Learning All Things with Video with Million-Dollar Earner James Creech

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell. And before we get started, if you want to know exactly how to win again and again, go to Wydell on winning.com webinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind.

I'm here with James Creech.

James, it's great to be talking with you. How's the weather out in la?

Things are great, Larry. Nice and sunny today.

Hey, what part of LA are you?

So I'm in East la. Eagle Rock, right between Glendale and Pasadena.

Okay. Pretty spot.

And James has a software company called Paladin software. Started in 2016.

The revenues are closing in on 4 million.

Right now. They're in 25 countries, 5 continents, and mainly really on the attck focused totally on helping companies expand their brands by working with influencers, running campaigns to grow and expand their sales. So let me ask you this. We started earlier. We were talking about emerging out of the Wild West. That's a competitive, it's got to be.

A competitive business that you're in.

How do you guys go about differentiating yourself other than one client at a time? What are you doing? Are you using your own game plan to build your brand and to expand in this arena?

Certainly, yeah. So content marketing is a big part of our strategy. We haven't done too much with influencers per se, but, you know, that's part of the reason why I host a podcast myself. Started it six plus years ago called All Things Video, where I sit down and interview entrepreneurs and thought leaders, particularly in our digital media ecosystem. And then I also share my thoughts every weekday on LinkedIn. So I write, write a post about some of the news or headlines of what's going on in our industry and try to have an opinion about some of the things that are shaping the future of this space online. And then, of course, participating in conferences and events. So I do a good amount of speaking and moderating different panels, all because I think some of that external activity helps us share the message and the story of what we're doing at Paladin, and then also help to kind of push the boundaries of what our industry is accomplishing. It's still a relatively new space, so there's a lot of education we need to do to help continue to evangelize the story of influencer marketing.

Now, what have you learned that's meant. What are things you've learned that's meant the most to you from Running a podcast?

That's a really good question. I started the podcast from. For fun. Right. Just because I think, similar to you, I was in a position where I just met fascinating people and a bit selfishly wanted to ask them a lot more about their lives and their journeys and what I could learn from that experience and then figured, okay, well, I wish I could share this with more people, so how hard could it be to start a podcast? And little did I know, it's quite a lot of work, but it's a lot of fun. So I think the things that I've really learned along the way are, you know, you have to, you know, ask the right questions. So I do a lot of research up front and then try and give people the space to tell their stories. And oftentimes I want to focus on kind of the emotions that they were going through. So, you know, put me at that moment in time. And, you know, what were the decision making criteria that you evaluated? How did it make you feel? What were the things that. What did you do next? Right. So getting that insight into decision making has been really impactful for me. And then I think it makes you, hopefully a better listener and someone who's better able to kind of get people to share the lessons that they've experienced. So how do you encourage people gently to open up? And I do that oftentimes by being very vulnerable and sharing some of the things that I've learned as well. Right. Kind of creating that safe space for dialogue and that often leads to the best conversations is, okay, well, here let me tell you the times I've messed up and what I learned along the way, and that makes other people more willing to share as well.

Okay, where have you messed up?

Good. Follow up. There's a lot of things. One of the biggest pieces of advice that I give to other entrepreneurs that I advise or mentor is really go deep before you go wide. So what I mean by that is find something that you can be the best at the world and nail that one thing really well. It's easy to get distracted by the bright, shiny objects early on, and it's easy to say, hey, we do a everything. We do a million things. But much more interesting is to do one thing very, very well. And it's much easier to tell the story. It's much easier for people to understand exactly what you do. So, you know, for us, it was trying to build too many features and too many products all at once. We should have nailed one thing. How do we just tackle, say, influencer discovery and Then, okay, once we've got, you know, that carved out, let's expand. What's the next logical step? Okay, let's build a CRM where people can track their influencer relationships. Let's build campaign management reporting tools. Obviously we've gotten to all of that by now, but I wish we had just started with one thing and really could hang our head on that. That's definitely been a learning for us along the journey.

You remind me of two things. One is that this whole, you know, between me and you, that's the biggest mistake companies make because you have, you know, you want to be new and your marketing companies say we need a new feature. New feature. But people don't buy features. You know, they, you know, it's like how many people use all the features there is on a microwave.

Truly.

Yeah. And when was the last time you baked pastry on your microwave? Never. Yeah, and so all, you know, I'm driving a Lincoln Navigator now, I've got it on a two year lease, I'm turning it back in. I'm just now getting to where you. I went through the orientation where within an hour and a half and I felt like I was learning calculus all over again. And with a chaser of astrophysics in the end, I never have learned. I had a friend of mine, he's a designer from Verona, Italy came in, Matteo Perrin, and he comes in and out periodically. And so we had to go over to a showroom somewhere. He was showing me things about how the knobs work in my Navigator. I've driven it two years, I have no clue. And so all of the features complicate things. And if you're selling folks, you got to focus on what's the main reason people should get excited about doing business with you. And you guys talked about, but like you can't overemphasize doing that one main thing. Jerry Seinfeld, unfortunately, Tony Bennett, I think is on up in years. I don't know if he's doing concerts anymore. But do you remember, you're so young, you probably don't ever remember Tony Bennett singing that I Left My Heart in San Francisco.

Sure. Oh yeah.

And this was years ago. Jerry Seinfeld went to a concert, heard him singing. After it was over, he said to Tony Bennett, he said, whatever you do, never stop singing that song. Because he said you, because you know, the impact of you singing it all of these years is right there every time you sing it. Nobody else could sing it like you. And it was like Aretha Franklin when she performed at The Kennedy Arts Awards thing, when she was honored. It's unbelievable. These performances that people give, have been giving all of their life, you know, and so it's in entertainment, but it's also in product. Find one thing you do that you can be known for, you can make your bones over. And the thing about finding the right influencer seems like would be an incredible thing.

That's right.

If you can't do that for me, why do I even want to talk to you?

Exactly.

It's like Shark Tank. I've talked to some people who have been on Shark Tank, and the last guy, he actually lives up in Malibu, by the way. He was saying that they can't. They found him, used his, his service. It was knife aid, it was the sharpening the knives, and they use the product, saw it on Instagram and they sought him out. And he said, how did you find me? He said, well, that's how we find a good number of our people. You know, we have tryouts. People send stuff in, but that's not enough. We have to go out and look. And so, you know, that's a good show for your service right there.

That's right.

I'm sure they've got a budget, but a company even that long, that establishes it. It's not like they just roll over the morning and they've got unlimited lineup of the best and brightest new business opportunities or entrepreneurs in the country coming to even a company, a show is established as that. They got to get out and hit the streets to supplement, you know, the goodwill that they already have out there. And it seemed like that would be an incredible thing that, that service. And so you, you guys have got that down to a science. Is that what you're saying? Because before you were talking about it, you say one of the ways it's done is manually. And I, I was thinking, well, that needs to be solved.

Exactly. We're taking people out of the Stone Age and helping them do it, you know, through technology, so automating a lot of their processes. And you're right, we try to sell not on the features, but more on the benefits. So, sure, you know, we've got all these great tools that can help you find the influencers and manage your campaigns, but at the end of the day, the value we're creating is, hey, let me give you several hours or days of your life back and hey, let me help you run a more successful campaign so you know that your marketing spend is, is being allocated wisely. You're not just shooting in the dark and then, you know, giving you this centralized information. So if someone's out on vacation or you know, someone leaves the business, you've got this historical knowledge. It's, it's not lost with an individual. It's actually kind of organized and owned by the company. So we try to communicate, these are the values that we deliver, these are the benefits that the software can provide.

Hey, listen, there's a lot of information online, but there aren't a lot of people who have actually done something. In my case, I've actually built a successful business, has accrued over $5 billion in assets under management and has done well even during trying times. Now, if you want to know exactly how I've done this, go to Whiteellumwinning.com webinar Now I've compressed a decade of learning into five short weeks. Just for those of you who want to give your an incredible advantage and are tired of waiting and watching others move up.

Well, we're talking about marketing and expansion and finding clients with influencers. But really there's power in partnerships, folks. Whatever your business is, there's power in partnerships linking up. That's what even the big boys do. And that's why they're always buying and selling other companies. You know, like When Google bought YouTube, Google did not create YouTube, Google bought YouTube. You know, and they were damned to hell for their stupidity at the time too. Like, you know, all the critics and analysts said, you know, how stupid can you be? You know, people posting their home videos, what a waste of money that is. And so, but they've got it. They were proactive in building those partnerships. And so if you're out there and you're trying to be only the lonely go it by yourself. It's a tough life is short. But you can compress timeframes, you can learn from the best. The best do this and they'll try and develop it internally. You'll see a lot of companies, but then it's like, let's just go buy the best out there. Somebody emerges that's doing it incredibly well. That's why you see these 25, 30 year old multibillionaires, they figured some niche out and they put it together and they got gobbled up by one of the fangs. And so the thing is that.

It.

Seems like that finding the right influencer, it's kind of like finding the right partner. That seems to be, it could be as revolutionary as this computerized fingerprint matching or facial recognition matching. You know, they get a picture of what somebody looks like, they Put it in the computer and the thing goes through thousands in a couple of minutes and comes up with somebody, you know, who's got that same profile, facial profile or fingerprint thing like we got him, you know, our DA DNA match, you know. And so it seems like what you got going on, you guys should spread, spread like the plague all over the, all over the globe.

I hope so. Yeah. There's a lot of really important technical challenges to solve. I mean, you're touching on, you know, computer vision and some of these image recognition technologies which have vast applications, certainly even in our business. Right. How can you monitor video content or social media posts and see what types of content work well and what don't and how do you benchmark performance? All of these kind of new technologies, machine learning, artificial intelligence, can inform the types of tools that we're building as well, which is really exciting.

Let's talk about what you've learned from your podcast guests. In terms of people that become elite, what have you learned that's helped you become elite?

Yeah, there's a lot of probably habits and practices that I can pull out from all the successful guests I've had the fortune of interviewing over the years. I'd say the biggest thing is the most successful people have a practice of self reflection and improvement. Right. So what is your methodology for that? For a lot of people, it's, you know, having a peer group that they can learn from so coaches, other entrepreneurs that they can share their stories with mentors. Oftentimes it's, you know, creating the time and space to not just focus on the tactical, but the strategic. Right. So I call it, you know, there's stuff you do where you're, you're doing things within the business, but you also need to create time in which you're thinking about the business and separating those two. So carving out time for reflection and strategic opportunity process. And then I'd have to say that, you know, I think personally those with the longest term horizons and success are those that are giving of themselves. So it's not just about me and how do I get ahead and make the most money? It's really about, okay, what can I give back? How can I, you know, I remember when I was, you know, a kid fresh out of college and I needed my break. So how can I make sure to be responsive to those who are, you know, reaching out, who are earlier on their journey and pay it forward or, you know, what can I do to be helpful and be a connector of people or inspire people? And I try and reflect that in the work that I do, not just with our team, but in the coaching or advisory and mentorship work that I do with others, is you constantly have to find ways to give it back, because that's going to lead to, you know, that you just put it back into the universe, and that's going to reward you tenfold long term.

Let me point out something that you probably have already realized, but the reason why the best and brightest people that you've had on your podcast are the people who don't just do their business, but think about their business is because they are the ones that have spent time all along the way thinking about how to improve their business and. And improve their performance. The way you get a knife sharp is you got to keep sharpening it. You know, the way, you know, like iPhones, what are we in the 17th iteration of the. The iPhones? Or maybe it's more now. And they. You got to keep improving. And the people who are elite have gone through various, you know, constant reinventions, refinements, and got more efficient, developed other skills, have continued to refine their staffing and simplify things. As a result, their volumes of production have continued to go up. And this is why I was excited to talk to you, because you're focused on growth and getting big. And the reason people should care about that is there is a gravity in business called you either grow or you die. And dying does not come necessarily immediately. It goes through stages where you go stay, you flatline, you know, you start to flatline, you flatline, and then you get bored, and then you slump, and then you sail away into the sunset. And the only alternatives of that, of only being able to stay fresh and inspired and motivated, is to grow, is to get better. And if you're focusing, you know, you. You were listening to James talk about, you know, the best and brightest people. The best and brightest people are the people who do the best job at thinking and noticing, what can we do to be better? And you don't have to be better 1000% if you're better, 1/10 of a percent, 1% per year. I mean, over the next rest of your life, all that continues to add up.

It compounds. That's right.

And all of a sudden you got huge separation between you and everybody else, and they can't figure out how you got.

How you went and left them behind.

Because you were constantly improving. So do you agree with that, James?

Oh, 100%. Yeah. I feel like we're doing Stephen Covey proud because we've touched on so many of the seven habits, I think at some point throughout our chat. But Sharpen the Saw is definitely one of the most important ones. Right. You got to put in the time and the work to reflect, to learn to challenge yourself and have others challenge you as well. And that's the only way to improve over time.

Absolutely. Well, thanks so much, James. It's been great.

If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works and in the real world, I've taken the most valuable business lessons I've learned over 40 years and put them into something for you to watch. Go to Whiteellumwinning.com webinar now in order to move up as fast as possible. I'm Larry Wydell and I run the Million Dollar Mastermind. Go, go Go.