How To Create Content That Connects! Feat. Troy Sandidge @FindTroy

Authentic Leadership podcast. A podcast where we're seeking to lead change, but also seeking to understand we are also here as a platform for leaders to come together to unite, to develop our other leaders in the areas of business, family and community. I'm your host, LaFayette Lane, joined by my co-host John LeBrun. Today we are joined by our special guest, Troy Sandidge. Put those hands together, put those clapping emojis in the comments section. Clap it up for our guy, Troy, who has joined us to have a special conversation of how to create content that connects. A little bit about our special guest. Troy is a B2B growth marketing strategist who's generated over $150 million for entrepreneurs, SMB start ups, enterprises and Fortune 1000, maximizing business profitability by formulating strategy strategies, building systems and developing solutions. And today he has joined us right here on the Unscripted, Authentic Leadership podcast. Troy, thanks for coming on. Thank you all for having me. I just want to say, as some of the best moments leading up to this man, the nurturing the back channel experience, oh, we I feel empowered as a guest on today, so thank you all for the warm welcome. Let's go, man. Yes, sir. Well, listen, man, let's jump right into the conversation. The atmosphere has been set. Let's just jump, right? And Troy, you are a marketing strategy beast, and I love some of the terms that you have coined as a growth evangelist thought that was pretty amazing. And as two guys that I've started a podcast for just over a little year, we know how important content is right and marketing and strategy. We're trying to take it to the next level. As such is our audience and our listeners. And so I just want to start off just in your specialty man. We know that content is is absolutely essential, right? Connecting with your audience engagement is absolutely critical if you want to be successful, especially in the social media on the marketplace. But how does one create content that gets that engagement just personally knowing that sometimes you create content, the engagement is really high and then that one that you think is going to do really well literally flops. And it's like you're trying to gauge what it is, the algorithms and so forth and so forth as CEOs and things like that nature. How can we create content and make sure that we get the engagement that we're looking for? I think that's a great question, and that's a relevant question. Everyone listening, you know it in your soul, your spirit, that man. I really wish my cancer would convert more. I really wish you would drive more leads, more revenue, more views, more watches, whatever the year, KPI or whatever it might be. And I think the first thing it comes down to understanding, you can only control when you can't control. Now this is something I've been battling with as a marketer, professional marketer for twelve years. The classic debate quality versus quantity. Right. And the debate goes, you have to have the best quality. And I always say to an extent, that's great. But if no one knows it exists. No one knows to look for it. It doesn't matter the quality. It's irrelevant. And so it's understanding the relationship of how the bigger picture is. We're creating content to achieve what and understanding that the effort of creating that content is a small piece of a bigger puzzle. We're creating content many times we're thinking we're stuck in awareness mode, and that's just I'm hoping somebody will scroll stop, look. Watch, click, read whatever. And in most cases, that doesn't always work. We have to go beyond awareness. How to create content that gets people to take an action is the key, not just creating content. It doesn't matter anymore. But creating content is the bare minimum for access is like your ticket to even be able to play the game. But now that you've got your tickets in the game, you've got to take action and so is taking your content and figuring out how can I compel someone to take action? Sure, you have the conversation of Am I using the right platform? Am I using the right mediums? Am I talking to the right people? Am I positioning myself in the right way? All of this needs to be kind of established that when you do create that content, you have your checklists and it's like, Do I do? This is like when you walk out your house, what do you say, keys, wallet, phone? And now you've got to say, man, right before you walk out that door, right? The same way with your content, you have to have your checklist and make it make sense. Now that sounds very simple, but a lot of folks don't do it. They create their content haphazardly. I think that's looks good. I think that sounds good. Wait, does your audience think it sounds good? Does your audience think it will land? Now it's a testing phase, but once you know where your audience is, do more of what works, do less and what doesn't work and understand that we don't understand that when it comes to your content. It's a constant evolving optimization thing. So don't take it personal. If you don't go viral, which you shouldn't be thinking that way, if you don't, you know, get it thousands of months of likes, you're amazing. And for validation, I don't mean it in the first ten minutes of posting something, that's not the case. But if you are consistent at longevity game, you know, you can post one piece of content that lands and everybody goes back to the beginning. You take to the beginning the only thing in your Instagram, your Twitter, your YouTube. And now I want to know how do they start? I want to go back to episode one and we're going to be working my way back up. So you never know what my take off is, just being consistent and knowing your audience. Mm-Hmm. So you mentioned the checklist, you know, to get action. I know when this is over, we don't ask this question. Someone's going to say, what about the checklist? Can you give some tips on what that checklist should look like? You know, man, you put me on a spot as, OK, I work with. This is what I do want to get in the weeds. Let's go through the weeds. So one framework, if you know me, you heard me, this is a very classic, but it's true. It's simple to the point you want to apply. Dart the dart marketing methodology. The DH is to be direct. The aim is to be authentic, the AHS to be resourceful and the T is to be tactical. And I'll send all the stuff psionic word about the list. We got it. We got is documented everywhere. And so you might think, well, sure. How does that help me out? The first thing does your content is a direct to me because we create content. We take snippets from audio games, from our pockets, episodes from our videos or we write content short, long form, micro content, macro content , all these different forms. Is it direct? Is it very clear from the jump what it is that it is? Is it a skit? Am I going to learn something? Am I going to get out of the way? You can't go in it with ambiguity in the first five seconds because all you got is five seconds and I'm out of here. I got constant real estate of scrolling. You have to compel me to get my attention. In the best way to do that is being direct coming in. Hey, are I in 30 seconds? I'm going to show you a tip to maximize your content creation? Well, OK, that was four seconds. I know exactly what I expect to get by the enemy committing my time, exchanging of time for watching a piece of content. one thing people don't think about time is the most expensive commodity that you have. We are literally exchanging every touchpoint, every moment, every interaction. Some was exchanging time to consume your content. So your content not only better be of high quality, but about deliver on what you're saying is going to do. And so the best way to do that is be direct. The next thing is be authentic. Now I know it's a buzz word. I know, I know everyone's like, be authentic, be transparent, be yourself. But it's true to extent that I would rather respect someone for being only authentic. I don't mean to authority. I mean, tell your life story when I am saying is common as you are, so we can be relatable. The more human. And the more connection I can deal with you. And in you, the more I'm an investor to stay and listen and actually hear what you have to say. And so the next thing is, be resourceful. Use your cap on budget. You know, maybe you're bootstrapping. You don't have all the technology advancements or the software. Maybe you don't know the greatest thing. Maybe TikTok intimidates you. Just be resourceful in what you know. Be resourceful in who to talk to. Don't you know that if you collaborate with somebody, their audience, that becomes an extension of your audience? Simple things. People just got too much pride and old man to say, let's collaborate on something. And lo and behold, we are we and I like to say this too. There's enough room in the sky for all of us to fly. You just have to ask and make it work. The last thing this is very important be tactical will be tactical. If something's not working, you've got to make some shifts. Sometimes you've got to make a makeshift thing. Everyone is going to tell you what you need to be doing. I'm going to be telling you what you need to be doing, but you have to be tactical and apply what makes sense to your situational awareness to where you are and optimize it accordingly. So dart direct, authentic, resourceful and tactical in the acronym that you just stated that was all fire and that last that to you, that tackle. I think it is synonymous with strategy, right? Having a strategy. one of the things that you emphasize as being a strategy hacker, I was very interested in that. What do you what do you mean by that when you say that your strategy hacker was everyone? That's another bars where we have a strategy. You have to have a strategy for success. But what does that mean when you can't really tap into what strategy that you should really have in trying to make a successful plan for your success? You know, strategy, I've been trying to debunk the myth that it's a set it and forget it, and it's not. Strategy is your piece. And I tell this to you just because you create a strategy. I can't determine how fast you can get to your destination. I can determine what you will face. What I can't promise you is once you have a strategy, you know exactly the line from where you are or a where you're trying to be Part B and no matter what happens, you hit traffic. You got to get off the highway, you get a flat tire, you go hungry, you get tired of driving. You made a wrong turn. It doesn't matter. This is always recalibrating to get you back on track. Hey, you're this far away from this goal? And what does it say? Does say guilty time of arrival? What does it say? Estimated time of arrival and it changes constantly, depending on other variables at play. That relationship and correspondence. Are you driving to your destination? Is strategy and you trust it. Because it's always keeping in alignment is adjusting with you. That's what you need. Not just set it and forget I made a brand guideline. I did an outline, added a projection of what I want to do when to, you know, maybe you know, you talk to your past or your wife or your family, you sat down. This is all the goals and things I want for my New Year's resolutions. And I have a list, y'all. I have a list, but that's not the strategy. That's a checklist. That's not a strategy of taking everything on that list and applying and seeing what makes sense, what seems possible and making it apply in the bigger scheme of things. And then here's my ActionScript for today, for tomorrow, for next week or next month, for the quarter, next quarter and beyond to slow progress, to get to your goal. And so when I say I'm the straight jacket one, I want to just stand out, I'll be really honest. I'm like, It wasn't trademarked. Your boy got a trademark and I hear ya. But that in my mind, I'm a I'm an outlier. I'm a former electrical engineer. I can convert to digital marketing, so I'm a unicorn. I can think analytical thinking and I get back at it with creativity. So I mean, I'm a bad man. I'm bad here and talk to a fault man. And so when I think about strategy hacking. All I really do is take complexity. I eliminated from your business equation, and I make things simple when things are simple, it's easier to understand. And this is why I really want to be a strategy, because people that look like me, they come from, I come from I'm from the British Chicagoland area. You know, a lot of black businesses marginalize businesses, people with lower socioeconomic settings and don't get the same access. And so I love to bring in, eliminate all the stuff and create a simple framework for people to understand. This is what it takes to get to where you want to go. And the more simpler it is, it's a straighter line. And that's easier to maintain all the awkwardness. And so I just decompress all the complexity and makes things simple to understand where things are simple. They can be sustainable, they can be scalable, and they can therefore be successful. Hmm. Yeah. Wow, really good. So I was listening to the first, so the first time I listened to your show, I listened to episode 33, if you haven't. So if anybody's listening is a show called I digress with Troy Sandwich, maybe we can put a link in the show notes and episode three says, Are you a pain reliever or pleasure provider? And I first started listening. I was in the car. Actually, I was coming back from a meeting I had with Lafayette because we have quarterly meetings, it's talk what we're doing. The show had had dinner. All that good stuff. Head back and there's the statement said, Are you Tylenol or chocolate cake? And I sat and I sat there and I had to pause that for me because I wanted to, like, let it kind of me figure it out. first, I went to the next spot and I said, that was a couple months ago. It still resonates. And I think it says so much about what someone's trying to understand, what they're providing to their customer can. You can you like they can take that a little further? No, I appreciate you listening. I know I remember I got the message. I was so happy that sometimes people don't give you the tea bag. That feedback. Y'all know the podcast charges just makes you feel good, you know, like, absolutely, I hit him. Yes, it was so good that it was so, you know, like I said, I like to take things so simple. People know what Tylenol is. They know typically multiple, which actually takes place like and then in the same way with your business, are you relieving that pain or are you just creating their moment of pure bliss and joy? And you can be both. I did talk about how you can fluctuate depending on the seasons and in the sales cycle and whatever the messaging is. But at its core, do they know you more for someone when in time of need? I need you to help me get out of that as a problem solver? Or do I need someone when I just need someone to give me joy and give you that hit a dopamine and pleasure? And so just understanding like where you feel comfortable with and sometimes think about it this way, if you don't like to deal with conflict, you're probably not a Tylenol because you don't want to be a problem solver. That's all it is. You're dealing with conflict constantly stress up to here. Well, I can't go that far. Yes, my rockets going up to here, and if we can't disclose our listeners, there's pictures of me with the rockets in the background. So anyone who hears no pun intended. And so the other thing is that that's not the case for you. That's fine. But then if you love to make people happy, you just love to make empathize with you and connect with them and make them feel good. You're their chocolate cake. So it's just understanding which one are you, the better you. It is that you know that from a strategy perspective, that means I know what my content is. I know what hits my audience right in the heart, and I want to constantly hit at that trigger because that's what they need. That's what they want, and that's what I provide. And so it's understanding. I love to say this what feels like home base to you? Well, he's that home court advantage. Yeah, I'm I'm a library of analogies. That's my thing. I'm sorry. Well, what is your home court advantage? But some people, it's problem solving. Here's a problem I solved. It makes you feel good or they were sad and I brought them joy. It makes them feel good. Both are valid. It's just understanding which will make sense for your concern, for your business and for your infrastructure. And the quicker people can identify that they know when to go to for certain things. So is there a certain amount of time that we've talked about the quality, is there a quantity that's a part of the success formula like I see different content creators, some people post, you know, 56 times a day. Is it is it doing that or is it just doing that solid content that you talked about? That's a great question. A phenomenal question. We can go negative. That could be a whole, you know, ten weeks of episodes and we still get the decision. That's likely to come with the answer, and it gives you that pie, which is constant numbers time. But you know, from my experience and what I've gathered through the years, you know, I like to think of it, the quantity that you need to produce matches, the result you need to get to divided by how much time it takes you to make that content. There's going to be times where you're going to have to sacrifice quality to boost quantity or it needs to be timely. If you're someone who's talking about something very specific on trends or something is happening in real time within the world, within your local region or your industry, what may have you, it actually burns you and hurts you. If you take longer to produce that piece of content, it may hurt you or burn you if you don't produce enough of the content. And so it's understanding that relationship of correlation of time to distribution. Managing a certain level of quality and then does the quantity justify me putting this effort to do so? And so you have to ask yourself, number one, if I'm want to do a certain set number, don't just pull an arbitrary number out some from somewhere just because it makes you feel good just because you saw a book or someone just right now, I'm posting four times a day on Instagram. I still have people telling me, try post seven times on Irish Stories, three times on Instagram, two Reels at one post. Then I'll be sitting deems to everybody, like my post 1010 hours later to give it pop up to the same thing. I apply the same strategy to LinkedIn, and it's just on and on and on and on and on. And it's just like, I'm like, OK, let's simplify this, please. Right? What's the goal? What is the goal? What is possible? What is the maximum amount of content you can create quantity? What is the maximum amount of B-Real and all the variables the kids, the family? The lack of motivation working a nine to five, you know, the games on a night like, what if you've got to put all these variables in? I'm like, OK, I can consistently do two pieces of content a day. Then I ask, you can do it in bulk to take a weekend and just wrap it up for the whole week, racking up for the whole month. Do you have a scheduler that allows you to schedule the content? Now, here's the key thing to talk about quality. Sometimes people miss this one. This a good one. Can that content be duplicated and redistributed in other mediums? When I'm saying take a podcast script, you're pushing it out on YouTube. It's going well on Apple Podcasts. You take a snippet of it now. It's a blog. Like another thing, it's a microblog. Another way you do a Twitter thread, another than you do a very small thing of posts. Series of polls that ties into specific timestamps on the podcast, you take another thing and now it's an e-book. You take another thing. And now it's a video series of highlighting certain things. You take another thing, and now it's an animated series. It can go on and on. That is also just as Google is high quality because now that content can be converted and multiple streams, that also matches your what quantity. So understanding what seems capable, what seems achievable in your day to die, it's all about adding that just up because you won't be consistent, you need to make sure you can hit those numbers. So this is where you shoot low. This is your opportunity to go low and just go the lowest you can and consistently do that. And as things change, evolve and expand. Mm hmm. So would you for anybody who's kind of get relatively new or they've been playing with content for a little while, is there tools that you would recommend they can use to help with that quality? Because we found we would, we would make clips, do things on our own, whether his Adobe or whatever we're using. And along the way, we find little tools required. This really gives us a level up from what we were doing. My biggest thing, excuse me, it comes down to price. I'm really when I talk to anybody, what is your budget? And don't sugarcoat it. Don't try to like you, flex and you'll get half of that. I am trying to know your financial base. I'm just some of the budget to start making this dream a reality. So you can make more money doing what you love to do or if it's a hobby, just to get the vanity of whatever the goal might be. So there's freebie versions, there's medium paid versions, there's high paying and sometimes depending on what you're doing, you know it may change. So let's say you're a podcasting, you're trying to distribute your podcasts in certain ways to get more listeners, get more advertisers, get more supporters, whatever the goal might be, right? And so we're looking at, OK, I need to have a higher quality microphone or OK, I need to now push my content out. So but I don't I don't have the budget. I just paid it for really high quality. Make it worse as my audience on Facebook and Instagram. Cool. But I could create a studio and schedule my content out there. I got paid and so if I create it, I can put it in there and schedule out. And so my Instagram page has my personal account, the personal Facebook account. So all the people who know me through the hometown and church and family can give you them like some because, you know, sometimes you need help me. It goes beyond. Sometimes really that quick don't mean hit and say, we did some cool things like, yes, maybe that podcast episode was amazing, OK? Unscripted leadership was the bombmaker. OK. And then also as you get on set. But yeah, it's an easy way to do it for free. Now we're talking a little bit more pain when you're trying to do multiple spectrums of LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. OK, you might talk about the policies of the world, the buffers, Hootsuite and other platforms like that you may use later if you're trying to get very focused on IG. So is understanding what platform makes sense and what your budget is? That's not really going to determine what options are available to you, then also, what's the learning curve? I don't want to give someone as much as I respect for social. I don't want to just recognizing the sprout social. They don't have the budget for it, and then they don't have the learning curve to learn how to use it. You have all these features that you pay for that you don't use. There's no point of of applying that. So going back to the point because I don't, I'm so I'm being very long winded right here when it comes to the content distribution price matters of what you can do, though, where is your audience and then understand how can you apply that? And if you have the budget, make it make sense. Just don't burn all your budget on ads. I'd rather people focus more on organic content that lays the foundation that ain't going nowhere. You can always get wins from your organic. And then when you're in a better place, apply paid ads in very many ways until you can see it works to amplify your account. But if you go on only on page to get that immediate exposure, but you don't have the organic library of content on your YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, whatever your social platform is to validate you , no one's going to stay. You can bring them to the door, but they've got to stay. They've got to open the door and stay. Hmm. We had had a few comments lately about people asking, Hey, how do you create that or this and who's doing that or are you paying him like, we don't pay anybody, but now we'd start using things like Canva Pro. It's 13 bucks a month. It makes things like amazing. Of course. Can you go keep going for sure. But you know, there's it was just this easy tool that was affordable for anybody. Right? Canva Virgin. Sorry, and I love to add that too, is that, you know, I want to just debunk this myth right now. Well, everyone else is using Canva. It has that Canva. Look, I don't want to use it. Hogwash, because guess what? Most folks don't even know aren't even in the back. You know what you do. You're looking at everyone who knows and identify with the most folk won't even know. And it doesn't even matter if they do know, because if they engage with it and they rock with it and you build your community because of it. Who cares? Do what makes sense in your budget and your range and all your time. What would you say to those content creators who are trying to convert their content to currency? Mm-Hmm. As in NFTs, or I mean, so conversion to get paid from there, to get paid from the content that they are making and distributing, like I always leverage this to start generating income. You can't start with creating the content because the work you have to start with the plan. Who am I attracting? How can I position myself accordingly? So I did this with my wife as a test. She'll appreciate this. I'm sure she'll listen now. So I said, Hey, how about I bet you I can present your Instagram account as a basic hygiene model type of J.C. Penney style, Yonathan. Nothing outside of that of just wholesome stuff and seeing if we can get a sponsor to do a photoshoot with you. And so we should immediately their content in a certain way. And we thought we have to show certain brands so we would take pictures strategically with certain brand placements and our messaging internally will be all about the brand. So now when we're pushing out the content, the brand that we're specifically targeting, those who are seeing the content in their minds are looking at it as its condition. As an ad, they're seeing the potential they're seeing, how this can drive more people to buy the product. And we did all that framing before we even began shooting video photos, whatever, and we brought a package that was a post in the same way. When you're trying to get people to convert with your content, you have to have possession and placement necessary in place already before you even start the shoot before you even create whatever your form of content of choice is that way. You know you're in the right place. You're speaking the right language. You know how long the list needs to be. You know what platform it needs to be on and how it is to be molded, what hashtags emphasize, what wording to do's and look at those who are winning . Empathize that applaud that and positivity what you're already doing. That's going to be essential for success, much better than just throwing something random or hoping someone's going to find the value to pay you five k, ten k 25 K for it. Hmm. All right. So then I heard another episode that I really like, I said I had two that were my favorites. Episode 37 just came out. It was how to build trust currency. Oh wow. That very first statement and I listen to the rest of it because the first statement had me hooked. It said trust is COVID proof. Remember that? Oh, I remember a lot of focus last announced on that one. Yeah. And I was like, This is super interesting in obviously as you can, and you can probably guess that the episode's about go listen to it, but it's talking about building trust with your audience, with your customers and so forth. I had a question and then maybe you can dig into that a little bit. That would be amazing. But to go with that is the question I had when I was listening to. It is is it possible to build trust with someone because you were talking about building trust, even through sales and so forth? How do you build trust with someone when you have very little rapport? Hmm. Great question. That's a great question, and I'll answer it simply this. What does everyone need? They need to feel like they belong and they need to feel connected and they need to feel heard. If you can do those three things. Doesn't matter, you're going to build trust. Now. It might be a little flame. It may be a humungous flame that counts. You can always and blow it and make the flame bigger. You know, in any conversation I have, whether I've never met them before or what have you. You know, and and whether you're an introvert lecturer, Amy, it doesn't matter the process. It's all the same. Everyone's afraid they belong. You know, everyone was there for her and they want to feel supported. They want to have a connection. And so it's just creating the path where that space for that to happen and what do we always do to start off with that no matter what? We ask a question. Yeah. The easiest way to get trust to start having trust is ask a good question. Hmm. Angela, what's your name? You know what? I guess I tell people like what makes you happy? Hey, throws a lot of people, obviously. I think going to ask them, you know, their job, age, occupation, the whole list. What? What makes you happy? And you'll see them light up and you never know this the mystery box. You never know what might happen. But you get them to talk. Now I have earned their trust. Now there's a conversation or space to be have that trust can really formative. But in the same way, let's say we can't technically talk to the client in this moment. I can't. The listeners are hearing me, but they can't specifically respond back, though I feel like they're desperately snapping their fingers or whatever. I imagine it doesn't. We're talking about, yes. But in the same way, you can still insinuate those questions and kind of the rhetorical questions. You can create a visual print, a picture that now they are having a moment with you. And now they trust you. And that's all that needs to get started where no matter the industry narrative, the purpose. You know, we've been talking about social media connectivity and engagement and those things and everyone seems to be busy. You made a post or your Instagram, you said, stop praising being busy. We all did your homework. I love them. I love that. Can you unpack that statement? For sure. I don't know if you wrote, I don't know if I'm ready for it because I'm guilty of it too. You have to stop praising the act of being busy. Being busy is not an answer. Imagine someone is how are you doing living? What are you doing? I'm livid. That's how you sound when you say, Oh, I'm busy. That's not an answer. That is a process. Give us an answer. You're not giving us anything. So we have to unpack busyness. We need to stop associating. And I blame also culture. Busyness is a rite of passage to success that we want. And I'm here to debunk that myth right now. It is not all you young cats, those trying to do the things. Yes, there are seasons that hustle happens. There are moments in life, whether you're religious or not, that you're in a dark place and you got to grind it out and hope for the best. But that is not how you're meant to design, to strive to be successful. You busy. This is not the way, the less busy you are. And the most intense focus you are within target of your actions will reap more benefits of efforts that reach to success that gives you to where you want to be. And so it is a mindset shift. We got to unlearn some things. We got to relearn some things, but busyness honestly slows us down. The hustle is not meant to be that high level on ten on 1100, whatever. All the time we got to slow down. I'm not saying you got to be old enough. I'm just saying sometimes we don't have to always be busy because when you're not focused, you're just on a hamster wheel. That hamster ain't going nowhere. It could have been doing that for ten hours a day. Got two steps. And guess what? It never went anywhere. In the same way, all the time that you say to everybody. How's your business? How's your podcast? Has a video coming? How's that promotion work coming? How's that this? How's that that coming? I'm busy. I'm busy. I'm busy. I dare you to replace that word with a goal that you set for yourself. House is going. I'm shooting to get to 10,000 downloads over the next six months. Right now, I seem to be hitting around two to 3000. But I'm encouraged and I'm going to keep putting in that work. Do that. Do you know how powerful that is? We're saying I'm busy. The extra five to ten seconds of being very clear about your goal reinforces psychologically in your own mind what you need to do when you say you're busy and you keep saying it out loud. Your mind is being trained to think this is where I need to be just constantly in this state of chaotic chaos and a static and everything else versus am I being intentional with every move that I make, my time is not expendable. I have to be very intentional about every second I have on this earth with everything that I do and I try to get too deep. But it's true. That's just the bump from the busyness. And so that's just my thoughts. Hmm. That was firemen. That was really good. Go ahead from guys like me now, don't get let me get hurt. It's someone I don't know who it was equal. They just said that the really successful people don't talk about how busy they are. Hmm. I mean, it's evident that they have busy seasons, obviously, but you don't need to tell everybody how busy you are, just like you don't need. Tell people how successful you are or any of those things they'll know just by how you carry yourself and so forth. And not that your income is 100% of what defines your success. But anyways, so if we're talking about. Creating that message to connect with your customer. If someone is someone is saying, OK, right now, we're kind of in a. Is there any anything unique now that we're in this Koven environment as far as like? I don't know how to describe it, but I feel it feels to me that the seasons are different now as far as connecting with people than they were even a year and a half ago, obviously. Is there anything anything unique to? How we're marketing now, Mike, I keep hearing a lot more about mailing as far as like mailing list marketing. Maybe more because I'm in the in this into the in the space more now, but it seems to me that it seems to be a push bigger than it was a couple of years ago. Get your get your bills, your list bigger, so forth. Is there anything to that? Oh, 100%. I mean, Facebook was done like a month ago. Facebook, Instagram What's that gone? Finito. How many influencers, how many businesses, how many churches, how many non-profits, all of them follow all the groups, all the top with the blue checks , all the folks running Facebook ads, we've got the algorithm figured out gone. They have no way to talk to them. They have no access. They have a validation. The pool checks got everything white off in a moment's notice. You are gone from those platforms. Now what? And if you never took the time to build an email list of those humans, but those individuals are the supporters of those buyers or your customers, of your fans of the community. I was really wanting to ask yourself this, what 99% of them go find you somewhere else? Probably not. No. You'd be lucky to get half. You'll be lucky to get a fourth because guess what? They too lost access to things. You're not priority number one to them. And so it was understanding, I need to have something of my own that I control my own land, that if something happens connected, what's the one thing we all have is an email address. Mm hmm. That's power. Now, if you think we're living in a time where we have five generations working at the same time, 50 email may not be as important, but that was a wake up call for a lot of people, myself included. And I don't care about email. Not that I can't do email. Marketing is not one of my migrations. I like to do all of that, but it was an eye opening that we think social media has to be the way the gateway to channel to the heart of a customer. And that's not the case. It is what it is one of many that we have to communicate to. So building an email list is a very important. There is some validity to that. And I think even now that should tell you that even the more we can't control it all the social media platform shut down. We don't do any sort of email. There's people that email in like ten minutes. They said, Hey, the the Facebook Live, we're doing our Facebook group. It's not what Zoom. Here's the link. And they kept it moving. I miss a beat. OK. Not one bit. They got the money. They got whatever they need to do. They delivered. It was not have been a lot of fun. They was praying to the Lord on the high that lord. Can this turn back on because I need to get my validation? I don't mean my is about money. And so email list is very important. And in the same way, you know, if we think of COVID, what is done during this pandemic and know some people are zoomed out a clubhouse out. You know, I think in regard, I like to have people change and saying all the things I got to do, so other things I get to do, and it's time where a lot of people don't even have the ability to connect and make money through the screen to have that voice being spoken to and her through the screen to connect to other humans through a screen. We get to have conversations at the screen. But I guess what? I got to wear no pads about. I want. I ain't got to pay for gas. I ain't got worry about traffic. I can in ten minutes, put on an outfit, get on a podcast with some amazing men and talk the talk. And then when I'm done, I go right to the fridge, get my wings out and watch the game, y'all. I don't have to go from downtown Chicago, get in my SUV, pay my parking and drive for a good two hours and hope to the lower that there's no traffic, so we have to really reframe ourselves. Look how much we lost. Look how much we gain. Look, how much have we got that? If you imagine now in in-person settings, you know, you might not remember people. So that's a little impersonal. But on Zoom in a little bit of your name, you can work things up and have conversations and throws in another Wow, you really know what I mean ? You really do this. Like, we have to think about the advantages of this instead of woe is me. This is the work in the past. Well, in the past me, it's now and the future is common. Social audio is here. Virtual summits are still here. Now we know we're transitioning back and that was a long winded thing. But I want to bring some clarity understanding here that you're coming in marketing and adjusting. You know, we focus so much on the negativity. But there are people thrive in this environment, right? Mm hmm. And it's just a mindset shift. Instead of what do I got to do, what do I get to do? Hmm. We started our whole show during the pandemic. Literally, literally. I'm like, I need to do something literally. Have you found podcasting to be a great channel for you, for and and for anybody else who's needs to market their business? Moorehouse Podcasting been for that. You know, I tell us when I started this, I told someone, I am not a podcast. I'm no marketer who has a podcast. There's a difference because I saw the podcasts. I didn't think one time to check downloads. I wondered if I created podcasts. Here's what's going to happen. There's so many distribution channels that you can have your podcast into your RSS feed. For those who don't create podcasts, get RSS feed, you submit RSS feed to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the works. So that's the contact you can submit to anyone. So there's lab directors. You can do that along over time. Is going to what fields are SEO? So when people search you on the internet, you're going to rise up higher and search. So I knew if I distributes 137 directories of my podcast, that means I'm using more clusters to give me back those back to my site and validate my efforts of who I am and what I do. So that's an amazing business card to have. Because you put your name in Google, you want to get ten seconds, impress somebody. But what comes up? This podcast gets what you could hear. My voice modalities, my structure, my strategies, how I think it's like five minutes. And so that's how I saw podcasts originally serving from me. Now I turned that into a sales funnel. You know, we all repeat our stuff all the time. You do this research you create on people don't see how much effort we put into these episodes. It's a lot of effort to convert that episode to that saying, Oh, just like you did, Josh. Okay, episode 30 to this episode 37, this and I consider myself strategies. Hey, I have this problem. Go to episode 29. Talks about growth marketing on. If you ready, come back. Have a conversation with me. So now again, quality of the content. I just took this piece of content. They increased my SEO began serving as my sales funnel is serving as a person that's not myself. To convince somebody of my modality is what I'm doing, what I'm about. So it's all the different layers to me and 30, 30 minutes or less. And now you've taken this one piece of content and doing so many of the things with it. But also, I'm a fast talker. I don't like. I love writing, but I'm slow, right? Well, a fast and. So I took all my pockets episodes and I'm making it into a book, taking the snippets out and according to a book, because I can think things out. That's my way. So just understanding how the podcast can work for you now, that's definitely someone coming to podcasts. I want to get 500,000 downloads. You know, I'm looking at Joe Rogan. That's my. So many other things. So how a podcast can be successful for your business? It's good. And personally, it's going to be a better speaker. Do a podcast. You will learn how annoying your policies are. You will learn to love your voice. You will understand the importance of a pause. Yeah. So understanding all that that came from just me doing podcast how to get out the Arms and the eyes. I still work on that man. We have better. We all do. So, yeah, for sure. For sure that T.D. Jakes calls it the pregnant. Paul's the greatest. The greatest words that you can speak is in your Paul's right. You say something powerful. Let that thing marinate. Let him meditate for a second before you start speaking again. Right? Troy, Troy, leave us. Leave our audience with the last fire piece of advice or whatever is on your heart to say a prayer to the press. Let us give y'all credit. I don't think, you know, I don't know if you're upset about credit for what you're doing. You know, I know the listeners are. Appreciate it. I appreciate as the guests keep doing what you're doing. We need it. And so one thing I'd say to leave it with everyone. There are six steps to get you to where you want to be, and that's the clover. That's Clover. I know acronyms, but it's easy to remember the CS for clarity. Be clear about your objective. Write it down. I was in the clubhouse room a few hours ago and I asked everyone to, you know, in 30 seconds or less told me the goal that you have 2022. And I said it and I said, You know what? Next time, do it again a record year. So sign that way until you struggle. You press, you press that and hear your voice. Tell you what your goal is to get you back on track have cleared the next thing else to have leverage. Leverage your talent again. The most expensive commodity that you have. Leverage it, I guess every second matters. Leverage your community, leverage people. Your network that put your family love at your friends. Hey, right now I'm trying to create a series of podcast episodes. I'm on edge, honey. My key is to kind of give me give that to space, gives us all the space, whatever might be leverage people. Hey, I can't afford a mic right now, but what would you imagine? What would you suggest a mike on a budget like? Leverage your time. The next thing is optimization. This is the big one, understand that no matter what you do, it may not always work. And nine times out of ten, it won't work the first time. So you're always going to be optimizing and making modifications accordingly. Next, vision and value, that's for the Z. It wants him declared a vision. Clarity is writing it down. Vision is manifest in your mind. I see it. I see what success looks like. I dream about it. I know what it says feels like for me. Then in the other part of the V is value about someone. Give them that. Give value. Yes, give. I would make sure you're getting enough value back because value isn't a whale. You're in limited supply and you need to make sure that your audience, the people you surround yourself with who support you, are giving you value back . Because we're human. We need support. You need encouragement, we need motivation. We can't do this all about us. No matter how bad you want to be, you can do it all by yourself. God is honored to have another human to always open the door to help. There's always someone else who's going to pay you invest in you fun. You give you access to whatever it is that you're trying to get to right and you can build this amazing podcast. We and got all these letters. Now we get to execute. It don't matter. You can listen to all the podcasts, all the Gear VR, you are all the great car, don't you won't. You could be going to Bible class if you're reading the Bible, but you could do all these things. Yoga, Jim, all that stuff you'd be like regardless of if you don't execute. Nothing can. Nothing will ever be the lesson. We can do all these things. We got to get results. We got to see results. We got to hit goals. We got to hit numbers. We got to hit our milestones to show that we're on the right track for success. Again, clover clarity. Leverage optimization. Vision and value execution. And a result, you apply Clover to your business, your clothing, your life. They will help you get to where you need to be more efficiently or effectively. You'll achieve your success. Listen, we don't want you to stop here. Stay connected with Troy. We want you to stay connected beyond what all these social media platforms, you can find him and find Troy. Also, you can go to his website, Grow with Troy dot com. You heard us mention the podcast. We want you to check out Troy Partners. I digress. Not everything that's available on streaming platforms. He's doing amazing things. Stay connected here with us unscripted, unscripted leadership on all social media platforms. Check on our website, unscripted-leadership.com. Of course, check out our podcast is available on all streaming platforms. Troy, again, let me say thank you. May. Becoming a being an amazing guest,having this amazing conversation. I'm not going to call you a guest, I call you brother. That chemistry that you brought. Just as a natural conversation. Thank you for having this amazing conversation on how to create content. As always, we pray that you be the leader that God has called you to be. As always, we're here to build bridges and not walls. Bridges connect and walls divide. Until next time, God bless.