Listener Q&A Part 1

Its my 35th birthday!  Cue happy and sad emotions 🙂 🙁

In this episode, I answer listener questions - so many that I had to split this into two episodes.

This one was a lot of fun and we covered a lot of different topics.

• How should a beginner in the digital nomad world get out there and reach out to potential clients vs. educating yourself and growing your following first?
• What have you found to be the best way to rebrand yourself as a person or as a business?
• How did I first discover ayahuasca?
• What are the most successful habits in my daily routine?
• How to determine the best social media plans platform for your business?
• what was the biggest challenge for you after you decided to leave your 9 to 5 job?
• What was the hardest thing you had to unlearn when taking a fresh direction?
• Why don't all my Instagram followers see my posts?

And so much more...

• The Values Test
• Wealth Dynamics
• My Ayahuasca Experience
• Tim Ferris & Dr. Gabor Mate on Ayahuasca
• The Checklist Manifesto
• Process Street
• FocusAtWill App
• Andrew Jernigan: InsuredNomads Podcast Episode
• The 80/20 Principle
• Upwork
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator
• Gallop Strengths Finder
• 16 Personalities

0:02

What's up everybody? It's March 22. In today's episode, we do listener q&a. I'm so pumped for this episode, I love doing Q&A. Some of the questions that just come in take us in a completely different direction to the normal stuff we talk about. And I love connecting with you guys.

We've got a ton of voice notes, a ton of questions, and I'm going to go through them one by one, you're going to hear the question and then I'm going to give you the answer. Today is actually my 35th birthday. And I wanted to give back at this time, I wanted to do something to help people out there who are at home and you know, we're in these uncertain times, and it just felt like the right thing to do. I'm on lockdown. So it's pretty Movie snacks and the podcast today.

Also a little bit upset. That is Mother's Day today for some reason they've moved Mother's Day to my birthday. And you know, it's never happened before. So I actually missed Mother's Day. So I'm a bad son and putting it out there mama love you. I'm sorry. But today is also my birthday. And it is also the podcast. So we're gonna have to make room for all three.

All right, so with that said, let's get into the questions. We're going to start right at the top with the first question that comes from Saterra from SandyFeetMessyHair @sandyfeetmessyhair on Instagram.

1:32

So as a beginner in the digital nomad world, would you advise just going out there and reaching out to potential clients and just getting yourself out there versus maybe educating and growing your following before doing so?

1:52

I think the answer to this one is not whether you go out there and connect with clients or you educate and grow your following. I think the answer is you do both So a lot of the time we look for, should I go in this direction? Or should I go in that direction? And typically the answer is we need to do both.

So there's a short term and there's a long term approach, the short term approach is go out there connect with clients. That's what I would call hunting. And we absolutely have to do that. The longer term approach is educate yourself. So you can create more value for the client, and also build your following. So you, you know, have an audience and there's also some social proof that, you know, you're a value creator in the world. And that longer term approach is what I would call farming.

So what I would tell you is you need to do both, I think absolutely start connecting with people. If you're passive and you wait for the world to come to you, often they won't. What you need to do is get as many people aware of you as possible, and that could be through social media. But if it is, then maybe you dm people, so I dm probably about 30 people a day. And I'm not asking for anything. I'm just creating value. I'm sharing resources that are completely unrelated to my business or what I do, I'm connecting with them commenting about something that I liked. So I'm showing up on their radar.

And that's more of a hunting type thing, because people are aware of me and I know that I can create value for them once they know me. So it's really a game of just connecting with as many people as possible. On the longer term perspective, absolutely. Educating yourself so you can create more value. And building a following is important. And it's especially important, you know, if you're going to put yourself out there as a social media manager, but you don't have a social following, then that's going to hurt your credibility. So it does depend. I would really look at what type of Freelancer or digital nomad Am I trying to become? If I am asking businesses to let me be a content creator for them, I'd make sure I had awesome content before I started connecting with people.

If I'm a web developer, and making sure my website works really well on mobile and on desktop, and it's really gonna wow somebody because you will your highest version of your work. So when somebody actually digs deeper and looks at your stuff, you can't have an excuse about, Oh, I didn't get to do the website yet, or it's a new social account, you're done, your credibility is shot at that point. So I would tell you do both and do them to the best of your ability. The process for doing that is I would look at what assets Do you need to create. And these are the things that other people are going to come and look at and judge your ability to do something.

I would create those assets first, then I would start connecting with people so that when they do connect with me, the asset that they see first, maybe it's my social media account on my website, really impresses them, because then I'm established as a value creator in their mind and they're willing to engage with me on a different level. That would be my recommendation. That is where I would start. And then it's really just a case of keep maintaining that asset. Keep creating new assets, and keep connecting with people and watch the magic happen. Okay, question two comes from my good friend, Natalie. Feel at Natalie co on Instagram, the most stylish woman I know and the biggest fashionista ever met. So Natalie is based over in London. And here's her question,

5:10

Skye, this is your Happy Birthday message question. What have you found to be one great tip, or bit of advice or resource when you have gone on a path to rebrand yourself as a person or as a business?

5:28

That's a really interesting question. When it comes to rebranding, I think a big mistake a lot of people make is they think that your brand is about the colors, the logo, the look and feel. But actually you are your personal brand. And the big shout out to Rajesh nag Ji, my mentor when I was in Dubai, we actually taught our entire two day workshop on personal branding in Dubai. And the big thing that we found is that personal brand is not what you think it is. It's actually about your reputation. So when you you first enter a community, what happens is you're judged based on what you say, and what you do.

So if you say you do something and you don't follow through, it hurts your brand. If you do follow through, it helps your brand. And what happens over time you build a reputation, a reputation for someone that does stuff or reputation for just being a talker. So the personal brand is really, firstly about your reputation, based on what you say and what you do. Beyond that, it's how do you actually engage with people. So a lot of people, their personal brands can be completely just about them. And that's what we would call an apathy grant. That doesn't really work because the most important person in everybody's life is themself.

So there's a good saying that I love that everybody walks around wanting to feel important. So imagine that everybody you meet has a sign on their head saying make me feel important, and there's a lot of wisdom in there. So if our brand is based on being all about me, and trying To impress you with all of the things I've done and how I'm so much better than you, it's gonna turn you off and you're not going to want to engage with me. The brands that do well are rooted in empathy.

Those brands focus on the customer, or the client or the prospect and they don't focus just on selling, they focus on serving. So it's really about how can your brand demonstrate empathy, that you understand that person that you're similar to that person? So that's the first thing and that can really come across in the language that you use. It can come across in the branding and the colors that you use and the images. But I think most importantly, it comes down to who is that individual that is the face of that brand?

And do you resonate with them? You know, anything that I did in free the wage slave or any of my businesses, it worked on a superficial level when I had the branding looking right, and the value proposition but what really worked was when people met me and they could see that I was authentic, that I live the values of the brand that, you know, my company profit partnerships was the first pay on results marketing agency in London. And it was complete Win Win proposition, we made sure that we do the campaign, we'd even pay for the campaign for the client. And when it was successful, we took a percentage of the sales, complete Win win, but it sounds kind of sleazy.

It sounds like, I'm not sure about that, until I met the client, and they could see that actually, I do have their best interests at heart. So the brand really has to be authentic. It has to resonate with who you are, you can't have a brand that's not congruent with who you are as an individual. So I would really tell you to just focus on that and actually put yourself and your personality front and center of the brand. It's an old saying, but it's true people buy from people. So put yourself front and center and be completely authentic with who you are. And you'll attract a tribe that resonates with you. Doing it the other way where you're trying to impress people where it's all about you where you Trying to make an offer and get people interested but it's not congruent, they'll feel that and they won't stick. And it's really just not a path to building something with longevity. So hope that answers your question, Natalie. So the next question is from my good friend Ben, at geeky tech geeks on Instagram, that's still probably my favorite Instagram name at geeky tech geeks. It doesn't get geeky than that. So Ben is over in Surrey, just outside of London in the UK.

And his question is, how did you first discover ayahuasca? So the first thing is, if you want to read about my iOS experience, go to free the wage slave comm forward slash my hyphen, Iosco hyphen experience, or just Google "free the wage slave ayahuasca" and you'll find it well, how I discovered it is a bit of a long story. My dad is what you could call a psychonaut somebody that explores the other world through psychedelics. So he, you know, grew up in the 70s and was part of that festival culture. So he was trying mushrooms and you know, various things like that. So anyway Remember him talking about that stuff when I was a kid, it was always, you know, quite an open household. But it never really appealed to me I like to stay in control. So, you know, I asked it was something I'd kind of heard about on the fringes of the culture maybe I'd seen a video on vice or something, you know, on YouTube, but it wasn't really anything on my radar.

And I think I didn't find ayahuasca but ayahuasca found me and I do think that it does that it comes into the person's life when they're ready. So for me in 2017 life got bad and if you want the details there's a blog post free the wage slave comm slash quitting hyphen, my hyphen, nine hyphen, two hyphen, five, that's a lot hyphens, just Google for the wage slave calm, and then quitting my nine to five and you're going to find it. So life got bad, there was a breakdown. And I then went to Dubai, so I kind of ran away from that life. And I went to Dubai, to work for 15 months and what thought was my Savior. It was actually a hard time I really struggled. I was working 80 plus hours a week, six days a week, I was alone on Christmas Day and my birthday in the desert didn't really make many friends because I was just working so much. And I left by in May 2018. And I decided I'm going to South America.

And I had a cruise booked with a friend of mine Ann-Sofie. Shout out Ann-Sofie, we're going on a cruise through Panama, Colombia, Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao. And at the end of that cruise, I knew I was going to be in South America, and I was probably going to Peru. Now I actually never made it to prove, but just the fact that I was going to Peru somewhere in my mind connected to ayahuasca. And I remember Tim Ferriss, he interviewed Dr. Gabor Mate about ayahuasca. And just before I left for that South America trip, my good friend Stephanie at Project glow on Instagram. She told me Look, if you're going to do it, that's okay. But make sure you're informed. Watch this interview with Tim Ferriss and Dr Gabor Ma Tei and it was just wonderful. I've watched it, and I kind of put it to the back of my mind off that I wasn't sure I was going to do it. Fast forward a couple of months and I was with my girlfriend, Miriam in Cancun. And she out of the blue in the kitchen one day tells me Hey, you know, there's an ayahuasca ceremony, do you know anything about it? And that was really where it became real. Before I knew it. I'd agreed to go to ayahuasca. And it was just a totally life changing experience. For me. It completely transformed everything, my relationship with myself with my parents, with my friends, my purpose in life. It didn't really change me. But what it did was it allowed me to understand other people's perspectives, I could feel their emotions and that feeling gave me empathy for them, and forgiveness and the anger dissipated, the judgment dissipated. And I think I just became a more well rounded human being as a result of that experience. So that's how I discovered ayahuasca.

So there's a follow up question here from Ben, which is what are the most successful habits that you will into your daily routine? So what do I do daily? That is successful? Well, the first thing I will tell you is if you're interested in forming good habits, the absolute greatest book on this topic is called atomic habits by James clear, that is a game changing book that I recommend to everybody. But in terms of my habits, they're not really that complex.

I spent many, many years experimenting. I did morning rituals, visualizations, meditations, writing down, you know, the different things that I was going to do today and honestly, Ben, most of it was too rigid and infringed on my sense of freedom. Freedom is one of my highest values. The couple of things that I've found that make a huge difference. There is a process called morning pages, and that comes from a book called The artists way. I don't remember the author's name is Julia something you can check it out online. And in that book, what they do is they take You something really simple but very powerful. You sit in the morning with a blank sheet of paper, and you just write and you empty your mind.

So it couldn't be that I forgot to pick up something from the store, I need to do that project for a client. It can be just writing how you feel, but you completely empty your mind you drain the swamp, as I call it. And doing that before the day is just amazing. Because one thing that I learned from David Allen, the founder of getting things done when I interviewed him is the mind is not designed to store things. It's designed to process them. But we leave all this stuff in the back of our minds. And that interferes with our ability to actually do the things we need to do in the day. We're using some of our mental power to remember that stuff. So the morning page is just gets everything out on paper, and then I eliminate the stuff that's not important. And I put the stuff that is important on to my daily to do list.

Now when it comes to my daily to do list, this really is the anchor of everything that I do. I have this list with me I, you know, populate it in the morning. And I keep coming back to it throughout the day to check in on how I'm doing. I've tried so many different lists and productivity processes. And actually, I've created my own, which is a hybrid of all of the best ones. And I call it the PACED system P,A,C,E,D.

And that stands for procrastinate, automate, concentrate, eliminate, and delegate. So I take every task and I run it through those filters. And I decide, you know, what, am I going to procrastinate on? What can I automate, so I never have to do it again. What am I going to concentrate on today? What is being eliminated? And what can i delegate, I do have a video recorded where I share that process.

So if there's some interest in that, I will publish that. I just haven't got around to that yet. But that process is really, really important for me. The next three habits that I would mention, one is checklists for my teams. I run a large digital team, and I kept finding that the teams would send me work back. That wasn't the accurate, or they didn't do it in the way that I wanted. And I realized that the gap was I was thinking I was communicating clearly. And I was thinking they understood, but they didn't. And a lot of the times in some of the countries like the Philippines especially, they have a cultural thing where they will not ask a question if they're not sure. So you think that you know, you've delegated it and they think that they've understood it, but there's a big gap and then what you get back isn't accurate. And I really couldn't understand why good people were doing, you know, below average work.

The book, The Checklist Manifesto really fixed that for me. That book tells you how a surgeon performs surgery based on a checklist, how a pilot flies a plane, based on a checklist, how even the most complex situations and scenarios can be made simple with a checklist because people can follow small instructions. If you give them the entire task at once. It can be overwhelming. If they know move this thing here, click that drag that over there. It's so lot easier. So checklists for my teams made a huge difference. And I use process.st is the the software I use for that. Another process that makes a big difference, which is also related to managing teams, is something that I learned again from Rajesh. And it's that you don't get what you expect, you get what you inspect. And I think it originally came from Peter Drucker, the father of modern management. When you expect your team to do the work, they will find ways not to do it. And it's not because they're bad people, it's that we get distracted, we're busy. And humans, I'm not going to call as lazy, I'm gonna call us efficient, we'll find the most efficient way to do something. So we'll deviate from the process a little bit here a little bit there. When they know that there's an inspection happening. It makes sure that people are aligned to your process, and they do things the right way.

So the way that I inspect is I asked for screenshots where I can see everything. And those screenshots provide evidence. So for example, I have a spreadsheet every day. that tracks the income. How much have we invoiced clients? And how much have we received in the bank account. So I get a screenshot of that every day. And in that screenshot that 32nd check, I can see whether it's been logged correctly because I have an idea of what's coming in. So just that two minute check every day makes a big difference. It means that I'm checking on all of my teams with the recurring daily tasks so that any process that's not followed, it gets captured right up front. It gets captured immediately, rather than it growing and becoming this huge overwhelming problem. That means I have to stop what I'm doing to deal with it. The next thing I'll tell you that successful is the focus at will app. So when I have a most important task on my priority list, I need to focus on that and that's probably going to be a two or three hour chunk of time.

The focus that will app puts me into a mind state using by neural beats. That is one of focus, so it shuts out all the time. attractions, and there's just music that's not too aggressive. It doesn't have vocals, and it puts me in a tunnel vision state or I can focus it just does something to the brain chemistry so you can find that focus at will. And I think they have a few of their video and audio tracks on YouTube so you can check it out for free. I do have the lifetime premium is definitely worth it. And I would recommend finding some way of focusing when you do those most important tasks.

19:27

So the next question is from my friend Andrew Jernigan, CEO of insured nomads calm and if you haven't heard my interview with him, it was actually the last Podcast Episode Episode Four called what nomads ought to know about coronavirus before it's too late. I highly, highly recommend you listen to that. And if you're a nomad go and check out insured nomads.com for all of your health and travel insurance. All right on to the question.

19:52

Hi, I'm wondering if you can tell us more about how to determine the best

19:58

social media plans platform for your particular market. Whether you should choose Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. to market your products or services, how do you determine which one and what's the best tool for managing your post. So we'll start with the easy one. The best tool for the post is going to depend on which platform you need to be on the tools that I use, I use promo Republic which is pretty good. The only downside to that is you have to get a notification and click a few times to post to Instagram. Miriam My girlfriend is using later calm to automatically post Instagram and all of hers.

I would tell you just go with the main ones Buffer, Later, Hootsuite, Meet Edgar any of those are going to do the job. But honestly, it's too specific to your needs to be able to give you know a definitive answer. Now to the bigger question, which was how do you determine which platform you should be on? to market your products and services, what I will tell you is you have to go where your audience is. Now, if you are doing b2b business to business where you're selling to business people, then LinkedIn is absolutely going to be the place for you. If you are selling to women, and you're a retail business, Pinterest and Instagram are the places to be 80% of ecommerce purchases happen from Pinterest is a huge, huge number. And Pinterest is a heavily female dominant audience. So you have to first really look at who am I selling to? And then where are those people? Why should they care about me and my brand? What are they interested in? And when do I need to post? So let's just dig into each of those. The why they're interested is going to be your value proposition, the thing that you bring, which is never going to be just about promoting your products and services. It's about what are they interested in and how can you become As Gary Vee calls it a publishing company where you publish content and information that helps them solve a problem.

If you look at my podcast, all I'm doing is putting out information for my audience. And I actually don't even have a product to sell free. The wage slave is not a monetized project. But that's the kind of thing you have to do is actually care about your audience and put content out that helps them solve a problem in their life. That's the why the what is knowing what they care about. And you can do a lot of research on that you can go into forums, where your audience congregate, and you can filter the forum by the questions that have the most replies or the most views that will really easily tell you what they're interested in. You can go to amazon.com and find the books that are related to your topic or the books that your audience reads. And use the look inside feature. Take a look at the table of contents. And after 10 books, you'll see the topics that keep coming up. You can go to your competitors and look at their blog posts look at their mobile popular posts, go on their Instagram, look at their most popular posts, you'll start getting a sense of what resonates and what's important for your audience. We never want to create from scratch, we want to figure out what's already working. And then start from that place. There's always always a better approach. In terms of where you post, you can do some research.

So the first thing is look at the demographics, which is all my audience, men who are in their 40s, who are business people. And then you do the research on the social platforms. And you're going to find that LinkedIn is where that type of person lives. If you are looking at you know, digital nomad stuff, and you find that there are people in their mid 20s to mid 30s. They travel a lot. And you know, they're into food and travel, then Instagram, being a visual platform is probably where it's at. In terms of when to post you're going to look in your analytics and find when your audience are online most and when you get the most engaged On Instagram, you just convert your account into a business account, and then you get those analytics. So in short, Andrew, my message is you have to determine who your audience is, and then determine where they are, then work on why they should care what they want, and when to post. That would be my advice to start growing your social accounts. The next question comes from my friend Anna based over in Serbia and and I have worked together for a long time. While I was in Dubai, she flew out to come and do a retreat with us. We have worked together for a long time on a lot of projects, and I'm hoping to go to Anna's wedding in Serbia in May. But this Corona virus thing is putting that at risk. So I don't know what's going to happen with that. But here's Anna's question all the way from Belgrade in Serbia.

24:46

Hi, Anna here from Serbia. And first of all, I would like to issue very happy by this guy. So my question would be what was the biggest challenge for you after you decided to leave your 9 to 5 Job?

25:01

Well, thank you Firstly, for the birthday wishes, Anna. And the question is one that was actually asked by my other friend Mr C Knowles on Instagram knows like Beyonce. I'm sure he's sick of hearing that. But his question was, what was the hardest thing you had to unlearn when taking a fresh direction? And it's actually the same as you know, what was the hardest thing when I quit nine to five? That was the biggest shift in direction in my life, probably. So to answer both of those questions, the hardest thing for me was trying not to take my foot off the gas. So I'd left nine to five, the motivation wasn't about me being pulled towards something exciting at that point, because I didn't know what I was going to do with my life still, even though it was 32.

At that point, what happened was I was actually moving away from something that I hated, which was you know, that corporate career and having to be a wage slave. So once I got my freedom, I had all day to pretty much do what I want. And I was doing freelancing and marketing, consulting. And not all of my projects excited me, it was much more appealing for me just to read or do another course, or work on my passion project, which I loved. But it didn't bring me any money, right. So I just had to remember that there's no paycheck coming, there's no company that's going to bail me out and send me a couple of thousand pounds, you know, every four weeks. So the thing that I did at that point was I had a white wall, which is you know, those walls you could write on with the marker that was in my office at home, and I put my go on the wall, I put the number. And every day at the end of the day, I'd go in there and write the new number. If you've seen the movie, The Big Short, where Michael burry, he comes out of his office in his shorts with the drums playing loud and he writes the value of the hedge fund on the wall.

It was exactly like that. My numbers were just pitiful In comparison, but that kept me focused on my goal. So the hardest thing for me was not giving into the thing that I wanted to do, and actually focusing on the thing that I had to do just to keep them money coming in, you know, to maintain that freedom that I just got. And it was hard because at that point in my life, I was just done. I was so tired of everything exhausted. And one phase of my life was closing. And the next phase hadn't opened yet. So I felt like I was in limbo. I couldn't move towards, you know, traveling and starting that digital nomad life because I had the commitments of my old life that I had to you know, unwind, I had to sell my house, I had to work my notice in my job. So being in that middle period was the first challenge and then once I did get my freedom, but I hadn't sold my house, I couldn't leave the country, just you know, keeping all of that stuff going and bringing it to closure, whilst making sure that I was you know, paying my bills and making sure I had enough money coming in. That was definitely the hardest thing about that time of my life. This next question is from my lovely girlfriend, Miriam. @Mimithedreamer on Instagram. She also runs @vegan.co you vegans out there. Go and check that page out.

It gives me food envy every single day of the week. My dieting is just completely gone to shit because she's posting good vegan food every day. So, yeah, this questions from her. And by the way, if you didn't see the video she made for me yesterday. She showed it to me at one minute past midnight on my birthday. And I'm not saying I cried, but there was some wet eyes. It was probably the nicest thing anybody's ever done for me. And I just loved that. And I love you, babe. So let's hear your question. Let's get into it.

28:28

My question is, if I have 200 and some people on my IG, how come only a certain amount of people can see my stories or my feed? And so usually the same people are always like my post. Am I doing something wrong? And that's the reason why other people can see my feed.

28:53

So this one is about what's known as Instagrams organic reach. So firstly, The gram is owned by Facebook, and what people are finding on Facebook. And now more recently Instagram, is that people used to see your posts when you just do a post on your feed. And now less people are seeing it. And what you have to understand is, you know, Facebook is an advertising platform. So I don't know if they're doing it purposely to make money conspiracy theory that we don't know. But what I do know is organic reach the number of people who see your posts in your feed is absolutely dropping. So if you have, you know, 300 followers, if you go into your insights in your Instagram account, what you're probably going to find is only a proportion, a small proportion of that audience actually sees your post. So a couple of things you can do.

One is you can pay for an ad, and that's not feasible for everybody. The costs are low, but it is the easiest way to get organic reach, which is people seeing your stuff. Now if you don't want to do that or you're not in a position to do that. There are a couple of other things you can do. Here's some things that I've been working with recently that are absolutely making a difference. So the first thing is you post your stories more frequently. People typically when they open Instagram, they go to the stories first and start watching them. And then they probably go to their notifications to see who's like their stuff. And you know, then they start scrolling through their feed. So if you're posting just to the feed your third choice, and they're probably going to get distracted. If you think about how many other accounts, the average Instagram user follows, the chance of you being seen is less. So posting to stories makes a difference. I recommend about 10 posts per day. The reason I do that is Instagram will show the most recent story, first in somebodies feed.

So just in that top left hand corner, if I post right now and then you come online A few minutes later, you're most likely to see my post now and might be behind the people Instagram knows who you're in. You know, your friends and family that you interact with regularly. But in terms of those accounts that you know, they've just started following, you want to be as far left as possible on that story feed. And by posting, you know, multiple times a day to a story, you're going to show up in there a lot more often. If you are running ads, Instagram story, ads make a big difference. You may have noticed every three stories you see an ad is actually really, really cheap to be seen there. And that's definitely one way to get more attention. Now, in terms of the feed posts, what happens with Instagram is they kind of like dry test how good your content is. So when you do a post to Instagram, what happens is it shows that post to around 7% of your audience, and it sees do they comment? Do they like do they save? Do they share these what are called social signals, they are signs of engagement. And Instagram looks at that and says okay, how many people engage with that post, and if it's a positive engagement, then they expect How many people see that post so it goes from 7%, upwards to another number, we don't know what that is. And then if those people also engage with it, it starts showing it to more and more people. So the key here is not to create more content is to create better content. So fewer posts, but great, and I would recommend about three to five posts per day.

The next thing you're going to do is, it's really about when do you post so look into your insight, see, when your audience is online, and time those posts to when they're online so that, you know 7% of people that are seeing it, they're online, they're going to see it and it gives them an opportunity to engage with the post immediately. At a time when they're online. It doesn't make sense to post it. When half your audience are asleep. You might be in Europe, but if your audience are all in America, you need to be posting in American time zones, not what's convenient for you. And you know, just going back to Andrews question, there are various tools that can do that that can automate the social posting for you. Like lighter Hootsuite buffer, etc. The next thing I would tell you, this is a new strategy I've been working with, and it's working really, really well. And that is to be on Instagram, engaging with your audience for one hour before your post, and after your post. So for me, for example, my time when my audience is online is 3pm until midnight, and it kind of peaks from 6pm till 10pm. So my posts going out from 3pm onwards, and I'm online, round about four o'clock onwards for my peak time.

And here's what I'm doing. I'm commenting on around 30 posts a day. And more importantly, I'm dming people, and I'm just creating value for them. I'm just sending them you know, positive messages, or, hey, here's something you might like or I really like that post. I'm just engaging with people. And why I'm doing that Instagram sees me engaging with those people and it sees that they reply, I am now more likely to be seen In their feed. So when I post Instagram says hey sky talks to Sandy feet messy hair, show that post in their feed because they have a relationship.

So Instagram prioritizes relationships over promotion and over just pushing out content. So I definitely definitely recommend do that dming thing every day. Actually that's just being social and you know guys it's called social media. Let's be social Don't be the dude at the party trying to push Herbalife or you know, multi level marketing stuff and I'm not dissing that stuff. There's some good stuff out there. But be social, ask questions. How do you start a conversation at a party? You start by asking questions. So in a lot of those comments, I'll ask a question that give somebody the opportunity to sound like an authority or a hero. So for example, let's just say, you know, they are a digital nomad and they've been a lot of places. I'll ask a question like, you know, what do you recommend for somebody who's never been to Vietnam for the first time, they get to look like an authority and Here in front of the audience, so they're definitely going to respond. Instagram sees that as engagement.

And if that person has a big following, well, that's somebody who Instagram recognizes as an authority figure, and they're responding to you. And when you do that again and again every day, it starts to show your posts to more people, your organic reach starts to increase. That's really for Instagram. When it comes to you know, the most amount of people seeing your content. A shout out Gary Vee LinkedIn makes a difference. My post how my life changed after quitting my nine to five, that got something like 80 comments, 2000 3000 views a hell of engagement. And I just posted it on my personal LinkedIn. So if it works for your audience, LinkedIn makes sense. I probably wouldn't post it to your personal page if it's not completely relevant. So if I had you know, like veganism as a food page, I would create that as a company page on Instagram and post there, but the organic reach is absolutely amazing in LinkedIn, So try to differentiate yourself and try some of these tips on Instagram. And I think you're gonna see that it makes a big difference. This next one comes from my lovely sister Jade, who is over in Brisbane, Australia.

36:12

Hi, Skye, thanks for the opportunity to speak on this podcast. The question I had was regarding digital marketing, and I noticed that you've got quite a few followers on your Instagram on I would love to know, what's the best way to grow an organic following on Instagram and get those numbers higher than what you have at the moment. I'd really like some feedback on that.

36:35

I think this comes back to the answer that I just gave to Miriam about Instagram. If we're talking about social media generally, I mean, the first thing is, you have to create value. People are busier than ever, we get thousands upon thousands of messages per day. And we have to ignore most of them to be able to deal with the barrage of you know, stuff that's just incoming, there's too much input. So we have to create it. value. And you know, that is always about empathy. What problems or challenges is that person having in their life? And how can you help them overcome that? So one great, great thing that I learned is called the jobs to be done framework. And it says that people hire a product or a service to get the job done. And we think that it's really complex, all of this business stuff, but there's really only two things people look for when they're figuring out how to get something done. And that is, how do I minimize the time to do it?

And how do I minimize the likelihood of getting something wrong or doing something wrong? So what you need to look at, let's just say in your case, Jade, you're a business coach, and somebody's trying to grow their business, what I would do is I would put content out, that shows them, hey, here's how you can do this in less time. And here's how you can avoid making mistakes when doing this. And you know, that can come into many, many different topics. And that's for you to figure out what resonates with your audience. Some of the tips I gave earlier in this episode, about finding out what resonates with the audience will make sense. But then really is about minimizing the time minimizing the likelihood. The other thing with growing your social account is that you have to post consistently.

So I was lucky on my personal. I had a social media team working for me, who did that every day they connected with people, they would comment and post for me because we were trying to build my personal brand at that point. Now I actually run my personal account myself now and free the wage slave. I'm growing myself, so it's a little bit slower. But here's what I would tell you about growing a social account, there's probably two things that I would recommend. So the first thing is you need to establish a baseline of followers or likes as quickly as possible. When we come to a page and we see that not many people like it, we just assume that it's not very good and we move on. So in Facebook, you can boost a post and you set the objective to page likes. I did an ad probably about a month ago. I spent only about $17. And I got 1500 likes in five days. Now people come to my page, they like it because they can see that other people like it is social proof. We are herd animals still to a large degree. In Instagram, you could do the same thing where you run an ad. And again, I did about $10 and got a good amount of new followers, I think about 40 new followers in three or four days. And the objective of Instagram is profile views. So when you do that, you build your baseline.

Now, it's important that your, you know page creates value for people that it looks good. There's helpful content that's rooted in empathy. So that when they come, you know, they see good stuff, and they're more likely to follow you. But really, those two things just you know, build a like campaign or a follow up campaign to seed your audience is how I would call it you're planting seeds. The second thing I would tell you, is to collaborate with people who already have bigger audiences than you. So how do you do that? Well in the UK Here's an example. There's a page called made you think 101 shout out made you think. And they've got about 90,000 followers. Now back when they had about 30, or 40,000. I just started to comment on their posts. And I did it in a way where I would forward the conversation. So when somebody has an account with a lot of followers, or any account, what they want is engagement, because that looks good to Instagram and it helps grow their account.

So I create engagement by asking questions that other people will jump in and answer. And by asking questions in a way that makes the account owner look like a hero or an authority, they love that. I would also dm them with recommendations he'd post you know, I'm looking for someone who can do this or books and I'd be the first person in there. Dude, go there, do this. check this book out. This is going to help here's some links complete value creation never asked him for a thing in return. And it was just genuine giving in all honesty, it wasn't part of some cynical strategy to get something back When you give just for the sake of giving the world has a wonderful way of giving back to you. So the big turning point, we've made you think one on one and that account is he posted asking, does anybody know where I can get healthy meals? And what I did was I called Miko RG a good friend of mine who has a question in this episode, actually. And he had a meal delivery business doing kind of fitness meals. And I called him and said, Look, there's a guy I know he's got a page with 40,000 followers. If you provide meals to him, he'll give you free promo. Mike said, Yeah, I'm down for it. So then I messaged made you think, and said to him, Look, I've got a guy, I get my meals from him. He's a good dude. He's gonna deliver them. And he'll give them to you every week.

Just give him some promo. And they did that and that went on for some time. So I created value in both their lives by getting one of them free advertising and the other one free meals. And I didn't ask for anything in return. What happened was made you think constantly would go to my account, pick up a post posted Feel free to his audience. And he do that regularly without me asking other people we're paying for promo at this point five $600 per post. I was getting that for free. So his entire audience, we're now seeing me as an authority in some regards, because it wasn't just like a promo post where he posts said he doesn't really say much. He'd really kind of add some stuff into the caption to show that he respected me in a way. And that made a big difference. They got a lot of followers and some of them are listening to this episode now because of that. So find people you can collaborate with, and add value and try and add value offline in the real world, not just online. This podcast is another example of that. The people that I interview become big fans of my account, and they repost everything and share everything. So just remember his digital business happens person to person in the real world.

So use technology use those tools connect with people add value. You know when I do an episode of a podcast with somebody I'm making them look important and making them look like an authority. I'm giving them content, they can repost and they can reuse, I'm solving a big problem for those people. And in return, they feel gratitude, that law of reciprocity, they want to reciprocate for the love that I've shown them. And they do that in a way that just helps me achieve what I want to do. In short, when you help people do and get what they want, they'll help you get what you want. That's really what it's about. So let's just take things back to a non digital approach and just start being good humans and collaborating and sharing and showing love. So the next question, just absolutely made me laugh.

So it comes from my friend, Sam Baldwin over in London. And the first question I am not going to read out on this podcast because I will get banned by iTunes and Spotify, but it was basically called growth speed. And his question was, I would like to know how you managed in such a short space of time to go from a massive Not saying that word to an EVA bigger not saying that word. Well, Sam, I'm not gonna answer that question. I think you know the answer to that one, and I've been called worse. But Sam's follow up question is one that you'll probably be interested in, which was, I'm giving a few things ago that could top up my wages, maybe an extra four to 500 pounds a month. But I struggle to get things fully up and running along with a day job. So the short message and his tough love Sam is prioritize. I know it's hard when you work long hours, and I know you've got kids, but it is possible. The biggest thing I would say is check the screen time app on your phone, you're probably going to find that you're spending four to five hours a day on social media. Use that time for something more positive.

Our default response whenever we stand in line for a minute, or we have a moment or we go to the bathroom, is to pull out that phone and consume rather than create we waste time. So what I would tell you is use those 15 minute blocks. And string them together. So here's how you do that you make a list of what needs to get done. So let's just say that it's a single two hour task, you break that down on paper into eight blocks, and each block is 15 minutes only. And you focus only on the next block. So when you have 15 minutes, you know, okay, all I need to do is focus on 15 minutes, this is what I need to get done in that block.

Maybe it's you need to go online and research, you know, a provider of something, who you can collaborate with, that's done is easy, it's simple. So breaking down those tasks, it just means that even if you don't get to win the day, you go to sleep every night, knowing that you've kind of moved forward on that. And there'll be days when you know, the kids are asleep, and you get a long block of time to do stuff. And there'll be other days where you only get 15 minutes in the bathroom, but whatever it is, and however it happens, make them count. The next question comes from Curtis at karateka 88 on Instagram and he's from London and he asks any productive He tips IE how to get more high quality things done in less time PS, Happy 35th birthday. Thank you, Curtis, I appreciate it. Okay, first thing here is you need to get a book called the 8020 rule by Richard Koch. And that book is about the Pareto principle. Wilfred parado, was an Italian economist during the Renaissance, I think something like the 15th century. And he basically looked at the wealth and asked, why is it distributed disproportionately, why the 20% of the people have 80% of the wealth. And what he found is that there's an 8020 rule across everything in your life. 20% of the activities you do generate 80% of the results or the cash 80% of the pain and frustration in your life comes from 20% of the inputs.

So you analyze your time and whatever the thing is, you want to optimize, and you find the 8020 and then you figure out, Okay, what are the good 20% that give me the thing I Want, and you double down on those. And then you look at what is the 80% of stuff I'm doing that's not producing any value. And you eliminate delegate automate, whatever that stuff is. Now beyond that, okay, here's the things that I do every day to get more high quality things done in less time. Number one, I control my phone. I call the phone, the distraction device. Those notifications will kill you. Those notifications, switch them off, put the phone on silent, take the badges off. A lot of what I'm going to tell you right now is in a blog post on my site free the wage life.com forward slash make hyphen, life hyphen easier. And there's 49 one minute hacks and a lot of them cover this productivity stuff that I'm going to talk about. So go there and check it out. Especially there's a guide in there about how to take control of your phone so it serves you instead of us serving your phone. We want to avoid the phone distracting us and taking our focus away and instead the phone but Something that we use as a tool. So number one, I control the phone. And it could be as easy as put it on silent and just flip it facedown or put it in a drawer or in another room. When you do that, you actually find that you have a lot more time than you thought, and you don't feel as rushed. And that creates space to do those high quality things. Second tip is research inbox zero.

And that is the process of deleting or archiving everything in all of your inboxes every single day. So the first thing I do in the morning is I go to my inboxes and I clear everything I delete what's not needed. And I put on my to do list the things that I need to do. I actually store the emails in a folder if I need to come back to them for some of those tasks. But just knowing the inboxes in zero means I don't start my day with overwhelmed. I start with maybe 50 emails, I probably delete 35 to 40 of them. And then I've got my 10 that I put on my to do list or I do a quick reply to and I do That probably about two to three times a day. Definitely in the morning is the first thing. So I gather all the stuff that came overnight, and I get clear on, you know what I have to do. And I do it at nighttime, just so the morning burden is a little bit less. But I gather on a schedule at the same time every day. And then I closed those emails and I do not go back to those inboxes I don't have notifications popping up. I don't check those inboxes during the day, I gather in the morning, I prioritize and then I set my day with what I need to get done. And I do not allow the inbox to control my life.

Here's the thing about the inbox. If you're constantly checking your inbox, you are prioritizing everybody else's To Do List over your own. You are prioritizing and making more important their stuff than your stuff. And it's a prime cause where your life can be stuck where it is. So gather it, check it shut it down. Once you've gathered and you've got everything done, then it is about prioritizing Use the paste strategy that I mentioned earlier in the podcast, procrastinate, automate, concentrate, eliminate delegate. And once I've done that, and I've gathered everything I then look at what are my seven things that I'm going to get done today, just seven any more than they're, they're probably not working on things that are chunky enough or important enough. And of those seven, I choose one, which is my most important task that goes on my calendar. And I blocked out two or three hours and I do nothing else until that is done is called eating the frog, you get the biggest and baddest goal done first in the day. So by not having distractions, I create the space for that by gathering everything from my inbox. I feel like I'm in control that I've gathered it and it's all on my list.

So I don't have this anxiety by prioritizing. I know I'm working on the thing that I need to most and those seven things, I timebox them on my calendar. So that means in my Google Calendar, I actually block out three hours And then one hour for the task two and then two hours for task three. So it feels my calendar. And time boxing again is in that guide free the wage slave comm slash make hyphen life hyphen easier. timeboxing literally changed my life. And it means that I can look back on my calendar a year ago and see exactly how I spent my day. That is also a very useful retrospective tool.

The last thing I tell you Curtis is control your physical space. So we've controlled our digital space, our phone and our inbox we've prioritized and time box to control our time. The last thing is control your environment is just critical. This is going to come down to where you work best. If I'm writing and doing creative projects, then I like to be in a busy Starbucks but with my headphones on and I can just hammer out content. When I'm actually working. I need to be in my home in silence both audio silence and visual silence I can't have too much going on around me I get distracted. So choose the physical space that really allows you to be creative For you to focus, I hope that helps. The next question comes from my friend Michael RG based over in London, Mike, somebody that I've mentored for a number of years, we've done some business together. He's a good guy, and he's the guy with the fitness meals company that I was talking about earlier in the episode. So let's get into Mike's question.

What would you say three skills any entrepreneur should learn before starting their own business? And how those skills helps you get to where you are today? That's a really great question. And I think this actually applies in life generally, not just business. I think business just reflects life. Mike, what I would tell you is empathy is the greatest skill, understanding what that person is trying to achieve, and figuring out how you can help them do it. And in a way where your intention is actually pure, you're not doing it to get something back. It's not about the money. It's not about the deal. It's about that person because you actually want to contribute to their life. That is the biggest difference. Every single piece of business I've ever done, has gone beyond that initial deal. Because of that intention in that seed.

For example, when I freelance on Upwork, every now and again, I really only do it to get new projects. And what will happen is, I know my hourly rate is quite high for, you know what that market offers. So a client will come along, and I will do things in a way that's so fast that it saves the money, they will tell me, Hey, can you do this? And I'll say, look, it's actually better if you get somebody on 15 bucks to do that, and you let me do the strategic stuff. That kind of stuff costs me money in the short term, but they're so appreciative, that, you know, I did that and it demonstrates that I do have their best interests at heart.

And what that means is they're then just they're kind of taken aback and they then want to work with me long term. I get testimonials. I get case studies. I get long term projects. So everything really just starts to work because where I started from was not Using that person was not looking at that person as a deal, or seeing dollar signs, but actually seeing them as a person, taking the time to understand what they need, and figuring out how to give it to them. That is really the secret of life, relationships business. So empathy is absolutely the most important thing. The second thing I would tell you, is your ability to listen. And everyone skips over this one and just thinks, well, I'm a good listener. And actually, we're usually not. And, you know, I've really, really learned this in my 15 months in Dubai, working with energy at register energy. He really showed me that our listening skills are so stupid. There are seven deadly filters of listening as he calls them. One of them is I already know where you think you already know what that person is going to tell you. So your mind is switched off and you're actually thinking about something else.

Another one is you're judging, as they're giving you the information, you're putting it into a good and bad bucket. So you're processing in that Moment rather than being present and listening to that person. There's the already always, I always already know what this person is talking about. So what I found incredibly helpful was to just be completely focused and present on that person. And just listen and absorb and take in. Don't be in my head thinking about what I'm going to say next. Don't be, you know, judging. Just listen, and you've actually learned so much. And some of the phrases that make a really big difference in the amount of information you get. One of them that I love is say more. People love that they love being invited to share their opinion. That's why people like coming onto the podcast. So they will say something and I'll go, that's interesting, say more or Tell me more. And they will just expand upon that and you get so much more information. And that knowledge really is power when you know a lot more about what they're trying to achieve. It really really helps you understand things From a deeper perspective, the other things that I do in terms of listening, is I operate across the five areas what who, when, why, how? So I'll ask, you know, why are you doing this? And that uncovers the emotional reason, which is a huge driver for everything.

They'll then tell you the logical reason anyway. But usually most people do things for emotional reasons and they rationalize them with logic. They rationalize with logic so they can go home and tell their wife or husband. Yeah, I bought because it was a really good deal. Not Oh, my God, that kitchen is so cute. I want it. So you have to give them the logic to go with the emotional reason it validates them making a choice to work with you or buy from you. Especially when your price is higher than what is you know, what are you trying to do? And what is a case of you know, where are you? Where are you trying to get to? That's really all that is. Who is Who do you have on your team? Who needs to work on this? Who needs to sign this off? Who do I need to work with? For you who pays the bill? Who do I send the invoice To there's a whole range of questions that come off the who branch, when? When does it need to happen? When do you need the proposal by when is the first deadline? When are you going to pay the invoice? And how, how are we going to do it? And that's really about that gap between where are we now? And where are you trying to get to? And that's the how. So just in listening, say more, and who, when, what, why, how, and asking questions on those five branches. They just do wonders, because that person is so used to people coming in and trying to pitch them and sell them and talk too much, when actually what we need to do is come in with empathy, and listen and ask questions around those five things.

I swear to you and you won't believe this may be when you go in and you do 10% of the talking and let them do 90% when you leave, they're going to say I really like that guy. You know, I feel like he really gets me and he understands when all of the competition go in there and they do all the talking and they're trying to impress and it's all about them and they're trying to sell it Got no hope. So that's how you differentiate yourself also in a crowded market is by actually caring the most.

The next question is from my good good friend, michealhoaddirector on Instagram. This dude is probably the coolest person that I know. He was a client of mine back in 2016, in the original version of my marketing agency, and I actually took him to an evening talk of Dr. Demartini. Another prime example of how just giving you know actually changes people's lives and your relationships with them. Mike was a personal trainer back then, and he still is.

But what he realized is that film and martial arts was important to him. And he's just embarked on this career of going from nothing to I'm going to be a martial arts, film star, and director and script writer screenwriter, all that stuff. He's a complete superstar. Go to his Instagram, check out the picture of him holding a gun to Sir Anthony Hopkins head. If you've seen Westworld you've seen Silence of the Lambs. He held a gun to Hannibal's head. Yo, that's impressive. Shit. Let's get Mike's question. What social media platform is best for finding high net worth investors? So for the context of this question, Mike is a movie maker and movies take a lot of money to do properly, sometimes hundreds of thousands, even multi millions, billions of dollars. So Mike is looking for investors to fund his movie productions. So Mike, I will tell you that it's probably going to be LinkedIn. The people who are on LinkedIn are serious business people, I would recommend that you are on there socially. But posting on there and hoping they're going to find you is probably not going to do the job. What I would tell you is this, get a LinkedIn Sales Navigator account, you can get a 30 day trial for free, and you can actually send messages directly into their inboxes. Now there are ways to do that. And I don't really have time right now to dig into that. That's a whole episode on its own.

But what you can do is message them In a way that builds value and establishes a relationship similar to what I've talked about earlier in this episode for the other platforms. The other really cool thing about LinkedIn and the Sales Navigator account is the search feature. You can search for people whose companies do a certain amount of revenue, a certain number of employees that they have, and the industries their job title. So you can even put in there, you know, investor, film industry company a certain size, doing a certain amount of revenue, and you're going to figure out who your people are. And it's really about narrowing down to those key people, and then hitting them up again and again, building value over time. There's a great book called the referral of a lifetime, that talks about, you know, establishing, I think it's 200 people and just building relationships and nurturing them over time. And if you do that, well, you know, they know so many other people that they can connect you with. I wouldn't even go with 200 my god identify your top 20 and just start building a relationship and creating For those 20 it's really about lasering, you know, down to those key people that are going to be pivotal in your career. We cannot boil the ocean, but we can boil a cup of tea, right? So focus on those people use LinkedIn, show up, create value for them.

And I think what you'll find is your relationships will start to just kind of blossom from there. What I would also tell you, in terms of business where I met, the most high net worth people is in two places, and it's by putting myself in the right environment. I had a mentor back in 2010. And he'd sold his company for $28 million at 28 years old. And because of my connection with him, he invited me to events, and I met Oliver Rothschild, I met a number of people who you know, they have the private jets, they're investors in companies, etc. And I haven't ever taken investment in a company. It's not something that I plan to do. I like the idea of using my own money because I think I spend it more wisely. But I get that for some projects and businesses that's necessary.

So just one connection of having that mentor opened doors for me to get in the room with other people. And the other thing that happened for me is when I went to work in Dubai, I went from just kind of being a normal dude running a business to being around billionaires and people on the Forbes list. And, you know, people with yachts in Dubai Marina, they drive Ferraris. And you know, that stuff doesn't really impress me. I'm not into that stuff that much. Yeah, hundred percent. I'd like a yacht and a Ferrari. Thank you. But, you know, it's not really the the prime motive. But I, you know, went to Dubai and I started working with Rajesh in his co business growth program. And as a result, you know, I was in a mastermind with some of the finest CEOs in Dubai and my profile was raised. I worked with many of them then and now as clients, and that made a big difference. So figure out how to get in the room. And you're probably going to get joy actually in the offline. Rather than online, it's not really where you are is who you know, to a large degree. I hope that helps Mike. Okay, follow up question two from my sister. Let's get into it.

1:03:12

Hi, Skye. The second question that I had also regarding Instagram was hashtags. I think I'm just about starting to get my head around them a bit. But I don't think I really have a full understanding of how they work and the best way to use them for your digital marketing for your business. So if you could give any insights on hashtags, that would be great. Thank you.

1:03:33

hashtags, hashtags, hashtags, okay. There's a lot to talk about in this one, but we'll make it quick. So the first thing is the hashtags. Where do you put them? Well, it doesn't make a difference if you put them in your actual post description, or as the first comment that comes down to preference. What I will tell you is if you do put them in your post description, use a tool like Insta space to create space in your caption. Nobody wants to read a big book. block of text there's bunched up and then you know, a ton of hashtags. In terms of the hashtags you use, the game has kind of changed quite recently on this. So here's what you need to know. Instagram is able to know what the content of a picture is. And if your hashtags are not relevant to that picture, it will reduce the number of people who see your post, if you post a picture of avocado toast, and your hashtag is something like you know, digital nomad travel, there's a disconnect is not congruent. So Instagram wants you to be a good community member. So use hashtags that actually represent what is in the picture that makes a big big difference. Now you can still have branded hashtag so in your case, Jade #suitedtobusiness in my case, #freethewageslave.

That's totally fine. But the priority here is really make sure your hashtags represent the picture. Do not use the same 30 hashtags are 10 hashtags on every post. Figure out which ones you want in all of your posts and I recommend that's just Two to three, and then use individual hashtags for each post. Now in terms of the hashtags, why do we use hashtags? The reason is on Instagram, not only can we follow accounts, we can also follow hashtags. So for example, for me, I want to follow hashtag quit nine to five, so I can see all the content being created, you know, for that specific topic. And when you go to the Explore page on Instagram, it's the one with the little magnifying glass, you can type in a hashtag. And if you looked at, for example, digital nomad, you're going to see that that explore page is going to show you the top nine posts, and then the most recent nine posts. The goal is to get into the top nine posts for their hashtag. That is like Google, when you want to get into position one for when somebody searches for digital nomad on Google. You want to show up on page one as close to the top.

It works like that. You want to show up for that hashtag as close to the top. People go and search For that hashtag and they look at those top posts a lot. So if you show up there a lot more people are going to discover your account. So the question then becomes, how do I show up there? Well, I recommend we do it in two ways. One, I always want to be showing up in the most recent. So for #quit9to5, nearly all of my posts include the hashtag. So I show up in the most recent, nearly all of the time, if somebody goes in there and checks me out. The top posts, how you appear there really comes down to the competition, when you search for that hashtag and Instagram is going to tell you how many people follow that hashtag. If it's 2 million people, the chance of your post out of 2 million, you know, people following the hashtag and all of those posts created for it, the chances of your post showing up at the top is really, really low. So we want to have a blend of hashtags that we use that have a lot of people following them and not too many.

If your account has under 10,000 followers, you want to be using hashtags that have less than 100,000 people following them, okay, you can throw in some high value or high volume hashtags, you know, in the millions and stuff, but I wouldn't really be posting any hashtags that have more than a million people following them. Listen, I don't care how good your picture is, you are not showing up in the top 10 for hashtag travel, it just ain't happening. I'm sorry. So, you know, when you're under 10,000, keep that low to mid range of under 100,000. And I would probably go from about 30,000 to 100,000 followers per hashtag when my account is under 10,000. Okay, if you need help with that, there's a really cool tool you can use is called flick. It is a premium tool, but you can get a trial for free. You go there and you put in your hashtag, let's just say it's, you know, barley, and it's going to show you his the hashtags with a good amount of followers and low competition. And that's the key thing. When there's low competition and a good amount of followers. You're going to get seen by a lot of people and you're probably going to appear in those top posts. So that is the goal of hashtags on Instagram.

1:08:04

Okay, on to the next question. It's another one from Mike, how do you what would you say are the most common mistakes you see businesses make when advertising on Facebook and Instagram? All right, Mike. So the most common mistakes that businesses make when the advertising on Facebook is a couple of things. It's a big topic. But mostly they try and convert cold traffic right out the gate. So that doesn't mean much. So let me explain that cold traffic is a stranger, somebody that doesn't know you, they don't like you. They don't trust you. They've never heard from you or have you and you're trying to get them to buy something immediately.

This is the business equivalent of walking up to a girl on the street and asking her to marry you. It just doesn't work like that buddy. And I don't recommend you try. Okay. How we need to do instead is we imagine we're a party. So what happens a party is you meet somebody. And the first thing is maybe you overhear something that they say and you'll step in and be like, Oh, you Interested in personal development to if you've seen the new book from Tony Robbins, and that's something they care about. So they're gonna like jump in, talk to you and engage with you. And that's the first thing we want people to engage with us, right? So the first step is awareness, which is getting their attention. And step two is getting them to engage. So the way that we do that in Facebook typically is not running an ad and trying to get someone to buy immediately. What I do in my business, and I really recommend that I do for my clients is I boost the post a boosted post is cheaper than running an ad, I create a really great piece of content, and I boost the post. And so many people see that and I target the people obviously, that you know, match who I want to influence and interact with. And they see that piece of content and they give it a like they comment or whatever they do with the post.

What then happens is I have another campaign, which is for warm audience. So originally they were cold. They saw the boosted posts, they at least know who I am. So I then retarget those people with another three or four posts that are again, just more content. And I'm warming them up, they're starting to know who I am engaged with me, that is going to be more pieces of content. In a business context, it would be testimonials and case studies and videos and my clients saying how great it was, you know, working with me. And they're really starting to know me like me, and trust me by this point. At this point, what I'd probably do is offer them something where I need their email address in return is that building the listing.

So it could be like, Hey, give me your email address, and I'll send you my template for writing a winning proposal on Upwork. I just made it up as an example. for them. It's an email address, but they get something of huge value. Then when I have that email address, I, you know, can follow up with them and retarget them through email. But what I typically do is I also keep running ads to those people who are now warm, and it's only at that point do I ask them for something where I ask a book or consultation, maybe purchase a product Maybe sign up on my site, join my subscription box, whatever that thing is. So there's three steps we've gone from, you know, cold to warm to hot, from stranger to friend to lover, if you're using that context, okay? Don't walk up to strangers and try and get them to marry you is just weird. And if you want to know more about that, there's a book called The 12 stages of intimacy by Desmond Morris and anthropologist, and he basically studied how mammals and humans and the animal kingdom bond and build relationships. And he found that there are 12 stages.

And if you jump more than two stages, the other person feels violated and runs away. This is why when the phone rings and someone's you know, trying to sell us a new T Mobile cell phone contract, we can't wait to get off that phone as quickly as possible. So you know, don't try and go for the kill, don't try and go for the sale first, yet again, it comes back to empathy, creating value, and you know, giving giving, giving Before you Ask Gary Vaynerchuk calls it Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. And that's really, really what it's about. So that's what I would tell you is the biggest mistake. So the next one comes from Jay Nagjee, @jaynagjee on Instagram. This guy is my little brother. I consider him my little brother. And you know, we worked in Dubai together.

I worked in his dad's company, he interned with us, we went to India every month, six or seven times in a row. And he is one of the smartest and most intelligent and talented people that have the pleasure to know. He's just turned 20. And He's scary, talented. his life's mission is film. But he also wants to create the world's greatest hamburger, the world's greatest chocolate mousse. He's a poet, a writer, filmmaker, videographer, and a film student at Boston, in the university in Boston. I can't remember the name right now, but it will come back to me and yeah, Jay, he's just a really, really talented guy. And I recommend everybody goes and follows him @Jaynagjee on Instagram. All right, let's get Jay's question. Hey Skye, how's it going? A little bit of context? Before my question, I want to start freelancing and helping companies grow through film.

1:13:12

So making advertising or corporate videos, and I've done that in the past, and I've always done it through, you know, people in my own circles, so my clients have always been people I know. And my question is, what are the different assets I would require? And what are the different steps I need to take to get myself out there and start getting clients that are outside of my network and around the world as well, so that I could, you know, remotely work anywhere the same way you are. So you know, you have a lot of experience in that field. And I really like what you're doing here, man, so keep it up. I mean, no, chill.

1:13:52

All right, Jay. So thank you very much. Firstly, for the kind words, what I would tell you is the assets that you need are the things that you're The audience or the people who are checking you out, are going to interact with. Number one, you're creative, you're into video studio stuff is going to be a portfolio. So I would spend the first few months just working on awesome projects and creating things that are, you know, great. You can do them for yourself. What I would also do is I would approach businesses who need video, okay? And I would do it for free in return for case study and testimonials. And I would select the businesses who are going to be well known. So people have heard of that brand.

So it might not be Wendy's restaurant, but it could be a branch of Wendy's like for example, I've done a campaign for the Hilton Hampton Hilton in downtown Phoenix, that's just one specific franchise. But on my portfolio, I can say, you know, I've done work for Hampton Hilton, which is true. You know, it's very clear that it is a franchise, but having that brand, being somebody that trusts you to do their work. That makes a big difference. So look at the businesses who you can leverage their credibility. Okay, there are certain businesses who have credibility. And when you do work for them, it's worth doing it for free to build an impressive portfolio and an impressive resume. So building the portfolio is first. Secondly, you're going to need a website that looks great, because you're in the visual space, it absolutely needs to work on mobile 80% of web traffic plus is mobile, and it's only going to get more.

So I see a lot of websites I go to the desktop version looks good. I go to mobile, and it's all screwed up. And that's a fundamental mistake that you can't come back from. So make sure that looks good. And, you know, you can just use a template from themeforest or buy a theme from WordPress or even get one for free. But visually things need to be impressive. The next thing I would tell you is those assets being in place. It's really about connecting with people. So the other assets you need are attention assets. One is a group piece of content that you give away for free. That solves a lot of problems, I would recommend you go and look at skyscraper content. It's a strategy, where you figure out what is the best stuff on a topic, and you find a way to top it to make it better.

If the current skyscraper in, you know, videos for business is 10 foot high, you create a piece of content, there's 20 foot high, you go beyond and further and deeper than anybody ever has before, you'll start getting attention. Once that piece of content is done, I would be boosting it in Facebook. And I would boost it in a way that only people who are potential clients are going to see that. So they see a piece of content. That is you solving a problem for them and giving and you happen to be a videographer. And you start building a relationship with them. When they like your post. They like your page, now they start seeing you in their feed.

So it's really about as every answer in this podcast, create value for other people and then push that out and get you know people aware of it. Then, you know, once they're aware of it, just keep feeding them that good stuff. And you can then reach out to people the answer I gave earlier for my code in this episode about reaching out via LinkedIn, that definitely works. And you know, it's really just going to be about everyday doing something. So in Upwork, Miriam and I probably apply for five to 10 jobs a day. So if you look at that over a month, there's 300 310 jobs a month. And I probably get, say, 30 of them that go to a kind of an interview discussion stage, and 10 of them become projects, and we're good. So you know, I know that the numbers are such that we need to be doing something every day to win new projects. So go on to the freelance sites, apply for projects every day. also reach out to businesses to do case studies every day.

Go on to LinkedIn, find the companies in your area and just send them a DM and you know, in the beginning, just do a low cost to get some projects in and as your portfolio grows and your feedback grows, you'll start to be able to come on to higher fee, people will start referring you. And you'll actually get more work from the people that you did the first project for. That's something that always always happens. So don't look at it as one project. Look at it as building a relationship. I hope that helps, Jay.

1:18:17

So the next question comes from Carla Isaac, who's actually my girlfriend, Miriam sister. So Carla asks me, what advice can you give someone that has been trapped in a job for over 10 years wants to quit, but has no clue how to start? Well, Carla, the first thing I would tell you is it starts with you. And you have to understand who you are. So I think it was Socrates, one of the wisest men of all time that said, Know thyself. And for me that comes down Firstly, to discovering your values. A great, great book on this from my mentor, Dr. demartini, is called the values factor. When you understand what's important in your life, you realize that that's the area you need to play in. Where everything becomes easy, where you can produce amazing results without much effort where people will recognize your value and will pay you to help them with that stuff.

Discovering your values is so important. Next, I'd recommend you discover your strengths, weaknesses and skills to great resources 16 personalities calm, my personality type is INTJ if anybody's wondering, and then gallop Strengths Finder, that test is similar to 16 personalities, it figures out what you are good at, for example, for me, I'm a visionary. I am good at breaking complex things down into simple language. So it helps you really understand who you are and what you're good at. So you make sure any endeavor that you embark upon, fits if it doesn't fit, what you're good at and what your values are, is destined to fail. So the first thing is make sure that you're starting in somewhere that you're going to enjoy and that you're good at, and it works with who you are as a person that probably Best thing on that spectrum is wealth dynamics. It is $97 for a test, but it is worth it. My code my client, way back when I gave that to him, I had a free test and I gave it to him. And our relationship went to another level because I created so much value in his life.

Miriam has also done it in wealth dynamics. I'm a creator, and Miriam is a mechanic. So a creator is somebody who's the big picture visionary of where we going, I think Steve Jobs Richard Branson, those type of guys, it means that I'm always going to fail. If I try to manage the details. I need to stay in my lane, and I'm great at starting things. I'm terrible at managing the details. I'm terrible at finishing them. That's why I have project managers.

And that's why you know, working with Miriam's great because she's a mechanic, she's not good at starting things, but she's great at running the system and finishing things. When you know who you are. You know what type of work you can do. I'm really not going to be implementing projects for clients and managing them. A marketing that much. What I'm going to do is figure out what's wrong, create a strategy, kick it off, and then hand it over, that works better for who I am as a person. So knowing yourself, also allows you to then know, alright, if my business does need someone to manage the details, my right hand person needs to be a project manager. And I've hired project managers for that reason. So it's really, really important wealth dynamics is just highly, highly recommended. The next thing is, once you figure out who you are and what you're good at and your lane, it's about the timeline.

So the timeline typically is this, you're in a job that you hate, and your desire and motivation is to move away from it. Secondly, you go beyond that into some kind of freelancing or some other work that you do, where you don't have a boss. It's something you're good at, you can get paid for it, and you can work on your terms. Then what happens is you're in that and it's better than working for a paycheck because you're working for yourself, but you're still not really doing that thing that you're called to do. In this world, it's not your purpose and your mission. And that third thing is your passion project. So while you're working and you're freelancing or your side hustle, whatever it is, you're doing to pay the bills on your terms, you start building that passion project for me, it's free. The wage slave for Miriam is the veganism, SEO Instagram page. And you know, that doesn't monetize. That's your long term legacy project, is the thing that you want to pay you eventually, but you know, it's gonna take a bit of time, but you do it because you love it. So the middle step, going from the job you hate, to doing something else where you don't have a boss anymore. That is where the freedom is found. And getting there quickly, is really, really important.

So how do you get there? Well, you can do a side hustle after work. I would tell you that freelancing is faster and safer than starting a business. You know, 95% of businesses fail within five years. So the chances of you making a success of it first time is probably unlikely. So I wouldn't recommend that I would To some Upwork type work, get onto upwork.com do some initial work, get some reviews under your belt, my first job on Upwork way, way, way back was $100. For 100 articles, they were 250 word articles about rich people's net worth. So there I am trying to leave a relatively well paying, you know insurance job in a fortune 500. And here I am doing $100 for 100 articles a $1 per article, and I'm writing about other rich people's net worth Meanwhile, feeling broke working for $1 an hour, but I did it to get reviews onto my belt, and that made other people more comfortable giving me jobs, when they give you a job, they're taking a risk on you. If I see your profile when you don't have any jobs, I'm probably not going to give you a shot. When I post a job on Upwork for people, I have a minimum that I need them to have worked 100 hours and have a 90% plus success rate because I don't want to be the guy taking a shot on something unproven and most business owners are like that.

What I do that does give people a shot, is you can do trial tasks for free. So one thing I did back then was I would just reply to people and say, hey, look, I'm new on up work, but I'm good. And I'll do a trial task for free. So you can see how we work together. Everyone's gonna say all the best stuff, but you learn how compatible you are from a work perspective, once you actually start working with each other. So trial toss removes the risk for the business owner. And it actually gives you a shot to show what you can do. And, you know, obviously, make sure you can do what the job is. But it really helps kind of break through that barrier. Try not to compete with the Indians and the Filipinos on Upwork. They're always going to be cheaper than you. So don't compete on price. If you do the same work, price yourself higher, and position yourself as here's why it's going to save you time and money to work with me instead. And that can be things like I'm a native English speaker, so the columns are going to be better and 100% responsive.

I'm always online, I'll give you free revisions. I have 100% satisfaction guarantee, hey, Karla, these are things that actually everybody does, but calling it out and specifying that and saying that provides the reassurance that the prospect needs.

So, you know, tell them that stuff in your job application. The quality of application is so vital, it gets you more interviews, which gets you more jobs. So learn about copywriting. focus completely on that person. And how you can add value to them, listen to their job description, show that you listen to it by paraphrasing, and then tell them how you're going to do that and give them some ideas that shows that you're creating value for them before you've even got the job. You're not waiting to get the job. And that's really, really going to change things for you build that side income is probably never going to match the day job income because your hours are limited and with freelancing you probably are selling your hours but you'll get to a point where you When it's possible, and you know, okay, I'm getting enough work.

I'm getting good feedback clients are working with me. I know if I spent my hours on my freelancing, I'd make more money. So that's the steps. There's some things that I would recommend for you. And I hope that helped. And I hope I answered your question.

1:26:19

If you enjoyed this episode, I want to talk to you about voice link.fm. This is a place where you can send me any questions you have, and I'll include the answers to your question on a future episode of the podcast. We're going to be doing a lot more listener q&a. I'll answer questions on business finances, entrepreneurship, marketing, travel, personal development, success, productivity, do I believe in aliens? Is the Illuminati real? Whatever it is that you want to know. I'm going to answer those questions go to voicelink.fm/freethewageslave that's voicelink.fm/freethewageslave