Amplify Your Impact: Strategies for Expanding Reach and Influence by Curtis McCoy

Do you want to be seen as a leader? Is your brand that of a leader or as a follower? Where our guest today is an expert on personal branding. He has helped leaders across numerous industries. Communications, technology, consumer products. He is the master of all media. And I'm very happy to bring on as our guest today, Mr. Curtis McCoy. Curtis, thanks for being our guest today.

Hey, Mr. T.J. walker. How you doing, sir?

Fantastic. Now we're broadcasting live on all major social media platforms, but we're here specifically for a few minutes to say hello to our friends on Amazon. We're on Amazon live. And Curtis, you are an author of numerous books, but we want to talk about specifically your book, how to be a Leader. Or excuse me, how to Be Successful, how to Think Like a Leader. Tell us about the book and what are people going to learn here that they don't see in every other leadership success book? Because there are a lot of them there.

Sure. One of the things about that that I did, if you know anything about me, I survived a malignant glioblastoma brain tumor. I was given less than 90 days to live back in 2010. I had woke up from a coma having seven to 10 seizures a week. Woke up, couldn't communicate, couldn't speak. The oncologist had his, when I woke up, oncologist had his hand on my mom's shoulder telling her that they need to take me to Disneyland or do some kind of a, some kind of a memory making thing that I would not be around. Which ticked me off. I was, I was bodybuilding at the time and seeing this doctor tell my mom that I was going to die and to take me to Disneyland. But I couldn't even say that I like, I don't want to go to Disneyland. I want to keep working on my business. But so I, I wrote the book originally started out, it's the fourth book that I published. But I started by just trying to leave something memorable and meaningful for my mom after I passed away because I, you know, we doctors saying there is zero chance of survival. So I started reaching out to guys like the inventor of the MP3 player. Just some incredible leaders who I had respected and looked up to and thought it would be really cool to be able to sit down and have a conversation with them. And a lot of them I did, whether it was video interviews or most of them was in person. So I flew out and just entered, interviewed these guys on how to be successful and how to think like a leader. One of the things that's different about this book Is I, I asked the same questions to everyone from the guy that owns, he founded a private church. I mean he's the owner of a church, he's got a private hospital that you know, has been very successful there had the inventor of the MP3 player. Another guy was an ex convict, he's multiple time convicted felon who had turned his life around and built successful businesses in affiliate marketing. But I asked the same questions on how they see life, how they, how they view success, rather than just saying like a lot of success books do, here's what I've done and here's how you be successful. Like, like what I do. There's not anything about myself and they're really, it's these other leaders who are already crushing it and, and just seeing their insights and it was cool to see how many of these guys have very similar viewpoints or very similar outlooks on life even coming from you know, the ex drug dealer to a founder of a church. And the guys having the same, same thoughts on success now.

And what did they say that surprised you that wasn't already in the common literature from you know, the thinking grow rich. I mean this is a very, very established niche of people interviewing successful people to who all say have goals, work towards your goals. Surround yourself with people more successful than you and smarter than you. Don't spend your time on frivolous entertainment. What did you learn that surprised you?

A lot of that was when I interviewed a lot of these guys. There was a whole lot of them that had a profound faith in God, a faith that there is a creator, there's somebody greater than himself. It was kind of cool just seeing that their outlook that you know, sharing their tips on, on success and then how they, how they view the world. But it's neat seeing that, you know, the difference how, how some of the questions are so far off and then and others, almost all of them were exactly, you know, real similar.

What else? I mean, no offense, but there, you know, there are billions of people starving to death who have a strong faith in God and there are many atheists like Ted Turner who are billionaires. So clearly that can't be the thing that's made them successful. What else did you find that someone could say, oh I haven't tried that. Let me try that.

You'd have to take a look at the book. It's, there's 18 different, different people in there who are successful that have, that have shared their own stuff.

But, and let's take a look.

It is right here.

Those of you Watching on Amazon, you can click with it. It is showing up on the carousel right now under either the bottom of your screen, the left or the right. And again, it is how to be successful. Think like a leader. Check it out. Thank you so much Amazon for letting us come to you live. Today we're going to say goodbye to our Amazon friends and signing off from there. But we're very happy to continue this hour with our friends on YouTube, Facebook and everyplace else. Okay, so thanks. Now we can talk about anything and everything. And I want to bring up specifically your website, Newswire Magazine. You're the owner, the proprietor and the editor of this magazine. By the way, if you want to know more about M. Curtis McCoy, we posted his bio links to all of his social media right here in the description. It'll be in the show notes and other places. But walk us through Newswire magazine. Some of our viewers listeners might not be familiar with it. What is it?

So Newswire magazine, we interview a lot like you do. Authors, entrepreneurs, motivational speakers, podcast hosts, anybody who's crushing it in life and business and helping others and then get their message out there, share it to a lot of the, a lot of the audience. I mean a lot of the articles have over 100,000 readers a month. But we advertise on the Times Square in New York billboard, the 96 foot billboard got a show on Amazon Fire TV that we host. But it's all tied into that Newswire magazine, newswire launched in 1997. I bought the company in 2018. So I'm not the founder, but I've done a lot to try to try to improve after we took over.

And how do you build audience for something like this? Because we do live in a world where anybody and everybody is a publisher and there's success bias and that. You know, it seems like every day we read about some 11 year old who started the social, you know, whether it's YouTube or TikTok. And they now have 10 billion views. But the reality for 99.9% of authors, experts, entrepreneurs, business people is they create and spend a lot of time and six months later they've got seven subscribers or seven views. By the way, Rose Ma stops in and says hello and says wow, if you want to talk to Curtis, we have posted the links. You can actually join us right on camera and but you can also post your questions as well in the comments section. So I asked a disjointed question. How do you build audience for something like this? And then how more broadly do you help clients build audience because everybody's looking at the Gary Vaynerchuk of the world saying, wow, this is easy. Let me just go on. And then they put a lot of time and effort and sometimes money and feel like they're just treading water and accomplishing nothing.

So there's. With all media, any type of advertising, there's basically. Basically breaks down into two separate camps. One is earned media, the other is paid media. I'll be speaking the day after tomorrow in another state over in Waco, Texas, about earned media. Newswire Magazine, Amazon, Fire tv, the other platforms that I run are all paid media. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you some tips on earned media that are the opposite. I'm telling you, do not pay me. Don't sign up with a service like mine. If you have somebody reach out and tell you that they need, that they need to spend some marketing or some money on marketing, you've just launched a book. You've just. You're trying to get your profile out there, but you're not getting any real solid results yet. Don't listen. Don't pay them or me to do paid media if you don't have the. Don't have the backbone built. But I would say start by just like TJ is here on this show where you're providing value over and over and over and over again to the audience without asking anything in in return, the more value that you put out. So if you're, say you're a local electrician and you're trying to figure out how to brand yourself, instead of getting up and say, hey, this is Bob, by the way, we've got a sale on installing lighting fixtures, Whatever your thing is. What if, what if you were going out there and just every single day you pull up, pull up your smartphone, do a quick video how to tips, or hey, do you know what? By switching from, I mean, I'm not an electrician, but if you're providing valuable tips over and over and over again and, and people start seeing you as the authority on your, on your subject matter, then when it comes time to hire somebody or when you know, 20 times, 20 videos down the road, you pitch whatever your offer is now, people automatically see that you're giving way more than ever, way more than you're asking for, and you'll be the guy there.

I mean, that's what I've tried to do. I mean, I've done, I've done all the mistakes you can make on social media, starting and stopping, being inconsistent But I have been on YouTube since maybe eight months after they started. And what. What I find the value is quite often is not that someone watches one video, calls up, and says, hey, be our KeyNote speaker for $100,000. It's more of staying in front of existing clients. I mean, I had a major insurance company hire me to do two days of public speaking training last month. Someone I'd worked with 20 years ago, because as TJ, I keep seeing all your tips on LinkedIn, because I post everywhere and that just happens to be where he is. So it can be a great way of staying in front of people. But many people start and they don't do it long enough. I mean, you know, that's the value of my newsletter. I've done a newsletter once a week for 20 years. Is it the greatest newsletter in the world? No, but it's the most consistent in the media training niche because most people quit after six months. Or with podcasting, people quit after seven episodes. How do you coach your clients, customers, your people you work with to get over that hump? Because our. Our society is filled with people selling quick fixes. Write a bestselling book this weekend, become an overnight success, have a million followers in 30 days. Reality is that basically doesn't happen to anyone. It takes years and years and years in the trenches. Even Mr. Beast basically had no audience for five years, posting videos every day. So how do you coach your clients to really have the patience and the staying power?

So now, again, that's. I get my leads from helping people generate the earned media where I make nothing off of it. Same thing. I'm flying out to Waco to speak to this audience who is learning to start building their brand. I make nothing on that from any of the audience members. But my goal, you know, if I can give some tips like that, just like you said, staying consistent, but not value, over and over and over again, staying consistent. I'm on the opposite side of that spectrum where I work with the guys who are already crushing it in life and business and need that next level up where they, you know, they don't know how to get on the billboards and those kind of things. That's where we paid media really takes you to that next level. But so, for example, if we were, do you mind if I give a tip, kind of a coaching thing on a. On a podcast on how you can monetize. If you're hosting a podcast right now and you've been doing it for six months? Okay, so. So let's say you've been hosting a podcast. I, I get this all the time as I'm a guest on other shows. And before or after the show the guy starts talking to me going, yeah, I don't know, I'm gonna, I'm thinking about turning in the hat. I've done done 90 episodes and I've made nothing off of it. And they're trying to figure out how to get, you know, how do you get the sponsorship, how do you start getting money from it? One of the easiest things that I see a lot of podcasters miss is having a dedicated landing page for search engine optimization. So where, for example, and I think you're already doing this, but say you've got, say the TJ Walker show, you got TJ Walker show.com forward/guest name. So on us, quick thing. I know you do a lot with AI. One of the things that I've, I've told people is a pretty easy way to get started is if you did this interview, you load the thing up to YouTube. So just do a nice video interview, cut out the UMSAs filler words, whatever junk that you want in there, upload that to YouTube, then take that, go down to the bottom left, click the transcribe button, view transcription button, copy that into Chat GPT or whatever AI service you're using. Tell it to remove the, you know, format it properly as far as punctuation, single space, after the period, proper capitalization, Tell it the guest's name and the host's name because it'll often mess those up kind of weird spelling. Then tell it to write you an article outline for a 2000 word SEO friendly article about that guest. So now ChatGPT is written you this article outline. Now you say from that article outline, write, you know, maybe, maybe tune that up a little bit, paste it back in there. So it's write you a 2000 word search engine optimized article about that guest name and what they talk to you about talked on your show. So now it writes out this good article. I mean you can almost always tell when it's written by AI. You could again say that. Now tell it remove filler words, filler words and phrases. Remove pretext and context. Make this sound more human. It'll rewrite the article again sounding more human. So now you take that, copy the YouTube URL to the, the top of that web page, to that guest web page. So now your YouTube video shows up. Then copy and paste that chat GPT article in there. And there's a misconception about the, about Google Banning pages or not liking AI. Google is here to provide the. I mean, search engines are here to provide the best possible result to the client. So they don't care if you wrote it with AI or if an alien wrote it for you, as long as it's the best result and it doesn't have a bunch of weird, weird junk in it.

If it's interesting, if people stay on it and watch it or read it, they're going to think, okay, this is something real. If everyone leaves after 1.2 seconds, it doesn't matter if, say I or not, they're gonna figure this doesn't deserve our spotlight. Isn't that generally the way.

Yep. But so on that now you've got your video at the top, you've got a couple thousand word search engine optimized article. Now when people are searching for my name or whoever your guest name is or the topic that you're talking about, they find your webpage at the bottom of that. You could have a call to action. You could have the book that you're selling, your coaching course, whatever it is that you're offering. You're not monetizing from the actual podcast, you're monetizing from thousands of people seeing those different articles you're posting. And you're providing the best, you're providing the best information on that guest that the person was searching for. Now your call to action will sell when you've got that at the bottom or on the side or however you set that up. Great tips.

I got to do that myself. We're speaking with Emma Curtis McCoy. He is the owner of Newswire magazine and he's an expert on personal branding and marketing. Here's the big question I have, which is, when is the perfect time for someone to use services like you? Because I encounter all the. As I'm sure you do, someone has written their first book. They're all excited about some new project and they think, wow, I've heard if I just spend $5 a day on Google Ads or something, I can be really famous and it's really easy. And many people advertise too soon. I think you and I probably are in agreement there. Many people advertise the wrong way on wrong stuff. Many people advertise before they really have a product that anyone would want. So what kind of a checklist do you have? I mean, I had a guest on one of my students just last week. I felt sorry for her. She's like, yeah, I saved up all my. I took all my money out of savings and I went to, she didn't call it a vanity publisher, but it clearly was. And I gave them $5,000 and now they're going to mail me 800 books. And I thought, oh my God, it's.

Just when that book is $2 $62.80 for the copy, depending on the, depending on the number.

I mean, there's so many ways to get scammed and waste, you know, waste money on marketing anything. And I'm sure you've seen people who say, you know, come to our seminar this weekend for $10,000 and you'll be interviewed and you'll be seen on ABC and Fox and NBC on 50 markets across the country. Well, yeah, you will be, but it's at 3am in the morning for an infomercial squeezed in with other people where the audience literally be zero.

Yeah.

You can say on your website, as seen on, on NBC in Orlando and Chicago, doesn't. Does that build a brand? A lot of people think it does. So first big question, it's good for building your ego.

Yeah.

When should, what's the checklist you have for? A, when someone is a legitimate client prospect for you. B, when they should be even thinking about spending money on advertising.

So the first one, if somebody reaches out to you, for example, if you're on social media, you probably all remember on Instagram how you'd get messages every single week from somebody that was selling a verification this, selling the check mark, this back when it was 15, 20 grand, you could actually pay a white label hacker to go in. And then not really white label, but our white hat hacker, they call them to go in and give you that blue check mark. There's 15, 20 grand you could get, you could pay to get it done. But now you look at the person reaching out, guaranteeing that they could get you verified. If you just send them 500 bucks via Venmo and you look at their check, you look at their profile and they've got, they're following 130 people, they got two followers. They don't have the check mark themselves. The person is either lying to you or they don't believe in the service they're selling enough to use it themselves. So for example, if you're, if you're talking to me trying to figure out personal branding. If you Google M. Curtis McCoy and I don't show up, I, I am an absolute con artist. You don't want to, you don't want to do a business with the guy that, that's not using the service that he says he's doing. So check them out. The other thing you can go to, you can pull up their website, copy the URL, go to a dope. I mean there's whois.com there's quite a few different domains, but you can look and see when the domain was actually registered, how long it's been around. If this is a successful business, you'll see a lot of times people use, they'll use a reputable magazine's name and then add something else to it in the URL they're saying, okay, we're on, we're on Forbes Spotlight. By the way, I listened to you.

And I just did what you said. I googled you. 3, 3 billion. Excuse me, 3 million websites come up. But we do in fact see yours. We see nice looking images, we see your business account, we see your Instagram account, we see your Facebook account, we see your Amazon, we see your YouTube, we see your LinkedIn. So everything is showing up. I did not see a link where the headline was, oh my God, Curtis McCoy rips me off. Run for your life. He's a scam artist. And it is amazing to me how many people never bother to look at someone's name before doing business with them. So thank you for mentioning that. And you passed the test, man.

When I give that info, when I gave that, that advice there, I did not think you were going to use it right away. That would have been absolutely a train wreck for me if you showed up and my name didn't even show up. Glad you pulled that up. But you can also reach out to somebody. Reach out to a friend or somebody who is trusted, who's not in the same niche. You'll have. A lot of times somebody will reach out to a web designer friend asking about a web design deal that they got and it may be a great deal, but the friend is also trying to sell you their service. So make sure you're reaching out somebody who knows, you know, knows about the industry or get on, do some research yourself. Go to the WHOIS database, whois.com or the ICANN icann.org and check the URL, see if that's actually. So for example, if you want to do this, go to. You might. Yes. I mean if you go to whois.com up the top right and search news-wire.com that'll show who owns the domain, shows it was registered on 1997 or May 2 of 1997, shows the, you know, the registration, proxy info and stuff. But if somebody says they've been in business for how many years? Search the website, see if they actually been online for that long or if it's a new bait and switch kind of a thing. But look and see a lot of.

Due diligence anyone, anyone could do easily in this era.

Yeah.

Let's get down to more nitty gritty. What do you look for in an ideal client and what is your checklist for when someone is ready to go beyond posting how to videos on YouTube, which anyone can do for free with a phone to actually doing paid advertising?

That's one thing where I, I turn down folks pretty frequently that are, they've had a coach, you know, they're working with success coaches or whoever that says you need to go out and start spending money on advertising because the more they can get you to spend anywhere, the more excited you are and the more, the more money you spend with this coach. So I'll turn people down there too where if you're not. Here's kind of the checklist as far as getting yourself deciding whether or not spend money. If you've got something set up, if you've got your, maybe your book website or you're, you're sending people to your website that redirects to an Amazon short URL to buy your book. If you're an author, if, if you've got a landing page that's converting and you, you notice that a good percentage of the people who actually hit your page are going through clicking and buying your book then throw some advertising money at it. You throw 50 or 100 bucks, whatever at that, at that ad. If you make more than you spent in the advertising, spend some more money. Keep, keep bumping that up because that's basically an endless supply of cash flow. What happens most of the time though is people will, they'll work with these success coded coaches who aren't successful themselves except for collecting money from people that are paying them to learn how to, how to be successful. But I would say, and I apologize too, I don't know if you know or not, but I survived a brain cancer. So my, my, I get off track a little bit easy now.

Well, you're doing very well and fascinating to us so I'm enjoying the conversation. We very much appreciate your time as you, as you gather your thoughts. I'm going to practice what I preach and do some pitching here. Here is my book on how you can make your own clone. Building an interactive AI video clone. This is a paperback. It's the hardback. There's an audiobook. It's available in Kindle. It's soon going to be available on every single platform in every format. It is available now via Authors republic on 57 different audiobook program platforms from audible.com But I'm, I'm obviously excited about speaking as a communication form and speaking in person, whether it's keynotes, live training. I'm also very excited about the communication tool of online video courses. I have 250 courses and 10 million student enrollments around the world. But I happen to be most passionate of all things about digital clothing. I have a video clone, Curtis, and it's pretty much like talking to me, only it never gets grumpy, it never gets tired and it's available 2am, 3am, 4am when I'm sleeping. So I'm a big believer that that is going to be a bigger communication tool than the Internet itself, than the printing press itself. So I spent a lot of time talking about my interactive video clone and I would certainly think for any of your customers who are already leaders, that if they don't have one now, in the next year they're going to have one and two or three years from now, it's going to be embarrassing not to have one. So that's my pitch. Here's what I like to do with because we're all about helping people become more successful right here on this show. And one of my strongest principles is don't wait for someone to ask the right question or invite you. Take initiative, seize the day and give value. Don't be ashamed to talk about your own value proposition. So we have a little segment right here. What we do, every single program is we turn over to our guest and say pitch away. Talk about how you give value to people and what you want them to do. If you want them to go to news-wire.com right now, you can tell them that. If you want to tell them to go to your LinkedIn or if you've got some free report, pitch away. But you've got 90 seconds starting right now.

Perfect. Hey, so if you're listening to the TJ Walker show right now and trying to figure out how to brand yourself, or maybe you're already you've got somebody working for you that's doing the personal branding. You're getting out there daily on social media, but you need to really get your name out there as far as paid media goes. We can get you on the 96 foot billboard in times Square in New York, put you on the COVID of Newswire magazine, do an interview on Amazon, Fire tv, send me A message, any social media platform. You can go to Newswire Magazine, just Google Newswire Magazine, you can get on any of the social platforms, but search M. Curtis McCoy, send me a message, tell you, tell me that you'd like to be featured and also mention that you saw this on the TJ Walker Success show. And I'll, I'll make sure TJ gets a, gets a little, little thank you gift for him, you know, from, from sending you over. But yeah, get, get connected. And again, this is not for people who are just getting started with personal branding, but if you're already successful, you're already making money, you've got a funnel that's working and that's generating revenue and you know, if you just send more traffic to it, you can make more money. That's where, that's where we can come in and help you appreciate you. DJ Great.

Now let's not bury really the sort of, the most important thing, a funnel that's working. Most people try funnels and never really succeed. I have failed numerous, I mean, every, every five years or so I'll get all excited. I'll hire some marketing expert who, who focuses exclusively on online course creators and I'll, I'll end up spending six figures every time. It ends up being an unmitigated disaster. I have been very successful on existing platforms where they do the marketing places like Udemy, but obviously there are people who sell on their own platforms and sell courses for, you know, a thousand, 25,000. They've, they've figured it out. Do you, are you able to help someone who, let's say, has a really successful consulting practice, maybe a speaking business, and are venturing into products the first time, whether it's a course, whether it's a book or something else, and build their funnel to get it working and successful?

No, I, I do not build funnels. I've got a developer on staff that's been working for me since 2006 or 7. Really sharp guy. The one recommendation that I'd have, I mean you can, there's a lot of stuff you can learn by yourself. You know, build a WordPress site, install Elementor, some basic stuff to make a really great looking site. But you mentioned something that's completely different from what, what I typically focus on. I'll teach, I'll teach people to focus on owning your traffic. So maybe you're sending them to YouTube, you know, say, hey, go watch this video on YouTube. But if you send them to your site.com guest name, you know, forward slash guest name with the YouTube video on there. They still see the YouTube video, but now you own the traffic that's come to your website. So if you're trying to build a funnel, there's all kinds of great funnel building software out there. But again I would recommend doing that on your own website. You can install software, make sure that you're sending people to your name.com or your URL rather than whatever the course, creator.com forward/some random URL. Make sure you on the, make sure you own the incoming traffic.

Media landscape is changing every day, sometimes every minute. What worked, you know, 20 years ago, doesn't work, didn't work 15 years ago, didn't, doesn't work last. It's constantly changing. I mean there were certain, you know, you and I are old enough to remember early 2000s, you know, blogging was a of piece big thing. Then things switch to social media. YouTube is still very successful for a lot of people, but it's, but it seems to be much harder to break in anytime you get an early on a platform. What platform are you most excited about? You mentioned Amazon, excuse me, Fire tv. And I've certainly heard of it. I've gotten pitched on it before. I've never actually watched it to my knowledge, Amazon Fire, nor have I heard of anyone saying they sold a lot. How do you, how do you get the mix right between trying new media? Because you never know what could be the next Twitter. And if you get in early, it's a gold mine versus things that can be time wasters and frankly can just be, you know, stroking someone's vanity. And I would ask you like related to that, what's the value of getting a, you know, an ad in Times Square that maybe people see for half a second and forget. It's nice for my ego to say, hey, I've been in Times Square. How do you actually quantify the value of that as well as doing something like, like Fire Amazon Fire tv.

That's a great question. And I love that you call out your guests like when there's, when there's something where if I'm a guy that's selling, going, hey, I get you on Amazon Fire TV and it's going to generate all these leads. I mean not Amazon Fire TV. I mean I can get you on the 96 foot billboard and Time Square and it's going to generate these leads. The, I, I don't know that anybody has ever sold anything off that. You'll see Reese's, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups advertises in between Our ads, real often that's something where they're, they're making money because you can walk right into the, into the convenience store across the road there, grab a Reese's that you just saw on the screen. Somebody who's typically not spending thousands of dollars because they just happen to see something one time on the screen. What that does is the credibility. So yes, it makes you feel good. I've had guys, you know, people fly out and stand in front of the billboard and have their family and friends all stand there, somebody taking pictures of them. So it looks cool. But, but that is for generating the credibility. So again, do not spend money on something like that if you don't already have the, the website that's generating the traffic, generating the route generic, that's making money. Now you put up that YouTube video. We do this with every person that advertises too. We'll give you a video clip of you and you know, all these different videos running along you can embed in your site. But that, the billboards for example, is strictly for credibility. We did all kinds of billboard advertising with another company that I owned years ago. Nobody ever come in and said, hey, we saw your billboard on the highway and that's the reason that we're in the store. But it was just that, that repeated, that repeated. They may have seen that they're going, okay, this is good business deal with, to deal with. Because every day on the work, on the way to work, I see, I see your face on the screen. But yeah, that's, it's not. Again, again, don't throw money at paid media until the earned media side is working. And then same thing with, with the magazine. This is a little bit different. On Newswire magazine, most publications have what's called a paywall. So you, you get on, you spend 5, 10, $15,000 to get your, get your name, you know, get a whole article about you in some publication. Now when somebody googles it, you get published, you got this great looking article. It sounds great. So now you send that link out to your mom, your neighbor, your grandma, everybody asking them to check out your article. This actually happened to me years ago. My grandma clicked on the link, she said, sweetie, I'd love to read your article, but I don't have to sign up for a yearly subscription to this other magazine. Um, so you don't have to sign up. Just, just click it and read it. She's no, it has this pop up that says I have to sign up, I have to give my credit card to be able to Read it. So again, look at the, look at the publication you're published in. If it's something where you're paying to promote their business. There, There you go, right there. He's got the news, the Times Square. And that's not a live feed, that's a recording. But yeah, kind of a cool, kind of cool thing. I mean, again, it's good for your credibility. If you put that on your website and it's got, instead of just the Newswire magazine thing, it's your face on Billboard. You're seeing cars drive by the, the other ads going on. That's an credibility indicator. Same thing as when we do, when we feature somebody on the COVID of the magazine, we send you a metal billboard, I mean, a metal gallery print like you see in different art galleries of your magazine cover. So it's kind of cool thing to hang beside you, you know, but hang behind you in the, in your podcast studio or in your real estate office or one of your businesses. But again, having a, having the credibility does nothing for you if people cannot find you. You need to already be doing business and already be getting traffic before you start spending money on the paid, on the paid media side for your credibility.

Our guest today is M. Curtis McCoy, expert on branding, working with top leaders across many industries. What are you finding your clients actually say moves the needle the most? I mean, there was a time, you know, 20 years ago when getting on the Today show here in the United States was sort of the number one way if you're going to be in morning TV, a positive profile in 60 Minutes or certainly Oprah back when she was getting 10 million views a day would completely make it a business. It would take a book that no one had ever heard of and make it a bestseller. Media has fragmented so much that since then that it doesn't move the needle. And some wildly successful authors like Tim Ferriss, as far back As I know 8, 10 years ago, was saying, hey, he can go on the, I can go on the Today show. I don't really sell much of anything. I can go on a, a niche podcast like the Art of Charm, and I sell a ton more books than if I go on a big broadcast TV show. Are you seeing that trend with your, with your customers and your clients? Certainly a lot of top executives would love to go on Joe Rogan, but don't necessarily want to take the time to, you know, fly to New York to be on the CBS morning show on a Saturday morning for three minutes.

You're exactly right about that. And that Even with the, with the magazine. When we launched, you know, years and years ago when I, when I took over Newswire, they had. People would constantly ask where can I buy a print copy? And now everybody realizes the print magazine is, I mean even most of the major magazine companies, a huge percent of them are, are getting rid of the print not only to save on paper and production costs, but because if you're on a, if you're on a magazine that is, that is set up properly where they're linking to your site with a do follow search engine optimized web page, they got a link, you know, do follow link to your site you can get on there. And that's not only even if nobody ever reads the magazine article. I mean you get a high domain authority site linking to yours. That's driving page rank to your website, helping your site rank better. So whatever terms you're searching, whatever terms people are that you're hoping people are landing on your page for enough of those type articles help your, your site to rank higher and push you past the competition. But yeah, again I, I do, I flow flown over the country doing different TV and radio and even radio where they're syndicating the, the video stream. But if they're not creating that dedicated web page, I, I typically don't see. I told you earlier, I'm doing up to six podcasts a day as a guest. I rarely ever see one that, that I actually get anything from being the guest on. But when I've got the guys that have done the, you know, they've created the page linked to the site, have the have landing page optimized traffic, Google seeing that like the TJ Walker show here now that's, that's like driving traffic. And I mean a lot of it's just throwing enough mud and seeing what sticks. And if you're not wasting money on don't be paying for every paid, you know, paid ad that you can think of or paying to be on blogs and stuff. But yeah again you're, you get more out of now the, the sites that are keeping up with, keeping up with the trends and keeping up with what's.

Actually working and things do change constantly. Is there any. You've given us very specific practical tactical tips on how to do things like get more out of your podcast interview. Is there any other media format or are just new media platform you are excited about? And can you go into a little more detail on Amazon Fire? Because there's Amazon, there's, there's Roku. I mean these days Pretty much anyone could start. I mean, I've even thought about it six months ago and I, the more I came up with it, it seemed like a waste of time. But anyone can create their own fast TV network, you know, free advertising supported TV network and get up on Roku and get up on I guess Amazon Fire. But is it worth it if, if you don't have a way of building it, an audience? Because I mean I remember from my old talk radio days the radio salesman would be like, oh, you know, we're in 500,000 homes and 2 million homes. Yeah, but how many people actually listen? And my counter to them was well, I've got a, basically a radio network available in 5 million homes. It's my voicemail machine. Anyone in the world could call and hear it. The fact that no one's calling all day, it's still distributed. Is it meaningful if you're not getting in front of people? So when you see, when you say the Amazon tv, are you talking about your own fast TV network or something else?

So it, and that's, that's a good question. Also the, this is something I would recommend if you've got telling you, hey, I can launch you an Amazon platform if you, if you're not, if you're not in a position where spending additional money is, is generating extra traffic. The difference between views on Amazon Fire TV versus YouTube, let me see here. Amazon has got Amazon's in 187 different countries, more than 50 million active monthly viewers. But if you're launching your own show on there, we launched this back in 2018, 2017. But for Amazon, if, if I was going to say YouTube free versus Amazon and the money that that costs to have your own platform, I, I would absolutely choose YouTube if they were the same price, if both of them were free, I would still choose the YouTube platform over Amazon. You know, the paid Amazon Fire TV.

More discoverability.

More discoverability. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the entire world owned by this, by the first largest Google. So there's no competing with that. But there's also people, you know, we've got people on there. The last time we talked with Amazon Fire TV rep, they said we had just over 150,000 viewers a month. So I have watched my own show one time on Amazon just because it was a cool interview and I wanted to show my family, but I own the show and I've watched the thing one time. But again that's a credibility factor where if you're already generating the revenue you already generate the media. Now you've got, people can click from Amazon tv, click right through and get signed up or buy whatever they're gonna buy from you. That's a cool feature. But if you're focusing on one or the other, do the free stuff. Put, you know, just put the work in. If you're at a point where you've got enough money coming in from the work that you're doing, then you need to start doing the paid media and, and, and, and scale up there. That's kind of like the story with the, you get the lawyer out, you know, lawyer out mowing his lawn, cussing and kicking the grass and then flipping stupid more. So they caught out here and he's ticked off, pushing the mower back and forth. The neighbor comes up and he says, hey, why are you out here mowing your grass? Well, it's got to be load, somebody's got to mow it. He's like, well, how much do you charge an hour as a lawyer? 100 bucks an hour. 150 bucks an hour. Okay, now the neighbor boy mows my, my lawn for $15. Is it worth your time to be doing 150 bucks an hour to waste your, you know, waste your time when you could be out making money? Same thing with, with paid media. If you're, if you got a business that's already successful, you're not trying to learn another platform, you're not trying to figure out how to do all this yourself. You could do what I'm doing. But if you're not, if you're in a position where you're successful and you're already making money, pay an expert who's already making it work and has been for years. Like the lawyer who could go make more money doing what he actually likes to do instead of mowing his lawn.

Back when I had a house, I learned that very quickly. I thought, I'm not going to be like all these lazy people around here, too good to mow their own grass. That lasted about a week and a half. So I, I could definitely relate to that. What's your take on the state of paid advertising? I mean for so long Google Ads seem to be the consensus of the best, most cost effective way. Some people say Facebook ads are the best. Gary Vaynerchuk famously is doing arbitrage of always looking for the least expensive advertising and does to his credit get right at, he gets it right early on TikTok when before anyone was talking about it. But for pure just paid ads on Google Facebook, TikTok what do you think is most effective for people right now?

It completely depends on your, whatever your price point is on what you're selling. So if you're selling a couple thousand dollars coaching session or if you're selling a, you know, retreats that are five grand to go out and do these entrepreneur retreats, you can spend a lot of money on advertising with a very low CPC or c, I mean with very high CPC or cpm, high cost per per acquisition there. And that's just fine. You know, say, say you have to have a hundred people look at the site and one of them finally buy. That makes it pretty easy. If you're selling a book, let's say you're doing a, an Amazon Kindle book promoting that, you're selling it for 2.99, you're making 206. I mean it depends on the number of pages and stuff. So you're making $2 profit per, per book sold. Now if you're spending a dollar per, a dollar per per view there, so you're spending 50 cents of you and you get four people look at it. If you don't have at least 26% of your entire viewers buy that book from the ad that you just spent, you're losing money. You cannot ever spend enough to get, to get back in the block.

And if you, if you can get a 26 purchase rate, probably the most successful advertiser of all time, you should, you should probably shouldn't be writing books. You should be running an ad agency. Is it even possible to advertise a book successfully long term and make money from the book? Certainly there are people who, who have a, you know, not this book, but they have a book of, you know, how to launch your hedge fund and become a billionaire. And they're selling services to hedge funds so they don't mind losing $10,000 a month on advertising because every client they get gives them a million dollars of revenue. But for someone who has to actually make what's the book to be profitable in its own right, do you work with authors to help them figure out the right advertising mix for that or is that, is that a fool's game?

I will, but again, if you're in the process of writing a book right now, I, I would absolutely never recommend writing a book to make that your profit center. The, the chances that, that that book, like I said, I'm publishing my fifth book right now and the chances that I'll ever make a dollar off that for if you look at my, I don't Know if you can look up the, the Amazon ads history but we had a cap and $10,000 a month Amazon ad budget on that, on that fourth book that I launched back I had worked with a, with a, with a publishing coach who again was not. I, I didn't know how many, how many scammers there were out there but they're telling me get catch on, make that a New York Times bestseller. So we sort of ten thousand dollar a month advertising budget that my other company is paying for trying to make this book take off where it make money. I have not spent advertising that 10 grand a month since I think early 2019, maybe 2018, 2019. I will never break even from the book sales. I will still never make break even from the advertising money that I spent back then on, on Amazon ads for the book. But the problem is because I did not have a call to action in the book. So the book was all these things about here's, here's a successful author. Here's the successful. Here's 18 successful guys that are telling you their, their how to be successful tips. Nowhere in there did ask, I didn't even ask. Hey, leave me a good, you know, leave a good review and help other people find this. I didn't know that was something I should put in the book. But if, if you're using that book as a digital calling card or as a, as a paper calling card. So maybe, maybe if you're doing a book on AI and you say hey reach out to reach out to me. Visit this website to check out this, this, this AI video clone software now throw some money at that. If you're, if you're converting people where it's, where it's more than that 2.6 cent book sale price. If you're making money off of one person can hire you for six figures to go speak or teach at their company. Absolutely ten grand a month you'll make back real quick. If you've got hundreds of people a day buying that book and somebody happens to hire you from that but have a call to action to monetize the book where the book is not your profit center, it's just a digital business card is what I would recommend.

Curtis, before you go, we have a few questions coming in. Viewsef writes in and says hey guys, I'm currently a junior in college studying advertising npr but I'm super worried as I feel like I don't know much about this field. Do you have any, do you guys have any advice or suggestions? Let's, let's hear your advice to this, this young. For starters, thank you for watching a show like this. Most juniors in college I think are probably watching sports or a silly tick tock. Sorry to be generalizing. So thanks for even watching a show like this. Curtis, what's your advice to this young person?

I think that's good that you're being humble about this and realizing that you need to keep learning, you need to keep growing. If you studied every book, every, every bit of information that those professors are going to teach you in college today, tomorrow you're gonna be outdated because there can be some new stuff that you need to keep learning. I'd say keep learning, keep growing and just, just keep up with the trends there. If, if I ask somebody who is an Internet marketing expert 2 years ago what to do today, most of the stuff they tell me is going to be wrong. So just keep learning. And that's really awesome. Like, like you said, they're really awesome that you're going out and continuing to keep growing.

And part two of that question is what should I be doing to set myself up for success.

Again? Keep growing, keep studying, keep learning, keep watching podcasts like this and, and these different shows that can help you grow.

I'm going to give you some. I'm sorry, go ahead.

You look at advertising experts like Gary Vaynerchuk, for example, you mentioned Gary Vee has got an entire team of people that are constantly researching, trying the newest trends, trying the newest, trying to figure out what's going to work, testing every new social media algorithm, I mean, I mean every new social media platform that's out there. But just keep testing, keep trying, keep growing. As soon as you take, as soon as you, you think you know it all, that's where you're out of luck.

Yousef, here's my advice. And your professors are not going to like this. My biggest advice to you was do not major in advertising and pr. And I'm not anti intellectual or anti the academy. I want my doctor, my surgeon to be a graduate of a medical school. If I'm being tried for murder, I want my lawyer to be a member of the bar and to have passed law school. Advertising and PR are different. I have found with very few exceptions, people who are professors in advertising and PR are typically the least successful, least knowledgeable in those fields. And as Curtis mentioned, it changes so quickly. My advice to you is, would be major in something that doesn't major in statistics, major in philosophy so you can recognize BS when you see it. And then in your side time when everyone else is off drinking beer or playing pickleball, spend time actually creating a product and then advertise it and promote it. Create an online course on successful ways college kids can ace test. Create a course on that and spend $2 a day advertising. You'll learn a lot. Try to get publicity for it in your own college newspaper. You'll learn a lot. Start a new business every month in college and if all of them but one fail, you're a success. Even if they all fail, you're still going to know so much more about advertising and PR because you can, you can experiment in a million ways where the only cost is your time. And your time is better off doing that than taking a course on pr, I believe. And I've been, you know, I'm sure you've been asked, Curtis, I've, I've been asked to give guest lectures at PR departments around the country. And I'm not saying there's no value, but these are things you can learn better today by actually creating a product and doing. There's no gatekeepers. When I was starting, you couldn't just create a product. It was too difficult. And I, you know, I spent my time in colleges, you know, washing wish windows during the summer because you couldn't just create an online course. Anyway, Yousef, I hope you find that useful. Curtis, we really appreciate your time today. Those of you listening or just tuning in, we've, we've linked to all of Curtis's websites, his social media. Check out his news-wire.com his magazine. You may want to connect with it or follow him on Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, threads. You know, I'm on threads. I never go to it. At what point when you're experimenting with something do you try it long enough and say it's not even worth me continuing? I haven't made that decision about threads yet, but I haven't thought about it. And something tells me if I really go in and look at my interactions, I may think why am I bothering to have my team post on threads? So kind of an aside there, but I would just, just occurred to me when I saw that you post on.

Threads and I do on threads, but I'm posting similar stuff, repurposing content. You talked about cutting up these videos into other things that re repurchased on their platforms. It takes almost nothing. I post on 10 platforms. You know, anytime I'm creating content. Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, the coup app in India. I mean, all kinds of different. I, if you, if you're on Coup search. I'm the number two ranked guy underneath of the Prime Minister. But again I, I have never got a single lead, never got, never made any money but never even got a lead off of being the second highest ranked guy on the, on the app. But if it's something where you've got the time or you've got the team that's doing it, keep posting and then, and then just figure out how to maybe re tune that up a little bit. Threads does longer form, you can, you can post some longer form descriptions and stuff on there. So I'm still trying to figure out threads myself but I'm going to keep posting on there until they shut it down or don't because if it, if it does blow up, they change the algorithm, something blows up later and that takes off. Now if you've been posting on there for years and years and you're on and you're, you have the credibility established already, you're gonna be the guy that blows up. So spend the time and, and just keep putting it in or have your, have your team do it. And if there's a, if, if it's something you're managing yourself and you really don't resonate it with it, there's a good chance that your target audience is not going to resonate with that platform either. So for example, you're, you're a, you're a coach trying to get on Tick Tock and do the, do the stupid dances to, to get viewers. Your potential client is probably not on Tick Tock watching those type of videos and if they see you, that's just going to cut your credibility. But figure out how to do what's best for your audience on each of the platforms.

And, and I, I assiduously avoid dancing on Tick Tock for that very reason. And Curtis McCoy, thank you so much for being our guest today. We appreciate it. Take care.

Thank you, Mr. Walker.