How Messaging Helps You Become the Obvious Choice

In this podcast episode, Steve Miller interviews Ryan Rhoten, the author of "Career Kred," about personal branding and improving one's online presence. They discuss Ryan's journey in discovering a drug dealer with the same name appearing in Google search results and how it led him to focus on personal branding. They also delve into Ryan's experience with blogging, website building, and the importance of LinkedIn in personal branding. Ryan shares his motivation to help others with personal branding and how it led him to write his book. Steve and Ryan emphasize the significance of personal branding in today's digital age.

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Ryan Rhoten helps entrepreneurs clearly communicate their value online. He is the author of two books on building your brand online; CareerKred and LinkedIn Made Simple. He is the proprietor at The Distilled Brand, where he helps clients clarify their message, focus their offer, and align their business and brand.

Website: thedistilledbrand.com
LinkedIn: @RyanRhoten
Email: ryan@thedistilledbrand.com
Landing Page: thedistilledbrand.com/uncopyable

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Transcript

Steve: Hey everybody, it's Steve Miller, better known as Kelly's Dad, marketing gunslinger, not the rock star, and and suspiciously and conspicuously absent. Is my my cohort in crime, Mr. David Mayo Loomis, who, and I always show his book, I always show his book, because I want people to buy his book.

Marketing is everything we do, this is a fantastic book and but he's not here because I found somebody else to talk to today, who I thought would be more interesting, and clearly he is handsomer than, is that a word? It can be, sure. Is 

Ryan: that a word? I think so. Yes. Let's do it. Let's go. All right.

It is now 

Steve: trademark at fast. Yeah, I got to get that domain. And yeah, with me today is somebody who I have already decided. I don't know why we don't know each other, and I'm asking the question and hopefully during the course of this, we're going to fix that very quickly. I've got with me.

Ryan wrote and it meant wait, am I pronouncing your name? Yes, you 

Ryan: are very good 

Steve: wrote. Yes, very good. Actually, I meant it would I pronounce Ryan right? No, I'm kidding Ryan wrote who is the author of a Book that I'm almost done reading. I'm almost done reading because I really like it. It's called career cred A R E D.

And I know you also have another book on LinkedIn marketing Ryan, but let me read what the introduction here. I've got it, I've got it over here on my iPad here. Ryan helps entrepreneurs. Clearly communicate their value online. Okay. In other words you're talking about we're talking about personal branding, right?

And the value that you are delivering but helping people to do a better job of communicating that message and save that word. Message folks. Okay. Cause that's going to be an important part of this conversation. He is the author of the two books. I just told you about, career credit.

And the other one is called LinkedIn made simple. He is the proprietor of the distilled brand, which of course, I naturally assumed it had to do

with bourbon or and where he helps clients clarify their message. focus their offer and align their business and brand. So Ryan, welcome, welcome to the B2B marketing and sales podcast. 

Ryan: Hey, thank you very much for having me. I'm super honored, Steve. And also I've been following you for a long time and I have been doing my best to be uncopyable.

Steve: Okay. Yeah. Flattery will get you everywhere because you know that I am a legend in my own mind appreciate that. And and here's the cool thing is that at this very moment that we are talking with Brian, he's actually inside an RV hurtling down the freeway while his wife is driving this RV.

Is that true? 100, 

Ryan: 100%. Okay. 98%. 

Steve: Yeah. 98 percent true. He's in an RV. He's traveling around the U. S. in an RV with his wife, which just sounds like a, such a great adventure. Really great adventure. Again, welcome, Ryan. I'm glad you're here. Give me a little background, more than what the intro said.

Tell me a little bit about you and how did you get here? Actually, I should say that, I googled you and some drug dealer came up. Yeah. That's an inside 

Ryan: joke. Yeah, no, that's but that's the start like you 

Steve: gotta read. You gotta read the book Yeah, tell us that how that story that because that's what that was the opening of your book 

Ryan: Yeah, and that's how that's why we're here.

Like literally that person is why we're here I had i'll try to be as short as brief as I can but I had a I was in the corporate world going up the corporate ladder doing corporate things one day I was up for a promotion that I didn't get and I thought What did I do wrong? What's wrong with me?

So I started doing some research, some personal reflection, all that stuff. And I hired a coach to help career coach to help. And one of the exercises she had me do was look myself up online. Which I'd never done before. So I Googled Ryan Rhoten and was surprised to find out that there was not just one, but there's four of us in the world.

And the one that showed up on the first page of Google in about, eight spots was this guy who was a drug dealer. And I personally did not show up until page four, who goes past page one ever? 

Steve: No, I'm surprised you went past page one. Yeah, I didn't 

Ryan: show up until page four and shockingly what was on page four was a 

Steve: PDF.

Ryan: of the lunch that I ate at some supplier's place like two years prior. I didn't know how to do it or what I was going to do, but I vowed then and there that I would beat that guy out of the front page of Google, push him back. And that just took me down an entire personal branding path, which ultimately led to the book Career Cred.

Steve: How many years ago would you say that was that, that this all started for you? 

Ryan: I started in 20, 

Steve: about 2014. 2014, so not quite 10 years ago. No, not quite. Not quite 10 years ago. And when you came to that, did you just say, I'm going to beat this guy, on Google, or did you say or, and you had a coach who was working with you on this.

And. They they had you do this exercise now when you did this exercise, you had this kind of clarification, clarity, or epiphany, I guess would be a better word for it. Then what next what did you do next? Yeah. 

Ryan: I didn't know what I was going to do.

So I looked, I just started Googling. How do you rank on Google? I hadn't yet connected the dots between the importance of showing up online in your career. I just wanted my name to be on the first page. So I started trying to figure out Google and SEO. And then I was like, Oh, I might need a website.

So I learned how to build websites and put together just a rudimentary website. And then I, then one of the research things said, if you want to show up online, you have to do blog posts. So I started blogging about at first, just the things I was interested in. And then as I was doing during the course of that, I started to become a lot more focused.

And then I realized I had people start to pay attention to me at work. They were like, Hey, I found this thing. You wrote something interesting. What's it about? So they started talking to me and then I found out LinkedIn started using LinkedIn more and started to connect the dots between website, LinkedIn, personal branding and how all this stuff especially now, and I think even more so in the future when we get into web three and AI and all that stuff.

Yeah. Like it just how it all creates a persona or a profile for you that people can use to learn more about you, to know that you're there in the right place when they come search for you that business client, potential prospects, clients can go and find, I just started connecting all these dots and that's when I started to realize, Oh, this whole personal branding thing, like it makes a lot of sense for a lot of people.

And I want to help as many people as I can. And the best way that you can do that is to Write a book, which I'd never set out to do, but I had so many blog posts and things already written that I'm not going to say putting the book together was not was easy because it wasn't. It's challenging to write a book, but I do enjoy writing a 

Steve: book.

Ryan: I actually, I enjoy the process. I enjoy the process of putting together the pieces that make up the chapters for the book, but then when you have to sit down and connect all of the different pieces, that's a lot more 

Steve: challenging. Yeah, I think anybody who enjoys writing a book is a sick person.

I'm working on my ninth book now, and I'm, I just can't believe I just keep doing this to myself. But my first book, which came out in 1990, You can believe that. What went on to be a bestseller. It was, and it was just, it was how to get the most out of trade shows, it was tremendous success, but I didn't make it.

I didn't make that much money off the royalties. Yeah, it was the other stuff from the book and I assume that's, and I assume that's what. You were looking for is that right the credibility? Yes, the 

Ryan: credibility for sure. I hadn't really that yeah with a K Yeah, which by the way, Building a brand around something with a funny word is a hard thing to do.

I Found I spent many time much more time trying to explain to people what career cred with a K means Yeah, and answering why didn't you spell it with a C? More often than I did. Hey, what's your book about? Yeah. Yeah. So I can 

Steve: understand that. I can understand that. Because when we first started using, I started using the word uncopyable many years ago in my speeches and consulting and things like that.

And and in fact, a lot of people said isn't it spelled with an I not a Y and actually you can spell it both ways, but, yeah. This is my way. Okay. And so I, and have since, been able to own that word. And, which has been a huge part of my personal branding as as I'm sure you, as I'm sure, so you write the book.

And of course, and I wish I had the actual book here. I'm stupid for not ordering it. And I apologize. I'll send you a copy and yeah, and vice versa. I'm going to I'll send you my stuff too, but I'm not talking to you who's watching us or listening to us.

Okay, I'm talking about Orion and just to be clear. Yeah. Okay. So you, so when you wrote Career cred. Did you have, did you already because it's clearly a system. Yes. The way I look at it, what I've read so far and studying your book and stuff is that it, it has more of a workshop flavor to it.

Is that correct that you know that you feel like okay, you're saying to people here. Here's okay. We're in this chapter We're talking about this part You need to do this. Yes, okay, and yeah How much of that did you already have in your head before you wrote the book or did the book help you to put it all bring it all together in your 

Ryan: own head Yeah, so I'm naturally a systems and process thinker. So I think linearly and I always think what comes first, what's next, what's, what happens next. And then I also, that's the way I learn. If I want to go through a process, I want to go through it step by step so that I know exactly what I'm doing when I get to the end.

And so when I wrote the book, I knew that I wanted it. The book to follow a very distinct process. In fact, LinkedIn made simple is the same way. That my work with my clients is the exact same way. There is a very distinct process that we go through and we go through it for a reason. There's a reason step one comes before step three.

If you don't do this stuff before that three won't be as effective as. Etc. Yes, it's written in a very distinct way. I learned some stuff when I went through that book about branding and messaging, though, which is, acronyms and jargon that you create as the author as you go through that you think, Oh, this is cool.

This will help people remember it. May not actually work for you. It may not work the way you think. And so you're better to just be more simple and clear as to what your book is about and how it helps people. Hence the title of book two, which is LinkedIn made simple. 

Steve: Okay. So not you, you don't want to try to force people to shoehorn into something that that doesn't actually make a lot of sense.

So you said, okay. It's very linear thinking clearly like an engineer. It's my dad was not an engineer. You're not an engineer, but you think like an engineer, apparently I've been told that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I and you also have an MBA. Did I see I do? Yeah. Yeah. You have an MBA. Okay.

See, I majored in electives. I didn't, that didn't work for me, but so what is step one? So step 

Ryan: one is to define your brand, which is to 

Steve: answer, yeah, we're talking about it to build a personal brand, step one is. 

Ryan: Yeah, to define it. And specifically, I like to have people answer this question, which is what do you want to be known for?

Ah, what do 

Steve: you want to be known for? Okay. 

Ryan: And the reason I like that question, because a lot of people will say, what do you want to do with your life? Or what do you want to do? Those are activities that imply that you already know. But when you, and they also are rigid, but when you ask the question, what do you want to be known for?

Your answer can change over time. As you learn and figure things out, but specifically people who are trying to build a personal brand initially need to answer that question. So they have something that they're reaching for, something that they're shooting for, something they're trying to achieve, obtain or achieve so that all of the things that follow steps two, three, four, we'll begin to back up the answer to 

Steve: that question.

Okay. And the people that we're talking about is anybody, basically anybody, right? Because whether you are like, as you were in a company, yes, at the time at that time, right? And it was after that, after the, where you didn't get the promotion that you started asking yourself all these questions, and realize maybe this who I am and who people think I am, 

Ryan: Are not aligned.

Yeah. And that's a big, that's a big deal in the career space. If people, if who you think you are, who the direction you think you want to go does not align with those around you, that's a big problem in the career world, you'll people won't know what box to put you in. And I think in the corporate world, they're looking for a box to put you in.

So they know how to, where to send you next. For example I was never in that box. Like I was more of a generalist than a specialist within the corporate world. I took on a lot of different roles. I learned a lot of stuff about the company, which I always thought would benefit me, but it turned out.

Because I went that route. I did. I personally didn't even have the words to describe where I wanted to go next. 

Steve: So the first step is knowing where you want to, what do you want, what you 

Ryan: want to be known for. Yeah. What do you want to be known for? What do you want to go? What do you want?

If I look to you up online 6 months from now, 7 months from now, 8 months from now, what would I find? What do you want me to find? What do you want me to learn and know about you? It's I love the exercise that you did in your newsletter. Maybe it wasn't the last one, the one before where you said, why would you hire this person?

Because I loved my answer. I love the answer that Chad GTP gave me because it's exactly what I would want it to be and what I've been working through the steps in that book 

Steve: to get to. Yeah and I've actually, I've done that now with a lot of my clients. That are companies, but I've also done it with friends when I've been talking with them about AI and there's still so many people out there really smart people who have just, they're just avoiding AI, cause it's, it sounds scary.

And I get them on and I just go, let me show, let me just show you this. Let's talk about you. And I put out, I'll put in something like, who is who is John Doe and why should a company hire John Doe, right? And then and see what comes up and they're often just blown away by, by what starts to come out from that.

And and then I'll do, and I did this in the last one where I compare, I did this for two companies, but then I compared them, I asked chat GPT to compare these two janitorial supply companies. All right, and why should a company hire one of them to provide them with their janitorial supplies?

And it's really interesting to see how CHAT GPT then goes and it analyzes. Like the first company who I said, who, why would you hire this company and then why would you hire this company and then it puts it together and it says if this is what you're looking for, then you want these guys.

And if this is what you're looking for, you want these guys. And then I said, now give me the pros and cons for both of them. And and so I said, and I've done this now with some of my clients, like I say, and I sit down with them and I say, okay, is this what we want?

People to think right, our is at which gets us to the magic word. Okay, and the magic word is message. 

Yeah, yeah, isn't that kind of like the focal word of? What you are teaching? Yes. Yeah, I 

Ryan: mean to me Messaging is at the core Of everything that you do online and the presence that you want people to know are the things you want people to know about you.

You need to understand that includes whether you're a business owner or whether you're a career professional trying to build a personal brand. The messaging that you put out into the world comes back to you. And it also is what others will see. And as people look you up online, whatever they find there, especially today, is like their first impression of you.

And if they don't find you, by the way, that's also kind of suspicious nowadays. Yeah, that's a good point. That's a really good point. Yeah, you want 

Steve: people to find...

Ryan: All the good things that you do and all the things, the ways in which you help people and the problems that you solve, et cetera. And the only way to do that is to actively put yourself out there and do step two once you've defined your brand, which is to integrate your 

Steve: brand online. Okay now, if you read my book, Uncopyable, you know that I teach the thing called the marketing diamond.

And I want to get into your dice here in just a second and the marketing diamond is real simple, but it's step one, step two, step three, step four. It starts, step one is who is the moose? Who is the target market that you are looking for? Who is the person that you want? To be communicating with.

And so if you're a company like who's, who are the customers that you want to, who are the people, those, if you're a solopreneur, who do you want to hire you? And and that's number one. And then you got it. And then you want to learn about as much about them as possible. Know more about them than anybody else knows about them.

But then the second step is the message. Which I define as being your branding promise to the moose. Yep. Okay, it's your branding promise. And whether you like it or not, You've got a brand. Okay, they already and what that is when they think of you What do they think of if we were to go to our you know?

If I go to my clientele, Or you go to yours Ryan and we say when you think when you hear my name, what do you think of? And you know me I want them to say Steve teaches us how to be uncopyable, right and And if they don't say that, then I've missed, right? So the message. Is taking the, your brand promise and you're putting it into words to people because you want that when you ask that, because you want people to, because then you reinforce it, correct?

You reinforce it. And, so that. They are thinking what you want them to think. 

Ryan: Yeah, exactly. And, one key difference in messaging, whether it's personal branding versus business branding personal branding is really all, obviously it's in the name. It's all about you. It's focused inward to you, things that you want others to know about, and how you act, behave, think, value, all that kind of stuff.

Messaging for business branding, Also similar, but it's in my opinion, it's external facing. So it's about you, but it's not for you. 

Steve: Let me ask you this thing. Go ahead and finish your talk. Go ahead and finish. No, so I was 

Ryan: just gonna say, so when a customer or prospect comes to your website, the words that they read there should reflect them, not you. So they're all you're writing for people who are on the other side of the screen, specifically in business. You need to let them know. I understand your challenges. I understand your problems. I get how you feel. Whereas on the personal branding side, you want people to know here's the problems and things that I can help you solve.

Here's 

Steve: what I stand for. Here's what I, here's what I know best. Here's what I can do best. Here's what I believe in. That type of stuff. But don't, wouldn't you also agree that a the message, the branding promise that a company is putting out, doesn't that also impact internally the employees?

Yes, it 

Ryan: can, you can turn it around once you know it for their external. All right, for your customers externally, then you can take that same messaging and bring it inside and let your teammates know, let your staff know, et cetera. This is how we talk about our customers. This is how we talk with our customers.

This is the words and phrases and things that they say that we can say that they will know we get them and understand them. 

Steve: Okay, what so let's first, let's continue with the personal branding part here. And because I don't want to get, I don't want to confuse everybody by trying to say, okay this for companies, let's which is my fault.

I'm the one who brought it up. So let's circle back here to to the personal message. How do you teach people to do this? 

Ryan: So we go there. First of all, there's exercises in the book. That we'll go through. So there's a, for every step along the way, there's a worksheet or some kind of exercise to do.

For people who really just don't know which is a fair amount of folks that I work with. I will have them start by so for example, if we're doing define, I'll have them start with taking an assessment. It could be a strengths assessment. The Clifton strengths assessment. The one I send people to is 16 personalities most of the time, because.

It's free and it's really good. And a lot of people start to make some connections. When they go through there to say, Oh, that's why I do that thing, or, Oh my gosh, yes, that's me. And it can be really eye opening for a lot of folks. Another good exercise is one you've already mentioned, which is, Go out to friends, colleagues, bosses, and ask them, What are three words you think about when you think about me?

And have them start to come back. So you start to get an idea. Essentially, DEFINE is really all about, first, self awareness. Understanding yourself, understanding why, why you are the way you are, if you will, things you really like versus things you don't like why, why your boss said, hey, I don't like the way you did this thing over here because, you don't like doing that kind of stuff over here, and that, and then it starts to click, like you just start to become a little bit more clear about who you are. And then once you know that, now you can start to answer questions like, what are my values? What are things I like to work on? What's my skill set? Like a lot of folks internalize their skill set and they just think it's it's just stuff I do.

And they forget that when you unpack the stuff you do, there are things in there that are valuable to others, like they're when a company hires you, they're hiring you to fix problems, and a lot of people forget about the problems that they fix because they just become things that they do. But those are problems that are valuable to others.

And so knowing and understanding all that could really guide you towards answering this question. What is it that you want to be known for? Yeah. 

Steve: I did that. I, I used to do that with friends and stuff like that, but I kept getting back words like handful loose cannon should come with an 

Ryan: independent thinker.

Steve: Yeah that's what I tell everybody, right? I'm an independent thinker, and clearly, 37 years ago, I woke up one morning realizing, I am unemployable, okay? I'm a bad employee, I was a worse manager, God, I just feel, I think back to the people that I was managing, I just feel so sorry for them, that they had me as a man cause I was terrible, and I realized, oh, you know what, I have to figure out how to do this by myself, I have to figure out how to do this on my own because if I'm not, if I'm not my own boss, controlling 100%, then, I Then I'm gonna starve because I'm gonna get fired forever and so I had to move forward like that and and I like the idea that you're talking about people learn, they might have skill sets, but they just think about them as stuff that they do, right?

Because you're doing them every day, right? And that's just and you've probably been doing them for years and you're kind and there are certain things like like with aptitude. Testing, for example it just teach, it just teaches you what you are naturally good at and what and what I believe is that people, when you are naturally good at something, you tend to be, that, that tends to be the thing that you like to do.

Yeah, which 

Ryan: is, which is valuable. On the market, to, if you, if somebody is thinking about becoming a consultant don't become a consultant in something you don't enjoy or something you're not naturally gifted to do just because somebody hired you to do something, right? And, 

Steve: Yeah, and Are you familiar with my rules?

Yes. Okay. See, and that's something that I think also fits into this type of a conversation is that if you're going to be, if you're working on your personal brand and you learn and you're, you've already said this. What you want to do and you also learn what you don't want to do, right?

And and that happened with us, as a consultant, you tend to take jobs just to get paid, just to make the money. Especially in the beginning. In the beginning, you take all the jobs. And, and we just had some just really crappy clients. Who were overbearing and overdemanding and all that sort of stuff and.

Finally, we finally fired our biggest client that represented over 60 percent of our income. That was painful and and K and I sat down. We said, you know what? We're going to make a set of rules that talk about our values and rules that we are going to live by. Like one of the rules is I don't do RFPs.

Yep. I don't either, by the way. And and if somebody says to me we're going to hire you, but we're required to have you fill this out. I just go, then, we're not 

Ryan: going to work together. Yeah, but one of the very first exercises I do in my brand messaging system with business clients is I have them create red flag policies and green flag policy.

And they're both based on things that they hear people say in a sales call or otherwise that make them go, Ooh, these are my people or, Oh yeah, this is not going to work out. It's not going to work. No. Yeah, so very similar. Red flag, 

Steve: green flag. We just fired a client that we've actually had for a few years, a couple of weeks ago, because they broke one of our rules that we call the rule of mutual respect.

And mutual respect simply means, look if you reach out, if you leave me a message or send me a text or something like that, you expect a response and you'll get it. Okay. A timely response and you'll get it. If I send you a text or message, leave a message, Okay. Works both ways, right?

Absolutely. Yeah, and after four years of working together all of a sudden they decided they didn't have to respond As quickly as we needed in order to be able to take care of these projects and We warned him we warned him and we fired him We just broke the rule Yeah, they were very upset with this.

It's the power. Now you get to go be upset with somebody else. So it's the power of no. The power of no. So you started with the, and the D was define. Correct. You're going through an acronym now that is in your book. DICE. Yes. D stands for define. You're defining who you are, what you stand for, your values.

Yep, 

Ryan: what you want to be known for. What is that skill set that you want people to know that is uniquely you? 

Steve: Okay. All right. Is there anything else about define that you haven't covered 

Ryan: yet? No, those are the big ones. And those are, honestly, that's the hardest part. Everything else is, I shouldn't say it's the hardest, but for a lot of people, it is the hardest.

It's also the most important because if you don't take the time to do that step right everything else is not going to work as well as it could. 

Steve: Okay. All right. What's the E 

Ryan: so E I, you mean I, 

Steve: I majored in electives. Okay. I before E. All right. Yeah. So 

Ryan: I is simply integrate. which means now that you know what you want to be known for, integrate that online.

So that could mean a number of different things for most people having a LinkedIn profile that's updated and reflects what you want to be known for is enough. For me, I wanted to get on the front page. That was my goal. So I put together a website. But it's essentially looking at the platforms where people are that you want.

To have to know the answer to that question to where do they hang out and getting your information there in one way or another. So whether that's a website that you put together, whether it's your LinkedIn profile, which social media platforms you want to pick, it's up to you. I don't recommend getting on every platform.

I recommend picking one, no more than two. And do those two really well in the beginning. Eventually there's tools and things you can use to get on to other platforms as well. But as you get started, so you don't get overwhelmed, pick a pick one, no more than two platforms and get your name out there. Yeah.

Steve: It's it's the old go where your market is. Yeah, exactly. Don't, I, when I, the moose thing that I teach where I say, you're hunting moose in a forest. Okay. But first of all, the first question you have to ask is if you're hunting moose. Are you going to go to Florida to hunt moose?

Don't think so. Pretty sure there aren't any moose down in the forests of Florida, if they even have any forests down there. You're going to go up north somewhere where the moose are. But then when you get to, when you get there, there are hundreds and hundreds of other animals in the forest.

Okay. But you're like this it's the moose. That's who you, that's who you want to you're going after. Okay. Yeah, so you go where your target is, right? 

Ryan: Yeah. Like it makes TikTok maybe exciting and new or it's not new, but exciting place to hang out. But if your people aren't there, 

Steve: who cares?

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Integrate and you're and you are proponents primarily for the personal branding part. Your proponent that social media is the place to do this. I think you're saying pick the pick. And in business, LinkedIn is clearly the, 

Ryan: yeah, but pick a place.

So I call, I refer to those as satellites. So and also you can look at as a hub and spoke system. So like your website would be the core or maybe your LinkedIn profiles, the core, whichever one you choose. And then outside of that, you have these kinds of satellites or spokes and those should all point back to your hub.

Because when you do that, you're not only letting people who are searching for here's how you find me, but you're also sending signals to Google to connect all these different platforms. So Google knows, Oh, this is Ryan Rhoten's platform. This is Ryan Rhoten's thing. And it's, it just all links together.

I used to do a podcast just like this where we interviewed people. I still do, but we're on a hiatus right now. And one of the things I did for research was I go look at people online and try to, I'd have to try to piece together Okay. Is this the right person? Is it because they would use different profile pictures or and it was just really confusing.

So make it easy for people who want to learn more about you to learn more about you. 

Steve: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And we're not going to be analyzing. I'm too old for that now, but okay. Integrate find the platforms that you want to use. And I, and I love the hub and spoke system myself, where you have a whether it's a centerpiece whether it's a website, whether it's a blog a lot of people nowadays are using their LinkedIn profile as their hub.

And that's cool. If it works for you all right. And then you go from there to 

Ryan: create. Are we at the E yet? No, we're at C. 

Steve: Oh, that's right. We got another letter in there. Dang 

Ryan: it. So create, which is essentially, now this is the part that people struggle with the most, but it is create something, create content, get your name out there somehow.

Now. When I wrote the book, I specifically focused on creating content through blogging and that type of activity. Obviously the world's changed since then. I believe create can now include things like leaving comments on posts, which also bleeds over a little bit into engage. But 

Steve: I have found that to be tremendous.

Yeah, it's very effective on LinkedIn. Very 

Ryan: effective. One, one of the, another site that's underrated that people don't think about when you're doing creation. I'm pretty sure I mentioned this one in the book is Quora, which is a question, which is a question and answer site. So it's an easy way for you to get into your area of expertise, what you want to be known for and start to answer questions.

But always remember Reddit can work too. Reddit can work too. It's just remember that when somebody goes, Oh, that's a really good insightful answer. What are they going to do? They're going to click on your profile. So hopefully you've integrated what you want to be known for into that profile. And then from that profile, they can go back to your hub.

Okay. All 

Steve: So now you're starting to create. In other words, you have to get them to go where you want them to go. Exactly. 

Ryan: And, but in this, in the process of doing that, you're starting to create a more holistic brand that makes it easier for people to know and understand, who you are and what you do.

Steve: But I really liked that advice you had about start, start small like a couple of places, might be, one of the, one of the places that I've seen solopreneurs in particular a lot of action is on Twitter. For solopreneurs, which I find to be very interesting and and they tend to use the big guns on LinkedIn that I'm you probably know a lot of them that I do too, that they work both on LinkedIn and on, on Twitter.

I don't see him so much anywhere else and I find that an interesting combination. 

Ryan: Yeah, they pick their platforms. One of the things that I, so when I wrote career credit was very focused on like corporate world and how do it still applies to everybody, but I was being focused on who I was talking to in the engage step, one of the things I recommend is LinkedIn and Twitter, a one, two punch type thing.

I recommended it then for different reasons than what I would recommend it for now. Oh, 

Steve: similar, but different. All right. You're recommending LinkedIn because it's the business platform. Yeah, 

Ryan: everybody's there. Mostly everybody's there. Now if your specialty is very niche, maybe not, but you'll know that as you go through the defined process and you start to figure out where are the, where are my people, where do they hang out?

But for the vast majority of folks like LinkedIn, Is it? And LinkedIn is starting to create a lot more tools to gain that engagement for people to get people to go to the platform. I also like LinkedIn because when people are on LinkedIn, they're in a business mindset as opposed to say when they're on Facebook where they might be more of a friends and family.

Mindset. And so then you have to like interrupt them. So there's pattern interrupt. It's like a pattern interrupts 

Steve: on the Facebook, which and I have, I still have some clients that I, they just, they keep saying, yeah but our moose are on Facebook. I go, yeah, I get it. All right.

Yes. You're there on Facebook, but they're not there thinking about business. 

Ryan: It takes more work. It's not, you can't, it's not, you can't do it. It just takes. More, because you have to interrupt their pattern of thinking for what they're there for to begin with. 

Steve: Yeah, absolutely.

And you already released the E. Yeah, so engage. You released the Kraken already, with very little fanfare there. 

Ryan: Yeah, some of the, so then that's why, so when I wrote the book, Twitter was a really big place to engage where you could build an audience because you attend these Twitter chats and you go in and you answer questions.

About an area that you know a lot of about. So you get a chance to demonstrate your expertise, you get a chance to help answer questions and potentially help other people all at the same time while building an audience. 

Steve: And I, I don't want to get into too much about, because I know on LinkedIn and I assume on Twitter now I know on LinkedIn, the objective is the longer you keep somebody on your post, LinkedIn loves it.

Yeah. They love it. And that's why right now carousels are, really the big dog out there. So rather than just write up, write a long post, you create these carousels for people. And if you don't know what a carousel is, you need to go figure, go find out. Okay, we're not going to get into all of that stuff.

And same and the version of it on Twitter are threads. That you create threads on Twitter, which is basically you're replying to yourself. Yeah, your original post multiple times. But and again, it's keeping you on that post. And the longer you someone stays on your post in either LinkedIn or Twitter, the algorithm loves that.

Yeah. 

Ryan: Yeah. It's called dwell time. It loves dwell time. 

Steve: Ooh, you know that, the words, I just said, they just stay there. I don't know. I see. I don't, I'm not on the end. 

Ryan: I'm not either. That's why I had a co author. Andy Foot is my algorithm expert. 

Steve: So he added some... Oh, Andy Foot was your co author on the LinkedIn 

Ryan: book?

Yeah he's the one who contributed all the stuff for the algorithm. 

Steve: Solid. Solid there. I follow Andy and yeah, solid stuff there. Okay, I could, we could keep talking for another hour or so. I want, what I want to know is how do we get people, how do what have we not talked about?

But, oh, I know what I want to share something. Okay. I'm going to share and for those of you that are watching this on video, you get to see this. For those of you that are not watching this, oh. I am going to suggest that you get on your your computer and I'll... You're gonna be nervous.

No. This is awesome. No, this is awesome. And this is, this... Okay.

You see the, see this page you should see, okay, so we talked about the idea that when somebody puts your name into Google, what comes up and Ryan was talking about how in the beginning when somebody put. When he put his name in he did not even come up on, on the front page and now imagine this, imagine my problem if I say to people just Google Steve Miller.

Oh, yeah. Are you kidding me? Fly like an eagle. All right that's, that dominates the first several pages. So I had to figure out a different way to get people to find me. And but if you Google Ryan's name just see right there, Ryan Roten, and this is what pops up. All right.

And this is amazing. This is like an, this is like a paid ad. It looks like a paid ad, but it's not a paid ad, is it? You can respond. Like I said, it is not storytelling for brands. It's got a broken down into, books, I don't know what concise means, but brand message system, build your personal brand shows the books right there.

And then even over here on the right side, it's got about Ryan. Now, if you scroll down now, it's okay. Then there's the LinkedIn, there's Twitter, there's Instagram YouTube again. Amazon. com about his books, Facebook, and you just keep scrolling that and so the entire first page as far as I could tell, and about, the distilled brand, his company down here and and so the But this part up here, I just find that to be unbelievable and I put in multiple people's names I pulled in companies names, things like that, and I haven't, I have, and I have yet to find this type of a response or what comes up on, on the Google search now, you did not pay for that, and is this just a result of all the, 

Ryan: of.

It's a result of consistency. Okay. I know what I want people to find me for. I know what I want people to know about me when they look me up and everything that I put out online reinforces that. 

Steve: Okay. And and I'm sure that you can teach people how to do that. Yeah. I'm not going to ask you at this moment how you did that, but see, if you put in Steve Miller.

The Steve Miller 

Ryan: band's coming up. Hello. 

Steve: Okay. Yeah, get rid of this. Yeah, Steve Miller, musician, right? And there he is, ugly guy. And everything is about Steve Miller Band, right? I think way at the bottom, I do pop up somewhere way at the bottom, but if you put in hello?

Okay, come on. If you put in Steve Miller Uncopyable,

then it's just me. But now it's not as cool looking as yours! But but yeah, but it's just, it, the entire page is just me, and so that's good, and I think if I just do uncopyable, it does the same thing but I was just so impressed when I saw that, I just thought, oh my god, I feel so meek and mild and I feel like I'm like Clark Kent, and this is Superman who I'm standing next to here going wow, that is amazing. So let's get into first of all, we got it. We're telling people go buy. Both of his books. We have been mainly talking about career cred with the K.

R. E. D. Career cred. Go get that. I am probably 80 percent of the way through the book right now, and I love it. I just think it's awesome. And then there's also the LinkedIn Made Simple. Okay, that will be my next book. Like that. If people want to reach him, we've already shown him, just Google him.

Okay. Somehow you will find him. All right. Yeah. And then pick your way through all the different choices. All right. But but you're going to find him. What do you want to leave people with here? So that so that they reach out to you? I 

Ryan: think so. I think that I would leave this on personal branding specifically.

And you said it earlier, right? You have a brand already, whether you realize it or not, and other people find it online. And think about what you want people to know about you. Think about where you want to go with your career, or whatever, and how can you leverage the technology that exists today?

To make sure people know what you want them to know because I personally believe personal branding is only going to get more and more important. I think with the new advent of, chat, GTP, AI, all that, when people type in who you are, they're going to get a summary paragraph. Of who you are, not, not this list of websites you can go to learn more, although there's that will still be there, but that's going to become secondary to a nice summary that says.

Here's who Steve Miller is right and so and that's how people are gonna find out That's how they do it today, but that's how they're gonna find out about you that's gonna find out how they find out about the problems you solve the people you work with and in many cases If you're doing video and stuff, they can actually determine whether or not you're somebody's That you, they would want to work with just based on your personality.

And those are all things that as a business owner, or even as a even as a career professional that you can cultivate so that people, when they find you go, Oh, I need to know more about this guy, right? So just don't underestimate the importance of personal branding. Know that it's real and that you have the ability to impact the perceptions that others have about 

Steve: you.

100%. I am absolutely a a product of personal branding and not only with the word uncopyable, but with color orange, you talk, I use different language, than other people, I call K my smoking hot wife. I'm Kelly's dad, all that stuff that, I'm such a believer in personal branding, that I have to walk the talk.

I have to walk my talk. And and so I love to hear from you how that kind of reinforces the way I've seen this. And doing this. People can find you, people can find, people know, you're the easiest person to find I've ever talked to, and and so congratulations on that and I love your book, everybody get it.

Thank you. My book is absolutely... Go ahead. Sorry. If 

Ryan: people go to . ryanrhoten.Com forward slash uncopyable, they might find some bonuses there. Did you hear that? 

Steve: Ladies and gentlemen, and you're going to, and next time you put uncopyable into the Google search, it's going to come up with Ryan Rhoten.

com slash uncopyable. 

Ryan: Oh, maybe I shouldn't do that. 

Steve: No, thank you very much. That's awesome. Ryanrhoten. com slash forward slash uncopyable. Uncopyable. With a Y. Correct. Remember that people. With a Y. So thank you for joining me on the B2B Marketing and Sales Podcast. I know that when Dave listens to this or watches this, he's gonna be intensely jealous that he was not here.

Too bad to you. And and again, this is Steve Miller, better known as Kelly's dad. Marketing Gunslinger. Thanks again for joining us. And as Mr. David Mayo Loomis always closes our programs. Bye bye.