0:00

Success isn't just about having a great

0:02

product or service. You're an entrepreneur

0:04

with a groundbreaking idea, but you're struggling to

0:06

gain traction. You've built an amazing

0:08

product, but sales aren't taking off as

0:10

expected. What's missing? The

0:13

answer may lie in something

0:16

that's often overlooked. Your personal

0:18

brand. In today's

0:20

noisy, crowded marketplace, it's not enough

0:22

to just have a great offering.

0:24

To truly stand out and succeed,

0:27

you need to build a powerful,

0:29

personal brand that establishes your expertise,

0:31

credibility, and unique voice. But

0:33

where do you even start? How do

0:36

you grow an engaged following whilst also

0:38

running your business? And how do you

0:40

translate that audience into meaningful results? To

0:43

unpack this crucial topic, I'm thrilled to be

0:45

joined by my mate, Chris Donnelly. Chris

0:48

is the founder of two successful

0:50

businesses, Burb and Lottie. But he's

0:53

also built an enormous personal brand

0:55

with over 35 million content views

0:57

per week. Brands are

0:59

lining up to work with him, and

1:01

he's become one of the most sought-after

1:03

voices in entrepreneurship. In

1:05

our conversation, Chris shares his insights on

1:07

the power of personal branding for founders.

1:10

We dive into the nuts and bolts

1:12

of how he grew his audience,

1:14

including the importance of consistency, experimentation,

1:17

and cultivating an authentic voice. But

1:19

we also go deeper, discussing the mental

1:22

challenges of putting yourself out there, how

1:24

to partner with others to accelerate growth,

1:26

and how to leverage your audience to

1:28

drive business results. And it's true.

1:31

Building a strong personal brand isn't

1:33

easy. It requires consistency, vulnerability, and

1:35

a willingness to experiment. But

1:38

here's the thing. This isn't just about

1:40

follower counts or vanity metrics. As

1:43

Chris puts it, everything is downstream

1:45

from attention. The audience and

1:47

credibility you build can be rocket fuel

1:49

for your business, opening doors,

1:52

and creating once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. If

1:55

you've been hesitating to prioritize your

1:57

personal brand, consider this your wake-up

1:59

call. Entrepreneurship is not

2:01

for the faint of heart, and those

2:03

who can cut through the noise and

2:06

build real connection will have an undeniable

2:08

edge. Okay, let's get

2:10

on with it. My conversation with

2:13

Chris Donnelly. Let's do this. Hey

2:17

Chris. Hi

2:20

mate. There

2:22

is a saying, you're probably familiar

2:25

with it, everything is

2:27

downstream from attention. What

2:29

do you think of that? It's

2:32

certainly been true of my

2:34

life so far. I think

2:37

if more people understood it, I think it would find

2:39

life a bit easier. But

2:41

it's definitely true. In every

2:43

industry, in any job, in anything almost,

2:45

if you're the one who gets most of the

2:47

attention, you'll get most of the opportunities. Which

2:51

is true of a graduate through

2:53

to middle management or a CEO, through to an entrepreneur.

2:55

It's the same concept in pretty much

2:57

everything. Is

3:00

there an inherent problem with that, where a lot

3:02

of people on social media are just painful attention

3:04

seekers who don't actually know very much about the

3:06

world? Obviously not everyone, but so many don't know

3:08

much about the world, and are

3:10

just constantly trying to hack attention. And

3:13

it can all be very distracting because

3:15

fundamentally people are quite confused about

3:17

who to trust. So how do we square

3:19

off the attention side to the trust side? I

3:22

think that's more on the reader or

3:24

the watcher. That will happen

3:26

forever, that's happened forever. People will always

3:28

be trying to hijack people's attention and

3:31

profit off people's interest and so forth.

3:33

And you've seen that so much in

3:35

the last couple of years with prominent

3:37

people like Tate, etc. But

3:39

the thing I would always put out in my content

3:42

is if you're going to read

3:44

from someone or watch someone, make sure that

3:46

you know what they've actually done and actually

3:48

accomplished to make sure you research the people

3:50

that you're listening to. And I think

3:52

if more people did that, I think that things would

3:54

be generally better. But

3:56

it is very easy to lie these days, and you have

3:58

like a massive rise of... unqualified

4:01

experts, which obviously you're

4:03

seeing a lot with people being exposed these

4:05

days. So who to follow? Yeah, personal preference,

4:07

I would say really put some time into

4:09

researching who you follow. When

4:12

you were like building your business in your

4:14

20s, because that's when we

4:16

met, right? We met whilst you were building Burb and

4:19

I was building Gravel, very different businesses.

4:22

What do you think about attention then? Because

4:25

at that time I was quite literally, you

4:28

know, more concerned with is my business going

4:30

out of business? You know, how

4:32

do I hang on to my staff? How do

4:34

I pay the wage bill? And I suppose in

4:36

that regard, I'm probably, I was probably more like

4:38

a typical business owner than anything

4:40

else. And I actually talk about this in a book I'm

4:42

writing, which is, there was a pretty

4:46

sort of monumental moment for me where I

4:49

woke up one morning and had an email

4:51

that I was on a direct message on

4:53

LinkedIn from the head

4:55

of marketing at Bugatti. And she

4:58

had emailed me, we weren't even connected. And she

5:00

had said, I follow all of your content.

5:02

I love the way that you talk about running your business.

5:04

I love the way you talk about culture. I

5:07

would love to talk to you about the upcoming marketing

5:10

brief for Bugatti Global. And our

5:12

clients at the time were like, you

5:15

know, standard bog standard clients, you know, paying

5:17

a couple hundred quid to a couple thousand

5:20

pounds. And then they came in with this

5:22

like million pound brief. And I remember pretty

5:25

much after that being like, wow, if

5:29

all of the marketing that we do at Verve was

5:32

geared and was expensive and was geared towards getting

5:34

clients, and my, I suppose

5:37

thought leadership as it was, I didn't call it

5:39

that back then. But talking about how I was

5:41

running a business publicly had led to a million

5:43

pound client and not just any, it was Bugatti.

5:45

There's only one Bugatti. I was like, wow, there

5:47

must be some serious power in this. And we

5:50

did over like three or four weeks go

5:52

and pitch them in Germany and have this

5:54

amazing experience and won them. And

5:57

I'm not playing journey back from them. I remember saying to

5:59

my business partner, then ask

6:01

him at the time and being like, you know,

6:03

we're definitely not the best. We were like laughing

6:06

a few drinks in, laughing being like,

6:08

we're definitely not the best agency. We're probably

6:10

not the most qualified for it. But like she found us

6:13

and isn't that quite something? And that actually

6:15

was, I suppose, my like Eureka moment of

6:19

this is powerful. Do

6:21

you think that there's a difference

6:23

in in

6:25

the impact of the stuff running B2B versus B2C?

6:29

Yeah, I mean, contextually, my

6:32

business that I used to run VIRB was

6:35

we were looking for clients

6:37

to book up marketing for them, you

6:39

know, so B2B business, it

6:42

became very much focused on luxury towards the sort

6:44

of later three or four years of the

6:47

business. But for that,

6:49

you can make a perfect argument that my

6:51

personal brand and my online presence that were

6:53

ended up driving over 50% of the inquiries

6:55

for the business, which is so powerful, considering

6:57

how much marketing costs to try and get

7:00

in front of these brands. Nowadays,

7:02

I run a business with my brother called Lottie,

7:04

which is a care home

7:06

marketplace, B2C. And

7:08

it is very different in that

7:11

the externalities of the personal brand are

7:13

less obvious. But when we

7:15

came to fundraise, we had the most opportunity

7:17

probably in the market, we had the most

7:19

inbound, I reckon anyone's ever really come across.

7:22

When we look to hire people,

7:24

we have hundreds of applications. And

7:26

I think that Lottie became very

7:28

well known very quickly because, you

7:31

know, on the day that we launched it, I got to post

7:33

it and got hundreds of thousands of

7:35

views on day one. So it has serious

7:38

leverage. And then there is a B2B element that

7:40

again, is very useful. What

7:42

do you think has changed in the

7:44

last couple of decades around sentiment

7:47

and around attitude from

7:50

founders regarding building audience?

7:54

My first experience of it obviously

7:56

changed me, but I remember at the time saying

7:58

I'm never posting photos. myself. I'm never

8:01

doing video. Like I will only write,

8:04

you know, email and LinkedIn basically. But

8:07

as time has gone on, you know, you get

8:09

more comfortable doing it and you progress. And

8:11

I think that founders used to

8:13

see it as a bit sort of lame

8:15

and used to see it as a bit

8:18

sort of, you know, unqualified expert experts. And

8:20

there's the whole, you know, imposter syndrome piece

8:22

as well. But I think that, you

8:24

know, if you look at in the most binary sense

8:26

in the world, if you're going to acquire a million

8:29

views to your business, you would

8:31

pay a lot for that. You pay an

8:33

extraordinary amount, especially if they were the qualified

8:35

views. And then you sort of reverse it

8:37

out and think from a personal brand perspective,

8:39

if you're quite good on something like LinkedIn,

8:41

you can get a million views relatively

8:43

easily. And like it doesn't cost you nearly

8:45

the same as paying for, you know, ads

8:48

or whatever. So I think people are starting

8:50

to realize that people

8:52

trust brands a lot less. People

8:54

follow brands a lot less. You

8:56

know, you've got complete democratization of

8:59

media going on where, you know,

9:01

the individual is becoming incredibly powerful. Like if I

9:03

was to advertise a B2C brand, I would look

9:05

to find five or six influencers in that space.

9:08

So I would go deep on working with them.

9:10

I'd have them in my content, you know. So

9:12

I think people are starting to recognize that,

9:16

you know, it's a huge competitive advantage if you can

9:18

nail it. And I always think there's

9:20

a very, you know, if I

9:22

think of it from a personal perspective, but

9:24

also applies to most people, if you were a

9:26

luxury agency back in the day, and then we

9:28

were your competitor, even

9:30

back then, we were getting millions of views on

9:33

our personal profiles every single day. And so if

9:35

you were our competitor, it was hard for you.

9:37

You were doing PPC, you were

9:39

doing paid social media, you were doing emails,

9:41

you were sponsoring conferences, but every day the

9:44

clients were reading our posts on LinkedIn. And

9:46

so it's like, it's an outside advantage. And

9:48

I think people are clocking that. Hmm. I

9:50

can speak from my experience, or one of

9:52

my, one of my, you know, negative

9:56

self talk things that

9:58

I still feel actually, I just, to

10:00

work out as I'm asking the question do I

10:02

still think this? I do still think this but

10:04

through practice feel a little bit less what

10:07

my team will think about me? It's

10:12

a great question because

10:14

and to what you said at the start all

10:18

you see nowadays is people posting about culture

10:20

and running an amazing business and how amazing

10:22

the staff is and stuff but that stuff

10:24

will bite you in the ass if you're

10:26

not authentically a good leader and so

10:28

I post about that stuff a lot but I

10:31

also as you know like

10:33

I put so much time and effort into making

10:35

sure that the environment that people work in is

10:37

amazing and so if I

10:39

was just posting and not doing the real stuff obviously

10:41

I think the disconnect would be very very real and

10:43

a lot of people suffer from that but

10:46

like you I think that you know

10:48

imposter syndrome is something that you can

10:50

practice yourself to not

10:53

overcome but certainly you

10:55

know minimize and like you

10:57

I mean I've had the

10:59

imposter syndrome around social

11:01

around personal brands forever but

11:04

as time goes on and on and on and you

11:06

achieve more and you practice what you preach you

11:09

can reduce it but it will always stay with you I think. Have

11:11

you ever had negative feedback or

11:13

difficult conversations with your colleagues about

11:16

being online and so social? I

11:20

think the only real challenge I ever had was so

11:23

my previous business I sold in 2021 and I

11:25

sold it to a private

11:28

equity backed agency and I

11:30

used to post a lot about you know

11:32

culture about leadership about you know building a

11:35

great business giving your people you know the

11:37

best lives that you could at the same

11:39

time is a good job and

11:41

obviously we got bought and

11:43

immediately I lost the ability to control how

11:46

the company you know ran and

11:48

there was a I had to

11:50

stop posting about it because there was a massive disconnect

11:52

between how this company wanted to

11:54

run the business and treat people versus how I

11:56

did but I had sold it and so I

11:58

completely lost the ability so for for a year,

12:00

I actually had a bit of a sort of

12:02

crisis because I don't know what I can post

12:05

anymore because I can't authentically say it's

12:07

the best place in the world to work anymore because

12:09

I can't control that anymore. So you started a new

12:11

company and said that you had good content. I

12:17

mean, I suppose nowadays

12:19

I post about a lot more than what I

12:21

did back then. And so in many ways, I'm

12:23

thankful that it happened, because it forced me

12:25

to sort of expand what I talk

12:27

about and what I read

12:30

about and educate myself on. But obviously, yeah,

12:32

I mean, I always try and run a place

12:34

that people would like to work. One

12:38

of the things I've learned, let's use LinkedIn as

12:40

a specific example. One of the things that I

12:42

did and was quite known for was building in

12:45

public. So sharing all of our information, our

12:47

revenue, our growth numbers, everything completely transparently. People really

12:49

enjoyed that. And I had an agreement with my

12:51

business partner, Joel, that that's what we were going

12:53

to do deeply uncomfortable for him. He doesn't really

12:56

use social media at all. He doesn't like any

12:58

of that stuff. But we agreed that was

13:00

exactly what we were going to do because I

13:02

was basically adamant that if I was going to

13:04

start a business, that's what I wanted to do.

13:08

But there was always this sort of

13:10

like, that's okay, but other stuff not

13:12

okay. And going to like a grey

13:14

murky area, like as business partners about

13:17

what we could post, what I could

13:19

post online about heights. Because to me,

13:21

I was like, I mean, if you're posting

13:23

everything, revenue, growth, bad months,

13:26

terrible months, awful months, like,

13:28

etc. Everything else in between

13:30

is kind of whatever. It's not really a big deal.

13:32

That's the worst thing that you could definitely shamefully admit.

13:36

But I learned that wasn't necessarily the case.

13:38

And so he certainly

13:40

got uncomfortable with quite a lot of the stuff that I was

13:42

sharing in that manner. And we ended up having

13:44

a good conversation about it. And ironically,

13:48

and this is, you know, all I ever posted on

13:50

LinkedIn was about heights, really. And

13:53

I wasn't really growing and I wasn't really doing it

13:55

to grow or be a creator. It's just that that's

13:57

what that's what I saw as the value of LinkedIn

13:59

was sharing a start-up journey, raw,

14:01

honestly, truthfully, and

14:04

to me, like the kind of thing no one else does.

14:06

Everyone just talks about the end. Yeah.

14:08

And looking back. All the good bits. Yeah, all the good bits.

14:10

And this is the narrative back. And I was like, I'd love to

14:12

do all the bad bits. And it'd be an amazing record of

14:14

a start-up journey, no matter how it goes. What

14:17

actually happened was, you know, he didn't want me to

14:19

do that anymore, other than the stuff that we'd agreed

14:22

to. And so I stopped really posting about heights, which

14:24

then as a content problem was like, well, I like

14:26

LinkedIn, I like posting about stuff, what shall I post

14:28

about? Yeah. And ended up actually, you know, going more

14:30

into like the psychology and leadership and this and that

14:33

and stories of entrepreneurs, which is the stuff we do

14:35

on secret leaders and stuff, otherwise. And

14:37

interestingly, my LinkedIn started

14:40

growing considerably more. I think

14:42

the lesson that I learned from that was, if

14:44

you focus all your content on you,

14:46

your business, what you're doing, how you

14:49

do things, etc, it might work for

14:51

one or two people. But generally speaking,

14:53

it's actually not interesting enough. It's not

14:55

very, it's not enough variety. It's not

14:57

actually good enough content in general, to

14:59

be a good growth strategy. By the

15:02

very nature ironically, of being asked to stop

15:04

posting all the time about heights and so

15:06

having to figure out what am I going

15:08

to post about and finding lots of other things

15:10

to post about that I find interesting that I

15:12

wanted to write about, my LinkedIn grew enormously. So

15:16

I guess I wanted to know if that

15:18

surprises you or that is sort of consistent with

15:20

your views on how to do LinkedIn well, like

15:22

how if you were going to be a creator,

15:25

how to grow and build an audience there. Does

15:27

that sound? Yeah, I mean, that

15:29

sounds consistent. You know, the I obviously

15:32

run a care home marketplace,

15:34

which is a very successful business. But if

15:36

I posted about that, every single day, I

15:39

would quite I'd go backwards, you know, people would

15:41

eventually get bored of it. And it's not because

15:43

it's not an amazing business. It's just because eventually,

15:47

there's not that much more to say. And

15:49

like you, you never want to seem

15:51

like you're selling too hard. And so for me, I

15:54

think the piece of advice I always give to people

15:57

who are about to become creators or want to come

16:00

creators or want to leverage that massive

16:02

upside is you should become

16:04

good at talking about what interests you and

16:06

the ideas that interest you because they would

16:08

interest other people and then if

16:10

you're clever with promoting your business you

16:12

will you know do some amazing

16:15

posts on leadership and what you've learned the lessons

16:17

that are applicable to other people you know

16:19

what can you post that you

16:22

know is going to help people with their productivity or business

16:24

culture whatever and then deliver your business message and

16:26

I always do this you'll see that me do

16:29

some weight my social all the time I very

16:31

rarely talk about my own businesses but when I

16:33

do I would have spent two

16:35

or three days beforehand making sure that I'm

16:37

landing quite viral content so the impressions on

16:39

my accounts are massively up and so I

16:42

can deliver a really powerful message about my

16:44

own business and so for

16:46

for entrepreneurs I mean well for anyone

16:48

I think it's it's a bit of a mis-trick

16:50

you know I get something like 35

16:53

million views a week on my content which is insane

16:55

if you were to buy that it

16:57

would be unaffordable and most of my

16:59

audience is you know

17:01

aware of my businesses but if I post about them every

17:04

day and my views were just we'll just crash

17:06

hmm okay how

17:08

do you put yourself out there this is a

17:10

big thing right so you're going from scratch you

17:12

are interested in building an audience things you're saying

17:14

makes sense how to actually do it so

17:18

comfortability is a big question and like I say

17:20

that at the beginning I was like I'm never

17:23

posting a photo I'm never doing video I'm just

17:25

writing and funny enough for me writing was definitely

17:27

how I started you know I just wrote every

17:30

single day on LinkedIn and I think I

17:32

think LinkedIn is a good place

17:34

for people to start because you you

17:36

don't you don't have to give away that much

17:38

of yourself you know it's not that uncomfortable if

17:40

you get into doing video all the time you

17:42

have to have like long video shoots which were

17:44

exhausting and you know there's no

17:47

you can't really scrub what you say you know

17:49

and it's out there it's you whereas writing feels

17:51

less invasive so I would say to people if

17:54

you're uncomfortable start writing and

17:56

set yourself like the one goal which would be

17:59

no matter what I will post seven days a week. And

18:02

as a basic goal, the thing

18:04

that I mean, people always say consistency is the thing that makes

18:06

a difference. And of course, it does, it won't get you to

18:08

the top. I mean, I know a lot of people who post

18:10

every day and they post garbage. So like

18:13

the baseline would be posting very

18:15

regularly. So

18:17

yeah, I started posting five days

18:19

a week to begin with and moved it to seven

18:21

as time went on. But

18:23

I think the advice I

18:25

try and give people is on

18:28

on starting, you need to understand what you are

18:30

going to talk about, because you can't start every

18:33

day being like, what's my post going to be

18:35

today? Because also, practically, I run my

18:37

business, and I run my sort of personal brand

18:39

business, I can't be spending all

18:41

day thinking about what my LinkedIn post is or what

18:44

I'm posting that day. And so I think you

18:46

should sit down and say, these are four

18:48

topics I talk about. These are the sorts of

18:50

formatted posts I talk about. This is

18:52

my content, you know, I

18:55

know I'm going to post about this, this and

18:57

this, and they might be four different types of,

19:00

you know, types of content, you might be reading something, you

19:02

might be reacting to something. And you should do it

19:04

in batches so that when you come to the day,

19:06

it's already scheduled, it's already done, you know, you don't

19:08

have to interact. And by doing that, you take the

19:10

stress off it. And then I wouldn't, people

19:13

get so upset if their posts don't

19:15

perform. Whereas for me, I just look

19:17

at an aggregated line, you know, like,

19:19

I just, I just want the line to be going

19:21

upwards. And if something doesn't work, I'll

19:23

probably try it a few more times, it doesn't work, I

19:25

just can't as an idea. And so I treat

19:28

it very much like a business because again,

19:31

where can you buy 35 million views? Like

19:34

near impossible, whereas everything that I,

19:37

you know, everything that I do nowadays, I feel like

19:39

I'm one or two or three steps ahead of

19:41

other people, because I can

19:43

just bring this huge viewership to whatever I'm

19:46

doing. And my audience know that I

19:48

am authentic with the things that I say, like I actually

19:50

run a business. And so I can talk about running a

19:52

business. And I

19:55

think that's the starting point would definitely

19:57

be put a good plan in place. Don't just

20:03

If you don't have experience yet, so say you're 21 and

20:05

you're hearing this and you're like, if I'd like to be

20:07

a LinkedIn creator, I'd like to be a TikTok creator, I'd

20:09

like to be whatever. Instagram, YouTube doesn't matter the platform, right?

20:14

How? You don't have expertise yet? Well,

20:17

I mean, obviously they would disagree with that

20:19

because all 21 year olds think they're very

20:21

expert. But what should

20:23

one talk about? Like you say, it's

20:25

all relative. At 21, I certainly thought I was an expert

20:28

on marketing. Correct. And so if I was 21

20:30

now, I would do the exercise. I

20:33

would say, what are the things I'm interested in

20:35

most? And also, I think like you've got

20:37

to be a bit ruthlessly

20:39

strategic about it. So something

20:43

like LinkedIn, leadership,

20:46

culture, AI, these

20:49

are all like inherently viral topics. You know,

20:51

people, HR, HR, culture, like all that sort

20:53

of stuff. And

20:55

there are some posts you can do, which

20:57

are things that everyone agrees with. You

21:00

give yourself a good leg up in terms of impressions

21:03

and views and interests from

21:05

off the bat. It's not too hard to

21:08

decode what is

21:10

already viral topic, you know? And

21:12

so as a youngster, I put down my interest and then I put

21:15

down the thing that I'm trying to achieve. So

21:17

my first business, the thing I was trying to achieve

21:19

was leads for my agency. And

21:22

so I knew that brands

21:25

would want to follow an individual who talked

21:27

about marketing. I knew that, you know, people

21:29

would want to see someone talk about leadership

21:31

and culture. And in the end, it kind

21:34

of evolved. But

21:36

I talked about leadership, culture,

21:38

business, marketing, and I went very

21:41

deep on marketing. But a

21:43

pick, like not just luxury marketing or all

21:45

types of marketing. And so I picked topics

21:47

that were already quite viral and things that

21:49

interested me. If you're

21:51

really interested in super niche things, that's

21:53

fine. But you

21:55

should know upfront that your potential audience size is going

21:58

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22:05

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24:01

leaders. There's

24:05

a link in the show notes. So

24:10

you talked about how to an extent, like how

24:12

to put yourself out there, but why do you

24:14

even want to do it? I mean, you mentioned

24:16

obviously big audience and stuff, but draw

24:19

a little bit deeper. So

24:21

why to do it? So all I can

24:23

really speak to is the people that I have

24:26

worked with. I can talk to what's happened to me. But

24:30

I suppose the concept is leverage

24:33

at the end of the day. I have an enormous

24:35

amount of leverage that I can bring to anything that

24:37

I do. So I have

24:41

an audience that if I start a business

24:43

tomorrow that's B2B, I can immediately post about it

24:45

and get millions of views. And like I

24:47

say, as a startup, as a business, that

24:49

would be invaluable basically.

24:52

I think that in

24:55

the context of a person

24:57

with a job, so I talk to a lot

24:59

of graduates who say, I want to build a personal brand. People

25:02

would say, why would they build a personal brand

25:04

internally? But if you were at a law firm

25:06

or a management consultancy firm, you were 21 as

25:09

a graduate and you posted content

25:11

regularly and got thousands and thousands of views, everyone

25:13

in your own organization will know you. The partners

25:16

will know you. It will be good press for

25:18

them. You might end up resulting in new

25:20

clients or press opportunities. You're

25:23

just building yourself outsized leverage

25:25

immediately, which is when it comes to

25:27

pay rises, promotions, and so forth. You'll

25:30

be looked at fondly because you have

25:32

both things now. You both have the carrot and the stick.

25:35

So they're like, this person's amazing because they give

25:38

upside to the firm, but also don't really want

25:40

to annoy this person because they have 25,000 engaged

25:43

graduates who are graduating next year who might

25:45

one, look at our firm or not look

25:47

at our firm. So

25:50

there's almost, in my

25:52

mind anyway, if you're comfortable with it,

25:54

quite infinite upside because if you

25:56

roll it all the way forward to, for example, what

25:58

I've done. you know, brands

26:01

will want to work with you, brands will sponsor

26:03

you, you know, any businesses out

26:05

there will approach you and offer you to

26:07

be, you know, executive or non-exec and

26:10

offer you equity. I mean, the leverage becomes

26:12

quite crazy towards the end. But

26:14

as a business owner, the most obvious

26:16

thing is staff and team. So, you

26:19

know, Lottie's like 75 people now and

26:22

we never use recruitment agencies ever,

26:24

never have to. And

26:26

yet when we put out a job role, we will

26:28

just get hundreds of people

26:30

applying for a role. And it's because we

26:32

have this big presence. So I

26:35

think as well, if you're, if

26:37

you're in a corporate role, which again, a lot of

26:39

people in my audience are, they will say,

26:42

what's the point in building it? And a

26:45

lot of them are thinking about a side

26:47

hustle, they're thinking about future business. If you

26:49

can build something, some audience 10,000,

26:51

20,000 people on LinkedIn, it's not

26:53

too challenging to do that. By the time you come

26:55

to a side hustle day one, you can find clients.

26:58

Whereas if you're speaking to an empty room, it's gonna

27:01

be much, much harder. Let's

27:03

talk strategy and tactics. Okay,

27:05

so I'm working in an organization,

27:07

or I'm a founder, whatever. Clean

27:10

slate, no social media, where do I start?

27:12

I think

27:14

it depends who you are. If it comes to

27:16

one camera, the upside on the video platforms is

27:19

insane. What does that

27:21

mean? So, you know, everyone

27:23

last year told me that Instagram was impossible to

27:25

grow on. And in six

27:27

months, I think I grew

27:29

up 250k audience and 10 million views

27:31

a week. And it was on business,

27:33

bite sized business, cultural content. So

27:36

if you're good on video, click,

27:38

talk and Instagram are an amazing place to

27:41

go because the platforms are

27:43

competing with each other. And so they're giving an enormous

27:45

amount of viewership to people so that they keep them

27:47

on their platforms. So if you can do video, I

27:49

would say look at those. Also

27:51

on top of that is the monetization aspect

27:54

of those platforms. So something like

27:56

TikTok has the Creativity Beta

27:58

program. So if you get millions of

28:00

views, you're also making tens of thousands

28:02

a month just from your viewership. Same

28:04

with YouTube, same with Facebook

28:07

and so forth. If you're more of

28:09

a writer then I would say LinkedIn is

28:11

your place to start and I would say pick

28:14

your topics, you know, pick your

28:16

focuses, what is your goal, why

28:18

are you doing it and then start writing

28:20

every single day. And the thing I talk about a lot

28:22

is like my audiences

28:26

and the platforms they are on will change,

28:28

the platforms will change, drastically and so you

28:30

might actually lose those audiences in the future

28:32

and you've seen this, loads of people with

28:34

big Twitter accounts or Instagram accounts are

28:37

starting over completely and it's because the

28:39

audiences are dead or inactive or no longer

28:42

there and so I always talk to, you

28:44

know, aspiring creators or creators about trying

28:47

to deplatform people to your own newsletter

28:49

or I would say probably YouTube is

28:51

a great place to deplatform people too

28:53

because, you know, it's second

28:55

biggest search engine, it's not going anywhere in a

28:57

long time. So how do you bring people off

29:00

those platforms and to your central

29:02

list I think is not very

29:04

talked about but very important. So how

29:06

do you do it? Talk with, technically,

29:08

like a little bit of, you

29:10

know, LinkedIn for dummies, Instagram or

29:12

TikTok for dummies, newsletter

29:15

for dummies. Let's start with LinkedIn.

29:18

This point is the same for all social media

29:20

platforms. If you want to gain millions of followers

29:22

you will need like a team and that's

29:25

like a team of friends. I don't have to

29:27

work with you but it's that sort

29:29

of principle that like one plus one does equal three.

29:31

You know, if I have two or

29:33

three of my close friends who are starting the journey

29:36

at the same time, you know, we're gonna engage each

29:38

other's content, we're gonna push each other, you know, if...

29:40

And you have the accountability, you're doing it every day,

29:42

I'm doing it every day. The accountability is a huge

29:44

part of it so, you know, people

29:46

will look at my audience now and be like,

29:48

wow, it's unbelievable, like it's unachievable, etc. but I

29:50

built it in 18 months, you know,

29:53

like I quite literally built the whole audience

29:55

bar a little bit to start with on

29:57

LinkedIn in 18 months from scratch and I

29:59

have... a few close

30:01

friends who we said to each

30:03

other, we're going to do this every single day.

30:05

And so even on days I didn't want to, I

30:08

didn't want to let them down, I didn't want

30:10

to ruin their accountability. And so I think

30:13

that concept is super important early

30:15

on, is to find people who

30:17

want to achieve the same things,

30:19

push them, you can be competitive

30:21

with them, you can be happy for them, you

30:24

always want to grow up a little bit more than them. I

30:26

mean, that's just human nature, but having that crew is

30:29

key because I have like four

30:31

or five people around me that post similar stuff that

30:33

I do and so forth, but they always make

30:36

mistakes. And then I learned from them mistakes before I

30:38

even post. And so

30:40

my sort of iteration wheel is just

30:42

faster than if I was on my own. So

30:45

step one, I would say like, get

30:47

some friends who are doing it. Or in

30:49

my regard, I was a smaller creator who

30:51

reached out to bigger creators and said, I

30:53

want to learn from you, I would

30:56

like engage your content as much as I possibly can,

30:58

I'll support you, promote you. I used to do posts

31:00

about big creators and how amazing they were, but it

31:02

was me trying to, I suppose, curry favor

31:04

with them. And then I got

31:06

into this big group of people who are professional

31:08

creators and I'm not, I would

31:10

say business owner first, but

31:12

then I was pushed so hard by them

31:15

to keep up with their levels. So that was, I think,

31:18

step one is accountability partners and

31:23

don't try and do it on your own. And then I suppose

31:26

tactically, yeah, I would put together

31:29

your why more than anything. Because again, if

31:31

you're posting 365 days a year, it

31:35

is exhausting. Like what the hell are you gonna

31:37

talk about? Like don't be afraid to repeat the

31:39

same thing. So I would always say like, with

31:41

my content, there will be repetition

31:44

every three months of old stuff. It might

31:46

be in a slightly new format, it might

31:48

be in a new image, it might be

31:51

drawn differently, written slightly differently, but

31:53

conceptually very similar. And

31:55

that's because again, there's not that much new

31:58

in the world. You actually. especially

32:00

if your audience is growing quickly. You

32:02

know, like I, for

32:05

example, on LinkedIn, I gained 50,000

32:07

followers in a week. So those

32:09

50,000 followers, presumably not seen so much

32:11

my previous stuff. And so if

32:13

you sort of extrapolate in a few months time, there'll

32:15

be hundreds of thousands of my audience who haven't seen

32:17

many of my old posts. So I

32:19

think repetition is key. So that brings

32:21

you to the idea of like having tenants that you

32:24

rely on. Like these are the things I

32:26

believe in, these are the things I live. And

32:28

so these are the things I will talk about. So

32:31

yeah, accountability, and then putting your plan

32:33

together. And then I suppose

32:35

the experimentation part is key. So if you

32:37

are posting every single day, you've

32:40

got to be super intentional about understanding why things

32:42

are working, why they aren't. Don't keep, like

32:44

I know so many people who post the same

32:46

stuff all the time, never works, but they never

32:49

seem to want to experiment with it. Whereas I

32:51

would always say, if

32:53

you want to grow rapidly on social

32:55

media, it's actually about understanding pre-qualified content,

32:58

as in pre-verified viral

33:00

content. So for example, I talk a lot

33:03

about leadership, and I did this post a

33:05

couple of years ago called, people

33:07

talk about red flag all the time in leadership. I

33:09

did a post called the green flag for leadership. I

33:12

hadn't really seen it before, but it was an

33:14

idea that I had with a team. That piece of

33:16

content, anyone can post that now and it will go viral. And

33:18

I see people post it all the time and it goes viral.

33:20

And so- And then

33:22

they're reposting your post. They're

33:24

taking the idea of green flags and what

33:26

I posted originally, which for LinkedIn, it

33:29

was like 150,000 likes or something in

33:31

like a couple of days, with

33:33

like seven million views on one post.

33:35

Now people can post that as a

33:37

concept regularly and they will get traction.

33:40

They might have to change up the, for

33:42

them, signals green flags in leadership.

33:45

And so I wouldn't work, I don't

33:48

think people need to work as hard as they are. Like you can

33:50

take a lot from what happens

33:52

out there from other creators you love. And

33:54

that's like my main point to people who

33:57

are new. Find five to

33:59

10 creators. that you absolutely love, you love

34:01

their content, and it might be you love this

34:03

stream of content from one or this stream from

34:05

another, and then bring it all

34:07

together in your inspiration. And so that's exactly what

34:09

I did when I first started posting, is like,

34:12

I love personal development from this guy, or I love

34:15

how deep this person goes on business stuff. And

34:17

then it was like, okay, I can kind of

34:20

see my brand of content, which

34:22

is things I'm super interested in, but also I know

34:24

this stuff will do well. And

34:27

then be ruthless. I

34:30

actually am pretty obsessed with AI because I

34:33

think that it just feeds so much of what I've

34:35

done previously in my life. I'd love to have had

34:37

it when I was first starting businesses, et cetera, or

34:39

in school. But

34:41

even if you don't, I would force yourself to talk

34:44

about topics that are in the

34:46

news, because if you're smart and

34:48

use Jack on a platform like LinkedIn, you

34:50

can just go viral overnight

34:52

type thing. And look, ironically,

34:55

whether you're an expert

34:57

on AI or not, it's

35:00

new for most people. So there's

35:03

another approach I think that's not really

35:05

talked about yet by you, which

35:07

is I'm learning in public. I'm

35:10

learning this thing. I don't know either. I've

35:12

just played with Claude, and these

35:14

were my amazing results. That's

35:16

still interesting for people. Not

35:19

all content has to actually be expert

35:21

content. Sometimes it's quite nice to just do the, that's

35:23

what I learned this week. And

35:25

actually turn that into really authentic

35:29

and valuable content for other people that can go viral. Yeah. So

35:32

I do a lot of curation with content

35:34

nowadays. So I did a lot

35:36

of my AI learning publicly. I did a lot

35:38

of like, I've just discovered this, or I'm playing with this. These

35:40

tools are super interesting. Look at what

35:42

you can use it for, how it's applicable to content,

35:44

how it's applicable to business. And

35:47

then I started doing curation of the things

35:49

I had used to learn. And

35:51

that content is super valuable because people go, okay,

35:53

I trust Chris. I followed him

35:55

for a while. I know he talks about

35:57

these things. He's learning AI and therefore. I

36:00

don't have the time to learn it myself as

36:03

he is, but I can learn from how he learns

36:05

it. And those, again, it's like,

36:07

it's not as hard to post that content.

36:09

I don't have to create that much new

36:11

stuff. I just have to be quite conscious

36:13

about if I'm learning from these courses, I

36:15

can now recommend those courses. I

36:18

actually think that's a really valuable point

36:20

though. Curation, there's so much

36:22

noise everywhere. So actually another

36:24

expert thing you can do as a

36:27

creator is be a curator, find the

36:29

best content and be known to make

36:31

that stuff simple and clear to people

36:33

in one place. Yeah, easy

36:36

as well to, as in

36:38

if you're thinking ruthless,

36:41

ruthless efficiency with growth, if

36:44

you're recommending four or five other creators and

36:46

their amazing work, they're more likely

36:48

to recommend you back. You're more likely to carry

36:50

a favor with them. Their audiences might see your

36:53

work, they might reshare you. And so you've

36:55

got to think about content first and foremost,

36:57

it's like the absolute key. But then you want to

36:59

think about distribution more than anything, which is how is

37:02

my content, when I have no followers, gonna go out

37:04

into the masses? And it's like, if

37:07

you're doing it completely authentically, you would

37:10

talk about lots of other people, you would

37:12

engage, but the slightly less authentic way, but

37:14

very effective way of doing it is, you

37:16

know there's 30 other creators who talk about the

37:19

same thing. You engage them, they engage you.

37:21

And even if you do it officially or unofficially,

37:24

if you're just starting your account, I would say, if

37:26

you're gonna spend years and years and years

37:29

focused on content creation, why would you

37:31

not give yourself the leg up? And people will hate me

37:33

saying that and they'll say it's inauthentic or whatever. The

37:37

game is the game. The game is the game. And

37:39

basically there are rules in the

37:41

game. And part of the

37:43

thing is actually understanding what the rules are,

37:46

which are hidden and obfuscated from most people

37:48

because people like to pretend that the game

37:50

isn't the game. And

37:52

that sounds like overly deep, but in reality, that

37:54

is I think one of the things we both

37:56

experience, which is most people

37:58

do not wanna actually. share how

38:00

to grow on any of these social platforms at

38:02

all. Yeah. And they sell courses and all sorts

38:05

of things about how to and they actually regurgitate

38:07

the same stuff which has nothing to do with

38:09

how to. Yeah, it's absolutely wild. So the

38:11

LinkedIn, so far you've said, you

38:13

know, find your, your content mix.

38:17

Understand exactly like the areas we're going to speak

38:19

about. Don't just

38:21

regurgitate stuff that's not working. Like hone in on

38:23

the things that are, pay attention to it and

38:25

focus more on posting the stuff that does. Make

38:29

sure that you're doing it with friends, engaging

38:31

with each other, etc. What's next?

38:33

How do you ace the game on

38:35

LinkedIn from zero to one

38:38

or zero to 1000? Well,

38:40

all that stuff is what you need to

38:42

do to get good, I think to, to

38:44

get yourself to a point where you're, you're

38:47

doing quite well and you're gaining traction to, to

38:50

level to the point where a couple of

38:52

my friends and myself are where, you

38:54

know, I think I have the

38:56

fastest growing LinkedIn account that there is, you know,

38:58

certainly whenever I look at the rankings, it will

39:00

always be the fastest growing. And now

39:02

it's probably a point where

39:05

on average, I'll get on just on LinkedIn,

39:07

20 million views a week, which is obviously

39:09

slightly mind blowing. If you want to do

39:11

that, then I think that you have

39:13

to super professionalize the whole thing.

39:15

It has to be a pretty military operation. So

39:17

what does that mean? What like, tell what is

39:19

your military operation? So for me,

39:21

I mean, I have a full time staff

39:23

member who just works on my LinkedIn. Yeah.

39:26

And that is sourcing content, looking

39:28

at what's performed previously really well

39:30

on my content, other people's content,

39:32

what's in the news, how

39:35

do we then create deeper

39:37

content, more complex content for people

39:39

to engage with. And so it

39:42

brings us to this point, which is like, okay,

39:44

there's different types of content that have different objectives

39:46

and different outcomes. So there is

39:49

content that gains huge virality, views

39:51

and impressions, which won't convert to

39:53

followers. So let's just hold that here

39:55

for a second. And then there is content that, that

39:57

really makes people consider and think

40:01

and want to save your content

40:04

and we keep that right here. If you post this

40:06

stuff all the time you'll have very low impressions, you

40:08

might convert followers at a good ratio but you're

40:10

not going to grow very quickly and so accounts

40:12

like mine what I will try and do is

40:15

I will try and post high virality stuff so

40:17

stuff I know has gone viral previously of my

40:19

own stuff or other people's and try

40:21

and put a more complex message

40:23

to it so you might

40:26

post something a well-known meme

40:28

or image about failure or you

40:30

know these sort of workplace graphics

40:32

about failure but then I'll

40:34

write a complex understanding of how I've dealt with

40:36

failure and how you can overcome it but

40:39

I know that post will do well that will

40:41

gain millions of impressions. The next day I will

40:43

do a post on how to

40:45

use AI to create content and it will

40:47

be a deeper more complex you know infographic

40:50

or so forth that people will see and

40:53

they'll want to save and so they immediately have

40:55

to follow you for more content like that or

40:57

even you could say if you want me to send you it

41:00

you can subscribe to my newsletter and so you've got

41:02

to become very intentional

41:04

about the type of content that you do and

41:06

then again if you want to promote your business

41:09

or something you want to

41:11

be doing that after a couple of high high

41:13

virality high impression posts because again

41:15

you know your business stuff isn't going to go

41:17

viral immediately so you've

41:19

got to kind of pay the game a bit to give it a

41:21

bit of a launch. And presumably then

41:24

you do the company staff and then it brings the

41:26

engagement back down again and so you need to build

41:28

it up again in more viral post and is that

41:30

essentially the system? Recently I've taken

41:32

I've worked with other creators

41:35

who have done really really viral

41:39

illustrations and I've done that at the beginning of the

41:41

week and I've had weeks recently

41:43

where I've got my impressions up to

41:45

20 to 30 million impressions in a week and

41:47

I've delivered you know 40 or 50 000

41:50

followers in a week through high conversion posts towards the

41:52

end and so you've got to play the game you

41:54

know it's it's effectively like if I was

41:56

to deliver a message and sell products to people I would want

41:58

to fill the room for you. first. And

42:00

that's exactly what the concept is. Yeah,

42:04

it's fascinating because it's actually essentially

42:06

the same as a marketing funnel.

42:08

Identical. And that's, that's what

42:10

I say, like, you've got to professionalize it. I

42:12

was a professional digital marketer for 12 years, I

42:14

did this for businesses and celebrities forever. And then

42:17

I suddenly thought if I'm going to do this

42:19

for myself, I don't

42:21

want to spend forever growing an

42:23

audience, I want to do it as fast as possible, as

42:25

efficiently as possible. And I don't want it to take over

42:27

my life. I don't want to think about it all the

42:29

time. I don't want to be on social media all the

42:32

time myself, I want to get it into a place where

42:34

I have outsized leverage and

42:37

opportunity in my life. And nowadays, you

42:39

know, I'll get invited to speak at most

42:41

conferences. And even if you don't want to,

42:43

you still have the opportunity to and I've

42:45

got this engine now that creates content on

42:47

the video side. It's very similar,

42:49

you know, I don't have a long form content strategy,

42:52

but that's what I'm going to be pushing into next.

42:54

But the short form stuff is very similar, you

42:57

look at what's working, what your audience likes, if

42:59

someone likes one of your videos, more than likely,

43:01

gonna like the same concept again and again and

43:03

again. So you've got

43:06

to be very efficient with that. How

43:08

does one find a good concept? Like, what

43:10

is the process you went through to find

43:12

the concept that you've been using and like

43:14

rinse and repeating, which is essentially like

43:17

tearing down bad bosses and bad

43:19

messages at work? So

43:21

I mean, the funny thing about that

43:24

is that's actually based on for

43:26

years, I've talked about like, good management

43:29

and bad management. And I think it's because

43:31

when I was younger, I had really bad

43:33

bosses. Yeah, I think in hospitality, they were

43:35

awful. And I had one professional

43:37

job, like two professional jobs, one manager was

43:39

awful, one was okay. And then when I

43:41

sold my business to people we sold to

43:43

were awful people. And so it sort of

43:45

reignited the fire of like, what are bad

43:47

bosses? And everyone's had

43:50

a bad boss. And so it's, as

43:52

a concept, it's applicable to everyone, everyone can resonate

43:54

with a boss being a dick when you're a

43:56

little bit late when the traffic's bad or like,

43:59

you know, when you're prioritizing your children over your work

44:01

and your boss treats you like you're a child and

44:03

it's like, well, I love my

44:05

job, but my child is more important to me. And so

44:07

I, as a

44:09

concept, it works really well and it's very

44:12

engaging with the audience. It's very suspenseful. You

44:14

know, people like a story. They like what

44:16

happens next. The other

44:18

thing I do, which does really, really

44:21

well, is I call out on entrepreneurs.

44:23

So like the obvious people

44:25

who have gained massive online following,

44:27

but from effectively complete,

44:30

you know, lying and, you

44:33

know, creating these stories and faking it and

44:35

posing next to Lamborghinis and, you know, all

44:37

that sort of flash

44:39

without any of the substance. And then they sell

44:41

you a course that never really delivers. And so

44:43

I do that a lot. And people like that

44:45

because I think anyway, because

44:48

I have run two big

44:50

businesses now, people think I'm authentically

44:53

credible enough to both speak about to

44:56

speak about what's good and what's bad. And I think

44:58

that's a great format because I

45:00

always think the reason I post is I would love to have read

45:03

my content when I was 21. And that's

45:05

like my underlying thing. Obviously, it's

45:07

expanded nowadays, but that's what I remember

45:09

doing at the beginning is like I

45:11

would love to create content that my

45:13

21 year old super

45:15

imposter syndrome entrepreneur

45:17

would love to engage with. And so

45:19

that's what drives a lot of the

45:21

formats nowadays. So that's the one thing that I think

45:24

people miss myself included. Who

45:26

are you writing for? Or

45:29

who are you creating for? Who is your target

45:31

audience? Again, same as when you're building a brand.

45:34

But I find it very challenging doing personal

45:36

brand stuff to think that way because it's

45:38

all very meta. And I struggle with that.

45:42

Who are you writing for then? Is

45:44

it 21 year old entrepreneurs broadly like

45:46

people who are looking to create? So

45:49

I think when I first started making

45:52

content, it was definitely that. It was

45:54

I want to create content that will

45:56

guide people through, you know, I

45:58

had seven years as an entrepreneur and I. I

46:01

wasn't particularly good at networking. I wasn't particularly good at

46:03

getting out. So I never spent any time with other

46:05

founders. I just- Yeah, we've talked about this.

46:07

Yeah. And it's wild really. But like

46:09

I sat in a room in Brick Lane and

46:12

I worked every hour of the day. And

46:14

that's all I did. I never gave myself

46:16

any chance of outside leverage or opportunity or

46:18

network or anything. And I

46:20

just worked really, really, really hard. And

46:23

you don't have to work that hard. You don't have to sacrifice

46:25

that much. Especially if you're strategic

46:27

about it, you can create massively

46:31

upsized opportunity and then

46:33

work less than you are. I

46:35

spent years trying to get clients

46:38

that notice our brand and all I could

46:40

have done instead is write online

46:42

every day. So

46:45

how much time do you think you do

46:47

spend or how much time does one need

46:50

to spend? Your average Joe who is

46:53

trying to run a business. I guess they're not

46:55

that average in the first place. But our typical

46:57

listener- Yeah. Busy founder

46:59

like you. But

47:02

you're like hearing the stuff and

47:04

you're like full-time person, another employee

47:06

in a separate company then. Like

47:09

they need management, I need to do this

47:12

content or not. It all starts to stack

47:14

up and like, is

47:16

this a day a week? Is it like an hour a week? Give

47:19

us some advice. What does one do? How do we build

47:21

up? So I think

47:23

the roadmap that I took in

47:25

my first company is a great way of thinking about

47:27

it. And Steve

47:31

Bartlett said this about social chain

47:33

and it's the same thing in that

47:36

it's much, much easier to market Steve Bartlett than

47:38

it is to market social chain. It was the

47:41

same thing with me and verb. Like we could

47:43

put time and effort into making me a

47:45

thought leader in marketing and luxury rather than

47:47

getting verb on the tip of everyone's tongues.

47:49

And then every single conference that happened

47:52

in that industry, I ended up becoming the luxury guy

47:54

as well as invited to speak at all the conferences.

47:56

Just made things easier. So I would

47:58

say principally. as a CEO,

48:00

I would say most of the time, and you

48:02

know, there will be exceptions to this, your job

48:05

is the generation of business and it's the generation

48:07

of revenue and bringing

48:09

clients to your company. And so I would say

48:12

you will have a marketing budget for your

48:14

brand and your business anyway, I would just

48:16

put some of that towards the intentional growth

48:18

of your personal brand. What I wouldn't do

48:20

is outsource your personal brand. Everyone does it,

48:23

founders all overdo it. They go, marketing team

48:25

member, I want to post five days a

48:27

week, you've got this. But

48:29

the thing is for you to make it excellent

48:31

and for you to make it brilliant, you need to

48:33

be part of it. I mean, a personal brand for

48:36

a reason. So I would say, you know,

48:39

take it seriously, commit to one platform

48:41

first. And like

48:44

I said before, it depends on how comfortable you

48:46

are with the different platforms. But for most

48:49

businesses and most founders, I would say

48:51

LinkedIn is a huge unlock. And it's unbelievable

48:54

the amount of traffic you get and the amount of people

48:56

on the platform. So sort of a why not. And

48:59

if people are saying I don't have the time, I would say, I

49:02

question whether you're working

49:04

on the right things. Because as a

49:08

business owner, as you get more experienced, you realize

49:10

that phrase that you hear when you're younger about

49:12

working on the on the business first working in

49:14

the business, but like, yeah, no, of course, like,

49:16

of course, but then you get older, you go,

49:18

Oh, I really do know what that means. It

49:20

means I don't work on these things. I outsource

49:22

them to my team. And

49:24

I monitor the progress of them. And

49:26

that's the relationship I have with my

49:28

team is you guys are delivering on

49:30

this, my job is to bring outsized

49:33

interest to our company. That is what

49:35

I do for the company. And if you think

49:38

about it like that makes your job is attention.

49:40

And like you said at the beginning, everything's

49:42

downstream from attention. What

49:46

about just managing your mental

49:48

health? So, you know,

49:50

that might be actually a very particular

49:53

I just bring more of myself into that conversation. How can

49:55

you help me manage my mental health and my DMs might

49:57

not be a problem for you. But

50:00

you just get inundated and I really like

50:02

to be a good person and I hate

50:04

the idea, you know reputation reputationally

50:07

the bigger you are the harder you

50:09

fall and people make assumptions about you

50:11

and People feeling unheard and

50:13

like you're ignoring that like there's no choice

50:16

after a while then basically just to ignore

50:19

99.9% of your DMS and that's at my

50:21

size Which is maybe a

50:23

tenth of your size So it's

50:25

like it just there is a point

50:27

in time where it becomes unmanageable for even the best

50:30

will in the world Yeah So how

50:32

do you deal with that? Because also the other

50:34

side of it is like trying to build community

50:36

right trying to build authentic engagement trying to build

50:38

real Connection with people who are following your content

50:40

and are giving you love and attention you want

50:42

to reward that and it's natural you

50:45

want it to feel like a two-way exchange, but how

50:49

it makes me think about something I didn't say earlier tactically

50:51

which is if you

50:53

want Outsized opportunity you're gonna have

50:55

to work hard for it. Yeah, it's

50:57

not easy Everyone's gonna do

50:59

it and moving forwards. I think

51:02

most young business owners will

51:05

see being a creator and an

51:07

influencer alongside being a business owner as Part

51:10

of the course and so up front

51:12

I will say it's not easy It is it

51:15

is time consuming once you get

51:17

to having an audience then growing an audience

51:19

can grow faster But building the

51:21

first part buildings. It's really really hard and Responding

51:25

to DMS and building community and responding to

51:27

comments is critical at the beginning and I

51:29

would even say like I've moved into different

51:31

Formats this year and I have put so

51:33

much time Into responding

51:35

to people to engaging with people and so

51:37

forth But you do you get to a

51:39

point where it's physically impossible if you think

51:41

like a normal post Every

51:44

day on the platform is getting Three

51:47

million impressions or something that means that you're

51:49

getting thousands of comments. It's just it's just

51:51

impossible So I put that in my comment

51:53

I put it in my about section that

51:56

unfortunately because of the size of the platform.

51:58

I can't respond to everything I will

52:00

always try my best to. To

52:03

the point on mental health, I mean, I

52:07

feel like in my life, I've been through the

52:09

wringer. I feel like I played the first part

52:11

of my life on absolute hard mode and

52:13

I honestly drove

52:16

myself to the absolute edge of my

52:18

mental health could take me. I felt

52:20

awful for years and

52:22

I suppose nowadays, I think

52:24

that has given me a really really tough

52:26

skin. You know, I've been through horrible clients,

52:28

you know, awful acquisition,

52:31

you know, terrible boss, all these

52:33

things that have driven me to,

52:35

you know, close to my own

52:37

slightly going insane. And so nowadays,

52:39

I feel like I have a very thick skin and

52:42

I think you do need to to an extent if

52:44

you are going to go quite big on social because

52:46

if you look at if you want

52:48

to laugh, look at my comments on my

52:50

TikTok on my Instagram. One of

52:52

the most common comments I get is your

52:54

dad paid for your business. You

52:57

posh to you know, you

53:00

anyone that speaks like that is yeah, it

53:02

can't help having your accent my accent exactly

53:04

like and it's easy for them to do

53:06

that and I don't even mind. I in

53:08

many ways I read the stuff like I

53:10

laugh the stuff that I think for me,

53:12

I laugh at would upset and affect other

53:14

people a lot of the commentaries like you

53:16

you're really fat or like you every video

53:19

I see you get faster and

53:21

I have like trolls who are so dedicated

53:23

to try to ruin my day. It's unbelievable,

53:25

but I do I just a lot of

53:27

times for sorry for them because I'm like

53:29

if you're doing that one

53:31

like what else are you doing with your day,

53:33

you know to be on my video in the

53:35

first couple of minutes being like your fat

53:38

or your posh or you know, we don't

53:40

all have your parents money and it's like

53:42

one I don't come from wealthy parents, but

53:44

if that makes them feel better at themselves,

53:46

I almost don't engage

53:49

them, you know, but I would

53:51

say if you're someone that struggles with that, I wouldn't

53:53

say it's the first place to go because it is

53:56

a bit rough. This is the thing right

53:58

everything is downstream of attention. fine.

54:00

Everything worth having, it like

54:03

comes at a cost and every

54:05

light has a shadow. So this

54:07

is quite a big

54:09

shadow. It just is, right?

54:12

It's a really good reason to not want to

54:14

do any of this. You

54:17

know, like frankly, even

54:20

it's just interesting, like our wives, like

54:23

I won't speak for yours, but we've spoken

54:25

about this before, like no

54:27

interest. Like

54:30

getting her to post something on LinkedIn,

54:32

like takes like a week of

54:34

me nagging her because she should. And

54:37

she just doesn't want to. Like there's no

54:39

interest and just like really just low ego

54:41

and rather put herself down and bring herself

54:44

up and especially publicly, just

54:46

can't do it. But it's not

54:48

just can't do it. It does not want to and

54:50

sees no value in it for herself. Right. It's just

54:52

there is no logical argument to it. Can

54:55

see how it is for me, but for herself,

54:57

absolutely not. So it

55:00

is interesting because also generally

55:02

much happier than I am. Generally

55:05

such a content person doesn't

55:07

have all of these like stresses

55:10

you have from wanting more bigger

55:12

audience, more attention. These

55:14

are categorically some

55:17

of the most toxic behaviors the human

55:19

being can have. And I'm not criticizing

55:21

you. I do it too. So I'm

55:23

sympathizing with you. You're just doing it

55:25

better than me. But the root

55:31

desire that we both have for

55:33

attention comes from a logical place,

55:35

right, which is this is good for business. And

55:38

I'm doing I'm sending out a good message in the

55:40

world, not a toxic one. And I'm trying to spread

55:42

positive messages in the world, not toxic ones. These are

55:44

all good things. But

55:47

the innate desire for attention

55:49

is like the 101 that

55:52

people tell you is critically bad for

55:54

your mental health and critically bad for

55:56

happiness. So how do reasonable

56:00

logical people like us know those are the

56:02

facts and still make all these excuses that

56:04

it's a brilliant idea. I'll

56:08

only tell you from my experience what

56:10

drives me and I think there is

56:12

a innate thing inside me which is I kind

56:15

of do want to have it all and

56:20

I think to get to

56:22

where I want to be and so I'm 33 now

56:24

and I think that I don't know if I want

56:26

to run big businesses for my whole life if I'm

56:29

really honest and I've been completely transparent I very rarely

56:31

say this but I've run big businesses as I was

56:33

21 and I ran a business from 15 to 21 you

56:36

know it's hard like it's hard

56:38

graft to run a business and you know

56:40

I've run bootstrap businesses and I've sold them

56:42

and I've never run VC back businesses and

56:44

they all come with unbelievable pressure I

56:47

would say that the pressure of running social versus

56:49

that is nothing I'd say the

56:51

pressure of running a big and successful business

56:53

and carrying everyone's mortgages on your back I

56:55

think is very painful and it's very exhausting

56:57

and if you'd met me in the

57:00

the later stages of my first business like I was

57:03

not to say that I'm particularly in

57:05

shape now but deeply overweight very unhappy

57:07

super depressed you know really struggling drinking

57:09

an enormous amount and and

57:11

I think that when I look at

57:14

what this can provide if you're okay

57:17

with dealing with some negativity I feel

57:19

like you can provide yourself kind

57:22

of an escape velocity plan from everything

57:24

which is you know if if you

57:26

are thinking in

57:28

the sort of Tim Ferris

57:30

way the four-hour work week you can

57:33

work much much less than

57:35

an ordinary person and I get the

57:37

same or much much more back from your

57:39

life by being strategic and you

57:42

know honest about what you want and

57:44

I think a lot of people would say

57:46

that there are narcissistic or tendencies or to

57:49

do it all but I think for me I am brutally

57:52

efficient with it which is why

57:54

a lot of it doesn't affect me I don't know if

57:56

I do it for the acclaim of the interest

57:58

or I'd Like I don't care

58:00

about a lot of that stuff. I

58:03

do it in many ways because I don't

58:05

know if I

58:07

can create an easier way than what I'm doing. And

58:09

I think that when I get to a certain point,

58:11

which is I'm experiencing it now in my day-to-day

58:13

life, which is almost everything

58:16

that I go into is easier. Everything

58:18

that I interact with comes to me quicker.

58:20

The opportunities in every market that I enter

58:22

just appear on day one. It doesn't really

58:24

matter what the space is, but

58:28

I would say to entrepreneurs, solo entrepreneurs,

58:32

or whatever, nothing great

58:35

is gonna come without some

58:38

downside or an incredible amount of hard work.

58:41

But when entrepreneurs, I

58:43

do occasionally support

58:46

entrepreneurs, they'll say, it's not quite going

58:48

my way or we keep losing or

58:50

our competitors keep beating us. And they won't

58:53

acknowledge that people nowadays don't follow brands as

58:55

much. If you wanna be an entrepreneur,

58:57

you have to accept that it's gonna come with a bit of gladiatorial

59:02

combat and personal brand in many ways

59:04

is your way of

59:06

fighting and beating your competitors. And for me, I

59:08

think that I will be

59:11

an entrepreneur forever, but

59:13

I just think that I might try and become a

59:16

thought leader and an advisor rather than

59:18

someone that always runs the companies because

59:20

those are exhausting. People

59:23

like this then gives you more luck

59:25

surface area essentially to pick the next

59:27

thing as and when it comes up.

59:31

I mean, that's it in a nutshell. I

59:33

mean, take this year, for example, but

59:36

people have asked me to co-author books that they have

59:38

prepared to do the work on. I say no to

59:40

it, but it's amazing that an

59:42

author would approach me and be like, would

59:44

you co-write this with me? Because they wanna

59:47

leverage my audience every- It's

59:49

a value exchange. Completely, and that happens in

59:51

every moment of my life these days. And

59:53

so the downside, the only real

59:55

downside- What are you getting under this? Huh?

59:58

What are you getting under this? You're a

1:00:00

good friend Any

1:00:03

exchange? Yeah What the only

1:00:05

podcasts are done? The only

1:00:07

real downside I find and I just say it's a

1:00:09

little all the time She's like do not does it

1:00:11

because I get recognized quite a lot now, which is

1:00:13

a weird thing to start happening You know, that's relatively

1:00:15

new where someone will be like, oh, I love

1:00:17

your videos on the street in the middle of the street It's very

1:00:19

strange the one thing I don't like is

1:00:22

if I'm in the gym and Someone comes

1:00:24

up to me like mid set or on the

1:00:26

running machine being like, oh, I love your videos

1:00:28

And it's like can you just fuck off because

1:00:30

I'm in the middle of my personal space right

1:00:32

now And so I

1:00:34

think the only change I've had to make is I now just wear a

1:00:36

cap to the gym That's funny. That's

1:00:39

it. Really? I have a

1:00:41

joke with Melissa where I'm

1:00:43

only famous in co-working spaces

1:00:46

The most niche fame. Yeah, quite incredible.

1:00:48

Yeah, I went to a co-working space

1:00:50

this week with my team we

1:00:53

were working in Holborn on Wednesday and at

1:00:57

10 maybe 15 people like you Dan

1:00:59

but secretly this height it they

1:01:02

were like this is ridiculous Yeah, I know this

1:01:04

is literally what happens if I go to a

1:01:06

co-working space Yeah, yeah, nowhere else was actually a

1:01:08

very nice place to be because of the niche

1:01:10

niche notoriety The awareness is amazing but not touching

1:01:13

any kind of fame. I walk out onto the

1:01:15

street No one would know who I am. That's

1:01:17

actually much nicer. Yes. I would hate that at

1:01:19

the gym I would hate that if you're like

1:01:22

like I I want to release My

1:01:25

own show at the moment. I want to write a book

1:01:27

and I think therefore To

1:01:29

do those things you do need mass awareness.

1:01:31

Yeah, you know to give yourself the best

1:01:33

chance to success you do So

1:01:35

I don't know how many people there are in London, but

1:01:37

let's say it's like 10 million people, right? Yeah, I

1:01:40

have multiple videos a week They get 10 million views

1:01:43

on each channel and so if you think about

1:01:45

like how many people are seeing it It's not

1:01:47

surprising that now Recognition is massively

1:01:49

on the up and the I don't

1:01:51

mind it I just I think that

1:01:55

I think it slightly is the price to pay for what I

1:01:57

want to achieve and I'm okay with that I've sort of made

1:01:59

that deal with myself But

1:02:01

like you say, like so many people, like my

1:02:03

close friends, if we go to the pub, they

1:02:05

have zero interest. I still don't know if my

1:02:07

close friends know what I do. And I quite

1:02:09

love that about our relationship. But it

1:02:11

is, I mean, you pick your poison. And I've

1:02:13

obviously chosen that I want to be

1:02:15

a thought leader.

1:02:17

I want to be someone that creates

1:02:20

content that helps other people with their day to

1:02:22

day. And I feel

1:02:24

like because I've been through it, and I've actually lived the

1:02:26

things that I say and I talk about, you know, I've

1:02:28

built businesses from scratch, bootstrapped,

1:02:30

I've built VC backed businesses, you

1:02:33

know, I have a lot to share. And if I

1:02:35

was if I'm not willing to share it, like who is

1:02:37

and so I think it is important that the stuff is

1:02:39

shared. And then on top of that, I'm

1:02:42

just not that affected anymore by the negative comments.

1:02:45

But again, I haven't really had a negative part

1:02:47

yet. Whereas, you know, some of the big names

1:02:49

at the moment are being canceled or they're being

1:02:52

torn down by the media, that must be quite rough on

1:02:54

math. What

1:02:56

about the people who are already in a business and

1:02:58

they want to go for it. But you know, they

1:03:01

have business partners, investors, other people who are just like,

1:03:03

what are you doing? You know, you just described spending

1:03:05

a lot of time, it's time. Yeah, so

1:03:07

yeah, sure. Like funnel it into the

1:03:09

business. And there's an argument for that,

1:03:11

etc. But equally, there's definitely

1:03:14

the dichotomy of this, right, which is

1:03:16

that you yourself become too big for

1:03:18

the business. And you suddenly have earned

1:03:21

yourself unfair outsized leverage

1:03:23

over your business partner or over

1:03:25

your investors. And actually, you've changed

1:03:27

the power dynamic, super

1:03:29

consciously, maybe innocently at first, but

1:03:31

consciously over time. And now

1:03:33

you're in a powerful position, you can totally

1:03:36

see how that is good for you. But

1:03:38

you can also see intelligent people

1:03:40

around you in your business, like investors,

1:03:42

like co founders who wouldn't want to

1:03:45

put themselves in that situation, because

1:03:47

they're like, I'm focusing on the

1:03:49

business that we agreed to do together. And

1:03:51

you're building yourself over the

1:03:54

business. And now where

1:03:56

does that leave us like on equal

1:03:59

footing? And that'll be a

1:04:01

lot of people who are in businesses that

1:04:03

are like that. It's very common that co-founders

1:04:05

have complementary skills, right? So therefore kind of

1:04:07

rare that you'd both be attention seekers. So

1:04:09

one is likely to be the marketeer, the

1:04:11

storyteller, the attention seeker, and the other person

1:04:14

may be more operational, financially oriented. What's

1:04:17

your advice for those people? Well,

1:04:21

I suppose my advice for the for

1:04:23

the one seeking the outsized of

1:04:27

the outsized return for them personally would

1:04:29

be like crack on. The results are unbelievable for

1:04:32

the people that are in, you know, in, in

1:04:34

their sphere. I think

1:04:36

you have to be really honest with them. And again,

1:04:38

I think I am

1:04:40

a very, very, very honest and

1:04:42

very quick communicator with everything that

1:04:44

I'm doing. And so I'm

1:04:47

very, my first business partner, he

1:04:49

too builds personal grandders. We, we both, that was

1:04:51

very easy. It was like, this is going to

1:04:53

gain huge traction for our business. Let's crack on

1:04:55

this both dirt. And he would say at the

1:04:57

time, my personal brand exploded pretty quickly. His took

1:04:59

a lot longer to get going. But

1:05:02

he was like, well, we want to build an amazing

1:05:04

business and sell our business. 60%

1:05:06

of our clients come from Chris. That's

1:05:08

a pretty good deal. You know, now

1:05:10

I'd say that my business partner and my

1:05:12

investors are firmly aware of all my personal

1:05:15

brand stuff, but I do think that they

1:05:17

see the externalities for the business being so

1:05:19

much higher than not doing

1:05:21

it. And that

1:05:23

is in staff. That's in clients.

1:05:25

That's an awareness. That's in every conference

1:05:27

with the speakers, every panel we're on,

1:05:30

you know, we get, we

1:05:32

get huge outsized interest in that, in

1:05:34

that market that we're in. I

1:05:36

mean, do people ever question whether I should be working

1:05:38

more in the business? I'm sure people very rarely ever

1:05:41

say it, but I'm sure it's a

1:05:43

consideration. But I suppose again, it's like,

1:05:45

well, you can't, you can't have your cake and eat it.

1:05:47

I can't build a personal brand and only be interested in

1:05:49

the business because you couldn't do a personal brand just on

1:05:52

the business. And so, you know, it's

1:05:54

funny. I was talking to someone the other day about

1:05:56

like, what do you value the personal brand out? And

1:05:58

I was like, I'll give you a basic. answer,

1:06:00

which isn't accurate in any way. But if you

1:06:02

were to pay for a thousand views on a

1:06:04

platform, it's very easy to find out that cost.

1:06:06

So on LinkedIn, you know, cost per

1:06:09

meal, I think they call it, so cost per thousand,

1:06:11

it's like 25 to 35 dollars for

1:06:13

a thousand views. So for

1:06:16

example, I have my

1:06:18

business name, Lottie, in my headline. I

1:06:20

get 20 million views a week. That

1:06:22

alone has meant that our company

1:06:24

page just grows rapidly and people

1:06:27

can't grow company pages. And so you think to

1:06:29

yourself, well, it's very easy to put a numerical

1:06:31

value on that stuff, even if

1:06:33

you ignore all the externals. Yeah, it's

1:06:36

actually a nice way of framing it

1:06:38

because again, like this is systematically describing

1:06:40

a funnel and actual

1:06:42

tangible impact, which is

1:06:45

a lot more

1:06:47

easy to communicate to partners than just

1:06:49

fluffy, like it'll be good for us.

1:06:51

Yeah, yeah. And I

1:06:53

would say like if you're doing it and you have

1:06:55

conflict in your own business about doing it, which

1:06:58

is likely, I think it's a likely thing to

1:07:00

happen. I would say get very good at understanding

1:07:04

the benefit. So if

1:07:06

staff are coming to the business to apply

1:07:09

and they say it's because they saw you on LinkedIn, that

1:07:11

is so valuable. Like how much does it cost

1:07:13

really to acquire a good person to work in

1:07:15

your business? It's a lot and it's so much

1:07:17

time and it might be recruitment agencies on top

1:07:20

of the time. And so if

1:07:22

you're resulting in 25% of the applicants, huge

1:07:24

value add. If you're resulting in X many of

1:07:26

the clients coming to the business,

1:07:28

huge value add, the awareness, the views, like

1:07:31

if I do a big post on my LinkedIn about Lottie,

1:07:34

the website traffic spikes. I mean that's the quantum

1:07:36

that we're talking about. Lottie is a big business

1:07:38

now and I can still spike the traffic. So

1:07:41

I've become good at, I

1:07:43

suppose, the justifications for personal brand. I

1:07:45

didn't think about it like that. My

1:07:47

investors knew on the way in,

1:07:49

my brothers, my co-founder, knew on the way in

1:07:51

I had a personal brand and so

1:07:53

that sort of baked in with me. But if you're

1:07:55

going from scratch, do

1:07:58

learn those, those, those, you It leaves.

1:08:01

A sublet a business or personal brand I think

1:08:03

most you wouldn't we think about hasn't been as

1:08:05

a business is a doing as a side hustle

1:08:07

the firstly like you know you're running your business

1:08:10

and eating personal brand stuff feel. Like,

1:08:12

I don't. I just don't think that

1:08:14

people think about it like that, know

1:08:16

that you did, and you think about

1:08:18

it, not just like a business bar,

1:08:21

like actually quite like a ruthless well

1:08:23

off or I said through thoughtful business

1:08:25

business. Yeah, and I found really interesting

1:08:27

talking to you and I oversee the

1:08:29

way people it's even bought which a

1:08:31

sassy or whatever that I big business

1:08:33

and all makes sense too far. I

1:08:35

think you thought about this early enough.

1:08:38

And set up and structure the early enough.

1:08:40

As a business I'm talking about, it makes

1:08:42

sense. Can you give us some ideas of

1:08:45

like what kind of numbers are we talking

1:08:47

like you know you talk about twenty million

1:08:49

views on this platform. In whatever light, how

1:08:51

much can a personal brand business at your

1:08:53

stage actually be generated on that? Is it

1:08:56

worthwhile? Yes

1:08:58

results of like of or we

1:09:00

go home and I am. I

1:09:03

supposed. good point that is. Symbolic

1:09:05

onto set is an interesting point, right? Because

1:09:07

they didn't just become what they are. They.

1:09:10

Like ground their way out but you just

1:09:12

forget about that. Grind said like I was

1:09:15

voting an agency the same time. Steve Butler

1:09:17

another see I actually followed days etti

1:09:19

on Facebook back in the day and those

1:09:21

two were like the to the posted

1:09:23

the most means on those channels he'd ever

1:09:26

seen and then that they were. Doing.

1:09:28

Loads of paid advertising to grow their

1:09:30

brands to those guys. A part of

1:09:32

examples of a monolith anyway. They.

1:09:35

Gained. Loads attention. They kind of product

1:09:37

ties to and fab podcast and that

1:09:39

books and so forth. and then they

1:09:41

used it's Her. Either. As another

1:09:43

leave a degree the bride even more and so

1:09:45

they are now like media outlets and so. They.

1:09:48

All passed by businesses. In. It's

1:09:50

most basic formula and so for me,

1:09:53

I look at those guys as inspiration. I

1:09:55

think what they've done is awesome. I me

1:09:57

I did a study know that much about

1:09:59

that both that controversies but I think that

1:10:01

the way they thought their brands is fascinating,

1:10:03

an interesting and. No.

1:10:05

Matter how much negativity or ever will be. they've

1:10:07

actually help loads of people so I think this

1:10:09

does the great things that so for me. I.

1:10:13

Suppose the most obvious thing. If.

1:10:15

I think about. Personal. Brand months

1:10:17

Ization was people get super excited

1:10:19

about immediately and entrepreneurs guess it's

1:10:21

super excited you need to didn't

1:10:23

quite. Wealth is the short answer

1:10:25

If you're thinking about the to be

1:10:27

leads and interest your business and

1:10:29

stuff it's not directly in a

1:10:31

money than you can game. Great

1:10:33

value immediately. better thinking about. Actual

1:10:36

monetary value. The base level is what the

1:10:38

platform to pay, so what each even tic

1:10:40

toc will pay. So for example you on

1:10:43

talktalk consistently no matter what. Every month Elle

1:10:45

paid ten round or something. sunny summer every

1:10:47

single month A masters the views you get

1:10:49

for during the content you would have done

1:10:52

otherwise safe. When they release that program I

1:10:54

remember like. Absolutely amazing

1:10:56

like that is just. Revenue.

1:10:59

And the best thing about that? as for creators,

1:11:01

A new creators. You. Can other

1:11:03

twenty one year old right now make

1:11:06

double three times. Force has fight on

1:11:08

an average salary in London posting ticked

1:11:10

off and I guess. Absolutely.

1:11:13

Insights to same thing duty, Beaches

1:11:15

Modernizations amazing, Same Facebook and so

1:11:17

that's what's that one. Step.

1:11:19

To would be say a sponsorship. So

1:11:22

brands being like wow they get that

1:11:24

many views if the branded by the

1:11:26

views of a custom death while invest

1:11:28

in it's infancy you know this you

1:11:30

have zero Btc company you pay. I'm

1:11:33

from. He. That will make you

1:11:35

don't, but that you've given product into some

1:11:37

sort of relationship. With. Influences as as

1:11:39

the same as me so yeah if a

1:11:41

big bank in the Uk. What?

1:11:43

To do it be to be business

1:11:46

banking and I aren't with them to

1:11:48

ten years anyway and they go cricket

1:11:50

stay five minutes is a week. And.

1:11:52

He's authentic visit person. Isn't.

1:11:54

He the passing attack. Which. I

1:11:57

mean us that? The truth? So my,

1:11:59

my business. The platform these

1:12:01

wish you could say is like a quarter

1:12:03

million pounds? Yeah maybe but she comes from

1:12:05

what I do and then you get sponsorship

1:12:07

v so Big Browns will pay me. You

1:12:10

know. That. Say that's another.

1:12:12

Depend. depending on the time of year, but. A

1:12:15

half a million for spots Gypsies Throughout the

1:12:17

year we bronze I worked with so they

1:12:19

form a be consultancy say to people getting

1:12:21

in touch the whether it's a brand, would

1:12:23

individual insane or pay for types I do

1:12:26

it very occasionally I do it a law

1:12:28

that time to hone the fact that I'm

1:12:30

trying to write. About. How

1:12:32

passer bys and teach and so. Cannot.

1:12:35

Year to I passed by priests. can I

1:12:37

turn some know audience and some with hundred

1:12:39

thousand followers of a couple months? I know

1:12:41

I can until the time and so for

1:12:43

me that's like one level. I don't go

1:12:45

that deep on that because again I run

1:12:47

a big business and so you have to

1:12:49

do the time trade off and and the

1:12:51

last one is can you build. Products.

1:12:54

And product ties your services so he to

1:12:56

I don't do that yet, but we'll I

1:12:58

release a book in the future, hopefully we'll

1:13:01

I have a A. Have been. A

1:13:03

poll costs or show that can be bought

1:13:05

in a future hopefully at some point and

1:13:07

the last thing is can I product I

1:13:10

something that can sell infinitely So a cool

1:13:12

so sensitive structured learning esta You know do

1:13:14

you pat how you run your yeah you're

1:13:16

peak life for whatever might be sedated the

1:13:19

different levels I think people can make money

1:13:21

and you you know a good example would

1:13:23

be. In. A J Satchels,

1:13:26

The Butler like. They have

1:13:28

courses, podcasts, books, Products.

1:13:31

Unsafe was they've taken advanced degree

1:13:33

and I think that if you

1:13:35

think about what celebrity really isn't

1:13:37

spicy same thing at the Kardashians

1:13:39

are quite literally a perfect example

1:13:41

of. Everything is bouncing from attention

1:13:43

because they can start any business they

1:13:45

want and they have didn't manage is

1:13:47

now forgot the name. The lady. She's

1:13:49

incredible. emigrating. Yes in. Any

1:13:52

business they touched know. Just. Gets millions

1:13:55

and millions of followers and likes,

1:13:57

engagement sales and expand. Say it

1:13:59

if you. Run. A business.

1:14:01

At some point you might not run the

1:14:03

business anymore and so I think that path

1:14:06

to brand will deliver unbelievably outsize or time

1:14:08

feel this is now. It will help you

1:14:10

become more ticket it more considered more thoughtful

1:14:12

and but a it will give you just

1:14:14

unbelievable leverage on the rest of your life

1:14:17

which is why we think is interesting is

1:14:19

that I think there's a point where you

1:14:21

can get see where you make more than

1:14:23

a small business. As an individual and

1:14:25

I think that's. Quite. Rare. To.

1:14:28

See I have something important as well

1:14:30

which is that in a world of

1:14:32

a I were skills do get commoditize

1:14:35

along. Personality is an enormous Lepage plane,

1:14:37

like just having a personality being a

1:14:39

trust of authentic source as a human

1:14:42

being. Like that something

1:14:44

that you can't just. Stick in

1:14:46

an algorithm. Athletic. And

1:14:48

that's gonna have more more more every

1:14:50

single day. Everything that we do is

1:14:52

use seen as we progress in up

1:14:54

an unfair realizing the commodities things that

1:14:56

used to be so valuable. I mean

1:14:58

I spent. Seven. Years of my

1:15:00

vibe like building web sites that now honest and

1:15:03

a i would do better. And. So

1:15:05

he just thinks yourself what are the skills

1:15:07

that not ever gonna got fashion or not

1:15:09

not one got fashion but but that will

1:15:11

never lose value. On. I think this

1:15:14

is one of those places where you know you

1:15:16

just get a infinite value from. From.

1:15:18

If you don't know the answers that that as long

1:15:20

as you're engaged, it. It can only

1:15:22

really. Serve. You and future as

1:15:24

had a thing. food is building an audience

1:15:27

and then is engaging with your community to

1:15:29

say how to make sure that you're You're

1:15:31

keeping that system going in like a good

1:15:33

structure system is way you talk about building

1:15:35

a business. It's gone to like up in

1:15:37

a a million pounds a year let's call

1:15:39

it sounds roughly in the ballpark else and.

1:15:42

Who is in that business to help you run

1:15:44

a million pony? You just like paying someone fifty

1:15:46

Came pocketing nine fifty. and just by condemning everyone

1:15:49

back all the time, it was the actual system

1:15:51

you haven't planned for. You're not twenty four seven

1:15:53

on this. So I had a wealthiest, non happiest,

1:15:55

busiest man and of her house. Yeah, I mean

1:15:58

I wouldn't say these days the. Really

1:16:00

busy. Like I would say that the

1:16:02

book because of the fact that you

1:16:04

don't need that many sponsors to pay

1:16:06

that type of money. It. It

1:16:08

just it just means that you do house. This.

1:16:11

Idea of outsized. It's outsize because you

1:16:13

have the audience and doesn't mean you're

1:16:15

working harder for the money, middle button,

1:16:17

less hard for the money and so

1:16:20

with me that the system is. I

1:16:22

have two full time staff, one predominate

1:16:24

bucks not editorial mom probably watch video

1:16:26

but they run everything. That what I

1:16:29

do with them is about idea generation,

1:16:31

what we want to talk about what's

1:16:33

important to ask, what's on messaging and

1:16:35

so they manage the creation and execution

1:16:37

of content. I prove it still, of

1:16:40

course, but. I mean. I

1:16:42

would be surprised if I put more than. A

1:16:45

hours a week and husband. Because

1:16:47

I started apostle than Ice and it

1:16:49

spread out across the week. So I

1:16:51

will you filming in batches So every

1:16:53

two or three weeks I'll do a

1:16:55

a six hour shoot and therefore. If.

1:16:58

You think about it as a business yeah to

1:17:00

be super prepared for everything you're gonna talk about

1:17:02

really well. scripted really well. We such a return

1:17:05

of the day without what you're gonna do you're

1:17:07

gonna waste whole day whereas I think that like

1:17:09

what am I. See. Because I'm very

1:17:11

very very efficient when I'm working, otherwise

1:17:14

I'm useless. But when I'm actually working,

1:17:16

I say the output for the time

1:17:18

we dedicate his diaries I get and

1:17:20

they know that I run a business.

1:17:23

And. They note I would be that whole time. Again,

1:17:25

He talked about the importance of getting

1:17:27

people off platform you couldn't d platforming

1:17:29

them which is a bit extreme but

1:17:31

either hey we're deeply v platforming people

1:17:33

on the email less. How How did

1:17:35

you that? Well how do you build

1:17:37

a great email list? Adam? how do

1:17:39

you like set of that system so

1:17:41

it's not really training to you as

1:17:43

well? What are you writing about? So

1:17:46

ah. I. Also example,

1:17:48

if someone's regularly already posted a

1:17:50

link and then sign and use

1:17:52

that is actually so straightforward am

1:17:55

setting. He. Even if we're not,

1:17:57

Tacky is very very easy to discounts. Combat

1:17:59

Kale be I've him and click set up

1:18:01

and and so forth and you'll basically spit

1:18:03

you are holding page. But how do you

1:18:05

get people to subscribers? Great question because it's

1:18:07

the think I think about most So. Publishers.

1:18:11

Products. Services businesses consoles

1:18:13

the anything you do in the future

1:18:15

you will sell the most that and

1:18:17

get the most engagement through newsletter. It's

1:18:19

wild the that still the case but

1:18:21

people with. You. Know people feel

1:18:23

at the following you on a deeper

1:18:26

level with as subscribing to newsletter and

1:18:28

so I only saw She Wants super

1:18:30

late I know I saw my six

1:18:32

months ago because I've she friends who

1:18:34

have been a huge these actors and

1:18:36

again gifts and huge leverage again and

1:18:38

and so I think to myself well

1:18:40

I was gonna go full and and

1:18:42

and we deep on the news that

1:18:44

are So I now create a lot

1:18:46

of content that is exclusive to the

1:18:48

newsletter. say if you want step by

1:18:50

step breakdowns of how I do it's

1:18:52

cool. That was that is like this is

1:18:54

how you achieve this thing this is how

1:18:56

you get from a to be where the

1:18:59

lot the other consent com be that detailed

1:19:01

on line and so it's more like instructional

1:19:03

for you achieve these things and then the

1:19:05

and gazan as every single week aunts cousins

1:19:07

in the news that are also the question

1:19:09

and answer questions and people love that and

1:19:11

I've spent zero town was getting the newsletter

1:19:13

on. I'm just under one hundred thousand subscribers

1:19:15

now so I'm going to try and scale

1:19:17

that. The Shelby my my focus but you

1:19:19

know. The. The Audience: If I

1:19:21

have a video that goes viral I will see

1:19:24

a like a my Knees that subs. It would

1:19:26

be small if I say it goes viral on

1:19:28

and then and there's like a lead magnet or

1:19:30

downloadable or something. you. Apart. To

1:19:33

coming this way the committing to do

1:19:35

on a huge thousands. Of. Subscribers

1:19:37

in a day and to achieve that with

1:19:39

paid media is so expensive mean and I

1:19:41

think that on average people think two and

1:19:43

a half to three dollars per subscriber to

1:19:46

acquire them said you have a good social

1:19:48

media funnel. You. Can achieve great. Near

1:19:50

me. That with so I mean everything

1:19:53

is downstream from attention. But really everything

1:19:55

is kind of downstream from finding your

1:19:57

voice, your nice, your audience, and the.

1:20:00

Reason why. You. Should be

1:20:02

posting a new have the authority and if you

1:20:04

can get those things right through judging by everything

1:20:06

is that. That sounds like he said. The

1:20:09

funnel can start to work in a sort

1:20:11

of no point sodding the wrong way round

1:20:13

with that. Yeah, I'm as I say I

1:20:16

I. I have. I. Have

1:20:18

helped a lot of people go from

1:20:20

near zero. Two hundred thousand followers and.

1:20:23

You. Can follow a path like it is.

1:20:25

You're gonna have to be very dedicated to

1:20:27

it. Gets print call a time but as

1:20:29

long as you realize that if we're doing

1:20:31

it for a business reason, Is. The

1:20:33

most proven thing in the world's. Most. Proven thing

1:20:35

that would advise people it's such a cliche but

1:20:38

of is is true. So if you dedicate yourself

1:20:40

that you can get. Fifty. Two hundred

1:20:42

thousand dollars Quite quickly. You have to

1:20:44

really work harder than you have to

1:20:46

really create. You. Know quite indepth content

1:20:49

every single day. If you do it like

1:20:51

idea and you batshit are you think about

1:20:53

it as a business, it just becomes you're

1:20:55

maxing fall for business and for me it's

1:20:58

just my father for everything. Know. Said

1:21:00

he could leave listeners with one piece of

1:21:03

advice based on everything that you've shared today.

1:21:05

What is your top adviser? People that want

1:21:07

to build personal brand? I.

1:21:10

Mean the main take away and I will

1:21:12

say this any will have asked is it

1:21:14

is not a zero some game like you

1:21:16

do not have to sail for me to

1:21:19

be successful and and therefore surroundings of people

1:21:21

doing it. You. Know commits the

1:21:23

fact that I actually really want my friends

1:21:25

to do well. And I think it's rare

1:21:27

that someone you know how the audience I

1:21:29

might spend so much time helping other people

1:21:31

grow. And it's because I'm always like, I

1:21:34

don't know why people pull up the ladder

1:21:36

because again, you know, if you succeed loads

1:21:38

and we're friends and we sort of engage

1:21:40

each other what each other, I'm going to

1:21:42

succeed more because of it. And so I

1:21:44

think people need to drop ego when they're

1:21:46

doing puzzle bromwich seems so crazy considering it's

1:21:49

It's so inherently egotistical in I am, but

1:21:51

it's not there some so. I would

1:21:53

to say. Good. Get good people

1:21:55

around more when and help when

1:21:57

Mason Chris Thank you so much

1:21:59

twentieth. The secretly to like. That

1:22:05

was my conversation with Chris Donnelly. Chris.

1:22:07

Has achieved so much with his personal

1:22:10

brand, but I really appreciate his honesty

1:22:12

about the challenges and tradeoffs in both.

1:22:15

If you're an entrepreneur considering building your

1:22:17

own personal brand, I hope this episode

1:22:19

gave me some strategies to get started.

1:22:22

but more than that I gave you

1:22:24

a realistic picture of what that Johnny

1:22:26

looks. It he found value

1:22:28

in this conversation that the best way to support the

1:22:31

show is by sharing it with just one person you

1:22:33

think is gonna really enjoy it. Was

1:22:35

I make sure to check us out on

1:22:37

Youtube by searching for the Secret Leaders Podcast.

1:22:39

I'll see you next week. Here

1:22:45

at my said when we went to give you

1:22:47

the tools to become better at. What You

1:22:50

Do! Taking inspiration and wisdom from

1:22:52

our guests we will hear stories,

1:22:54

strategies, tips and tricks told. By

1:22:56

leading names and sport. And beyond, you

1:22:58

know what it takes to get to

1:23:01

the very top sarobi. Two episodes each

1:23:03

week. paths with amazing stories and

1:23:05

practical take away. For us all

1:23:07

to follow. Search for mine Said when

1:23:09

on you tube and on your favorite

1:23:11

podcast Us.