Get Gain and Give Influence: Even If You're Just Getting Started

Welcome to Your Business, Accelerated! Digitally remastered with AI, Your Business, Accelerated! is the go-to podcast for entrepreneurs ready to scale smart. Hosted by Attorney Shaune B. Arnold, it delivers strategic business insights, legal frameworks, and real-world solutions to help you operate with clarity and confidence. Get actionable guidance to protect, grow, and optimize your business…one smart move at a time.

Are you ready to lead your industry instead of just surviving in it? In this dynamic episode of Your Business, Accelerated, Attorney Shaune shares practical steps to becoming a true industry influencer, through strategic marketing, joint ventures, brand consistency, innovation, media exposure, and high-impact partnerships. Start leading today. 

Transcript

Hello, everyone and welcome. I really want to welcome you to this week's episode of your business accelerated. I am your host, attorney, Shaune B. Arnold.

I want to make sure that we, first of all, assure you that you're in the right place today. You are in the right place if you are frustrated and sitting at the top of your career mountain and looking around and realizing you're sitting on somebody else's career mountain. You are in the right place today, my friend, if you have been downsized and you're wondering what to do next. You're in the right place if you are in startup mode and you're not quite sure how best to build your business. And you, my friend, are in the right place if you have been in business for a while, but you feel that you are on a hamster wheel and you are just running and running and running on it. You can't seem to grow the business, sell the business, or get off that wheel.

You are indeed all in the right place, here on your business accelerated. You will learn tips, triggers and red flags that you must be aware of as an entrepreneur to give you a shortcut for being successful in your business.

I also want to invite you to listen to legal biz Café. You see, your business accelerated deals with hardcore legal and business issues that you are going to have to be aware of as an entrepreneur. By contrast, legal biz Cafe deals with your mindset as an entrepreneur. It deals with all of those emotional issues that can stop you dead in your tracks and keep you from building a business that you'll absolutely love.

So, if you want to deal with both sides of that entrepreneurial coin, then I would suggest you listen to both of these shows. I also want to let you know that I am a California business attorney. Therefore, my discussion of any legal topics is, by default, a discussion by a California attorney. If you live in another state, in another country, or in another state of mind ...then I invite you to take what I tell you to an attorney in your jurisdiction. They can tell you whether there's a difference in the law between where I live and where you live.

Tonight, folks, we are talking about becoming an influencer and what it takes to do that. We aren't talking about becoming a social media influencer. We are talking about being an industry influencer. 

There are some very simple steps that you should adhere to and go through in order to be an industry influencer. The very first step is, well, you want to host events if you can and really do a lot of marketing as widely as you can.

People will do business with you once they've been touched by you seven times. And my contention is it's not just seven times seeing your ad in the newspaper. I think that people need to see you advertise to them in several different ways as well. 

Can you put an ad on a bus stop? Can you then put a display ad in a local newspaper? Can you blanket social media and make sure all of your social media is branded exactly alike? 

Your LinkedIn profile should say the same thing about you as your Twitter profile and as your Facebook profile, etc. They should all be the same. There should be a common voice spoken about you, no matter where people look you up. That is going to help people know, like and trust you. As you know, people do business with those they know, like and trust.

You can also be an innovator in your industry. Starbucks didn't invent coffee, but they did innovate how we drink it and how we gather around it. How can you innovate in your industry? Think about your industry and the ways that the players in your industry typically market themselves. I invite you to think of some other industries that are different from yours and how they market to their clientele. Compare the two.

You are not limited to the typical marketing that your industry already does. Some businesses get stuck doing business just like everybody else does because they're afraid to step out of the box. They're afraid that they might be seen as aberrant, and they're afraid that they won't get the clients that way.

However, if you make yourself look like everybody else, how do you then turn around and try to differentiate yourself? It's very difficult to do. Don't be afraid to distribute your product in a way that products are distributed in a different industry, but they aren't distributed in your industry. Why not?

The next step in being an influencer is to look to compatible businesses. You can either set up a compatible business and do business in the marketplace twice, or you can do joint ventures with compatible businesses to yours. You probably noticed, for example, in the last few years that Kentucky Fried Chicken and Taco Bell are doing business out of the same facilities as are Carl's Jr and Green Burrito.

In these cases, the restaurant companies merged, or were purchased, and are now owned by the same parent entity. But there are other instances where you see companies come together to do joint ventures for shorter projects. A water company and some sporting company, or theme park, for example, may join forces for the summer to jointly promote their businesses.

Take a look around you. What businesses are compatible with your business? What do people buy right before they buy your product? What do people buy at the same time they buy your product? What do people buy after they buy your product? These are compatible businesses to yours, and you can either set up a business so that you're acting as the point of sale twice, or you can set up a joint venture with another business. Either way, it's just clever and it will increase your market share.

Another secret to being an influencer is to get involved with publications. You can write an article about yourself and then send it out, write press releases about yourself and then send them out. Get yourself a column in a newspaper. Do a public relations campaign, which is different from press releases. Once people start to see you in the mainstream media, you’ll have what you call social proof. People will have confidence that since other people like you, they can like you too. Since they've seen you on The Today Show, then you must really know your stuff and they can do business with you. You want to appear in as many different types of publications as you can.

You can also find some high-profile users of your product or your service. Do you remember years ago when some football player won the Super Bowl and the reporter asked, “What are you gonna do now?” The football player turned to the camera and said “I'm going to Disneyland.”

Well, somebody at Disneyland was really wise. They caught onto that. For the next three or so seasons, everybody who won the Super Bowl was going to Disneyland. And it became the mantra of contemporary pop culture.

So, think of your high-profile users that you can tap into, that can do something like that for you. Take your stuff viral in this way. Nowadays, you don't have to get onto the Today Show in order to go viral, because everybody has access to YouTube and other social media platforms.

I saw an ad on Facebook. It wasn't even an ad. It was a post on Facebook recently a gentleman who paid homage to women and those women who have saggy bellies, etc, and how much men love you anyway. Okay, this was just a post by a gentleman, and it had 200,000 shares and thousands upon thousands of comments. This was just some guy who posted something.

If you can find a celebrity that likes your industry, then that would really help you, even if they don’t know your specific company yet. I have a client, for instance, that is creating a chess proposal that he can take around to schools, because he believes that if you can get chess in as a reading, writing and arithmetic type of mandatory curriculum, it would teach children how to do math, how to think critically and a number of basic skills that would catapult them to success in their later years.

He's looking for celebrities that like to play chess and one that will endorse him and his proposal and get it into the mainstream media to start that conversation about chess for kids.

Another tip for you becoming an influencer is to find someone with credibility and leverage their credibility for yourself. For example, Les Brown is my mentor. I leverage my relationship with him in speaking circles. It gets me gigs, and he leverages his relationship with me in business circles. He instantly gets even greater credibility because he's rolling with a lawyer.

I often drive him to meetings. People are like, what …you brought your lawyer? I tell them, I’m his attorney, but that's not why I'm here. I'm just playing chauffeur today. That gives him instant credibility, and it still gives me instant credibility.

Dennis Kimbro out of Atlanta said, “If you are the smartest person in your group, you need to get a new group.” You can leverage yourself by associating yourself with people and entities that have a further reach than you do.

Also look at your competitors. Are they ailing? If they are, then you may be able to think outside the box and come up with some creative strategies to actually acquire them and flip them or flip their assets. This may be better than buying a headache. But what is it that your competitors have that you can either leverage and take advantage of, or that you can differentiate yourself from based on what are they doing incorrectly?

Are there long lines going out the door? Well, is that because they're so popular, or is that because they have lousy service? See, Burger King has been competing against McDonald's for decades. McDonald's will tell you that you can get your food fast and easy. Everybody knows that McDonald's food sucks, but Burger King keeps trying to tell you that their food tastes better. 

Everybody knows their food tastes better than McDonald's. Everything tastes better than corrugated plastic. But Burger King keeps trying to compete based on flavor, ...and their processes are a mess. You wait twice as long at Burger King than you do at McDonald's. 

They're not competing on the basis of McDonald's success, truly fast food, so they keep trying to tear McDonald's apart on variables that don't matter to the consumer. This, in my humble opinion, is why Burger King has never sold more hamburgers than McDonald's ...or Wendy's ...or Carl's Jr. I do believe BK is like fourth in line. If they could just get that one point - stop trying to compete with McDonald's based on taste, and clean up your processes. Make it faster for people to get it their way, then you just might be able to compete with McDonald's on their own turf.

Just like BK, you want to analyze your competitors. What are your direct competitors doing that is all wrong or that is all right? And how can you either innovate that or differentiate yourself from that?

Lastly, I want to talk to you this evening about strategic partnerships. Now you and I have discussed this in past episodes of your business accelerated, and I invite you to dig back into those archived episodes and really pay attention, because this is a huge opportunity for you to build your business.

So, you're either building your business by manipulating your clients, your market share or your transaction prices. In the case of strategic partnerships, you want to look out in the marketplace and see who you can do business with that will gain you instant market share. Remember, just a few minutes ago, we talked about finding compatible businesses and doing joint ventures with them. Well, that's exactly what a strategic partner is. They can help you gain instant market share, by sharing their customer database with you, and they can also give you instant credibility by interacting with their brand. They can instantly give you the goodwill they have in the community. You aren't asking for something free. You want to pay them to do business with you. That'll get their attention - and it'll get you instant market presence and credibility.

If you are new in business, this is a huge marketing tip, just for you. I encourage you to look around your immediate market and find a business that is already established, that has customers that can use you as an adjunct to what the business is already doing for them. The two of you can service those customers. You can also get contracts that neither of you can get by yourself, and that will bring value to the table for each of you. When you approach the potential joint venture partner like this, you don't look like you're begging.

You are not just walking up to a business and saying, “Can I please fold myself into your processes?” Rather, you're saying, “Can I please fold myself into your processes …because you and I then can go over here and do something wildly successful together. We can build something together that neither of us would be quite as successful at building by ourselves.” That is an entirely different conversation.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for joining me on this week’s episode of your business accelerated. I invite you to follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter X. In all of those places, my moniker is s.h.a.u.n.e. dot Arnold. In the meantime, and in between time, I’m attorney Shaune B. Arnold, reminding you, as always, to MAXIMIZE your COMPETENCE to get the CONFIDENCE YOU NEED to succeed. I’ll see you right back here next week, on your business accelerated. Bye-bye, friends.