How to Turn Your Content Into Cash With Craig Ballantyne

Hey, it's Sharan and how many times have people told you make more content make more videos make more posts? Well, no one tells you what happens next, right today. I talked to my friend Craig Valentine the most disciplined man in the world and the creator of the social story selling system And he's gonna talk to you about exactly how to turn content from your phone into cold hard cash That's right how to turn content into cold hard cash. We're going to the exact strategies the tactics and even the specific scripts that you can use To turn your content into cold hard cash get ready for a super tactical episode with my friend Craig Valentine One thing is for certain Just because it's tried and true doesn't mean it's working right now So the big question is this where can you learn what is working right now the strategies the tactics the psychology and the exact how to How to go your business? How to blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer my name is Sharan Srivata and welcome to business school So Craig the Underground circles of the world Call you the most disciplined man in the world now My my question is this I'm worried that someday some Navy SEAL is gonna come and punch me in the face and say how dare you so I mean I just said almost like Pre-frame it by saying citizen and non-military You know whatever but but but no, but here's the thing though I know a lot of I know a lot of active duty Navy SEALs I know a lot of people that in SWAT Army Rangers. I know a lot of amazing athletes and I think that I think that title fits you very well Not only that and I think it fits you very well because For a couple things one you have such insane clarity And what you want and what you want to do and I think that's why you're able to do a lot of these things right like you're able to say This is what I do. This is who I am therefore I'm able to go create this Well, I thought yeah, I appreciate that and so I would say that the genesis of the whole world's most disciplined man thing I'm not like the guy and the Da Vinci code, you know, Flagulating myself each night the whip or anything it's it was A lot of people who are on my email list who are also entrepreneurs and they said that's kind of writes a lot You know, it's like it's a great amount of content that he puts out not only for a Business coaching business, but also I was running the fitness business back then. They're like that's a lot more content And I'm putting out as one person. He's putting out essentially like the content of three people So it really was the world's most productive man, but in general, how do you get productive? Well, you probably have to be pretty Discipline structure regimented whatever and so then this the world's most disciplined man kind of took hold But that's essentially what it is. It's output the man is a machine in creation of stuff Therefore there must be something to learn here is the overarching lesson for everybody listening Yeah, so I think there's a precursor to that and you've taught me this Over and over and you And the concept of Manufacturing celebrity, right? You originally where you had this amazing fitness business and then you grew it morphed it and you were on the cover of Men's Health magazine you had your videos have been watched millions of times and you manufacture celebrity and then you You you you went into a new vertical you manufacture celebrity again and You've always told me you're like hey, Ron. It's way easier to have impact to sell to create content to actually touch people in the space if you have If you're famous if you actually have celebrity I'd love for you to talk about Manufacturing celebrity a little bit is it a is it is it actually a process? Can anybody accomplish it? Is it only reserved for the elite few? How does that work? Is a great question and when you think about it Almost every celebrity is manufactured. So here's a great example the one that just pops into my mind so You know like the guy who landed the plane soli right now he landed this plane in the Hudson River and you know He deserves a mention for sure. I mean that was you know, he saved lives now. Here's the thing is it couldn't he could have just went away But somebody decided to continue manufacturing the celebrity around him bring in You know Tom Hanks to be the guy who plays him in the movie and so on and so forth Now but but again, there's other people who have done stuff like that where no one decided to manufacture any further celebrity So if you go back to me I was You know, I grew up as I grew up not with nothing, but generally nothing You know, I grew up in Canada in the first of all Canadian all places right I grew up on a farm I grew up with my father as an alcoholic. I grew up my mother as a receptionist at a factory who you know made at most $25,000 Canadian down American Canadian in a year so really if I could go then Getty graduate degree in exercise physiology and somehow leap for augain to men's health magazine which then allowed me to become Famous through association in a way people knew my name and then to go and film a bunch of videos and get them on YouTube early and then Get a bunch of views and then sell program and then the more programs I sold the more people recognize my name So you know celebrity micro celebrity and then To switch the businesses and you know, I basically we stopped that. I mean we maybe make like a few hundred bucks I should not a few hundred bucks. We have some recurring fitness stuff So we make probably like five to ten grand a month out that business still actually make almost a thousand dollars a week on YouTube from one video And on admiral right like on playing ads and it's a video that's been being currently watched about 250,000 times a week during COVID because it's a bodyweight workout and it's being Recommended and it's now at the six and a half million views the one video So you know interesting, but that was all manufactured. I made the video. I uploaded it to you too Like you know, I didn't have any funding or any You know ABC NBC Fox News or anything behind me manufactured it then I wrote the books self-published them promoted them to my email list got on I probably done three hundred seventy five maybe over four hundred podcasts now and you know one once you do one You can get on two more from it because every podcaster knows two other podcasters that they'll have you and so then speaking on stages You know is me saying hey put me under stage and in some cases and other cases people are asking me and then starting Instagram on February 15th 2017 after not even having an iPhone until 2016 and then manufacturing the celebrity on Instagram to a higher level and so it's just me doing all the stuff You know with the help of team members and friends, but that's it. It's all manufactured So but it's all done with There's the celebrity There's a purpose behind it. Yeah, like yeah doing this for a very specific reason. There's intentionality in each post It's not the hey, I need to be on 17th platform So I'm just gonna take one post and post on the 17th platform. It's never been that way with you. It's always been very purposeful Yeah, and not you know, I'm not doing this to get invited out for free coffees for people to pick my brain I've got you know, I'm doing this for something slightly slightly more Impactful than that, but as an end result of it for sure, but yeah, I mean it's like okay. Let's figure out The platform and you can look at like Russell Brunson really describes it nicely in traffic secrets like Facebook is the talk show and Instagram is the reality show and YouTube is the sitcom and yeah, that's pretty Accurate you know linked in would be like Bloomberg or CNBC or something like that I mean you look at them that way and you go, okay Well then obviously the content's gonna be slightly different the style of videos can be slightly different I never liked Facebook like I just don't like Using it as a content platform. I never really got it But Instagram came so naturally to me because it's really you know short raw and When I tried posting similar stuff on Facebook, it never really got the traction That Instagram was able to get the traction for me Yeah, Tiktok is interesting. You know, I watched a tiny tiny bit of it every couple of weeks and start me get the hang of it And you know, we put videos up there every single day. I film them sending my guy. I've never logged into my own account there You know, we've got a following there, but I'm not really sure how Make it into a business as much as JC maybe JC can share that with you. Yeah, yeah Yeah You said something very quickly. I want to I want to put it on the Tiktok Tiktok and Instagram stuff, but Tactically speaking a lot of folks that are listening are either hosting a podcast and being guests on podcasts And you said something very good and you said hey listen You're showing up on a podcast you've done three hundred and fifty four hundred podcasts and you're very intentionally Wanting to get the word out getting using the platform the podcast as a platform to get the word out So when you're talking to a podcast host, is there something that you would intentionally, he asks say do to get the next intro or is this an organic thing where I say Craig that was so good, let me introduce you. How does that work? It's generally at the end of it. And so why have I done so many podcasts first? I go back to I had a conversation with Dan Kennedy and Dan Kennedy said that whenever he went on a tell a seminar, which is different than a podcast, you know, back in the day, tell a seminar. Whenever he went on a tell a seminar, and usually it was for the host customer list, he was able to sell about 100 books every time he did a tell a seminar. And I, you know, just in the math, okay, if I want to sell 10,000 books, if I go on a hundred podcasts and they sell 100 books, 10,000 books, that's a lot of, that's a good amount of books. And so I started doing them all and at the end, the interviewer generally says to you, "Hey, is there anything I can do for you?" And you could, you know, sometimes they say, "Hey, I have a friend who has a podcast, would you like to do it?" And then they say, "What can I do for you?" After the show is done, you know, this is not recorded, and you say, "Well, you know, why don't you introduce me to your friends who have a podcast, and I'll jump on those shows, too. I'd love to be on those shows." And then it's like, you know, one becomes two, two becomes four, and it's actually a potential from there. And the next thing you know, you have to start turning them down based on how many listeners do you have on the show. Right, right, right. So I think that a lot of times, right, the average person goes on the show or does the show. Thank you so much. And someone says, "Well, what can I do?" You're like, "Oh, thank you so much for having me on these just bounds." When the person really wants to help. And so at that point, there's a, I talked to a Vader about this. There's a "Carmic Balance." And I don't, I mean, in a very positive way, right? There's a "Carmic Balance." A person wants to help. There's a gratitude component there. So the ask becomes important. But it makes sense, especially if they can naturally further your mission. It just totally makes sense. Yeah, totally. I love Vader's whole story of, like, he did almost the same number of podcasts, but he did them before his book came out. I did the same number of podcasts after my book came out. And it's, you know, obviously there's a slightly different result when you do it before because then you can get people wrangled up into a book launch. But, you know, I'm an impatient person. And my book was self-published as opposed to his, which went through Benbella. And therefore, it was like, "Well, you know, if I do a book launch, it doesn't end up on any lists anyways. So why do we launch?" And it's just, let's just get this book out and get people hearing about it. And that leads to other things because, you know, sometimes I do a podcast and at the end, I'd say, "You should really do my coaching." And then, you know, they become a client and then they get me speaking on their stage. And then I get clients from speaking on their stage. And so you just have to like figure out, "Where do you feel like you rate in this person's eyes?" Like, you know, if I'm on Lewis's house podcast, I'm not going to pitch him on coaching or something like that, but it'd be like, "You know, you could get me in with, I don't know the names of the people that he associates with, I forget them, but like the Hollis, you know, like Rachel and Rachel Hollis. He probably knows them, right? So, you know, hey, if you could nudge, you know, actually what I often asked was, "Hey, I'd love to get connected with somebody." Like, so I was on this one guest podcast in the New York City of St.V. Porterfield. But like, you know, why don't, why don't you find out her shipping address and then will shift one of my perfect day kits to her as a gift from you?" Yeah. Okay. Well, then great. So, you know, you can just tell the address to the shipping company so that like, you know, so you're not sharing her shipping address with me. You know, I don't need it. But what, you know, we just want to give a gift to her. And we get in front of her. And to be honest with you, that hasn't turned into anything, but we did it. And, you know, maybe it will, maybe one day we'll meet in an event and she'll go, "Oh, you know, I've had your thing for years and just never got around to get in touch with you." No. You know, whatever. But it's just goodwill. And the great thing about, you know, a betroth in his position, me in my position, you in your position is, there's so rush on us, you know, getting your return on a introduction, you know, an ROI, return on introduction. Like for you and I, it's like, well, you know, what if this takes 10 years to turn into him and not hello? Yeah. It's no big deal. You know, we just want to give. I've got all these books. Like, I didn't write the books, not to be read, you know. Yeah. I wrote the books so that every single person could get some takeaway from it where it made a big difference to him. So that's what I'm all about is I just want to get a book in the hands of as many people as possible. So that's sometimes I ask for that or sometimes I sometimes, you know, one time I recently did one, you know, Nick and Tom, these Canadian real estate investing guys. No. So they're up near Toronto and they have a Greek last name I can't, it starts with a K, Custas, something like that. Yeah. Anyways, I've been on their show. They're really big in Southwestern Ontario. They help, you know, working people by their first rental homes and stuff like that. And so at the end of it, I said, well, hey, you know what? Why don't you guys, you know, you love my book? Why don't you guys buy a copy for all of your VIP members, you know, you can get them down to like five books book. Like that's literally we make no money on it. And you know, I'd love to get this book in the hands of it because if I get my hands in, you know, 200 plus people's investors hands, I mean, these are legitimate, serious people. You know, that leads to opportunities, even if this great conversations with people and then you kind of snowball from there. So those are the kind of asks that you may, you just have to be strategic. You have to know where you are in the pecking order and make the appropriate ask. But once you get on a couple of podcasts, you could never get off that that marry go around because everybody's got one now. Yeah. I'll say the one last thing here, just just for for if you're listening right now, the couple of great takeaways, right? Number one, make that make that soft, considerate ask. I think it's totally fine to do that. Just be thoughtful about it. And number two, Craig, I you know, I have no idea how many how many perfect day formulas and perfectly formulas I've bought, right? Like every time we do, I'm like, Hey, I got a new mastermind group. No, no, no, but like, you know, I got a new mastermind group. I have a gift. Great. And it's so easy because I talk to your team. I give them a list. They bill me. They ship the books out with whatever note I want on it, right? And it's so great because I get to do that. And what people don't realize and I'll give you the, I'll give you the pro tip here for folks that are listening of not if you want to, what do you guys should do is go, you should contact DM, DM Craig contact his team. So he you can buy a, a, a, a book, a set of books for your, a staff, your mastermind groups, you know, 100, 200 people. And then the pitch is always to Craig after I've gotten the books and they're ready to get delivered. I'll say, Hey, Craig, can you do me a quick favor? Here's the, here's the type of people. There's 200 of them in our, in our Facebook group. Can you record me like a 60, 90 second video that just introduces the book in the, and as a thankfulness saying, Hey, this is what you should watch for. And you know what? Craig is like, this is awesome. He's happy to record a video. He sends it to you. Now you launch the book and the gift with Craig's message. Now there is manufacturing celebrity, celebrity, there's proximity to the author. Now that feels like there's connection. I think people just buy the books and forget I as an author, you as an author like this is amazing. Like I would gladly do that video to further the message of the book. Yeah, and then you know, some, some people like your friends Don and Penny, you know, they bought a bunch of books and they're giving them away. So people feel really awesome like, Oh, I want a book, you know, because you know, they're friends with Craig and stuff like that. So you can always do that too. There's a whole bunch of ways that you can do it. Yeah. While we're on the book topic, I don't know if you know this. I'll tell you the last story here and then we'll go into practical stuff. I was reading Seth Godans. This is marketing. I'm a big Seth Godan fan. I read it. I was like, Oh, this would be a really great book for my mastermind group. So I bought a hundred copies for my mastermind group. And while I was reading the book, Craig, I was like, Oh, I wonder what Seth would say about this. I wonder what he, so I wrote some questions in the book. And after I bought the hundred copies, I actually sent an email to Seth. He said, I bought a hundred copies for my mastermind group. Thank you so much. Okay, I have three to five questions. If you're okay with it, I'm happy to either send it to you, but it may be even more powerful. If you just, if we could just do a 10 to 15 minute video interview, just for the members of my mastermind group. And he was like, that's a really great ask. I'm happy to do that. You don't need to send me the questions in advance. I send him a zoom link. We do a 15 minute interview. Now my mastermind group got a book from Seth and a video interview just for them, which was so cool to do. Yeah, so simple man, so simple to deliver these types of experiences now more than ever. That's for sure. Yeah. I want to go to one thing that you just, you, you, you kind of glossed over a little bit if it was fast when you said, Hey, I jumped on Instagram is kind of my thing. I was a blackberry guy. You and I, you know, you and I kind of enjoy that where often you'll pull out your blackberry and show them together. Hold on. But the cool part is you were never big on it. Oh, there it is. The blackberry for those of you can't go to the podcast. But you told me, I think this was either a time when you and I had just gotten together for dinner and you were on a, on an in an Uber on the way to, I think San Diego. And you're like, Hey, man, I made $5,000 in the back of a new bird. And was that the time you started to actually kind of believe in the power of what the platform could do? - Well, it was definitely what I made that for sale. I've probably done it a few times. The very first time I did was in April of 2017. So two months after I had been on Instagram, I had 500 followers and I sold something in five minutes to someone for $5,000. Now there was obviously a little bit of a relationship existed before, but they didn't know about the stuff that I was doing. They didn't know that they could get this level of coaching from me until I made the Instagram post. And once I had done that, then it was just a matter of quick conversation, sending them the link. And they were obviously very warmed up, but I've done other sales with complete strangers to me. Maybe they weren't strangers to me, but I was a stranger. They were a stranger to me. I was an stranger to them. And in the backseat of an Uber or sitting, I did one the other day, I was out in front of the grocery store. I had one hand holding my dog leash and the other hand with just the thumb, not even any other fingers, just one thumb. So a $2,500 coaching program standing in front of the grocery store, waiting for my girlfriend to come back out. And I looked like an idiot, right? I looked like an idiot on the side of the street, just doing a post in a photo about it. Yeah, that's right. I made a video of it because I was like such a dork. And that's the great thing about just figuring this out. You can have these conversations anytime anywhere. So it doesn't matter if you're selling a house, it doesn't matter if you're selling books, courses, coaching, personal training. It is very, very simple to do this because Instagram is raw, it's personal. And when people show me their Instagram and it's a logo as their profile picture, I'm like, you immediately fail Instagram. That's for sure. - Yeah, I remember you telling me this. You said to me, you're like, hey, Shron, you heard it from me first. Instagram is the new email. And I was like, what is he talking about? And that's when you started explaining to me, hey, you remember the four years ago when email was the personal vehicle? This is the personal vehicle now. And you've actually almost taken parts of email and how people are comfortable with email and applied a lot of those principles to how they how they kind of work with Instagram. Can you talk a little bit about, kind of, why do you think Instagram is like email and how is that integrating into people's lives? - Excellent question. So with Instagram, you can make stories. And that's where I really found the most overlap with email. So your main feed is kind of like a blog where people come and they find you and then they kind of sign up to follow you. And then they get into your stories, which is kind of like having an email. And you make these little stories that follow an email format, which is headline, right? Subject line for email. If you mess up your subject line email where it just says, you know, Joe, the real estate agent, newsletter 157, like, nobody's really excited to open that. But if it says, you know, how to sell your house for 20% over asking. Even if you don't stage it, you're like, what? Let me open that. And so, you know, you do that sort of thing. Now you can do the exact same thing in a story. Like, hey, you know, I was finishing up a sale here and walking out, we sold up for 20% over asking and we didn't even stage it. In fact, you know, we did it in seven days and I only went to this place once. Wait a minute. You're probably wondering how the heck did I do that? And how can I do this for your home? Well, let's go on. And then so that's like kind of the first video slide. You're about 15 seconds long. Then you go in, you tell a little personal story, teach a little piece of content, where it's actually valuable to somebody. And then I say, you've earned the right to make a call to action. And that's exactly what I did with my email marketing for so many years. Ryan Dice did it for so many years. Frank Kern, Vade Rose, Matt Fury was probably one of the original guys doing this all the way back in 2000 when he was the king of email. And it was just compelling subject one, personal story, given nugget, and then tell them what to do next, which was usually buy something via a link. Well, that's exactly what we do with the stories on Instagram. We make video versions of it. You can also do text versions of it. But it's just simply get people to go through a little message where they feel like, wow, this person knows what you're talking about. And then you tell them exactly what to do next and why they need to do it now. And it's the exact same thing as email. So that's-- I discovered that also when I was in-- I was in Florida when I made my first sale for the 5,000. I was also in Florida this time in Orlando. I was in the airport walking around and just hit me. It's like, oh, these stories that I'm watching, I understand now that it really can be analogous to email. And that's when I start doing it. And very few people were doing anything like it. And so I started selling stuff through stories and taught a whole bunch of people. And now I get people who buy my course. We got one yesterday. Some guy bought the course. And overnight, he made a message. And the next day, he made $3,000. He sold a bunch of coaching. And we get those all-- 3,000. It's a lot. But usually we get $1,000 in 48 hours, $1,000 in 24 hours. Because one thing that's missing sure on for most people's social media is, A, what the heck do you actually do? I still don't know that. I've been following you. You got cool pictures. But I don't know what the heck you do. And how can I do business with you? And we just taught people to be quote unquote blunt by describing it. And like, oh, that's what you do. Cool. I'm interested. I'm going to hire you. OK. If you-- it's not rocket surgery. It's just that you have done-- you have made all these posts. And at the end of the day, no one knows how to do business with you. Yeah. Yeah. So I have a more kind of psychological philosophical question for you. I meet folks that are of two extremes generally when they approach social media when it comes to selling. And you have one camp of folks that are like, hey, I can sell all day on social. I'm happy to go on social. I'm happy to tell people to buy my stuff. And then on the other hand, you have people are like, well, it's social media. I don't want to-- should I sell? Should I not sell? I'm kind of-- I don't feel good about selling. I have my friends on this channel as well. I have some family members. My aunts on Facebook, my aunts. You know, you've got that feeling. When someone is in the-- if they're in one-- I think both extremes are tough, right? Like, you have the-- even the person that is totally cool would sell, it kind of goes over words sometimes. Well, I would rather do this. And so everybody can picture riding a horse, right? I would rather pull the reins in on the horse, then have to whip the horse over and over and over again to get them to do anything, which is that person who won't sell because of the 17,000 in nine reasons. Why they can't sell today. That's a tough person to deal with, man. I'd much rather say, man, let's pull it back a bit. And you'll still be good. But why do you-- so why do you-- have you seen a specific reason or a mindset or something that can unlock people's hesitation for wanting to invite a sale? Do you think it's scripting? Do you think it's the process? What is it that makes them feel uncomfortable to ask for the next step? I do think scripting is helpful when you do that. And we can talk about that in a second. But the analogy I like to use is-- I always say the Cosby show. I shouldn't say the Cosby show. It's kind of better than a bad name now. But let's say cheers. So I grew up watching cheers. And anybody or friends sit comp, right? Every sit comp followed a formula of 22 minutes of content and seven to eight minutes of commercials. It was that for every single sign felt another one. And so I just look at it as like, hey, sometimes we didn't love the commercials. Sometimes we did love the commercials. But that was a fair trade, right? 22 minutes of sign felt for eight minutes of commercials. We made that trade for a decade, right? So obviously we were OK with making that trade. So it's the same trade you make on your social media. Or as I call it business media, because if you're there for social media, you should find some more social stuff for your life. But business media approach, OK? I'm going to give, give, give, give. And then I'm going to say, hey, let's do business. Here's how to do it. Gary V has the book, jab, jab, jab, right book or whatever it is. And I think that's fair. It's good. I'm going to give you great. So I have now on my Instagram, move to this basically like a written advertisement on my main theme. And we called it a blunt post. And I just, I put one up to them. We'll get in it right now. It says, it's just a black text on a white background. It's got a picture of me that looks like it came from Twitter. And so it looks like a Twitter post. And it just says, I am looking for three business owners who want to make seven figures in 2020. Then it says the next line, I'll personally coach you to scale your business and achieve financial freedom without working more. DM me seven figures to see if you qualify. OK? So, so that's it. That's the post. - Okay. - And I actually get half the number of likes on it as I do like a really valuable post. Like a really like, like I'm shocked at how many people like it and some people comment on it. And I just tell people that send me a DM. It's my commercial break in amongst, I mean, every day I make at least one if not two Instagram TV videos that are three minutes long. And we do quote posts. And we do my podcast up there. And we do some of these carousel posts, which are 10 pictures in one post. We do all types of great content. And I'm now ministering you up in advertisement. - Yeah. - But even then, if people read the description, it's actually pretty valuable. So it's almost like 22 minutes of comedy followed with seven minutes of infomercial and infomercials are entertaining on its own. It's not like a boring commercial. Or it's a guy code commercial, which are pretty entertaining or a bug-wise or one or whatever. So it and it's so blunt, like if you've never told people what you do on Instagram, you're gonna get dozens if not hundreds of direct messages because people are like, "Oh, I didn't know that you sold this. I didn't know that you did that." Went one guy who runs a jewelry store down in the diamond district in New York. And the very first time you made a story, you sold a $20,000 rent or necklace or something. Because the person who bought it said, "I didn't know that you ran a jewelry store." - That's crazy. - It is. It is so bananas. And so you can customize this for any marketplace, right? I'm looking for three homeowners who want to sell their house in the next 90 days. I'll personally guide you to staging your house in the absolute best way so that you get more people to your open house. DM me sell my home to see if you qualify. So simple. And I realized this the other day, Sharon, that if anybody knows anything about copywriting, there's a classic formula called AIDA. And this blunt post in probably 35 words covers all of it. It's attention. I'm looking for. So it calls you against your attention. Then interest. You want to make some figures in 2020 or you want to sell your home in the next 90 days for above asking, "Oh, I'm interested in that." Then desire. You're gonna desire that I personally coach you or I personally guide you. And then the last one is action. So it's attention, interest, desire, and action. And the last one just says, "Dm me, this code word, that's the next step." It's an entire sales letter in a 50 word Instagram post. You know, I love that because I want to dispel this myth of sell, sell, sell because there is a, what you did there was you basically told them exactly who you are exactly what you do. You give them the promise and then you just invited them. It was you didn't tell everybody else bug off. You just say, "Hey, if you are interested in this, I'm inviting you to DM me. I'm giving you a very simple next step." And you're not. And there's a something very specific here. You didn't just say, because you see an insurance broker or you see a real estate agent or you see a coach or consultant, they'll say, "Hey, I work with pro athletes to get them six back abs. Text me at this number." And now it's weird or call me, which is the worst. Like most service providers will say, "Call me." And I always tell people, "Okay, so I'm gonna pick up the phone. I'm gonna dial your number and be like, oh, hi, is this Craig?" Craig, you don't know me, but I'm, and I was trolling you on Instagram. I have nothing to say. Like it's so weird. You're making it so awkward for me to actually take the next step. But instead when you can say, hey, DM me the word seven figures, and I'll get you all the details. DM me the word seven figures to see if you qualify. You're giving me exactly what to do. So it's not just a, I have actually see bus benches that says, "Call me with the phone number." Like someone's gonna stop and call. Like that's crazy. What a waste of the real estate, right? And if you can just give people a very simple, easy next step, they'll take it. - Yeah, that's why a lot of, you know, advertising things say text whatever to this number. And now you've got your phone number. You didn't have to pick up the phone 'cause everyone hates picking up the phone. I mean, you had to pick up the phone to text, but you don't have to pick up the phone call somebody. - Right. - It's like, it's so easy. And you get to track this, right? So if you do a different word in each one of these things, or if you do a different word in your stories, you do a different word in your story highlights, you do a different word in your profile, where a lot of people screw up their profiles to its horrible. You know, just like, you don't tell people what you do in your profile. Or you, you know, a lot of people, if they have a whole bunch of other accounts, they'll put their other account in their profile. - Oh, you think someone's gonna do it? - They'll just daisy chain profiles, they just go inside. - Right, okay, I'm off to the other one. Or you like send them to, you send them to, to your YouTube channel. What was the point of that? - Yeah, you know? - You said something which is great, which is great. I wanna make sure people understand. A lot of time people will ask me, "Shiron, well, how does creating content, how does creating content help me make sales?" And, and, you know, like, the more, and I think you just laid it out there. You're like, "Hey, listen, whenever, if you ever have a thought that you're ever thinking, how does creating content help me make sales, you should think about friends, cheers." You know, yes, you created 22 minutes of entertaining content. Now you have eight minutes of permission to have the advertisement, to ask, to sell, to invite them to do things. So that way, don't be overly focused on, oh my gosh, I'm creating this piece of content. Every piece of content I have, I need to create a call to action. Like, you don't need to do that. And I think that's what I got from that Craig, where you can actually be free in your 22 minutes of content creation, if you will, if you are very disciplined on the, on the advertisement. - Absolutely, absolutely. It's just, you know, if you're an expert in whatever it is that you do, you should be able to create content, snap of your fingers, super easy, and be able to, I call it the with it out challenge. You know, I made this video the other day. With out your phone and make a video, 90 seconds or less, getting people excited, teaching them something that they don't know, and then telling them like, "Hey, I have space for three more home sales in my real estate roster. I need you to send, if you're interested in selling your home for above asking, send me a direct message right now, but please hurry, I have over 5,000 followers, and these three spots are gonna go really, really fast." So send me that DM today and just say, sell home. - To that so awesome. And, but, but, Craig, you've talked to folks that are creating content in various niches. - Yep. - Why is content creation daunting generally for people? Why is there a philosophical roadblock to that? - So everybody knows of the Imposter Syndrome, right? The Imposter Syndrome is, oh, I'm not good enough. Well, here's the thing, is you don't actually have an Imposter Syndrome, you have expert syndrome. And expert syndrome is this, that you don't realize that you have forgotten more than 90% of people will ever know. So you've been, you know, like for example, I have a lot of nutrition folks, you know, nutrition coaches, and they won't make videos or something because to them, like, missing protein and fats every meal, like, duh, who wouldn't do that? That's so obvious, because you've been reading articles on that since 2000, and you think it's common knowledge, but most people don't even know what a protein is. They're like, is there, is, like protein, like breads of protein, right? - No, no. I actually, when I used to teach personal training back in, when I was still in undergrad, I taught personal training in 1998, I had a medical doctor. So some, well, he wasn't a medical doctor yet, but he was his second or third year of medical school in my session. And he was like, yeah, so like, is like peanut butter or not? You know, it's like a really stupid question, but like, is there protein in carbohydrates? I'm like, what, that is the stupidest question ever, let alone from medical doctors. So you don't make videos because you think that what you know, everybody knows. - Yeah. - So like, you're, so you're like, I don't know what to say, because, and then you get into your head, like, there's all these other people sitting there, and I'm just gonna be lost in the noise. No, you're not. No, you're not. You're not, because another thing that I've learned is that most people are terrified of making a video. So the fact that you make a video immediately elevates your celebrity. Because people are like, oh my God, I saw you made a video, that's amazing. How did you do that? Well, I'm actually able to hold a phone and talk at the same time, it's just, you know, I know it's, I know, obviously I want to stand there and where it'd be able to do this. And so, and then, you know, you published it without the fear of criticism. So you are now celebrating a lot of people's eyes, simply because you have shown up. Now, if you show up consistently, they immediately think that you are smarter than them. Oh, it's like, the same thing is when, as soon as you step on stage at an event, the thing is, what do most beginner speakers think when they step on stage at an event? I'm so nervous, is anybody gonna listen to me? And everybody in the audience is like, I didn't come here to, like, not listen to you that's why i'm here i am here to listen to you are an expert your you're standing three feet above me so clearly you must be more intelligent so so it's funny like the it's all it's not ad visceral but it's the speaker the beginner speaker and the audience have completely different views on what's happening the speaker the beginner speaker the beginner video content maker is terrified and the people on the other side think they are in the presence of greatness they automatically default to that yeah so if you're not making content it's only because of what's going on your own head so so i teach people i say to them let's just come up with the three to five things that are your core beliefs and if they could be different than what most other people say then we're really on the road to success i call these like you know i created this five by five grid you know here your five main beliefs here five different ways to tell the story here therefore you have 25 different pieces of content and you can go and do it now there's one caveat there with the expert syndrome is that too many experts who do make content you know if they're level if the level of understanding of the audience is at a two most experts are speaking at a seven yeah and you know it's like talking about organic grass bed butter to somebody who's eating pizza and soda every day yeah yeah it is a mismatch and you end up not having content that connects yeah you know the crazy part is i my over the last year and i think i shared this on on your stage as well when people are getting started especially the experts right if you're a coach a consultant or real estate agent a insurance broker etc anytime that people hire us to do a complex task because they're outsourcing the complexity of that transaction or that result i always tell people the the number of questions that exist in that are so many and i said you never have to create new content ever i just just go into your email and look at the last question that you got asked and then just start a video and say hey today's the today's question of the day comes from Craig Valentine in Vancouver Canada Craig asks you know what is earnest money well Craig there's three three ways to think about earnest money one two three four by the way i just worked on it with the client right now and i have it opening for one more person to do this if you're interested in buying or selling a home in Vancouver message me the word Vancouver below and i'll get you all the details the stuff is like you do this all day you just answer the question people have already asked you right and like i tell them just go to your you don't even have to make stuff up you responded to the client anyway you already wrote the out you already wrote out the answer you don't even have to make anything up just read your email if that's the worst thing but you have everything done and daily i'd say you know for if you were a coach a consultant or a real estate agent and insurance broker anybody that is in that in the in a kind of in the expert knowledge delivery mechanism business you literally should be doing in my opinion you should be doing a question of the day because now and Craig you taught me this you're like dude why are you building something that you can't reference later so now when someone else asks the questions you can say oh sure i'm super glad that you asked that question in fact i just recorded that here here's the link to that now you don't have to record that all over again either yeah exactly and you're on wait wait a minute people are emailing you questions you must be a celebrity therefore i can trust you that's awesome uh so Craig i want to go back to kind of the most productive man the most disciplined man conversation for a second when it comes to content and everyone's like hey Craig it's easy for you you've been doing this you can write you're a great writer you can think you can put stuff up you've got a team i have a full-time job i still have to run my business and you've heard this you shared with your private clients recently you actually shared your full schedule you're like here's what i do oh yeah actually like walk through that and it was really real it was like hey i wake up at this time this is what i do you gave yourself really great buckets of time to drive results and i'd love if you wouldn't mind just sharing hey this is what my day generally looks like so people can get a sense uh this is how i this is how i Craig work yeah well let me tell the full story because i didn't tell the full story and the email that you got but you know this is to show people that i'm human so so i met my girlfriend michelle november uh last year so let's six months ago at the time of reporting this call and i'm living in Toronto so i'm ended up staying up i was living in Toronto then so i was you know staying up until 11 o'clock at night talking to her and so i actually started sleeping a little bit later and then you know i moved out here to the west coast in march and i thought that i was going to have to change my schedule get up later but fortunately you know michelle goes bed at the same time i do which then permits me to get up really early so i went through a phase of about four months when i wasn't sticking to this schedule and i was getting up a little bit later and working a little bit later at night so but i just adapted to it so the current schedule is now back to my normal schedule which i profiled in the perfect day formula so it's back to literally getting up at three feet before three fifty seven a.m usually i'm up before then some days the alarm goes off but most of the time i'm up before then and ignore what time i get up okay it's not about the hour that you get up it's about what you do with the hours that you are up i love the morning i have a meeting with my team at seven a.m pacific time so i have to prepare for the meeting it's a marketing meeting all my member all my team members are on the east coast at ten o'clock but we have to get the ads up on facebook as early as possible so therefore what option do i have and so i get up at three fifty seven i write uh actually what i do now is i take the dog out and then i do a five minute maybe sometimes ten minute meditation and then i write and then i will have you know after i've done my what i call non-origin important work my writing i then will reward myself with a check of social media to check my dm to get the sales conversation started there i will go to our sales tracking document move drum up some businesses what i like to say we always want to drum up business early in the day that should be a priority for every entrepreneur so we're pushing follow-up messages i'm thinking about what videos i can create if i have to write any sales scripts and then i have to come up with facebook ad ideas for our seven o'clock meeting we meet at seven at seven thirty my dog is going bananas so we go outside there's fortunately an amazing park right beside us which actually isn't a dog park and so we get um you know these these guys the mall cops show up on bikes every morning and like this is not an off-leash dog park and like oh actually like just before this i was working outside and i was doing bodyweight rows on a piece of playground equipment that had yellow caution paper up to round it and so a city worker came over to me and said hey that you can't do this and i'm like what is it going to be a broken is it going to fall down on me goes no covid man can't use this and so i'm like oh my god but i don't know is it against a law for me to do what i don't know anyways so we we uh the dog plays in the dog plays so hard that it just this passed out for nine hours after that which we have to do and then um i spent time with michelle working on her business for half an hour and then we read for half an hour which is new because i used to read before bed when i looked at Toronto but now i don't hear and so we read in the morning and i'm going through traffic secrets right now and i actually just bought um remeatseffey's book i will teach you to be rich i've never read it before and i was like i want to go see what's all about i mean it is a i'd cycle a pedia of knowledge for the average person who you know has to you know get rich on sixty thousand dollars a year it means an incredible book and so i'm learning a lot from it both in style and substance and then after that i go and write again and then i work out and then in the afternoon i do stuff like this yeah you actually showed there's never a time where you said do i spend 14 hours creating content those are the rewarded pieces of time and it's not a you slot the content creation in during the day as opposed to because you've gotten so natural with creating it it's not a burden and daunting task anymore now so so a couple of ways we create content want to create content when i'm at the dog park so i create tick-tock videos some instagram videos stuff like that and then whenever i go outside to work out all my workpots are outside i will do a three minute video um after the workout sometimes before the workout i'm very fortunate we live right on the water with great view so i'll just you know i just get fired up you know often by a question somebody's asking me and i just run out and i uh to the balcony if i'm in the house or when i'm outside working out i'll just whip out the phone and do the video and that's all you really need to do except for once a month we get a videographer to come into the condo and we are prepared in advance and i filmed four to eight youtube videos and a bunch of it and if i have too many sales videos or whatever and it's like okay you've got some work to do and he goes and edits the stuff and gets to my team and my team distributes it now you don't need a team i'm not my team it's 21 year old kid so you got a high school kid in your life great high school kids going to be able to distribute the content across platforms put it on youtube edit the video you just can't do any of that so if you start to edit a video I've just slapped your hand, you can't do it anymore. And so that's how I create content, very short snippets on the drop of a hat, and then also planned as well. - Yeah, for those that are listening, I have bought, we can't go into all of the ninja tactics here that Craig likes using, including the DM sales scripts that get you the conversion based conversation. So we bought that for my mastermind groups to have the social storytelling system that you have, Craig, make sure we link it up here so that you can, you guys can get it. It's a no brainer if you're spending time on Instagram, and you're actually using unversations to create conversion, and you should totally have the right tools so that you know exactly what to say so you can move the conversation forward. But Craig, if you had your choice and you wanted people to go somewhere where they can learn more about Craig, learn more about your message, and get kind of a deeper dive into what you're working on. What's the best place for them to go? - Instagram, real Craig Valentine, go and find me on Instagram. If you need help with your time, go and get perfect week formula.com, that's my newest book, my best book, and then you can also go to IGsalessystem.com, get the Instagram course that Sharon talked about, and then also you could email me 'cause I like email. I like email a lot, and you can email me at cragetgodfather.com, and give me some material from my content. - Yeah, listen, for just as a thank you, when you guys listening to this, jump on Craig's DM, send him a quick DM, and say, "Hey, heard you and Sharon on the podcast." That was awesome that we Craig has some context as to where he actually connected with you, and he knows you all-- - DM me the word "Sharon podcast." - Oh my gosh, just DM me the word "Sharon." He'll get a bunch of hearts and likes. That's exactly right. - Yeah, that's right. - That's what happened. - That's exactly right. Craig, man, you've been an amazing friend and mentor to me ever since the first day we met, and I can't thank you enough for being on drop in nuggets, and always just sharing and serving every single day. I appreciate you very much. - You are in beast mode all the time, and an inspiration to me day was, sir. (upbeat music) - Hey, Sharon, I have a cool gift for you. I took some of my best ideas from the last 20 years and created a five day MBA. It's quick connection pact that you could listen to on the go, just like this podcast, and I wanna give it to you for free. Just as a thank you for listening to the show. No fluff, no gimmicks, just pure actionable ideas for you to use instantly. You can grab it right now at businessschoolshow.com. That's businessschoolshow.com. (upbeat music)