Scott Duffy interviews Kolby Kolbias: How To Build & Monetize Your Online Presence, SLIDER 11

Welcome to business and burgers sliders, bite sized pieces of great business advice. Colby K struggled with his business until he leveraged social media to turn things around. Colby grew his presence from zero to over 1 million followers in under 12 months and now hosts the upcoming Meltdown in the Desert 2, a must attend event that gathers the top social media influencers and entrepreneurs from around the country so attendees can learn how to build and monetize their own online presence.

Colby, awesome to see you brother. So great for joining us.

Alan Taylor Meltdown in the Desert Dude.

Pardue, I'm so excited to have you guys there.

You have had tremendous success and impact leveraging social media and social networks to get out a message.

Yes.

How do you do that?

So about a year and a half ago, if you didn't do business with me, you had no idea who I was and what I did, Right. I leveraged social media just like most people do. It was bunnies and rainbows and kittens and pictures of my kids. And what I realized was the more real and relevant I was about my message, the more I started to connect. I took my account off private and I sat down and I did a series of videos. When I was on my way to London where I shared business experience about what I was doing in the entrepreneur space. I kept each one under three minutes and I did seven in a row. And in that small impact, I had about 10,000 views over seven videos and I haven't stopped.

Did you share them with people? So this is all off like your personal.

It was all organic. It was on my personal page.

What social network?

On Facebook. So what I did was I leveraged that and I continued. I've got a. It's an equation. It's quality content plus consistency equals value. So I just picked up my phone and started recording. And it was really an interesting journey for me because the stuff I started to share was what I was doing with business and helping other businesses, taking an idea, creating a non profit, doing the first meltdown. And I just continued to share the journey. So everything I did was around sharing aspects of what I was doing from taking ideas and driving revenue and helping clients do that and just shared it. I was being myself. There was no BS filter, there was no here's my kids, here's my vacation. It was every day you're going to get me 100%, I'm going to swear, I'm going to be real, I'm going to lose money. Almost got divorced, almost lost my house because. Because we pushed all the chips in on the health and wellness program and a company that I started that was I still to this day, we went all in on stress and, like, what stress is in America. And I pushed all the chips in. I spent two years building a supplement, and I documented the entire thing. When the company went live, we sold $200,000 in, like, less than two days. Because people followed the journey of what I was doing, from getting blood tests to building a company to launching a product. They believe me, most people.

This guy's a corporate guy.

Yeah. I learned a ton. It was a great experience.

But you were a corporate gu.

That was 15 years, man.

180 degrees from what they taught you.

Yes. Yeah.

Oh, awesome.

Thank you.

Nice.

Thank you.

What do we have here?

What is this?

So this is the Silk Road spicy shrimp. So it's a lightly breaded style shrimp, and we do this with a pepper emulsion as well as a sweet chili reduction.

Can you get me a hamburger bun?

Certainly. Absolutely. Thank you.

Thanks very much.

Thank you.

We're used to eating hamburger.

I know this is. This is too classy with a hamburger.

I don't know what to do with it.

Actually.

Send this back. Put this on a burger bun, please.

Let's roll. Let's roll.

So here's the question I have is most people, after they film that first video on, for Facebook or wherever, whatever network, they're out of ideas. It's like, oh, man, what do I do next? What do you do next? Where do the ideas?

When I started, I wrote a list of everything I thought I wrote, topics that I wanted to talk about. But here's the thing is you don't script it. So having a reference point, if you're just getting into it, if that's the question, if I rewind it and unpack it, it's. How would I get started? Leveraging video to tell a story is write a list of things that you're really passionate about, that you love, that you have experience talking about, and then just hit record. Don't filter it, don't edit it. Don't do more than one take. You just do it. And then hit send and go. So for me, it started with topics. Now I don't do that. Now it's literally on the fly. We're doing a whole series around just my journey here. So the things I talk about are relevant to where I am in my life and my business. But if you're just getting started, make a list of the things you love and just go.

When you first hit send the first time and you thought, oh, my God, everybody's gonna think I'm crazy.

Yes.

What was your reaction when they didn't think you were crazy?

When I write or when I do something or when I'm filming, I'm not thinking about if I say this or if I do this to pontificate some kind of character. This is who I am. You know, for 15 years, I'm tattooed head to toe, and I wore a suit and a tie, and I was very comfortable and learned a ton of. But then when I took that off and I wore T shirts and I remember, I swear once in a while, I'm a colorful dude. I'm super passionate. I love to do a lot of things. I don't have to hide that I can be my real self. So for me, I did it. And you're always nervous. Like, the first thing is, like, your gut. It's getting butterflies. If you're speaking. I'm like, oh, my gosh, what's gonna happen? Am I gonna get accepted? And then it was like, okay, I'm gonna do the next one, and then I'm gonna do the next one.

I want you to talk to somebody. For me, I know it's talking to a lot of people who have the same experience, but I had somebody hit me up in social media recently, and this woman told me that she decided that she wanted to change. She wanted to get healthy. And so she took a before picture and was going to take an after picture.

Yes.

And she wanted to challenge herself by doing that and putting that out online. And she told me that there were three or four people that made such negative comments that she took it down. She told me she wanted to get off social media entirely.

Wow.

And I was like, I mean, I feel like if you're going to be good or great or just do anything different than everybody else, you've got to be open to having some people say some tough stuff.

You know what I love is I'm going to run a marathon at the beginning of the year. How many days a week do you run? I don't. I'm going to run five days a week. You don't run at all today. How about you run one day a week? Let's start getting you out of the house. Maybe you walk around the block. What is she going to do in the other senses of adversity when it comes to diet and discipline around working out? If she folds under the pressure of what social media says. Right. So what she needs to do is use that as a kicker, repost that picture and say, in the face of adversity, I will not fold, because this is just the beginning. If she's serious about it, if she's serious about it, she'll do it.

You gotta step up.

Otherwise, she's not serious about it. Take the picture down and don't do it.

All right, I'm serious about the hat. Let me try it.

First of all, I looked ears for this hat. I just wanted.

Yes, yes.

You like that?

You like that?

I don't know if I can eat.

That because I got no hamburger.

No. Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna take the hat. I'm gonna dig in. Why don't y' all dig in? Colby, it's awesome to have you on today. Meltdown part two.

Part two. Yeah, yeah.

Give us the dates.

June 24th, 25th. In Phoenix, Arizona, we've got nine people speaking that collectively have over 600 million impressions on social media. The goal and the objective of this whole thing is being able to take social media influencers and entrepreneurs and put them together with real people, not corporate people talking about social media, real people that have an influence. And it's everything from fitness pros to wellness professionals to entrepreneurs to technology companies. We'll have 500 people there. This year, I added a special component, which is the podcast lounge. We didn't have that last year. We're going to be bringing burgers. I can't wait to have you guys as a cornerstone of the podcast lounge. And the heat you guys are going to bring to the desert.

We're bringing the heat, baby. We're bringing the heat.

I'm pumped to have you there. Thank you very much, man.

Colby, good to see you, man. Take care.

It.