Nicholas Hutchison Speech at the Create Your Own Economy Conference 2022

He is the founder of BookThinkers, a company dedicated to spreading the personal power— the power of personal development books. Nicholas is focused on developing insightful content and interviewing the world's top nonfiction authors for his podcast Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. He's interviewed people like Grant Cardone, uh, Brian Tracy, and he's a digital nomad. He actually spends most of his time in different countries working on his business. Give it up for Nicholas Hutchison!

Ah, this is exciting. A tip that I was given for public speaking is when you walk on a stage, you want to be silent for a few seconds. You want to ground yourself. And so I'd like to invite everybody here just to be silent for a second. Really be present. Think about the fact that you're here. This is an amazing opportunity to learn so much. We've had so many cool speakers so far. And I hope that I can provide you some value as well. So I'd like to start off today's presentation with a question. Raise your hand if you have read the legendary book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Oh, awesome. Over half the room. Now raise your hand again if I can call on you and you can tell me all 7 habits.

One person.

Okay. It begs the question— I'm going to throw the question up here— what is the use of reading or learning anything, any information, if you can't recall what you know? What is the use of reading or learning anything if you can't recall what you know? There have been a lot of amazing speakers so far today. There are going to be more amazing speakers throughout today and tomorrow. And if you don't have a system to internalize, organize, retain, and implement the information that you're learning at this conference or from the amazing books that you're reading, you're leaving something on the table. So that's one of the subjects that I'm here to talk about today. Only if you can remember information can you live it. That's something that one of my mentors, Kevin Horsley, tells me all the time. And I'd like everybody to write this one down: only if you can remember information can you live it. Because here's the thing: you've spent your hard-earned money to be here at this conference. You're spending your time, which is one of your most valuable resources, to be here and to listen to the speakers that are up on the stage. But if you choose not to internalize, organize, retain, and implement the information that you're writing down in these notebooks and consistently review it, then you're leaving something on the table. And so again, that's one of the subjects that I want to talk about today. When the legendary Bob Proctor used to take the stage, he would say, some of you are going to learn something today. Some of you are going to get a lot of information out of the conference, but most of you are going to choose not to review the information. You're going to write it in these notebooks and you're going to move on. You're going to be excited for a couple of days and you're going to move on and nothing's going to happen. There will be no real behavior change. So one of my goals in the first half of the presentation today is to teach you some of the methods that I've learned from guys like Kevin Horsley in this book, Unlimited Memory. I'd highly recommend it. And from some of the hundreds and hundreds of books that I've read, and we'll get into that story in just a minute. So, who am I? My name is Nick, and for the purpose of today's discussion, there's really only 3 things that you need to know about me. Number one, you can see there's a little book icon here. I'll tell you guys a little story. When I was 21, graduating college, I was in a very confusing place. On one side of the spectrum, I had developed a little bit of an ego. I was not a lot of fun to be around. And I would usually try to be the center of attention at the expense of the other people around me. And that did not make me happy. On the other end of the spectrum, I had a lot of insecurities, especially public speaking. So if you would have told me that I would have been on this stage back in, you know, whatever that was, 2016, I would have run in the other direction. And so I had a lot of insecurity, I had a lot of ego, and I read a couple of good books. And those books totally transformed my life. I mean, I am literally a different person standing here than I was back in 2016. And it's because I internalized, organized, retained, and implemented the information from the books I was reading and created real behavior change. And so I actually started a business in that space too. It's called Book Thinkers. We are a network of social media communities. We have a podcast. We do a bunch of other fun stuff, all with the central mission of spreading the positive power of personal development books. These books have the power to change your life if, like Bob Proctor says, you actually take what's in these notebooks, all of these amazing notes that you're writing down, and you retain the information using the systems that you're going to learn about today. Number 2 on the screen, we've got Instagram. Now, back then, I was also not a social media guy. I never really had any personal social accounts. But when I started posting about the books that I was reading, it started to gain a lot of traction. Instagram is where I was able to develop my first community. It's also where I was able to make my first money as an entrepreneur. And so even if you're somebody I saw before Jeff asked if there were any business owners and a lot of hands went up. Even if you're somebody that doesn't love social media, there's a lot of power in leveraging social media because money goes where attention flows and there's a lot of attention on social media. There are billions of people using these platforms every single day. So regardless of what you do, regardless of what your services are, your products are, what you want to do, your target customer exists On these platforms. And so during the second half of today's presentation, I'm going to tell you a little bit about some of the strategies that I used to go from 0 to over 100,000 on our main platform. And number 3, this little graphic represents my core value, my number 1 core value, and that's progress. Just like Kevin, I'm fighting against mediocrity every single day because it's so easy to be lazy. It's so easy to fall victim to the instant gratification and dopamine hits that we get when we open up our smartphones. You can sit and scroll TikTok for hours, but it's not going to improve your life, and it's not going to help you make an impact on other people's lives. So I will go as far as saying that I hate mediocrity. I really hate it. And I'm motivated by progress. What that means for me is when I go to sleep at night, if I've made progress in my health, my wealth, or my happiness, I'm going to sleep like a baby. If I've helped somebody else make progress in their health, wealth, or happiness, I'm going to sleep even better. I'm a little bit of a biohacker too. On my Oura Ring, I'll literally get up to 45% deep sleep, which is crazy. That's a little bit about me. Today's agenda, like I said, is broken into 2 parts. The first part of the presentation, we're going to talk about how to internalize, organize, retain, and implement the information that you're going to learn at this conference, every other conference you go to, and every single book that you read or course that you take. And in the second half of the presentation, I'm going to talk about the importance of social media and some of the strategies that I use to organically grow my audience and to do real business and make real money in the real world. And my ask before I jump into this is that the audience participates a little bit. If I say something that you don't fully understand, if there's something that you don't fully understand or connect with or maybe even disagree with, Just yell my name. Nick, I don't get it. Explain that a little bit more. Because odds are, if you're thinking it, somebody else is probably thinking it. If there's a gap in my presentation and you don't fully understand it, just tell me. And I'll be happy to stop, and we can go back and forth a little bit. All right? Everybody agree?

Yeah.

Awesome. So part 1, how to internalize, organize, retain, and implement more information from the books we're reading, the conferences we're going to, like this one. I'm going to talk about 3 things. Number 1, retention starts with your intention. That's a subject that Jeff also talked a little bit about, but just for a second, I was kind of hoping that he'd go a little bit more into it. Intention has totally changed my life, and I can't wait to share with you why. It's one of the most powerful things that I've ever learned. Number 2, repetition will strengthen your retention. Kevin talked a little bit about the sticky notes. The sticky notes are going to be an integral part of what I'm talking about today, too. And then number 3, action strengthens retention. We need to get out there and create real behavior change in our lives. So, you can write these down, but we're going to review them all individually. All right, number 1. This one's a little science-y, but retention starts with intention. Our brains have this little bundle of neurons on the top of our brainstem called an RAS. RAS stands for reticular activating system. It's really actually a filtering system in our brains because we receive bazillions of inputs into our brain every day, and we only focus on a few of them. And the environmental cues that we have around us and the questions that we ask and the things that we focus on, that determines your filter. And so I was actually at a conference about 9 months ago, and a speaker was on stage, and he said something I'll probably never forget. He said, there is power at the conference, obviously, with the speakers teaching you subjects that maybe you're not totally familiar with. But there's also power in proximity, in the people that are here today. A lot of business owners. It's rare air to be a business owner. There's a lot that everybody can learn from each other. But unless you know exactly what you need help with, you're probably going to miss the opportunity. You need to have an intention. So show of hands, and I'm not sure how many it's going to be, but did you guys actually write an intention before coming here? Do you have a very specific thing that you need help with and that you're looking for? A couple of people. Awesome. That's something that after my presentation, if there's a couple of minutes, I'd like you guys to focus on. Because if you bump into somebody walking back from the bathroom or in line getting food or whatever the case is, And they say, hey, what do you need help with? You should be able to answer that question. Again, otherwise, you're going to miss an opportunity. So intention is really, really important. And when we're talking about the RAS system in the brain, here's a little thing that I do with books. Every single time I read a book, I write my intention for the book, and I try to make it as specific as possible. You can use the SMART framework too. Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-oriented. And I write the intention of the book on the inside cover. And every single time I pick up that book, because I don't read them all in one sitting, every single time I pick up that book, I review the intention. I tell the RAS system in my brain, here's what we're going to focus for today. Because you can read a great book like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, But if you don't have a very specific intention for what you're trying to get out of it, chances are you'll read the book, you'll move on, you'll read another great book, and you won't retain even the most basic information from it. So again, what is your intention for this conference? Why are you here? What are you looking to do? If you don't state the intention over and over and over and over again, You're going to leave something on the table. There's an opportunity cost to not stating your intention with clarity. So I know I'm going to hammer home these points many, many times, but the power of intention has totally transformed my life. I've read somewhere between 400 and 500 nonfiction personal development style books over the last 7 years, and I've just about implemented something from every single one of them because I'm very clear on my intention. And I don't just read without a purpose. I read with A purpose. All right, number 2, repetition strengthens retention. And this is probably the most complicated slide that I'm going to throw up here today, but if you guys could take a look at it for a second. On the vertical axis, you see memory retention. When you learn something, you're going to retain 100% of it for a very short period of time. But unless you repeat that information, unless you look at it again, the chances are it's probably going to dissolve and disappear. So it's very important that you repeat. Again, repetition will strengthen your attention. The more often you go through the information and you review your intention before you do that, the more often you're actually going to implement something that could change your life. And so Kevin passed out these sticky notes. When you go home, go through your notebook. You're going to have tons of miscellaneous great takeaways. You're going to be excited about a lot of them. But like Kevin said, what you wanna do is take the 20% of your notes that have the opportunity to change 80% of your life related to your intention, and you wanna stick them up on your bathroom mirror or on your fridge, whatever the case is, and you want to review them every single day. This is what I do with the information that I learn from books. I review that information every single day. And Kevin and I, before this all kicked off, we were talking a little bit about How do we help everybody retain and implement? Because Kevin goes to a lot of conferences where you get excited for a couple days, you really do, and then it fades away because you don't have a system in place to internalize and to organize the information. And that's exactly what these sticky notes are gonna do for you. Now I have the letters P, B, and T up here. One of my other mentors, his name's Evan Carmichael, he's an amazing guy. He says these are play bigger triggers. They're environmental cues that you can set up in your office space or your bathroom while you're brushing your teeth, or in your kitchen while you're preparing food. And they're going to help rewire your subconscious to play bigger, to think bigger, to be better. Play bigger triggers. That's what they are. And I love play bigger triggers. I try to wear shirts with motivational lettering on them. I try to have like little trinkets on my desk that remind me of how much potential I have. I try to put people around me that believe in me. And attending conferences like this is a great example of people that believe in you. And again, if you have an intention and you can articulate what you need help with, the likelihood that somebody here can help you close the gap between where you are and where you wanna be goes sky high. So play bigger triggers. And I've got 3 more sticky notes here. NLP, neuro-linguistic programming. All of us have so much self-talk. We have things that we default to. When you're feeling a little tired, what do you default to? A hit of dopamine? Is it your cell phone? What is it? And you can rewire your default pathways slowly. Takes a lot of time. You've got to review the information and repeat it over and over and over and over again. But eventually, and this happened with me with gratitude, I know that's been a big subject that we've been talking a lot about today.

Yeah.

For years after I read about the benefits of gratitude, I wrote 3 things that I was grateful for in a notebook every single day without fail for years. And instead of driving down the highway in my car and I see a Ferrari go by and I go, oh shoot, I wish I had that car, I'd say no. Instead of focusing on what I lack, I'm going to focus on what I have so that I don't lose what I already have, which is a car. And so I'd be grateful for the car that I was already driving. And this behavior continued to change and change and change. My default pathway always became, let's look for an opportunity. Let's look for an opportunity to be grateful. And that's exactly what happened because of sticky notes just like the ones that Kevin gave you. So, big recommendation. Like he said, when you go home, don't just put the notebook somewhere and leave it alone. You want to review the information, especially the 20% of information that has the opportunity to change 80% of your behavior. And then number 3, this is the 3rd section of the first half of the presentation. Action strengthens retention. I've got 2 little graphics up here. The first is a cookbook. There's this funny little metaphor that gets passed around the personal development book industry. Imagine you bought a cookbook on how to make the world's best chicken parm. You opened it up and you read it and you studied every detail and you took notes. But you never made chicken parm. You never actually implemented what you read. That seems so crazy to us, but we read books on real estate and then we never invest. We read books on dating and we never go up to somebody at the bar. We read— we go to conferences like this and literally learn how to solve the problems that we're facing in our lives, and we choose not to solve them. So think about the cookbook. It's like reading a cookbook on how to make the world's best chicken parm and choosing not to implement it. You'll never know how it tastes. And so every time you read a good book or you come to a conference and you learn some cool information, see how it tastes. You have to actually take action. And then number 2, I've got a little video game controller up here. I've got a little thing against video games. I like to say that if you read a good personal development book and you choose not to change your behavior, then it's nothing more than a form of entertainment. And this conference is the same thing. If you choose to come here, spend your time and your money, take some good notes, but choose not to change your behavior, then right now I'm not a form of education, I'm just a form of entertainment for you. Why are you here? To create behavior change. Don't forget that. Action strengthens retention. And there's a little quote, you guys have probably seen this passed around social media quite a bit. Edgar Dale, and he says that we remember 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, 30% of what we see, 50% of what we see and hear, 70% of what we discuss with others, 80% of what we personally experience, and 95% of what we teach others. So I'm going to let you guys in on a little secret, something that I've been doing for about 5 years now, an accountability group. Whenever I learn information from something like this, I want to go and teach it to my friends. Every time I go to a conference, I go back and I take out the notebook and I go to my accountability group and I say, here are all of the biggest takeaways. And I try to reiterate it like the rule of 16 that Jeff was talking about earlier. In 16 seconds, can you explain to a 16-year-old, etc.? You want to be able to take the information that you're learning here today and talk about it. That's a form of repetition. Talk about it. Teach your friends. Rise together. Improve their potential. I actually have an accountability group that I've met with on a weekly basis for maybe about 4 years. It's a group of 5 people. We each maintain an activity tracker that kind of looks like this. We list the things that we learn, that we want to try, that we want to implement on the tracker with the number of times that we want to execute it that week. And then on Sundays, For years now, we've been meeting via Zoom or Skype or whatever video call, and we go through, here's what I told you guys I wanted to implement, here's how I did, can you offer any feedback, constructive criticism, room for improvement? This is the best form, again, like system to organize the information and actually provoke yourself to take action that I'm aware of. And so there are probably some of you in here that would love to be part of an accountability group that meets on a weekly basis where you can talk about subjects like this. Because I run a big personal development book community, a lot of people reach out to me and they say, hey, listen, thank you for creating this community because personal development is a rather lonely place. Sometimes you're the most motivated person in your friend group, in your circle, in your household, and you need to have a place like this where you can retain the information by taking action and teaching it to others. So I'd recommend that everybody goes out and tries to get some of the most motivated people in their circle or even meet somebody here that would like to participate in an accountability group with you. That's how you take action on the information that you're learning. All right? Presentation's halfway over. That was part 1. So remember, retention starts with intention. You have to know why you're here. Why are you at this conference? Repetition strengthens retention. You want to review the information on the sticky notes that was given to you. And then number 3, action strengthens retention. You want to create an accountability group. You want to teach this information to others. You don't want it to be like that chicken parm recipe that you never actually taste. It's kind of weird that we do that with information. All right? All right, that's halfway through. Does anybody have any questions? Nobody's interrupted me yet. No? Awesome. So part 2, I've actually structured this in the form of the 7 Habits, which is kind of funny. The 7 Habits of Leveraging Social Media to grow your business. The second half of the presentation today is extremely action-oriented. So a lot of what I'm going to teach you are things that you can actually go and implement into your social media networks to grow them and foster better relationships and make some money, network more efficiently, whatever your goal is, whatever your intention is. Here are the 7 habits. Number 1 is be proactive. And during this part of the conversation, I'm going to tell you some social media statistics that will blow your mind. There's money to be made on social media, that's for sure. Number 2 is begin with the end in mind. What 20% of information related to social media can lead to 80% of your social media success? And then once you've defined those things, we move on to number 3, put first things first. What are you going to do first? What action are you going to take? Number 4 is think win-win. We'll talk a little bit about raving fans. How to incentivize good behavior in your social media communities and with your businesses, your customers. Number 5 is seek first to understand, then to be understood. God gave all of us 2 ears and 1 mouth, and we should use them in that ratio, especially on social media. Number 6 is synergize. We're going to put everything together and see what the result looks like. And then number 7 is sharpen the saw. I'll talk a little bit about some additional resources that you have access to. So habit number 1, be proactive. To be proactive means to take responsibility. And look at these numbers up on the screen. Facebook has 2.9 billion monthly active users. YouTube, 2.3. Instagram, 1.4. TikTok's over a billion now. Even LinkedIn, which nobody thinks is a social network, but it has 734 million monthly active users. So my point that I made earlier was that where attention goes, money flows, regardless of what you do. Your customer exists on social media, and if you're not on there, there's an opportunity cost because your competitor or somebody similar to your competitor is grabbing their attention and using it. Now, with business owners, sometimes we have a little bit of a fear of social media. We default to traditional forms of advertising. And I've got a picture of a billboard up here. And what's tough about traditional forms of advertising is they cost money. You have to pay to play. You have to fork up a bunch of money. And like Jeff said earlier, he started with a credit card that had a $20,000 limit and that was it. That's the beauty of social media. It's based on effort, not money. Effort. You need to show up every single day and provide effort and you can make money. You don't need money to make money. And that's what I did. I started posting on my Book Thinkers account, just the books that I was reading kind of informally all the way back in 2018, I think. And then boom, through consistency, people started to pay attention and it started to grow organically. We'll talk about some of the strategies that I used in just a minute, but I didn't spend any money and I built a business. And everybody here should think about that too. Sometimes business owners say, I don't want to build out a whole social media division because it's going to cost a lot of money. No, it doesn't. It's totally free. And the other benefit is that traditional advertising is short-term and transactional. You might drive by a billboard, you might take a picture of it, try a product once, and then you move on. But if you follow somebody on Instagram, I mean, the likelihood that you unfollow them is very low. You have somebody now in your community for life as a business owner, and you can build a relationship and build trust and provide value. Habit number 2, begin with the end in mind. That question again, what 20% of social media-related activities can lead to 80% of your success on social media? And as somebody who's been in the space for a very long time now, here are my 3. Number 1 is deliver daily value. Number 2 is grow your tribe. And number 3 is reward raving fans. And I'm going to tell you exactly how I view each one of these categories. Habit number 3, put first things first. Deliver daily value. A lot of people think that posting on social media 7 days a week is a lot of work, and I'm here to tell you that it's really not. All right, I need a volunteer. We talked about this one before. And what's funny is I actually wrestled when I was in high school, and then I did a little bit of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and that's what he does. So hopefully he doesn't hit me. So there's this philosophy of it. Any of you guys heard of this before? Jab, jab, jab, right hook. It's a Gary Vee thing. A couple of people. Okay, good. So the idea is when you're standing up next to somebody and you're gonna box, right, and you throw a jab, what's happening? I'm learning a little bit more about how he's going to respond. We're going to see what he does. And by the time I throw a right hook, it's going to be more accurate, right? Because I know a little bit more about what he's going to respond with. And a lot of business owners, they get on social media and all they do is they throw right hooks. They're like, buy my thing, follow this, show up to this webinar. It's just right hook after right hook after right hook. But what Gary Vee says is when you're jabbing, you're building a relationship, right? You're just learning a little bit more about your follower. They're learning a little bit more about you. You're building trust. They kind of know what's going to happen. And once you've delivered value for long enough and then you throw your right hook, which is a call to action like buy this, buy that, buy this, buy that, they already have a relationship with you. They're more likely to buy from you. So anyway, I guess I probably didn't even need you, but I'd want to throw some punches. So this, this philosophy, jab, jab, jab, right hook, is something that a business owner should take into account. Don't show up on social media throwing right hooks all day long. Social media is a place to provide value over and over and over again. Jab, jab, jab, jab. And then by the time you throw a right hook, your opponent's been weakened a little bit, they know you a little bit, they see the value you're providing, and they want a little bit more. So they'll buy. That's a philosophy for an introduction to delivering value. The second thing that I want to talk about today, and this is another Gary Vee philosophy, is that business owners think it's a lot of work to create content for social media all day long. Document what you're already doing. Human beings, we have this weird bias where we don't find ourselves interesting, so we think other people aren't going to find us interesting either. But that's not the case. Other people are fascinating. That's why pages like Humans of New York blew up. You're just reading profiles of random people because we find other people interesting. So instead of creating content, document what you're already doing as a business owner, even if it's walking your dog or taking your kid to a T-ball game. I mean, even with my community right now, I should probably document what I've got going on. Yeah? All right. What I'll do is just a quick video of everybody, and if we could do like a 1, 2, 3, create your own economy.

1.

That could be fun, right? Yeah? All right, we'll do it. 1, 2, 3. Preach strong coffee. So that's an example of just documenting what you're already doing. People are going to find that interesting. Your followers are going to find it interesting what you're doing. You're here at a conference learning some amazing things. Regardless of what you sell, Go back and share what you've learned. Teach it to other people. Remember the 95%? Teach it to other people. Go back on your Instagram stories or your TikTok or Snapchat or whatever, and just teach your followers what you learned. What are your 20% of biggest takeaways? Provide value. Document, don't create. And the next thing that I want to talk about is that video builds trust and leverage. When I was first starting out on socials, I was pretty insecure about video content. I really did not want to put my face on social media. I was scared that people would make fun of me. At the time, I had a lot of verbal pauses in my language, but I stuttered a little bit. Like, it was bad. But what I realized was that without a face on my accounts, it would be very hard to build trust with the people that were following me. Because oxytocin, that love drug that gets released when you're in person with somebody, can also be released through a video. But it's not going to be released through a picture post or something like that. You have to build a relationship through video. And I like to say that you can't get to your 100th video, which is really clean, you're well-spoken, you've got a nice background, you can't get to that without your first 99. So my first videos are still up on YouTube. They're hard to watch, but it shows me how far I've come as a video content creator and as somebody who likes to speak for a living. And the second thing is leverage. You know, I've put thousands of videos out into the universe, and they all still exist, and they're all still being consumed. So it's almost like a virtual version of me is teaching people around the world right now while I'm giving this speech. Is that not the best form of leverage? It's infinite because these social media platforms are free. As a business owner, again, regardless of what you sell, You should be posting on social media every single day, adding people into your leads funnel. Social media is a sales tool, and if you're not putting content out there, then people can't watch it. You can't hit home runs from the dugout is like a cool way to put that. You can't do it. So you need to get into the game. You need to step up to the plate. And again, like sometimes while I'm sleeping or going to sleep, I guess I should say, I think it's kind of crazy that I'm literally teaching people and adding value. To people all over the world right now, and I'm not even, not even in front of anybody. It's the craziest form of leverage. So that was number 1, deliver daily value. What I tried to show you guys was that it's not hard. You just document what you're already doing via video, upload it to socials, and you're going to create more customers and more community and more trust and more leverage in your business. But number 2, there are growth strategies that I've used to improve my business. Has anybody heard of the $1.80 strategy? A couple people. Awesome. Yeah. The $1.80 strategy— I've tried over the years, seriously, I've tried dozens and dozens and dozens of different tactics to grow my audience organically. This is the one that takes the cake. This is easily the best and most efficient one. You guys familiar with the term 2 cents? Like you just provide your opinion, your feedback. What you want to do on social media is search hashtags related to your business. So for me, I could search hashtag the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and posts are going to pop up almost on any social platform. There's a search functionality, but we'll talk about Instagram. On Instagram, they'll filter the information in 2 ways. They'll say this is the trending content and this is just the most recent content. So you want to click on the trending content and you want to leave your genuine 2 cents on the top 9 posts. Click into each one, leave a genuine comment, not, hey, follow me, but, oh, I really thought that habit number 3, put first things first, was cool too. And that's going to be a passive invitation for that account owner to check you out. They're going to see the comment. They're unfamiliar with you. You're new to their community. They're going to check you out. If you're posting video content, documenting what you're doing, providing value all day long, jabbing, They're going to say, I want to check that guy out, I'm going to follow him. And if you do that on 10 hashtags a day, top 9, you get to $1.80. Now, it's a lot of manual work, but you've got to get the flywheel moving with a little bit of a push. And this is the little bit of a push that enabled me to grow my accounts. And at first, my Instagram account from 0 to 500, 500 to 1,000, 1,000 to 25, 25 to 100. This is that strategy. So what I'd recommend if you're interested in growing your social media accounts is to go home and search $1.80 strategy and watch Gary talk about it. He's a little bit more professional than I am, and he goes a little bit deeper. He'll bring up some examples on the screen, and there's really some good content out there. Number 2, and this one's really good too, borrow credibility. You know what's interesting about trust? is that trust is transitive. I've worked with a lot of really popular, really big names. Some of them people like, some of them people don't like. But if you trust somebody like Grant Cardone and I'm hanging out with Grant, you're gonna trust me because if you trust Grant and Grant trusts me, you're gonna trust me because trust is transitive. So a question to ask yourself, something to think and journal a little bit about is, Who are the most famous people in your industry? Who are the rock stars in your local communities, in your states? Who are the rock stars on social media that talk about the, the same things that you do? Because if they're in your industry and they talk about the same things, their followers are also going to like your content. And if you have more followers, then you can sell more and do more business and build more relationships. So borrow credibility. What I did was I said, okay, I'm in the nonfiction space. I've got all these authors that I would love to interview and work with. So I decided to create a podcast. I created that podcast because I wanted to exchange value with them. The value that I was getting was their credibility. The value that they were getting was access to a very large audience of nonfiction book lovers. Right? So they'd give me 30 to 60 minutes on a Zoom call. I'd interview them for my podcast. But now all of a sudden I'm hanging out with all of these A-list people in the personal development space and I'm borrowing their credibility. Now they're not thinking, oh, this kid just wants to be pictured with me. They're thinking, I'm going to get to speak to tens of thousands of people in his audience. How cool is that? And so what way can you borrow credibility is a question that I'd ask you. It's great for growing your tribe. Even if you're a local insurance rep, who's the insurance superstar that everybody knows? If you're— it doesn't— like I said, it doesn't matter what product or service you're selling. There's somebody that's a superstar in your space. And one thing that I've learned is all of these people are way, way more accessible than you think that they are. Somebody looks at somebody with a billion-dollar net worth and says, I could never talk to them. Not true. They would love to talk to you. That's what they're doing for a living. And so create a platform, maybe it's a podcast, maybe it's a social media show, maybe it's an opportunity to do an Instagram Live or something, and borrow credibility. It's a great way to build your audience. So habit number 4, think win-win. You want to reward raving fans. So what is a raving fan? A raving fan is somebody that's a customer of yours, And they sing your praises, right? They sing their heart out. They love what you've got going on. Everybody has them. Maybe they're the person that comments most frequently on your Instagram posts. Maybe they're somebody who continues to walk into your office and purchase things on a weekly basis. They are your raving fan. Number 2, after they sing your praises, they're willing to provide constructive feedback. If you send out a survey, they'll take it. They'll provide their real feedback. They'll give you value. And number 3, that's like a little shopping cart graphic up on the screen. They will spend money, right? We're all in business and creating our own economies so that we can live a life of financial freedom. Like Kevin kind of joked around when I was walking up here, after reading The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, I thought, I want that life. I want to travel 6 months of the year and sit on remote beaches and work from my laptop and read books. And I was able to do that by building my community and by having raving fans spend money. So don't feel guilty as long as you're providing value with your service. You're giving more value than you're taking in terms of dollars. You know, sky's the limit. I'm figuring that out. And so every business has them. You want to find them. Like I said, they might be the person that engages most frequently with your Instagram page. You want to engage back. I was watching a speech one time, again going back to Gary Vee. I, I don't even love the guy, but I've learned so much from him. Gary said to the audience, he's like, who here wants more followers? Everybody put their hand up, and he picks on somebody, and he says, what's your social media handle? And I think the guy gave him an Instagram handle, and so he puts the Instagram up on the big screen, and he goes into each post, and Gary says, why aren't you responding to comments? This is a business page. People are literally asking where they can buy your product or service, and you're not even responding to them. So how can you dare ask for more followers when you're not even engaging with the ones that you have? That was a really powerful lesson for me. So you want to locate those raving fans, and you want to engage with them. Then you want to over-reward them. A raving fan can sell 10 times better than a sales rep or a business owner can. Because they're a user of the product or service and they're super happy with it. And so for me in my community, whenever I'm working with an author that wants to send me an extra 25 books, I'll just send 25 books out to people in my community. I do that every single month. I want to incentivize good behavior. I want them to come back. I want them to feel like they got a unique experience when they were dealing with my businesses. You want to over-reward them. Number 5, seek to understand, then to be understood. So like I said before, God gave us all 2 ears and 1 mouth, and we should use them in that ratio on social media. And what that means is the algorithm on any social media platform is the same. They're always changing. It's this big intimidating word, but here's how they work. They do microtesting. So you post a piece of content, it gets distributed to a small number of your followers. If your followers engage with it, that means it's valuable. That means that that social platform will distribute it to more people, more of your followers, more people that aren't following your page. That's how you get them to distribute it. They have to engage with it. But if they don't engage with it, it means that it's not valuable. And if it's not valuable, they're going to smush it down and it won't get seen by anybody. One of the biggest things that I have to teach my customers is that Your followers determine value, you don't. Just because you think something's cool, if it doesn't perform well and it continues to get smushed by the algorithm, I don't care if you think it's the best thing since sliced bread. If it doesn't perform well, it is not valuable. And so when you post content, don't be afraid of the numbers. Let's say you post 50 pieces of content and 3 or 4 of them did really well. Those are the most valuable pieces of content. Listen to your followers. They're telling you, we want more of this. We find it to be the most valuable content that you're posting. And then post more of it. Post a lot more of it because that's how you can provide value. That's how you can grow your social media followings. Habit number 6 is synergize. What this means is as you take each one of the pieces of this puzzle and sort of combine them together, you start delivering daily value. By documenting what you're already doing and jabbing instead of throwing right hooks all of the time, and you're actively growing your tribe. Birds of a feather flock together. Somebody's way more likely to follow you if you have 10,000 followers than if you have 2 followers, because they see, okay, other people are validating that this person provides value on a daily basis. Once you start to add these things up, it's like 1+ 1= 3. In Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, he says in a mastermind, when 2 people are focused, their intentions are the same, and they're working in the same direction, it creates a 3rd mind. It's like somebody else is in the room helping them. And that's exactly what happens with social media once it starts to compound. When you're delivering value and you're constantly feeding the growth engine by putting all these little 2-cent comments out into the universe, People are gonna start to pay attention. And by the way, I forgot to mention, on the $1.80 strategy, when you're leaving your 2-cent content comments and you're searching for like pictures and videos that are trending, you're going to start to see 90 pieces of trending content per day. You're going to start to be able to replicate what that content looks like, how it feels for your target followers. And when you're leaving comments on trending content, a lot of other people are gonna see those comments and come back to your page because nowadays Let's face it, let's take Instagram as an example. When you're in the comment section, it's all just like fire, fire, fire emojis or something like that. You're going to stand out by leaving a 2 to 3 or 4 sentence comment. And because that content is trending, a lot of people are going to see it and a lot of people are going to check you out. And because you're providing value and you're synergizing, people are going to follow you. All right, we're nearing the end of the presentation. Habit number 7. These are some additional resources that I wanted to recommend to everybody. These are 5 books that have dramatically changed my life. Number 1 is The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. Kevin and I share this in common. Darren Hardy has been a really big influence on my life. The Compound Effect teaches us that small steps in the right direction over a very long period of time will lead to disproportionately positive outcomes. What this means is that although the progress will feel really slow at first, you're going to start to build momentum. That's the synergize habit number 6 piece coming into play. After Kevin's introduction about like sitting on a beach and stuff, if you guys are interested in learning how to automate, delegate, and eliminate more low-impact activities so you could focus on things that you truly love, then I'd highly recommend The 4-Hour Workweek. It's over 10 years old now, but the principles in that book have literally allowed me to travel the world while running a business. And it seems so far-fetched and expensive, but it doesn't have to be so. If that's up your alley, then check out that book. Built to Serve by Evan Carmichael. I mentioned he's the one that taught me about those play bigger trigger sticky note ideas, environmental cues. Up until I read that book, I was kind of confused, like, what is my purpose in life? And that's a really big question. It's kind of a cliché nowadays, like, what's your purpose? What's your passion? But I'll tell you what, after going through Built to Serve, it's full of exercises. I implemented all of them. I was able to articulate my purpose. It's progress. It's helping other people make progress in their health, their wealth, and their happiness on a daily basis through connecting them to the right books. And without reading that book and being able to articulate it, nobody would have wanted to work with me. I was just running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was just trying to be busy all the time. So if you're confused about your purpose, Check out Built to Serve by author Evan Carmichael. Book number four, I have Crush It by Gary Vee. This one's old too, but it talks a lot about some great social media tactics. And then Kevin, book number five is Talk Is Cheap: The Fight Against Mediocrity. Like I said, my core value is progress. I hate mediocrity so much. All of us are capable of doing so much. Like Jeff said before, he said only point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero one percent of people. are living in a place where they actually think that reality is negotiable. One of the things that I learned in The 4-Hour Workweek actually was that reality is negotiable. We can design whatever type of life we want and we can live it and it can be fulfilling and you can actually be happy every day. And so, Kevin, thank you for writing that book, man. And that's it. Thank you all very much. Thank you.