Julieanne O'Connor Talk "How Social Media Made Me a Star"

I'm so excited to be here and thank you for coming to my session. I know so many choices out there and I hope that I can provide some value. I'm a little bit known for being a bit of a candid speaker and so sometimes a bit unpredictable. So forgive me. I hope I don't offend anybody. I'll do my best not to. On my way out to Boston, I actually planned on making this a family vacation. And so I kind of, when I got the invite to come speak here, I made this whole plan. I had everything figured out like months ago. And so I went ahead and booked myself a flight to Boston and then a flight for my family, my entire family, to go to New York. And then I bought tickets to Cats because I have a 7 year old daughter and I thought, how much fun for her to see Cats. And the day before I was about to leave, I was just so excited. I have a home away, I'm staying in, which is really cool because people are really nice. And the day before I left, my daughter does a little bit of acting and so does my husband and me. So those of you who have read the title and you know where you're at and it's not by accident that you're here, know that already. But my daughter got a call from our agent and she booked a commercial. And that's super cool, but bittersweet for me because I was planning a family vacation and I had just told told my agent, I said I want to book her out through the holidays so that she can be a kid. I don't want her to work for a little while. Not that you work every day when you're an actor, by the way. You're usually a starving actor. But in this case, she's seven and if she works here and there, she still has to do a lot of auditions to get to that point. So I'm super excited she booked that. But then I had all of this planned and then, you know how many of you guys have used Orbis and it's like non refundable. Okay, fully guilty. I decided to do that on the flights to New York. Cats is non refundable. So I've really gotten into the Uber thing. And so I was ubering out there, met a couple of people. Like once I got in and gifted my Cats tickets and met the coolest people. But what that led me to is I had nothing to do and so I was like, oh. So instead of just dropping in and speaking for a moment, maybe I'll attend. So I hadn't actually been to Inbound. This is my first time. How many are first timers? Wow. Okay. I met so many people who are. It's like their fifth year, and I thought I was the only first timer, so that's fantastic. I feel so much more comfortable already. So, anyway, so I'm really excited because I started attending, and these speakers are amazing. How many people saw Gary anybody? I mean, was he amazing? He used my favorite word. How many times? Everybody knows what that is, right? That saw him. So, anyway, just been a wonderful event and I have learned so much. And the speaker who was just in here a moment ago, he was telling me how this is really intimidating for a speaker who speaks about marketing and advertising because all of you are in the same industry, and so you're our peer group, and that is, as a speaker, the hardest group of people to talk to. So I'm not going to try and teach you something you don't know, but I'm going to try and hopefully share something that maybe will give you some ideas about things that you can do that might, you know, help you just think a little differently about what you're doing. And I guess, for the record, if you can just do one thing, look for one or two, like maybe, you know, tidbits, little morsels of something that you can take from me and go implement and just really take those one or two things. And if you don't resonate with me, don't do a max exodus like the other keynote speaker yesterday. I don't know how many people saw all the people walking out, but, you know, just go ahead. You know, if you're bored, you can leave. I understand completely. So I would never force anyone to stay here. So, without further ado, let's see. Oh, let me give you one more warning. I have been known to scrap PowerPoint presentations because I get so bored watching PowerPoint presentations. And the last time I did a PowerPoint presentation where it became sort of this profound moment in my life, was I had written this really detailed PowerPoint presentation, which was a training, and it was all about social media and details of how tos and what ifs and all that stuff. But I wrote it for somebody else to present at this conference for thousands and thousands of people. It was this enormous conference. And then I decided to go ahead and go and watch the event, and I showed up to that particular presentation, which, by the way, I had not prepared for. I had just written it. So anyone who writes a presentation doesn't mean you memorized your presentation. And when I showed up, the guy who was going to present said, here, here's the mic. You're going to do this better. I was like, oh, shit. I don't know. This presentation, the place is packed out, and so I get up and I just decide to have some fun. And I start rolling with these slides, and I'm like, okay, I have no idea what's coming up next. The whole place was cracking up. And it was fun. I was just like, whatever. I can't screw this up too bad because I wrote it, but I still didn't remember at the end of it, people were coming up. That was fantastic, all this stuff. The next day, the VP calls me in, and I'm thinking, he's going to be like, good job. Right on. That was awesome. Everyone loved you. No, he reamed me up one side and down the other for admitting that I actually didn't know the slides and for admitting that maybe I was going to be winging it. And he said that was highly unprofessional. So what I decided at that point in my life is that it was so much fun to be unprofessional that I'm going to live my life that way and I'm going to have fun. And so bear with me, because when Inbound asks for slides, I always provide slides when I'm asked. But I'm guilty of I somehow miss the deadline. And so I get this email, and it says, if you don't turn in your slides, you're not going to be able to speak. I was like, oh, shit. So I run home, I put together some slides really fast, and I send them over, they send them back. I do one revision, I send them back. And then I got out here to Boston. I've been so busy, and I realized that I should probably write a talk about my slides, which is usually the reverse. So today it's going to be the same thing. We're just going to see what comes out, and I'll share some stories and some tips, and hopefully you will benefit from it in some way. This is because somebody gave me a glass of wine last night. All right, so let's see. So this is kind of what we're going to go over. What's going on in the world today. Listen, I could literally spend an hour just talking about statistics. And I'm just one of those people who. I don't want to learn everything, and I don't want to pretend like I know. And the statistics are changing so fast. I mean, I can sit Here and give you these things that, like, blow your mind in terms of what's happening. The bottom line is we need to be in this space of social media. It doesn't matter who you are or what you're doing, you really need to be here. So I've got a couple of statistics slides in here, but it's really not anything you haven't heard already. I'll talk to you about who I am, who you are, why it all matters, and really what I'm going to focus on today is social media strategy, because strategy is where I believe everything from life to business to. To death, it's all about strategy. So I'm going to share some don'ts and some do's and all that good stuff. And so let's get started. So here's a stat we all have heard. 4.61 billion mobile users, I think expected to rise to 4.77 billion or something this year. Look, I can't even comprehend that number. But we know from this image that you look around and if anyone even looks up at me and I see some of you looking at me, I'm like, they warn you, you should. In this audience, I don't know. But typically everybody's looking down. So there's no question there is opportunity. And there's disadvantage in that it's all wrapped into one thing. And it's neither here nor there. It just is. This is the world we live in. And for marketers, this is awesome stuff because it's so obvious, it's so apparent what's happening, and so it's so obvious where we need to put our focus and our time and our money. But our time and our money, that's valuable. So we're going to talk more about that. So over eight hours are spent on electronic devices. I kid you not. I believe this is actually a low number. But the bottom line is we spend more time on our electronic devices than we spend sleeping. And how many of you guys check Facebook from bed? Yeah, guilty. I try not to do that anymore because they're showing some crazy. I have a client who's actually a doctor and shows a study of where somebody got breast cancer and it's the shape of a cell phone, where they kept their cell phone, literally. And so I try not to keep it by my head and stuff, but, you know, I know that's all debatable, but it's incredible what's happening. 67% of Americans never try to unplug. I'm going to tell you that is not Me, it is my goal to unplug. Unfortunately, it just doesn't always happen. Like, I don't meet that goal. That's one of those I fail with. So we could go on and on and on about platforms. There's so many things I don't know why I didn't like. I could put so many platforms that you guys are all familiar with in here. The question becomes, when you have all of these different places to spend time and energy, where do you put your focus? And I don't want to master all of these things. I don't know about you, but yes. Okay, I want to call myself brilliant, maybe and know a whole bunch. I do believe in a comprehensive approach to social media. And I'll explain why that is a little bit. And that is just because you don't know what's going to pop up next or what's going to be the next thing all the time. And it's all part of your reputation online. So comprehensive is great, but mastery is a whole different thing. So if you look at some of these YouTube stars and these vine celebrities, and I've spoken with them, I've met them, they focus on one platform, they get super good at that. And then what they do is they get the residual benefit out to these other platforms. The key is set them up, like, get them started and figure out what you're going to kind of play with and then outsource that stuff. That takes time that you don't want to have to figure out, but just. I just don't spend a ton of money on it. All right, so let me tell you a little bit about me. I'm from Reno, Nevada. I'm sure there's nobody. Nobody in here from Reno. What? Oh, my God. I never meet anyone from Reno. That's fantastic. Wow. Okay. Do you guys still live there? Oh, cool. Very exciting. Okay, so we've got some people from Reno here. So I grew up in Reno, and I'll tell you a little bit about my story because it gives you some insight into why this matters so much to me and why I'm super excited about social media personally. And it all comes back to not being tech savvy. It comes down to some really fundamental basics. So I grew up on this property outside of Reno, Nevada, which is Palomino Valley. You guys familiar? Okay, so my. I grew up poor. Like, you guys would laugh. In fact, just to give you. To tell you how poor I was, we grew up in like, the dirt. Like, my father bought this property and it was like we had no plumbing. Okay. And so we would sneak to our neighbors and, like, use their well water. I remember the old well taking a shower in their well water while they were at work. Not telling them that we were doing it. Insane. But it gives you perspective. So I grew up on this property not knowing that, you know, in addition to the fact that we were kind of broke, we. We did drill a well at a certain point. But the property that my father bought was from Rockwell, Rockwell International. It was a Rocketdyne property, which, by the way, I'm not allowed to talk about. I sign my life away about, but I'm a rule breaker. Sorry. The property was extremely contaminated. I mean, so badly contaminated, it's under 100 year cleanup. Okay? The air above the soil was contaminated. Where I grew up, our water was badly contaminated. We didn't know, though, growing up there, obviously, that it was contaminated. So there was this day that my father dropped dead and he had gotten lymphoma cancer and got very sick very suddenly. And we had no idea what from. And of course, it all made sense later, but at the time we just thought, oh, that's crazy. That just can happen overnight. That really happens. And then all of these years went by and suddenly we got this letter in the mail and it said, don't drink your water. Don't touch your water. Don't breathe the contamination. I mean, don't breathe the evaporation from your water, obviously, don't bathe in your water. And then we got all these cases and cases of bottled water that start showing up to our house, which we didn't order. And something clicked in me really quickly that something was seriously wrong. Not just a little bit wrong, but it was really serious. And so I sort of was like, okay, we gotta figure out what's going on. But then they started flying us to doctors. I'm outside Reno. They're sending me to LA and San Francisco to see these high profile doctors and psychologists and psychiatric. We're going under the psychiatric evaluations, doing the ink blot tests and stuff to see if we were sane enough to determine whether or not we should be afraid of the possibility we might get cancer. And so at the end of these tests, what would happen is these doctors would bring you into your office. I don't know if anybody's ever been called into the office with a doctor, but it's not always a good sign. And they would sit across their desk, and I remember I was young, but I just remember so clearly. And they would say, I'm so sorry. But there's a really high likelihood that you will get cancer from what you've been exposed to at some point. And I thought, huh, where's the opportunity here? Well, if you can tell me when, then what I'm going to do is I'm going to figure out what I want to accomplish and I'm going to work backwards from that date. So I got this figured out. I'm a strategist. So I said to them, I said, you know, can you give me a date? And they were like, no, no, I can't give you a date. Can you give me an approximate date? But they couldn't actually give me a date of when that might happen. So I had to set out on this other journey, which was to really figure out, okay, if you're going to be stripped of everything, like everything that you think matters, all your material possessions and then your health, then what is there that's left? And I think we can all answer that. That is simply your relationships. There is nothing else under the sun that really, truly matters. You can be famous. You can have all these accomplishments and awards and all these things. Nobody gives a shit. The people who care, they really just care about you. That's it. They don't care about the awards. I mean, look, I don't care if my husband has an award or not. I just care that I love him. And if that makes him happy, then right on. So I sort of set out on this journey to discover what mattered. And then by figuring out and boiling that down right away to relationships, I just decided that I would ask every single person that I met what the secret was to help happy relationship. So I started asking couples, and I would say, what's the secret to a happy marriage? What's the secret to a happy relationship? What's the secret to, you know, whatever? And I interviewed couples for so long, and it was so interesting because what I found was this overwhelming thing where all I heard was the same shit year after year after year with nine out of 10 people complaining. And there was one out of 10, sometimes two. Last night there were two couples I met in this group, and they were. They're both really cool. One of them is here, and I'm very excited about that. And so one or two couples would actually seem, really genuinely seem like they were having a lot of fun. And when you meet that, you're like, what are you doing different from. Differently from all the rest of these people who are just bitching and moaning and complaining. And so I discovered that there were some very Fundamental, simple things that people were doing differently. And I decided that somebody should put it in a book. And so I decided to write my first book. I decided it many years ago. I didn't actually do it until years later because how many times do we decide something but not actually do it right for I don't know how long, but too long oftentimes. And so I sort of set out on this mission to write about relationship. And I wrote this book and I thought, okay, strategically speaking, I actually want people to read this book. I actually care about people enough that I think that they could simplify things if they read it. And so I wrote the book and I was like, well, what do I need to do to get my book out there? And this is where I talk about strategy. Everything boils down to strategy because you only have so many resources, so much time, so much money. And so I thought, well, I could publish it. I could self publish it. And I thought, you know, I know social media, and I know social media is a way to reach people. And I get that you can post and do all that stuff, but what is a publicist going to look at and what is a publisher going to look at? And so I thought, well, I'll start a Facebook page. And so I opened a Facebook page for the book title, which my book wasn't written yet. So the Facebook page was just spelling it out for your man. And that was it. And I started spending just a little bit of money on Facebook advertising and just driving a little attention. And I thought, well, if I build a following, my strategy will be that I'll go and I'll present my book or my query letter to the publishers and I will present it along with, of course, as all of us in here would know, some sort of a marketing plan. But I feel like I'm going to have an edge if I have a following. So I spent enough money to get myself to about 30,000 followers on Facebook was super cheap and super fast. It still is today. So all I did that was different from so many other people at that time is I just opened it up worldwide because you get so much more for your money. And I know that relationships are happening everywhere. It's valid, right? It's bible. I don't speak all these other languages, but I can certainly market there. And I did an ad that I still run this ad today. You guys will laugh. Okay. But I did an ad that said money or love, who can't relate. And even in other languages, apparently they can relate. So I get this following. And I decide. I tell my husband on a Friday, I'm going to submit to some publishers. Tonight I bought myself the publisher's guide and I said, I'm going to submit to some publishers and I'm just going to see what happens and if I need to, then I'll self publish it. So I submit to six publishers and everybody told me, you're never going to get a publisher. Today it's absolutely impossible to get a publisher and you're a first time author. Excuse me. And I know I'm nobody. I don't expect a publisher to care about me or even my content, but I do expect them to care about my following. So I submit to these publishers and I get not one, but two responses. And by the next week I'm signing the first contract that comes across my desk. Because I'm like, I'm nobody. Wait a second. I got a publisher. So I took the first deal, I got the next week, but I had a deal within a week. And let me just tell you, from an insight standpoint, I submitted them a query letter, I told them my following, and then I sent them two chapters of my book. I hadn't written the book yet. Do you think that they bought me because of my book or my social media following? I 100% guarantee it was because I had a following and then it's since grown. That Facebook page has 180,000 people or something following it. But I have not spent a lot of money. If I wanted it to be millions, I could build it to that. There's no question in my mind you could do that. And it's a door opener. So it's part of a big strategy that everything is about. How do you do? What's your big picture? What do you really want to accomplish? If you can answer that, you can create a strategy that is unique by how many of you heard the Spotlight speaker just a few minutes ago? Just a few of you. He was fantastic. Okay. He was just absolutely. Did you guys agree? Excellent. Yeah. I mean, just a fantastic speaker and he shared just incredible insights. But if you can just look at how you can take what's already being done out there, all these different things that are happening and you kind of put it together is what he was saying, in your own way, your own creative way. And we can all come up with a way to do this if we're not distracted by so many other things that are going on in the world. So it's about really coming up with starting up here. What's your vision how many people can actually answer what their vision statement is or has a clear vision of what they're trying to do right now? Anybody have a mission statement? Okay, so I commend you guys that if you look around in here and we all know they've done studies about if you write down your goals, the people who write down their goals, what is it, 5% or something, they accomplish their goals and the other 95% don't. And that's about what we're looking at. And so I don't say that at all to give you a hard time because I don't have mine written down. So, I mean, let me tell you, I teach what I need to learn, but I do know my vision. I do know that. And my mission, I can tell you, is to put relate back into relationships. I am all about relationships. And everything to do with social media, everything to do with your job, everything to do with who you work with, who you go home to. It's all about your relationships. And if that is not what matters, then you need to reevaluate how you're living your life because you're probably not very happy. And I'm not saying that relationships are always happy. Believe me, I wrote a book about it. So let's jump into. Let me just share this other example because this is me working backwards from slides, because I have a bunch of slides about this and, and all of you guys saw my title, which is this long ass title about the super bowl commercial and stuff. So I'm going to share this story because it was also part of a big strategy. And if you can take something from that and understand the value in creating a strategy, then you'll see wherever you want to apply that it's going to matter. And so here's what happened with the super bowl commercial. How many of you guys have seen my super bowl commercial or know what it is? It's Doritos pug attack with a pug that comes in. Yeah, I've seen some hands and it knocks down a door. Okay, so it was a mega hit, like, ridiculous. This commercial went so viral that it has won awards in countries I hadn't even heard of. Okay. I get letters still from producers who are like, hey, we signed this deal memo and we'll pay you whatever, 800 bucks or you make really good money from a commercial. So it's cool stuff. But anyway, this commercial is so viral, it's ridiculous. But the way that it started, people don't realize what really happened. So we did this commercial as A homemade video. And it was on a shoestring budget. I'm talking $500, okay? And my friends who were graduates of USC, they were new graduates from USC, and they had basically come out and decided, you know, let's. Let's enter the Doritos Super Bowl. Crash the super bowl competition. How many of you guys have heard of that competition? Yeah, so they've done a phenomenal job marketing, right? But not only have they done a phenomenal job marketing, but they do a phenomenal job with getting other people to promote for them without having to pay them a dime. It's an incredible strategy that they put together. So they said to me, can you allow us to. To shoot this commercial at your house in Camarillo, California? Said, of course, yeah, no problem. I'd been acting for many years, but they told me, we're going to enter it into this super bowl competition. Okay, I take that with a grain of salt. That is the woo. Are you kidding? If you're an actor, you want to be in a Super bowl commercial, right? But I just didn't take it seriously. This is me. I think it's funny, like a joke. And I'm not kidding. They're at my house and I'm still snickering, going, aha, this is funny. We're eating Doritos. Probably getting drunk at the time, I don't even know. And they asked if my brother in law's dog could be in the commercial, which is the pug Oko Nono, who's in it. She's very old now, but not to date this, but this was 2011 and it was a huge opportunity. So anyway, so they come over, they film this commercial, and I think it's a joke. And surprise. All of a sudden, we are a finalist. And I'm like, is that a joke? Like, we're a finalist? This is kind of cool because this is like thousands and thousands and thousands of amateur videos that are submitted for this competition. And I'm in it. I'm like, I'm thinking, oh, hey, this is kind of cool. That's enough for me. I'm good. I have so much gratitude about the bragging rights of even just like, hey, we're a finalist. Because what I did is I was like, okay, well, I got people that were interested in to kind of support me. And so what happens is once you're a finalist for the crash of super bowl competition is they encourage you to go out and get votes. And if you get enough votes, then what they'll do is air you during Super Bowl. Now you have to be in the top three, or now it's, I think, top two to actually air during Super Bowl. But this is kind of a big deal. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to enroll people. So the first thing I did. Now, don't laugh too hard, but I was like, mom, open up a Facebook page. And I was like, you know, and so where people think that we had this huge viral sensation. What they don't know is that the social media supported a bigger strategy. So what we decided is we all got together as friends and we powwowed. We're like, we're a finalist. We need to get votes. We know social media is here. And so I had a friend who was, like, really good with Twitter, and she was. She was like, I'm going to tweet pug tips. That's it. I'll tweet to all the pug enthusiasts, right? So how many of you guys have heard, you get really focused. It's not about trying to cast this huge net, but it's about hitting these markets in these really focused ways. So that's exactly what we did. So we started tweeting to pug enthusiasts. Well, I took it another step further, and I was like, okay, I have an opportunity. I'm going to partner. So I started reaching out, and I picked a couple of nonprofits, and I picked up the phone. I was like, listen, if I end up in this super bowl commercial, you're getting a percentage of everything I earn. Good thinking, right? So now they're supporting me, and they're promoting me. And then pretty soon, we have, like, the local press, and they're, like, picking up our story and they're, like, sharing, because I'm going to give a percentage to a great cause, right? And so then the local press that starts. We promote it. We're like, Facebook it, and we're, you know, tweeting. And so all of a sudden, but we're still behind the scenes picking up the phone, and we're calling everyone we know saying, hey, will you share this? We didn't just put it out there and be like, shit, nobody's liked it. You know, like, we didn't do that. We made sure people liked it. You know, like those people who are obsessing, and they put a post out there, and they're looking if it's got likes, and then they text you, hey, can you like my post? It's important. And you're just, like, embarrassed for them because you're, like, really you just did that. I did that. Okay. But I did it. I wasn't one of those people who had called a lot of favors, so I was able to get away with this. Now, if this whole thing fell flat, I couldn't do it again. But at the time, if I won, they won, because that means that they helped somebody get a Super bowl commercial. So it was a really big deal. So I had literally, by the time it started rolling, we started promoting the press, then we promoted the little publications, and then we said thank you to the little publications. And then pretty soon, I had CBS on my doorstep saying, hey, can we do a story about you? So the day that the commercial was maybe going to air, and we had no idea, we were really excited. But we were also, at the same time, watching our competitors who were also promoting their social media. So we knew that they were savvy, too, and they were figuring it out. And so we're, like, nervous. And so I've got these news crews, and they come to my house, and they're like, hey, can we watch you watch the Super Bowl? I'm like, are you shitting me? You want to watch me watch the Super Bowl? Because they won't tell us if it's going to air. And it's like, I'm. And so I'm like, hey, yeah, yeah, come with me. And so I stroll down to my local bar. I could walk to everything from my house, and I've got all these friends coming with me, and we're sitting in there, and I buy them around because I am secretly mortified. I'm like, what if this doesn't air? I've got, like, these news crews here in the. You know, not only, like, locally, because I know everyone. I'm like, they're gonna be like, you suck. But on the other hand, I was like, this is like, please air, please. You know? And I'm like, oh, have a round. Maybe if I get them drunk, they won't notice, right? So they think I'm really cool. Well, thank God it erred towards the beginning, which is also a sign. It's a really, really good spot. And so I am just like. I mean, it started airing. I didn't realize it. And we are so stoked. This is actually the day. I don't know who took that picture, but that's at the bar. That's my husband back there with the tattoo sleeves. And so, anyway, so we air, and this thing goes. So. So I don't know if you guys know this or not, but when the crash of super bowl competition happens. Doritos put prize money up for grabs. So they put a million dollars up if the USA Today ad meter says that you're the number one spot of the commercial. Okay? They put $600,000 up if you make number two and $400,000 up if you make the number three spot. That is the farthest thing. All right. From my mind, all I know is I just got kicked in a Doritos contract. Like. Like, I'm getting paid. I'm an actor. I know the contract. And so I am so elated and beside myself. It's surreal. But then all of a sudden, this commercial is the most tweeted commercial of Super Bowl. The most tweeted. Like, you know, how much money people spend on marketing and advertising, creating these campaigns and how much money they spend for a spot. I'm thinking, how the hell did we do that? You know? And so we were the most tweet. This commercial went so viral that it got picked up by ad week and was written up about in the Wall Street Journal and all the. Like, just every single place that you could write about this, it was written up. Now, I don't tell you that to brag. I tell you that because I know what happened behind the scenes to make it happen. And it was not easy, but it was committed, and we were driven, and we were passionate, and we were serious. And so we did all the legwork, okay, to make this happen, including with the press. And so it is one of those things where when you have an opportunity. I don't know how many of you guys heard that social media talk where he was talking about the unicorns and he actually had the unicorn. Yeah. And all I could think of the whole time was, you guys, forgive me. See, this is where I go off track. But all I could think about was the squatty potty. And it was awful. You know, like, every time I see the unicorns and the. Anyway, sorry. But it was like. But he was on to something, because when you have something that hits, you make it really hit home. It's not about just, like, letting it be and just taking your win. Look at. I am talking about this today, and it actually opens doors for me to come speak because somebody actually cared, and that's silly. And I do expect to change that and have something else that's big to talk about as well. So, you know, I promise that for future years. But this is a lot of. You can get a lot out of something that hits, and even if it doesn't hit this Big. I will tell you that I work with clients all day long that they just miss the picture on the strategy. And so what they do is, for example, I work with a lot of dentists, and I'll just share this with you because it's one of those things where they miss the point. And you'll see with dentists specifically, and this matters for all clients because it all comes back to strategy, because then it's about pricing and what you're willing to spend and how that all fits together. So with dentists, you'll see if you go search dentists that like 2013, 2014, these guys dropped off the face of the planet on social media. They're like the slowest industry to change. But in 2013 and 14, all these people went out there saying, I can do social media, right? You guys remember this? Like, everybody's brother and dog was doing it from home, only they really didn't have business smarts and they didn't know how to follow through. And so they dropped the ball. And they were charging an astronomical amount of money for social media management. And so they collect the check, and then I don't know what they did is they just went and sold the next person, but they didn't really do anything. And also, the dentist had no clue about strategy, so all they thought was, okay, social media. I keep hearing about it. I guess I need to have social media. So, yeah, here's a check. But if they had looked at the big picture, they could have seen that for dentists, what matters is their reputation. It's not about, you know, whatever. It's not about having a Super bowl commercial. You know, I mean, this stuff with the ice bucket challenge or super bowl commercial, that stuff comes along, like, you know, once in a while. It doesn't have to be that big for it to matter. And it also doesn't have to be anything for you to turn it into something that does matter. Okay. So when you align with causes, when you add your mission with something that matters and you realize your why behind you in terms of everything that you do, it completely changes everything that you do. So I just share that. Obviously it went insanely viral. So without a strategy, that's kind of what I'm talking about right now, which is this thing with Denison, it's with all. All things related to marketing. I mean, we all know the whole spaghetti thing and all of that stuff. But that's really easy to get rid of because with a strategy, even when things don't work, you can monitor it. I Mean, there's a lot of guys in here I know. And women who are into analytics. Right? How many of you guys are analysts? Like, are really into the analytics side? Oh, see, that's my crowd. You guys are. You came to my talk because you're not into it. There's a few of you, but. But I'm not into the analytics either. But I am into effective. I can see what works and what doesn't if I know what it is that I'm trying to accomplish. So if I don't know what I'm trying to accomplish, and the same is true with life. This is my whole thing about working backwards. When you have your big picture, obviously, create a strategy around it. Use a marketing calendar. Everybody knows this, but how many people don't do it? It's incredible to me. So there are people sitting around in offices posting. I walk into places. I'm not kidding. And I don't know how many of you have had this happen to you where you walk into an office and it's like I walked into offices in Beverly Hills and the person at the front desk says, excuse me just a second, I need to post to Facebook really quickly. Has that happened to anybody? Okay, I'm doing something wrong because I'm not getting attention when I go in. But seriously, what's happening is people are trying to cram it in, they're trying to flip it in, and then what happens? A couple weeks go by, they don't do their post or whatever. Some of these talks I've been listening to how it's all about the content. It's gotta be the best content in the world. I will tell you that when I'm not working on something that really matters, it's not about the content. I hire out my own social media. Fully guilty. Okay, so I have somebody I don't pay a lot of money to. I can't hold them to creating this super valuable content. What they do is they post. What's the point of posting if it's not good? The point is that you're consistent and relevant, so there's always a reason to be doing something. And so if you understand that, then it's not no problem to kind of fit wherever you need to fit. So right now I'm hearing these people that are saying it's gotta be the best content in the world. Don't bore me with your content. I just simply know that people will tune out while it's boring. And that's fine. But Google keeps picking me up, so it's okay, I'm using a strategy right now. My strategy is I've got other things that are more important. So my social media still needs to operate. So if you went and looked at my social media right now, you'd be like, oh, she's posting about love or career books or whatever. And that's okay for people here and there, and some people who are obsessed with it maybe, but for the majority of people, they don't really care. I just have a strategy, that's all. That's the only difference. Creative sharing. So I'm just going to touch on this and what I really want to do is I don't know where I'm at on time. I think we're almost done here, but I want to give just. I'm not sure if I could see through the lights, but five minutes. Okay, perfect. So I just want to give a couple seconds in case anybody wants to ask any questions or has something they're working on. They need ideas. And I want to invite you if, after this, you'd like to come up and talk to me in person. You have something you're trying to do and you know what that is, and you want me to help you look at some ideas on strategizing that, by all means, I would welcome you to come talk to me and I'll see if I can give you some ideas around that. Sorry, let me go back to this. So creative sharing. So an example of that on a really small scale would be this idea that, okay, you want to do a giveaway on social media or something. You're trying to get attention. Look, we're all just trying to get attention at the end of the day. So you want to do something to get attention, and so you want to give something away. It's to not just give away your own product, but find somebody else's product to give away. And so I don't know how many of you guys are savvy on sponsorship, but sponsorship is an amazing thing. And whether you pay for it or they provide it, what you then do is you partner with them and you try and get them to share as well. So instead of giving away whatever your own product, you give away the restaurant's gift card. And then you go and you let them know, hey, I'm going to promote your restaurant. If you're a local business, that's just an idea. You can do this for any kind of clients if you're an agency, and on and on, and it goes as big as you want to go, depending on your budget, that's creative sharing, social partnering. Again, just talking about this idea of partnering with causes and things that matter, because people care about that, and they don't really care about you necessarily, but they do care. If there's some reason or something you're supporting behind that, that resonates with them. I used to be the director of marketing for a company, and it was ink and toner, okay? And I literally chalked up to about 25% of my sales because we supported the Leowa Wildlife center, okay, in Africa. And I knew that about 25% of my buyers, that's what put the sale over the edge, because they were like, oh, finally somebody who's pitching me something. And they're also looking outside of themselves. They're not just trying to make money. And so there are these really good reasons behind doing that. This is the last thing I'm going to say, and I'm going to wrap it up with this, is, listen, we are all so vulnerable. Our egos are so caught up in what we do and what it looks like, and we're all guilty, and I'm fully guilty of it. But I always try to bring myself back to this place where I ground myself in knowing that, you know, it's not my job to be perfect. And innovators, great people like you guys who are here, there's a reason great innovators, they take risks. And, you know, you've got to take risks. And everybody out there who's doing social media saying, look at what everyone else is doing, right? I say, look at what everyone else is doing wrong. Everyone else, which is the majority, just like with wealth, is doing it wrong. So they're doing the same thing. They're telling you what you should be doing, which is the same thing that they should be doing. They think. And in reality, it's that thing that's not been done. It's that thing that we haven't tried. And it's embarrassing, it's uncomfortable. That's the thing that we need to try. It's like, even the ice bucket thing, if you really look at it, I mean, if that was your idea, don't you kind of step back and go, this is kind of dumb? Like, really, like somebody's gonna. I mean, this is kind of a risk, right? But somebody did it. And so I honor those people who take risks, whether they completely fall or they do really, really well. Usually we all know that they fall flat most of the time, and then something hits. But you've got to be brave. And, you know, bravery comes from being okay with being vulnerable. And a lot of people don't like that word, but I love it. And I just think that that's what life is about. That's what human being is about. That's what being is all about. So take risks and learn from what others shouldn't. You know, they need to stop doing and try something new. And let's just take one quick second. If there's anybody who has any questions, feel free. And that is all I have for you. I just want to leave you with that. But if there's anybody who has any questions, otherwise, I will let you guys free. And thank you so much.