This episode is all about how you can connect an incredible customer experience to influencer marketers! Gordon is an expert who wrote the book on influencer marketing and dives into detail on how building long-term relationships with your influencer has an immeasurable impact on their audience and their ability to persuade their audience to check out your product or service. It's all about building that trust!
For detailed show notes, Justin Varuzzo's after thoughts on each episode, and lists you can use to take immediate action in your business, check out the website at http://www.marketingandservice.com.
This episode is all about how you can connect an incredible customer experience to influencer marketers! Gordon is an expert who wrote the book on influencer marketing and dives into detail on how building long-term relationships with your influencer has an immeasurable impact on their audience and their ability to persuade their audience to check out your product or service. It's all about building that trust!
For detailed show notes, Justin Varuzzo's after thoughts on each episode, and lists you can use to take immediate action in your business, check out the website at http://www.marketingandservice.com.
Imagine, if you could get a major TV, newspaper, or celebrity endorsement, uh, the possibilities would be endless, but it might not be as helpful as you think. What if instead of dreaming for the impossible you could build long-term relationships with a network of influencers who have a far greater ability to persuade your specific target audience. Today's guest Gordon Glenister will tell us just how to do that, that, and more. Coming up on marketing and service.com podcast.
Speaker 2:[inaudible] Justin Brusso
Speaker 1:Here from the marketing and service.com podcast. The podcast to help you build your business by creating incredible customer relationships. If you find value in this episode, please, please, please take a moment to follow or subscribe. If you want to do me a huge personal favor, please leave a five-star review because it means so much to me. And it's what helps keep me going and motivated on doing more episodes of this podcast. Also, I'd love to hear from you. Please hit me up on the marketing and service.com Facebook page. What marketing challenges are you having with your business? What would you love to learn more about? Let me know over on Facebook, you can also email me justin@marketingandservice.com. I love hearing from listeners today's guest Gordon Glenister is all about influencer marketing. Now we've all heard of influencer marketing, but we don't necessarily know all the ins and outs and the specifics of it. And that's why I brought Gordon in today to discuss this because I wanted to learn more about influencer marketing on the surface. It always seemed like, just reach out to someone who seems to share your target audience and make them an offer, but just like everything on this podcast, the goal is to build long term relationships and to create a great customer experience. The only way to do that for your end customers when using an influencer is to make sure that you have built a great trustworthy and powerful, consistent long-term relationship with the influencer. So without further ado, let's jump right into it with Gordon and I am so excited to have Gordon Asser joining us today all the way from the United Kingdom to talk about influencer marketing Gordon. Thanks so much for being with us today. It's a pleasure. So just to get started, uh, obviously most people know what influencer marketing is. It's generally when you have someone endorse your product, right? Uh, back in my day, we just called it a celebrity endorsement, but now anyone can be a celebrity if they have the right audience, right? So, uh, what people might not know is what does an influencer marketer do? What is your job
Speaker 3:And lots of jobs, really, but as somebody that is consulting and advising, uh, entrepreneurs and organizations about how to be effective on influence marketing, um, is really about leveraging your brand values through somebody else and using it to promote a product or service in such a way that it is congruent, congruent. If you will, to what your brand proposition is all about. That's why finding influences is still one of the hardest and most challenging things to do, but making sure that you find the right people that, um, that are relevant, authentic, um, and, and yeah, I've, I've got the right type of audience. So it's not just, of course, about the follower numbers. It's a lot more, um, research that, uh, these, uh, these marketeers needs to need to think about is why there are influencer platforms. There is why there are agencies that are able to support these basic because, uh, uh, you know, it's not for the faint artists, you know, it does take time and effort. And I think there's a lot of misnomer education about this. Oh, well actually, if I send a product to somebody, um, they're going to happily promote it. Well, no.
Speaker 1:So what what's where, I mean, uh, so the average person might say, average business owner might say, Hey, I'm going to just go to YouTube and look for a, who's ever got the most followers in this space, uh, and reach out to them and pay them to promote my product or offer to pay them, to promote my product. What's wrong with that strategy. Why doesn't that work?
Speaker 3:The first thing of course, is that you need to have a better understanding about the type of audience that YouTube or Instagram is likely to have. So if you've got a fitness product and you ideally perhaps think, right, well, I mean, just go and find a, a YouTuber that's really big on, um, on fitness. And then that should be fine. I should make out that him just to let you guys know that are listening around 65% of influences do not react to inbound emails and direct messages, which may surprise you. But that the reason for that is because little or no thought has been driven by the person that's actually reaching out to them the same way that if you wanted to, um, somebody go and promote the work for you, it wouldn't discount go to somebody in the street and say, hi, would you like to work for me? You do a bit of due diligence when you, um, you look at their resume resumes, um, because that's what you're trying to do. You, if your brand is sacrosanct to you, you want to make sure that it is someone's going to promote your product or service, and you want to make sure that they do it in the right way that is, uh, engaging and relevant. Um, so one of the things that I say to business owners is to do your research and spend more and more time about type of influencer that you think. So it's almost like almost like praising a mood board of, of the ideal client, the ideal type of influencer who's got the reach, but more importantly has got the engagement because that's now seen as a much bigger value proposition or a brand. Um,
Speaker 1:We've all seen, we've all seen the social, uh, people who have a million followers or a hundred thousand followers yet they put out a message and they don't get one comment. They get no engagement. Uh, and chances are, you can tell that they probably bought a lot of fake followers or, or, or fake, uh, uh, people to follow them and promote them. But yet when they actually put out content, you don't actually see a lot of genuine engagement, right.
Speaker 3:And that's, what's really, really important. Just going back to the point I made a minute ago, despite doing your research, understanding the level of comments that the, this influencer is getting and the sentiment behind it, because sometimes you can have a lot of engagement and it's not good, right. But if somebody is reacting badly to a particular post, I always say to people, go and have a look at the last 10 posts, um, on an influencer, um, because that will give you a much, they'll give you the last one will give you a much great, so broad, broad opinion about what they're doing, what type of content they're doing that is resonating well, is it, is it, is it imagery? Is it videos? Um, is it what time of day they putting it out? So all of this is really, really important. Um, and once you're in a position to have almost put your pre-list together, now that might be a time when you, this is even before you've reached out to them. If this group of say 10 influences are ideal for you, and before you do that, start to comment and like their, um, their content. I always, I call it tickling the toes in a way, what I mean, therefore is show that you care about what they're doing, because if you want to work with them, no, these are employees. These are ideal partners for you that can do amazing things potentially for your brands. Um, so there's, there's a little bit of what I will call cookbook chip. That is the biggest. You have to remember a lot of these influences get huge amounts of, of, uh, inbound requests, various companies, and what they, what they like, what they like most is somebody that takes the time to have at least considered the top of content. And they're already putting it out, right. Maybe they'll notice some comment from somebody. So then a little while after you then make a reach out, you are doing it with this, with the, um, with the fact that you've already seen some of their content. So like, did John, um, just, just wanted to say, I love what you're putting out at the moment. It really, really resonates with us. You know, we're a brand in the fitness industry. What we're looking to do is to do this, this, this, um, we'd love to have a conversation about potential collaboration without mentioning too much more, right. So what it is is, is what I call peaking the interest. Um, they will, at that time, probably if there are interested, they will have gone onto your Instagram or your YouTube to figure out a little bit more about your brand. And then hopefully, um, you know, that approach will create a reaction. Um, uh, but remember the, the, the best collaboration's only work when there's total alignment on both brands.
Speaker 1:Sure. So obviously this podcast is really focused on customer service and building long-term customer relationships. And I think that that also is effective advice for brands, uh, engaging with influencers, where, uh, you take, for example, uh, Michael Jordan, uh, and working with Nike that has been a consistent relationship, uh, virtually his entire career. Uh, and it has a lot of, uh, a lot of validity to it and respect versus someone who might have, uh, partnered with a different manufacturer of basketball sneakers every six months for seven years straight, uh, because you clearly that person's just doing it to get money, uh, and promoting whatever the company will pay them the most, uh, where a more strategic approach would be to build just like we tell businesses to build long-term relationships with their customers. We want businesses to also build long-term relationships with the influencers that are going to promote or, or, uh, uh, use and, and, and, uh, yeah. A hundred percent
Speaker 4:Yeah. Your product, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a hundred percent agree with you. And the growth in influencer marketing is in two areas, one in the, or we call them micro and nano level, which is, you know, we were talking at the beginning of this podcast about, uh, what used to be the celebrity endorsement now, which is there's still some of that, but largely, uh, the growth in influencer marketing has been in a much, much lower at follower accounts because one of the benefits, of course, they're able to engage with their audience on a much more human level. They're able to go back to those comments personally. And so that the consumers have a much more closer trusted relationship with those people. Um, so w we, we think that's why there's been a growth in ambassador programs that have developed over the last year. Um, and what is interesting as well, Justin is not just with influences. There's been a growth in consumer advocacy platform, but people have realized now that even if somebody has like a thousand followers on Instagram, they're more likely to, and they're, they love the brands and those individuals could be great. I think that's an, any brand out there what they really want. You've raving fans, isn't it. Right. Um, and if they can get that through and through to the tuners and great, what helps sometimes is when you've got a mixture of what I call the VIP influencer group, and then also maybe a consumer advocacy group, because some of those consumers that are doing a great job might find themselves entering the influencer space right. Themselves. Um, but if you think about it, somebody said 10,000 followers, but they might have an engagement rate of 20 cent even is more than possible. Um, you know, that's a lot of potential click-throughs to a website that could generate sales.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Yeah. No doubt who wouldn't, who wouldn't want that. Right. Well,
Speaker 3:Exactly, exactly. Um, so I think, um, to, to your point about building relationships, you know, my advice is always for brands to do seek longer-term relationship. However, in the first instance, you don't know ways how, how a campaign is going to start. So what, what might be a quite good idea is to run a campaign, um, over a period of time. And that will give you a better understanding about the types of individuals and specifically the ones that do a really going the extra mile. If you're using 20 influences, you're not going to get the same results from all 20 of them. Uh, you might find one or two of them are heads and pad about something just truly spectacular. And some of the live done an okay, and maybe one or two of bond. Um, and that is something that, you know, that's why, when you run a campaign, you have to tweak it a little bit. Right. But what's great about it. You can, I mean, whereas if you've got like a billboard advertising campaign and it's up, it's running, you can't do anything about it. Whereas own influencer campaign, you can tweet the content, learn from some of the others and start to share that amongst the wider group and say, look, this particular, um, this particular type of content is resonating really well. Guys, you might have to consider this.
Speaker 1:That's great, great advice. So how do you take, uh, let's assume you, you find this perfect influencer, uh, you come to an agreement, uh, you work it out. How do you leverage influencers to really become the brand ambassadors that you want them to be?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, obviously there's this, uh, there's all sorts of things that you can do to bring them together, because remember what an influencer wants, this is really important and understanding why an influencer has got the community has, has got the community because they are trusted with their followers. They are often indicators or entertainers, or maybe inspiring. So what they want more than anything else is they want great content. Um, and therefore anything that you can do to help them deliver that content. So tools give them opportunities to come to events, maybe with VIP access or, um, location opportunities, um, perhaps give them a tour around the factory or how product is made. So be very aware that it's content that is little unusual and different, that will help them. Um, and I mean, money talks. It is, it's still the number one reason why, why influencers do what they do and that isn't to be shied away from people only different they're actually entrepreneurs in the same way that all of us are trying to make money. And I do think is quite amazing. The time I've been involved in this sector is how multi-skilled these individuals are, you know, they are digital natives in many areas, you know, they are not just about taking pictures, uh, videos, they're, they're, they're location Scouts, they're directors, they're producers, you know, their web designers, their email automators. So they really have all of this sort of under one roof, or even if they are, um, you know, contracting into somebody else, they know how to do it themselves in the first place. Right. So, um, you know, I think, um, me just to continue on further is it's about creating a community so that the you're not just working with one ambassador, you're working with a number of giving them opportunities to meet each other, to share content on online, allowing consumers, perhaps to, um, give feedback. I mean, there's, there's a great example of a company that I was interviewing on my podcast recently that actually used influencers as part of a product creation ideation. They, they, they flew them over to Brazil. It was a sugar cane product actually. And, um, they immersed in this sort of three day experience and what was going on the whilst this was happening, the influence was where we're creating content, sending it back to all their followers. But what do you think is, what do you think of this? What do you like this? And so they were almost going on that journey with them. So of course, for the brand, that was amazing because not only were they getting real insights from, you know, these half a dozen or so influences, but in a way they were, they were doing product research and potentially future consumers for their brand as well. Right?
Speaker 1:So it's really getting the influencer to get some skin in the game of their own. Uh, and now, now this has become a big chunk of, uh, of what they're doing right now. They're in Brazil, they're helping develop this product. Their fans and followers are watching along. They're engaging. And now it's like, everybody has a little piece in this master puzzle, uh, for, for this brand. Right. That's very cool. That's very unique.
Speaker 3:Well, and I also see that with, um, with, with the way the contents, um, delivered. So you'll often see them asking, you know, he like this blue or that red, you know, they're trying to, uh, really good at engaging with their follower base because that's why they follow them. So it's not just about, oh, here's a piece of content. They want them to comment. They want them to like, because let's not forget guys, these influences when they run a campaign, they want it work as much as you do. So what I would never say is ask them to do something, please say this, please do this right. Treat them like real partner collaborators. So that this is what we are trying to convey. This is the source of thinking so far. What do you think your followers would like best? And if you can involve them in the earlier part of the process, rather than me amplifies things, you'll find that you get a whole lot more, sometimes more than you ever expected. Wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's great advice. And I know, you know, we, we kind of at the start of this podcast discussed that difference between the, you know, the, the, the individual who will just take, you know, 50 bucks, a hundred bucks, a thousand bucks say, I'll mention your business five times in my next YouTube video, but then never goes back to it again, there's none of that engagement. Uh, there's no involving the audience. Uh, but I think what you just mentioned, these strategies, they really are what, make the difference and make someone trustable, uh, and trust trustable. I don't know if that's a word trustworthy,
Speaker 4:But it's
Speaker 1:Really what creates those relationships, a longterm relationship between the business and between the business and the consumer and between the business and the influencer and the influencers, fans and followers. Right,
Speaker 4:Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, what we were just talking about with Brazil, it was almost like they were going on this journey. There was this experience with them. And, uh, and I think, I think really great influences. They want to break, even when they go to these VIP parties and events, they, they, they're doing the, um, the pre the, putting the dress on before they go out. And when they go there and they're sharing the video graphy of the time, just outside the venue, and then they're going inside. So it's, it's almost like a bird's eye view to the, to the viewers, um, of what's going on. So the reason I say that is, think about what they are trying to do. They're trying to entertain the, trying to educate and trying to inspire.
Speaker 1:Very cool. Yeah. I like that a lot. Now you literally wrote the book on influencer marketing, right? So you, you have a book influencer marketing strategy, uh, how to create a successful influencer marketing. Uh, tell us a little bit about your book.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I'm really pleased to say that I, I, uh, published that in March, uh, 2021, uh, in, uh, actually in the UK on the third and then alcohol on the 30th. And I'll tell you a little bit about the book launch in a minute, but, um, yeah, it's 270 odd pages. Uh, we're covering everything you need to know about influencer marketing. So it was, it's almost idiot proof. Um, I've interviewed about 70 odd people, um, uh, within it and lots of case studies, um, which I think are really important because, you know, you can say what you need to do, but I think it comes to life when you've got real, real great brand and agency stories that support that. There's also a glossary of terms. So when people hear these, these, these terms like micromanage, what do they actually mean? So I've put all of those plus a number of influence lofting platforms and research tools. And this is really important for a business owner. If they're serious about this, they might want to think, well, I haven't got time to re, to find out all about these people, you know, but there are platforms that make this job a whole lot easier where you can search globally or influences, uh, engagement rate. You can find out there, um, and gender for how much this is the audience, by the way. But the influencer, can you imagine if some of bought 500,000 followers and you can find out the mix of male or female, you can see where their geo location is. So let's just say you want, you've got a us brand, there's a new restaurant that's opening up and you think, oh, this looks like a great guy. I've got 600,000 followers, but then, you know, 80% of his audience is based in Europe, but at useless for a us in that. So, um, this is why it's, this is, I mentioned it research thing a lot. It's so important. Also, you want to see the quality of their audience. Um, there are, uh, because there are people that have, um, got, or followers, or that have had bots that have just bought them ethically, followed them and obviously work but influence. We do get rid of those because it doesn't help at all with their, um, their engagement,
Speaker 1:Right. It actually, it, one, it makes the engagement rate go down as a percentage of your engagement versus your total audience. Uh, and interestingly, uh, really fascinating. I had someone on the podcast, uh, about a month ago and we were discussing fake reviews, uh, specifically like fake Amazon reviews and, and being on all these different platforms for so long. Uh, I remember, you know, back in the, in the late nineties, uh, digital marketing strategy was all about, you know, how do you fool, Google and get to the top of the search results. Uh, and you could pay companies do these really crazy things that would, you know, uh, artificially boost you up the search results, but eventually, uh, and quickly Google would catch onto these things. And then not only would they undo everything that you did, they penalize you for having tried to leverage it in the first place. So now, if you were ranking for something you wouldn't rank at all, they might not even put you on the, on the website. Right. And, uh, interestingly, that just happened with Amazon. We, we did this discussion and we said, you know what, even fake good reviews and bad. I mean, if you're dealing with a fake review, chances are at some point is going to figure it out, crack down and penalize you sure enough a week later. I don't know if you heard about this, but, uh, about two weeks ago, three weeks ago, uh, Amazon, uh, cut a massive tech brand. It was literally like one of the biggest tech brands that they had on their platform. Uh, and they just said, you know what? You guys are trying to gain the review system. You're out, you're done. Uh, and, and they banished them from the platform. Uh, and yeah, yeah, it was great. And this is a company that it had this whole underbelly of Facebook groups and all these things to incentivize people to in paying for reviews and, uh, gaming the system. And, and I imagine influencer marketing, even though it's in many ways in an infancy stage, I am certain that what you just said, you get these influencers who might be able to dupe some people and say, Hey, look, I got a a hundred thousand followers, uh, you know, give me a thousand bucks. And I'll, you know, I'll, I'll put a picture on Instagram with your brand. Uh, they get paid, they do it. But at some point, I think that's going to come crashing down to, and again, you might get by a little bit right now, but the penalty down the line will be way worse. You'll be completely discredited. You potentially are banned from the platform. And, and, and then you got nothing. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Um, the other thing of course is that when there, if there's any sort of payment or coercive gifting required, um, they actually have to do the proper at disclosures to alert their audience. So we want to see is people that are using proper disclosures because the people that are using it are, is another sign that you're working with a professional influencer. Right. Um, I mean, I, I worked with a bunch of content marketing association, uh, in the UK and we have a set of inference, um, influence, uh, guidelines, which anybody can download by the way. So it's, it's got everything that you really need to know, and we've had it. Um, the individuals that worked closely with the, uh, American authorities, advertising authority CFTC, they've had a look at it as well. So it's, it's important. And I cover that whole area in one part of the book, actually on the, the legal requirements of influence marketing is really important because what you don't want is things to go wrong, right? If actually people, which is why you have briefs, you have proper brief requirements. You should have a contract in place. This isn't just a, oh, hi buddy, would you mind doing this for me? This is a proper, this is a proper business arrangement and partnership, and it should be treated as such. Sure
Speaker 1:That, yeah. And I think that's great advice too, because obviously you're, you're usually dealing with YouTube or Instagrammers or, uh, people who may not be professional, you know, business majors, they're just, uh, people who've found some success in a small niche, uh, and to protect both them. And you obviously, it always makes sense to have the appropriate paperwork and contracts in place with anytime, especially if there's an exchange of money or financial consideration.
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely. I was just going to wait one more thing to the, to the, um, to the book actually. So I had my book launch on the 3rd of March. And, um, obviously you can imagine, I couldn't get a lock down here in the UK, so we didn't have, I mean, in Turkey, on this for two years, it was, you know, one stream to have, uh, all your friends and colleagues to have a glass of champagne or something's good thing for an author. Isn't a big deal.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Congratulations on that accomplishment.
Speaker 3:But obviously I couldn't have any physical events, so I had to move online. Um, but we had 104 people online, which is right, right atmosphere. But when it say Justin is, is the big thing, the post on LinkedIn had the work, I would have literally been dead in the water if an influence of marketing posts. So I used their freely attributable. And if your view want to, sorry, our listeners want to go and have a, have a look over to my LinkedIn profile. I think it was the one on the 3rd of March. And you'll see, um, it was a very personal, the reason I wanted to share it with you because it's the type of thing that's important. Those are very personal story of recognition to the people that are attributed towards it. Um, and obviously, um, like got 16,000 views on that one post wow. And 135 comments and 15 reshare is fantastic. And thank you. But I had to make sure that I did do that. And that's what influencer marketing is all about is making sure that if you are going to work with people that you really understand these, these empathy tools that we're talking about here, you know, they know their stuff, they know the numbers, they know the time that their view their followers are most likely to be online. Right. Um, so treat them with respect in a way. That's what I was wanting to say is, is that, uh, because you want it to work well and give them the, the sort of latitude to allow that to happen. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You want to make the best of it, period. If you're going to, if you're going to be putting your brand out there and you're trusting, you're trusting an influencer to take your brand and represent it right. In a PO in a positive way. Uh, and you know, we've all heard the horror stories of that, where, you know, someone endorses something and then does something horrible the next day. And it's like, whoops, I better cancel all those endorsements.
Speaker 3:Tell me what you want to do. You want to think that influence would have bought your product anyway. Right. So that's not what you want. You want somebody that's really enthusiastic. Um, and again, it doesn't have to be a financial compensation as part of, I see that as content creation rather than necessarily. Oh, just because they're, um, that they're wanting to earn money from it. Um, but, um, I do generally think, um, uh, you know, it's, it's a great partnership to have with an influencer. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:So if, if I'm a business and I say, this sounds great. I, I like the idea of the influencers. Uh, I, I have no idea where to start. Uh, so I'm going to buy your book. It's basically soup to nuts a, to Z, how to do influencer marketing, right? It's called influencer marketing strategy. It is available on Amazon, by Gordon. Glenister right. This is a great book, but now I read the book and I say, you know, this is great information. I have a great understanding of everything now, but I just don't have time. Can I call you and hire you and say, Hey, help me Gordon, please help me.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Absolutely. Because I've also got tools at my disposal. Um, B can really, uh, put together a strategy that works for you, uh, and implement that, uh, over a period of time. Or we can look at an ambassador program. Um, but yeah, we can, we can put a plan in place. No problem at all. That's
Speaker 1:Great. And how do people get in touch with you if they want to learn more about your service that you're offer?
Speaker 3:Uh, so they can do that through, uh, Gordon bennison.com my website. Um, they can listen to my podcast, uh, which is called influence the global podcast, which is on all the major networks, also a influencer marketing secrets round table, um, every Wednesday morning, um, which might be a bit difficult in the UK. Um, but I also run a Facebook group called influencer marketing secrets. If you have an interest in that and that you can not happily, uh, you don't have to be an influencer at all. This is about aim that and entrepreneurs that want to learn, want to know more. It's a lovely community, really is great people in there. And, uh, we've um, we, we actually, our current, our current top is all about storytelling and the importance of telling a story in an engaging way, rather than just promoting. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Brand story has, is just becoming critical. And, uh, you can see the success of the brands that really do it. Right. Uh, and then the ones that kind of just fake it and try to make up a quick little story. That sounds interesting, but, but you can tell the ones that are really dedicated to it, uh, and you always want to root for the underdog. So when you learn about a brand, you learn about a story, you learn about the struggles they may have gone through, uh, to get to where they're at. Uh, again, it gives you a little bit of buy-in and a, it builds that, that longterm relationship. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 3:I totally agree, Justin. I mean, I think for the time that I've been involved in this sector, I love authenticity. I love the behind the scenes stuff, it to me, but don't pull particularly amongst younger audiences, you know, they will not stand for, um, you put in the wall over there. I think it's sold to either. Um, I mean, I'm not a great fan of some of these marketing automation. I don't know what you think, where it sits. It's a, that you connect with somebody in bingo, the Australian first. So I think it's, this is what the show is all about. It's all about relationship building and how can we, as, as brand and influencer work together to enrich your follower base and sell more product for me. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I couldn't say it any better. That that's perfect. And I agree with that 100%. So I have to ask, uh, because we were talking about mistakes, what is the biggest business mistake you've ever made? And how has that impacted you in your career to where it is today?
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness. Well, I have, I have to say it's about, I have this thing called shiny new toys environment. I bet there's many an entrepreneur listening to this thinking, I know you set off with one goal. This is what I'm going to be doing. And, um, it sort of sets you off in different directions. So I, I, you know, if I'm on estates, I still have a little bit of it within me cause I'm, I'm that sort of a person. But, um, I know that if I didn't keep a control of that, it would have, um, I would have been starting 10 things and not finishing any all of them. So, uh, I think,
Speaker 1:Yeah, especially today, it's an easy, easy rabbit hole to fall down
Speaker 3:Is salaries. I always say what, and when I'm talking to any part is the thing I tell people not to do this. And sometimes, you know, I mean, as,
Speaker 1:As a fellow podcaster, I'm sure you see it in the podcast forums. I mean the endless discussions about microphones and software and tools and, you know, arms that hold the microphone. Well, this night it's like, listen, record the podcast, worry about your content. First. Don't worry about all these little, uh, peripheral things. You can really get carried away with it.
Speaker 3:Well, but this content is king. And, uh, you know, we should never forget that people come for content.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Now to flip over to the positive side, what is the best piece of advice you've ever gotten?
Speaker 3:Uh, if you are a sole entrepreneur, you just not to hire a mentor or a coach really, really resonates with you. Um, I'm in a, what we call a mastermind program at the moment with a group of other entrepreneurs you're headed by, um, some, some great individuals. And because of this collective thinking, uh, it's made me really, you know, positive product and poked me to, to perform better, um, as an, as an individual, because I yeah, will talented people in our own rights, but, you know, we've just come through a pandemic. It's tested many of us be on belief. I mean, I know friends of mine and I've had the worst years of the business life. I think being strong, being part of a strong entrepreneurial group that has shared values and has got your back. Uh, but, but spearheaded by one individual, I think has been by far the best advice for me helped my, um, my entrepreneurial journey. And I would guess that, uh, to anybody, I mean, picking the right guy or people is super important as well. There's many people out there that just want to feed off vulnerability and, and individuals, but, uh, when you find the right people, they can transform. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That, that, I think that's absolute, uh, great advice, uh, you know, mentors, uh, they're, they're not, uh, not so easy to find all the time. Uh, and, and like you said, with coaching, I think coaching is finally coming to a point. I don't know if it's the same in the UK, but I know here, uh, I start to hear a lot more about it and maybe it's just because I'm falling more into that circle. Uh, but I do, I do feel like there's a lot more legitimacy now to personal coaches, uh, for anything in life. You know, it could be a success coach. It could be a management coach could be a marketing coach, right. But just generally partnering with someone who will hold you accountable for whatever it is. Because I think a lot of people are really good at doing what they're told. If someone says, Hey, you gotta do this and this and this at work, you do it. It's done. And then you get home. And I think you mentioned that, yeah, you'd like the contractor with the house that was never done. Right. Uh, you know, falling apart because they, but they build big, beautiful mansions all day long. And then they come home and they're like, ah, I'm not, I'm not putting that trim up. I'm up to, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. They, they fell out. We'd do what they do. And so often we give advice to people without doing it ourselves. But, uh, um, more, more and more people are now looking at us. If we are leaders to look at what our values are and see whether they resonate through the organization, because it's, this is, this is super important now, but you guys be authentic. That's my lasting advice.
Speaker 1:Be authentic Gordon. Thank you so much for being with us today. I really appreciate it. Again. The book is influencer marketing strategy, how to create successful influencer marketing. Uh, you definitely want to get this book it's on Amazon. And if you are considering doing any type of influencer marketing, you definitely just what we were just talking about. Having a coach, having a mentor, having someone who can guide you through the process. Gordon is that guy. I mean, he wrote the book on influencer marketing, and he's going to be able to help take you from the idea to pursuing it all the way to connecting to the right people, how to get the most out of the relationship and how to build a strong long-term relationship where your influencer really does become a brand ambassador. Is that fair to say, we'll put
Speaker 3:It better myself. I mean, you should be mindful. I'll
Speaker 1:Be your hype man for today, but no Gordon, thanks so much again for being with us. And I hope you have a good one and I'm going to be following you on this journey. And I'm definitely going to check out the Facebook group. Thank you so much. All right. Have a good one. Wow. What a great guest. I learned so much about influencer marketing and I hope that you did too. Again, if you enjoyed this podcast, please take a minute to like, or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And don't forget to check us out on the marketing and service.com Facebook page. Lastly, for more information about our guests and some further deeper insights I get into on the website, marketing and service.com, you can look up the episode and you can see my afterthoughts on the show, as well as the transcript of the show to reference. It's a great resource. So check it out, marketing and service.com. Thank you so much for listening today and have a great day. I'll catch you on the next[inaudible].