person would do. I went to law school. And so why did I go to law school? Two reasons. My brother went to med school, so I had to do something. And secondarily I wanted to be the president of a record label. And I knew lots of presidents of major corporations were lawyers. So I went to law school, continued doing media creation and stuff. And then I got out of law school. And so I got married after my first semester of law school, had my first son a week after I took the bar exam. So life and fast forward has always been kind of my forte. So I got out of law school and this whole thing called Napster happened while I was there. I don't know if you caught on that. So that whole business kind of didn't exist when I got out. And so my business partner Jack's like, well, hey Nick, I know what you should do, but you're not gonna like it. I said, what's that? He said, you should practice law. Because I went to law school. The first day in law school, they asked what kind of law you're gonna practice. I said, I'm never gonna practice state of law in my life. And so they thought that was good. Cause they do the look to Your left, look to your right thing. They're not gonna be there. They thought it was gonna be me, but it wasn't. So I got the last laugh there. So out of law school, he says, hey, we can position you as one of the top experts in the entire world as an entertainment lawyer. Does that interest you? I'm like, yeah, it does. He goes, well, what you probably don't realize is you have two unique skill sets. Media creation. I'd made music videos, I'd made magazine ads. I had just done a bunch of media creation. And you understand celebrity buzz building and PR because of the people you've worked with. Okay, cool, said. And what you may not realize about me, and this is him talking to me now. He said, nick, what I have a specialty in is personal branding and direct marketing. He had marketed and sold over a billion dollars worth of products with those two skill sets. So if we put the four of those together, personal branding, direct marketing, media buzz building and PR and media creation, we can position you as one of the top entertainment lawyers in the country. So I bid. So we did it. Within a year of me practicing law full time, I was billing it over $1,000 an hour. And I'm in Orlando. Not the place matters that much. But most of those deals go down to LA or New York. So I don't tell you that to brag. I tell you that to tell you that it worked. So I did what any 20 something year old kid who's billing $1,000 an hour would do. I went to Jack and said, this is awesome, but I don't want to do it anymore. He said, great, what do you want to do? So I want to travel the world and teach people how to do what we did because we just created a freedom formula. Now if anyone follows our formula, they can work less, make more, they can work more, make more, they can have more of an impact. That's what they can do. So he said, that's a great idea, Nick, but you have one big problem. So what's that? He said, you're your only testimonial. Duly noted. So he said, you should write a book. So I said, like an ebook. And he's like, well, everyone's doing ebooks. But no, you'll never get the same type of credibility you'll get from an actual physical hard copy book. So I bit again. We wrote a book called Celebrity Branding youg. It took about six months to write it. I did what I call drive by writing. It's like the computer's open and I kind of walk by and do a little bit of that because I don't sit down for very long, if you haven't noticed. So we wrote the book Celebrity Branding youg. And we took the book and we were getting ready to launch the book. And I did what I thought he had done on his last book because he had a three big book deal with McGraw Hill. Him, the publicist. Everyone brought in this guy, his only job was to make the book a bestseller. So I tried to study what he was doing. He wouldn't tell me anything. And I tried to replicate it from our book. I also emailed everyone I'd ever met and said, practically, I will fly to your house and wash your dog if you will buy my book. So we launched the book. It was Halloween Day, 2008. My son was in a pirate costume. Jokes later. And I filmed the video and it said, r Mateys, buy my daddy's book. Shameless. I know, but it worked. The day the book came out, we had seven bestseller lists. And my life's never been the same since. I travel around the country and now the world. I gave away 1,000 books is how I made my first seven figures. I gave away 1,000 books. That's how I made my first 7 figures. So you don't make money by selling a book. You make money by having a book. Big important point. So now I do that for over 2,200 clients all around the world. And the thing that I want to break down for you today is that's my story. Why I told you my story is because of one thing. Branding is simply storytelling. Most people will try to confuse you about what it is. It's simply storytelling. Tell your story, and that's building your brand. And ultimately, you want other people telling your story for you. So you have to figure out how to tell that story in a way that's effective, that they will want to pass it along to. So we'll do a little exercise here. Try to fill in the blank for me. Tastes great. Less melts in your mouth, not in your. Got not milk, but. Or got. I messed that one up. Got not beer, but milk. Yeah, Right. That's it. All right. So how do you know all these things? Repetition. Right. So the reason why you know all these things, because brands have spent billions and billions and billions of dollars just cramming this stuff in your head. I also know you now watch entirely too much television, but brands spend billions of dollars putting this in your head. So how many of you here have about a billion dollars to spend on your branding. Well, damn it. I usually get at least one. But here's what you gotta do. So the only way to combat that truly, is personal branding, because it's the one thing that you have that no one else has and will never have. So you can either spend money trying to make. Trying to put. Trying to create associations with nameless, faceless objects and words, or you can make people connect with you personally. And so that's what we specialize in. That's what we teach people how to do. So what you have to do, you have to tell your story so that people understand who you are and where you came from. You kind of have this life, and you've got where you start and where you end. And we have this whole journey in between, and things happen to us, good things, bad things. And most of us tend to want to close the door on the bad things. Right. And just forget about them. Well, all those things make you uniquely positioned to be the only person in the world to help your prospect the way you can because of what you've been through. So don't forget those things. That's part of telling your story. Okay? Now, storytelling is really interesting. There's the left brain and the right brain, right? So the left brain is the analytical side. The right brain is known as the creative side. If I asked you which side of the brain do you think stories appeal to, which one would you say? The right side, the creative side. It's actually wrong. That's why I ask. So the left side of the brain is actually what stories appeal to because it helps you make sense of things you otherwise wouldn't understand. So it takes a bunch of facts and puts them together into something that you want to believe in, and it makes sense out of it in the analytical side of your brain. So think about, would you rather watch Braveheart or read a book on the history of Scotland? Braveheart, right. Want to watch Mel Gibson kicks him ass? So that will give you. That's how that works. Now, every time you tell a story that people connect with, there's a chemical in your brain called oxytocin that's released. Not what Rush Limbaugh got in trouble for. That's oxycontin. This is oxytocin. This is a chemical you have in your brain. When you give someone a hug, when you have sex, this is released. You can actually get the same effect from telling a story. Also, when this chemical is released, it builds trust. So if you tell a great story, you build trust. Now, let's Talk about how to really use this to your advantage. Now, all these things I'm telling you can be used for good or for evil. I ask that you only use them for good. So anyone know what Dunbar's rule is? I learned it from reading Peter D. Manus book Abundance. Basically, you can have 100 relationships. You can only ever have really 100 relationships at one time. Been researched. I didn't do the research, but they tell me it's true. So think about it. If someone watches Oprah every day, Oprah takes over one of those 100 spots. So if you watch Oprah every day, you take over one of those 100 spots. I think your brain can definitely distinguish between your mother and OPRAH Being at 1 and 100 or whatever. But the whole point is you create relationships and Oprah is creating a relationship through media. So let's talk about the effect of media on storytelling and your brand. So you can create many media formats that are one to many but feel like one to one. Well written newsletters, CDs, DVDs, Internet videos, emails to your list. Those feel like one to one communications, but they're one to many. If you show up in your client's mailbox or inbox regularly, you will get Dunbar's rule effect media effect on your clients and prospects. You actually become their friend in the business. And if you have a friend in the business, how many people do you call to get a quote? One you call your friend in the business. So it makes price irrelevant, it makes competition irrelevant. All based on building your personal brand. But you cannot do that unless you tell your story. So in closing, what I want you to understand is that building your brand is nothing more than telling your story effectively. Telling your story effectively through media. Media is simply a medium for telling your story. And when you do it effectively and you connect with people on a one to one level using one to many media formats, you can connect with lots of people. You can create relationships. The trust factor will go up. They'll get oxytocin, their brains. They will actually feel like they are a part of your story if you let them in on it. And so they will ultimately feel like if they went to your competitors, they would be tearing down what they've helped to build. So go out and tell your story. That's how you build your brand. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to this episode of I Love Marketing. If you'd like to learn more about the Genius Network annual event, please visit geniusnetworkevents.com that's Genius Network events. If you would like access to the complete presentation, the show notes, the links, and the special resources for this episode, please visit ilovemarketing.com 325 that's ilovemarketing.com 325. Sam.