How To Create Content That Will Level Up Your Business! Feat. 'The King Of Content ' Dontell Antonio

Welcome to the Unscripted Authentic Leadership Podcast, a podcast we're seeking to lead change while also seeking to understand. We are also a platform for leaders to come together to unite to develop and empower other leaders in the areas of business, family and community. I am your host, Lafayette Lane Drive, about co-host John LeBrun. Today we are joined by our special guest The King of Content. Dontell Antonio, put those hands together. Put clap emoji's in the comments section. Don so has joined us to have the amazing conversation about creating content to level up your business. Just a little bit about Don, tell Don Taylor. Antonio is the king of content. He's also the founder of Composite Media He's been featured in Forbes, HuffPost, Fox News, BuzzFeed, NBC and Yahoo! Finance DonTell makes it his mission to help people grow and expand their brand and business with the use of content. Today, he has join us right here on the Unscripted, Authentic Leadership podcast, Don Taylor. Thank you for coming on and I appreciate how that was really, really good. Appreciate you, man. Let's get right to the content that we've been following you. I know John's been following Instagram. I've been following on Instagram, and you are just a fireball. I love it. You're very intense. And I like it because your attitude comes across as no excuses. And that's something that we. Yeah, yeah. Like that's something that we always say, something that John and I live by. That's one of the fibers of the day of our podcast is in order to be a leader, you know, you got to do it at all. Calls, no excuses. But what I kind of want to back up from there. I mean, we see your Instagram, we see your content, but how did you even get to this whole king of content? You've got the whole kick, the Golden King chair behind you. And I love it. I see the King content logo there on the screen. How did you get into creating content? How did you get into the social media and the marketing? How did it all start for you? Man, I think to be honest, as a builder, right? So I actually been doing content, if you want to be honest for over 15 years, really. So I started at 14. I actually was doing graphic design at 14, and literally I was doing all the graphics on my, my, my middle school, my high school, and then I went to art school. So I went to a private art school as a graphic designer. Then I switched my major to photography, and then I literally got a camera and started doing music videos. And so I literally got my start in music videos really blowing up a lot of artists, turning people to multi-millionaires to content, doing music videos for the last decade, you know, and literally as I progressed mentally, the things I wanted to do progressed as well. So it's like I spent over seven years really focused on artists and branding artists to get them seen. But my my passion was really helping businesses because I was a business owner the whole time. And so since 2010, I've been a full time entrepreneur. No, non five, no, nothing at all, Leigh. And so I was like, man. Like, I just started working my way. And so I went from seven years of straight music videos to shoot a movie. So I shot a big movie in 2017 and start shooting smaller stuff and learned just transitioned into literally businesses because I was a business myself. Wow. So you were like what Jay-Z said I am a business man. You are a business yourself. And I like how important the thing. Yeah, like, like, how important is it for business owners and entrepreneurs to understand the connectivity between content marketing and the success of their business? Like, they're intertwined especially in the days. How important is that? If you don't have that element, you can't be successful. First of all, they are cousins, right? So you can't have one without the right. And at the end of the day, I tell people, you're not going to scale if you if you get to invest, right? You can have the dopest product on Earth. But nobody knows is there because what happens, right? They don't know what's there does. And so without content, content is that vehicle for people to see it to get in front of people faces. And then you got marketing to spread the awareness. Right. But a lot of people be scared to invest, right? They think it's going to be all organic. They think that their family and friends are going to support them all the way to $1,000,000. It's not going to happen. Right. And so literally, I tell people all the data, the two things that you can't stop being is content and marketing those monsters you got to keep being. That's something that never stop eating no matter how big you get, you are saying. So, yeah, go ahead, John. I just saw that turn that you just made. Don't you get more excited? Yes, I love it. So on that same. No. So you help and I know I mean, you're content, you're helping businesses sort of frame their strategy. I've seen some of your sessions where you're working with the entrepreneurs on literally you show behind the scenes of how you're setting up and how you're creating your content. But I also know you tend to come from a very authentic sort of starting point So what is the key to helping them develop their strategy and maintain their authenticity? Because I understand that sometimes your product or your audience, how do you merge who they're the owners personality and authenticity with who their target audience is? Because maybe it's not exactly you know, they may not be in the friendzone necessarily if they're to hang out. Yeah, I think at the end of the day, I just tell people, especially the business owners, be your damn self. You don't try to get on here and be all uppity or pissy or boozy. If you talk a little slang, talk with the down slate you because when you talk to someone, you talk, right? Because they're going to love you for that, right? And even if your market is not that they're going to still respect you because you are you. And so you don't got to adapt to them. You're servicing your product. You're still you're servicing your product. Right. But you as the person and the brand, they're going to really fall in love with you because you are genuine. You are you you are transparent. You showed them when you said you show them when you happy, you showed them when you mad. You showed them when you when you lost. You showed them all of this so they can really resonate with you. And I tell people all the time, you ain't got to conform for nobody. Just be the genuine version of you. If you think about DNA is only one of you. So if you be truly to you, you going to literally stand out, right? Even if your audience something so, so different, they're going to love you for you what would you say to the entrepreneur, the leader that is saying, man, I struggle creating content daily because a part of your mantra is being consistent in creating your content. Right? And so that person that's struggling, consistent like I don't know, you know, I'm not comfortable in front of the camera. I'm not comfortable to come see me. Okay. Okay. So, so, so so the fact that like, like, okay, so like comes to you and what would you do for them? So first of all, whenever you doing so when it comes to content, you must know who you talking to? I think that's the biggest thing. And we ain't talking no shallow avatar avatar. We need talking in depth. We need to understand they mentor 100%, not just demographics and stuff like that. Age and stuff. That's it. Cool. But we need to what makes them, what they desires, what they fears, what makes them time, what makes them want to get up every day, what makes them want to spend. They laugh like we go deep down and we really find out who is this person and we start talking that to that person. And then I make sure that they create or address all of the problems that that person has. Right? And what is it that you're going to change? What's the solution that show product your service is going to bring? And we create a crazy list, right? And inside of this list allow us to create crazy content because we know we can pull off that list every time. So if your problem is, hey, I'm scared to get in front of the camera, nine times out of ten is because you don't get your message in, right? You don't know who you talking to you all over the place. And so literally we find someone else. So if you know that show person, he likes a light, right? And so little we get in front of the camera, we talk about the light, how powerful, how important the light, how you look when the light hit this way, how you look when the light hit that way. And literally, we help them understand and get focused on who the audience is and the problems and the desires that they audience deal with so they can better they message. Because at the end of the day, that turns out telling you in front of that camera about your day themselves. So the only person you're afraid of is you say you ain't in front of 50,000 people. Wow. So I understand that a lot of you talked about getting noticed, right? I think I heard the grant card down or someone had said something about money follows attention. I think is what it was. So you speak with passion your content is passionate always fire is that with every creator or every content you like is every business owner that they need to bring that or is sound karma. Is there something about passion that brings attention or is it is it deeper than that is deeper than that but it must it must have some passion, right? So you know, I tell people all the time you're in a passion must meet your outer passion. And when those to connect is endless, you will forever have happiness. Right. So me personally, I'm raw, you know what I'm saying? I'm raw. All my clients, not to say majority, none of my clients are raw. Some of them are laid back, some of them are chill. But they still get the message out because they steal them. Right. But they stay true. Self how they talk when the camera's not on how they talk and we don't interview regular and I make them bring they regular self out instead of you kiss and you talk when they are make key to talk with the this. You know what I'm saying? Sometimes you want to get on and be queen like with somebody. You know, you want to be somebody different and I make up be her, you know what I'm saying? And literally that be the biggest thing. But you got to have passion and you got to have a purpose, right? So if you don't get a passion and you don't got purpose, it's kind of hard to do content. And so what we do is really figure out your purpose so you can start pulling from your inner core every time you get on this camera. Mm. So you can show passion. Then after I ask the question, the thought came to mind. Then sometimes passion doesn't have to be loud. Then like I'm not necessarily the high energy person all the time or very rarely, probably. And so but you can bring out the heartfelt passion and sort of the is that kind of wish you're getting that like a lot of it can be very like heart strings attached. I guess 100% because my wife she's she's the opposite of me. Right. She's very she's laid I, I tell people I'm Kanye Jay-Z you know, as in but I'm really, really a creative right? So it's like I'm really a creative guy is not nothing like this they just happened right recently like I'm telling you since I was 14 I quit doing it really before that but I was a rapper at 11 so started rapping at 11. So we want to technically use that then literally, you know, since it's 11 and probably beyond that you not saying but getting paid for my services I've been getting paid from this since I was 40 that's that's literally you set at the perfect question because I was going to ask you, we're talking about content, but how do we talk? How do we convert our content into currency? Right. Easy, easy. You got to make sure it's a vehicle, right? So when we come in, it's like people see content. It's just that's the outer. But what happens in the inner is what we come in and our company, we come in and set up all it makes it a brand and is together making sure all of the systems is together, right? So when you post that piece of content, what are you talking about in that content? What is that copy like in that message? What is the call to action? Where are you sending these people to? Right. If you send them to something, then that right there convert conversion what are you doing with that data? As soon as you get that data, how are you following up with these leads? What are you giving them that's valuable other than you trying to sell to them? Right. So that's what happens. We it's literally a system that happens underneath the content. The content is the vehicle to get the eyes on you. And then from there you drag them through this system. In the system is what converted into to sales. And so as a business owner, should we be diversified on different platforms or should we focus on one place? Let's focus on, okay, dominate, focus and dominate, right? Because you've got to think about it. Even your guys watch our podcast you got to make sure y'all top on YouTube and then whatever Apple. And then it could go to Trigger on Instagram, but you got to master one of these markets because you got to think about it. Three different five different platforms you pay for by different marketing. You're talking to five different people, you're talking to five different people that probably digest this. This type of material here, focus on one and dominate that shit. And so to get to the level and then you start spreading over to the other ones with ease mm. Okay. Because if y'all can focus and that's be the biggest thing people be trying to like took everything at once and don't got the manpower to handle everything at once. And then got to realize that that marketing dollars now time three times four because you got to market on each one of these platforms so if you got a $10,000 budget monthly now you messing it up, you're going to need a $40,000 monthly but each one of the platforms so yeah so you can cross post but when you talk about where do I spend my marketing dollars and how do I, what audience am I talking to and how do I, you know, size the images and everything. It's, it's 90%, 100% on one. See that you know, is where your audience is. 100%. What. Yeah. So you can bulk yes. Right. Get your numbers. So where you trying to get. Of course you can. You're going to be able to resize the pictures, post it here. But attention wise you may even be able to give attention all the way to each one of them at one time. The manpower needs to be there first. So if you own YouTube you dominate you trying to get a 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, it's going to be hard to try to get 100,000 followers on Instagram at the same time. Why are you doing both of them? It's going to be hard. So you focus until you get that success on this one platform. And then you let it sizzle over. You take that audience and move that audience over. Do you find that like when you talk about marketing dollars and this is kind of like a personal question for us because we've we've done before pay for like Facebook ads and pay for. Is that really worth it or is there a certain way that when you pay for this to be promoted outside of just, you know, the free promotion, you're paying it to reach an audience and they ask you what your region is and what your demographic is, is there a certain way to make that work in your favor of more than another way? And we can't be the only ones bad at this. No, no, no. Help us right now. 99% of our clients is is they bad at this? Right. Because you get on Facebook and Instagram and yo ads going for reach when you shouldn't be going for retail, you just help boost my post when you shouldn't be boosting your post right? So what we do and the type of ads that we focus on is retargeting ads. So we target more people that's already been in our world, right? And so by we doing that, we spend less and literally these people convert quicker. Because I say if somebody been on your page in the last three days, seven days, last 360 days, we send in ads to them and we bomb Rush and then we ask, or if they hit our websites and everything on our Web sites, then literally we go in for them. We not reach and we're not doing no reaching we pay for more influencer and sponsor pages that already get our audience, and we want to put big money on that because we know that that audience and that market is already focused on what it is that we offer instead of trying to reach and do this little circle around these people and stuff, not us. It don't work, but don't advertise me. That works Go ahead. No, I said this. Some of the best, most targeted information I think we've ever had. Yeah. When it comes to social media and as the I mean, people give it, but it's always very general. General in general, we try to dig and it's hard because you don't know, maybe they be selfish, they'd be selfish. That's all it is. Like we give it to like we got ads running right now. We get hundreds of hundreds of hundreds and hundreds of leads a day. A day, right. So and literally the system, that's why I said you can't stop being the monster. But our blessing is we literally for our class, we come in and set up everything. Literally, we slash daytime. I'm not telling them to go and learn this shit. We're not teaching, you know, programs. We doing it for you. You know, I saying I've got 25 employees in my team. 21, not 24 hours, but 40 hours a week and they literally doing everything for you. We don't all your brand create now you found it was great help you create your content running your social media cleaning up your social media, setting up all your add accounts, send up all your pictures showing you how to do it. If you, if we launch it with you, then we launch it with you and then we actually get on the calls with your leads to help follow up via text message, via phone calls, via emails, literally if we launch with you. But if not, then we set you up to get to the finish line and all you got to do is push the blast off. But yeah, so I noticed one of the things you do, okay, how do I frame this? You do a really good job of being strong and someone's friend at the same time. Okay, this is what I know. So watching your content and this isn't verbatim, but I notice you use certain terms to let somebody know I'm still your friend. Like the term little buddy SEO. Say something like, I can't believe you're letting somebody steal your dream. Hold on, little buddy. I got you. And then, you know, here's what you need to do. And I'm like, it's genius because it's hard to talk strong when someone needs strong. But at the same time, let them understand. I just say this because I love you is that I'm assuming it's got to be intentional it's definitely intentional. Right. And literally, if you go down my pose, I always been strong minded, like my whole life I've been strong minded, my mother strong minded. It runs in my family. But what happens is, like in the beginning, I was I'm I'm corporate. I'm so like I like I want to talk about that. I'm playing it safe. And I got the plan. It saved so much and I'm like, yo, I really want to say hi if I can feel, you know, and then I really want to say how I feel. And it's like, what am I being corporate for? When my whole career, every dollar that I've been put into this career has been my dollar. I haven't had no invest. There's nobody above me. I don't work for corporate America. Every dollar I'm spending millions of dollars on building my business, and I did that from my pocket. So first of all, who the fuck going stop me you know? Hey, you can't be fired. You can't be fired. I mean, what I realized, too, is that my audience, my demographic loved the brownies. You know, I'm saying, but I can say like this. Hey, hey, John, I want you to make sure that you scale your business has but I'm like, Yo, John, what the fuck are you doing? Get the business together. Get this guy. Oh, ho, ho. Lee, look, buddy, let me show you how to do it, though, right? So what I want you to do is I want you to take this podcast and I want you to make sure that when you are on YouTube, you got all the right keywords, all the right hashtags, and you actually run ads on your competitors videos so they can see your commercials in between that job. Do that shit. Now, don't play around. You got this, you know? And I love it. I think, you know, I think I know it works. For you because that is your genuine self. Like, we're big on authenticity. Everybody can't do that. Everybody can be. But that is genuinely you. It works and like John said, that it's not time to be Mr. Rogers, you know, when you're trying to go after it and feed your family, you don't what? I mean, you're trying to make it happen, you know, so I get it. I get it. I want to get into the the whole playbook that you created. And I love the title of it, the concept Bible. How did that come about in tell our audience, man, where they can get it and explain to explain to them if they get this the strategies that are within this whole playbook. That you created. So so first of all, the content Bible is is going to teach you how to literally break your sign. This is going to teach you how to actually plan out your campaigns shoot more content, consistent content, plan out your day to day content so you can make sure you put out enough content and how to really understand your numbers and your focus and different pieces of content that you should make. And literally, this is the play I actually was doing for a lot of my clients for years and allowing them to scale. So what I said them, a lot of people can't afford to pay us $25,000, so what should I do? I should do something where it can actually help them tremendously. Scale so they can scale and be able to afford us, right? So if they can make an extra $25,000 from this content Bible, which is only I think like 80 some dollars, if they can, if they can grow a scale, then they can reinvest that and allow us to do it for them. Like one of our clients the other day he did a launch, he made 160 some thousand in like two weeks. And then he turned around and from there upscaled and made an extra, I want to say 500,000 so that his watch, he made about 600 and some thousand in a month. You see what I'm saying? And literally this will happen when you focus in and launch, right? And you got to focus in on one product. So the content Bible literally allows you to focus in on what it is that you trying to do because what happens us as entrepreneurs, we try to do 12 million different things at one time and we don't get the focus here on what it is that we supposed to be doing. And that literally takes away. So we tell people, Hey, if you got this product in, this product is what you focus on. If your goals is six figures, do not stop promoting this product into that funnel or whatever it is, hit six figures. That's when you stop it. That should take you six months. If that should take you 12 months, you need to be focusing because what happens is you get to hone in on that message. You get to get better your content, get the get way more precise, right? Everything that you do get to be precise by you focusing in on whatever there's one product or service it is that you are free. And so the content Bible really allows you to do that and literally is a fraction of a tiny fraction of what it cost to get us. But it's literally your guy and that's why we named it the content Bible because literally you got a content, you got to pray over that. You got to allow that to really hit the universe. You got to make sure that that messaging is hitting people's souls. And this the Bible to help you get there. Hey, I go ahead, bro. And I appreciate you go on the show. We've gotten so much covered in 24 minutes. I don't have any other questions. It's so good. I love, I love what you're doing. I love your authenticity. We talk about it all the time. We talk about a lot about how some people have construed authenticity to where I call like the Gary Vee effect. They see Gary Vee being Jersey and they think, you know, they got to talk Jersey. And I'm like, Dude, you're from Wisconsin. You know what I mean? It's like it's not the same. And so, like, I don't talk to same as Gary Vee, but I feel if I did, I would be and I would not be authentic to myself. How I how I grew up. And so I love it. I love what you're doing. It's real. This is real. And I tell people this all the time is like, if you know me, you know me, like this is me 100% like I've been like this since I came out of my mama vagina. Like, I yo yo. It's like at the end of the day, is is raw, is real. Sometimes it's real people the wrong way. I'm not going to like some people like it. Some people don't. But we don't care about who don't. We ain't even the press and then we everybody angle like you regardless. Everybody don't like Jay-Z. Everybody don't like Beyonce. Everybody don't like God. Like, you know what it was? This was like it please everybody. And then you try to please everybody. You're going to self-destruct anyway. So we're don't here, you know, I'm stuck up. Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm never, ever disrespected. Nobody. I don't disrespect any person. So anytime I talk I'm always respectful. I'm gonna keep it real with you, but I'm always going to be very respectful. You can like it or not, but I think a lot said that. He said that someone will keep it real with somebody. Because I was always told that a friend likes you enough to keep you where you leave you where you are. But a mentor loves you too much to keep you there. And so it's really the difference. Be someone who really loves you and wants to tell you the truth because it's it's so much easier to not tell the truth. Let's be honest with my wife. She'll say I'll be like, I got to tell you something and insist. I'm just being honest. I'm like, I'm just saying this. I love you because I don't want her to just stay stagnant or, you know, or go do something and waste your time and those types of things. And I hope she does the same to me because when you really appreciate or love someone, you you don't want them to sit here and waver around for six months. Right? Waste their time, and somebody's got to tell them. So, yeah, I, I tell people all the time, like everybody around me is part of my army. I'm there. I can have no weak links, right? So everybody, I must be they are they honest to me? Like, I'm honest to them. They honest to me. Why they keep it a b when me like, yo, that's shit, ain't it fixed? They try that again, you know? But literally, I'm from Chicago, you know, and saying my mother was on dope. I'm a crack baby. My biological dad got killed when I was one you know, I'm since I'm really a product of the street. So this is some different and literally I'm able and was able to make it out the jungle. So for me, I could make it anywhere in the world. Ain't nobody gonna be able to stop me. I'm Tom I'm the cause I got dealt when I was younger is you. You'll break down and you'll kill yourself for the shit I've been through. You know what I'm sayin? And literally, if I'm able to make it out and see my kids and see my wife, see my family, we in amazing community, we got everything that we ever expo, you know, what I'm saying? We all did it from my back, right? I say I'm super gangsta because every second on earth, I got I'm sacrificing for generations to come you see what I'm saying? I ain't doing this for me. I'm doing this shit from generations. Probably people I might never, ever meet for my bloodline. I'm doing this for them. So everybody that's on earth with me today, literally, that shit don't mean not to, so I'm not going to allow them to stop my my son. Six months. His name is Legacy. My daughter, she's three years old. Her name is Journey. Like this. Is she real? To me, this shit ain't make believe, you know, they'll admit. But I know my calling ever since I was a kid. I think at 14 I got angel wings tattooed on my back because I knew I was my family's guardian angel. I knew everything I was doing was going to sacrifice for them. I knew that already. And I've been living in my purpose. I tell people all the time, it's all about your purpose. What's your mission? My mission isn't to be the coolest person. My mission is to have generational wealth and break all that occurs is because everybody before me died or got stuck in a project was still got project mentality. You see what I'm saying? And I'm able to get out. So it's like, Yo, who won't change if I don't do it? And so that's what I'm more like. And that's that's been my whole life. I've been like that, man. I love. I love that. Especially the part you didn't say you were trying to get rich. You're trying to create wealth, which is already rich. You rich do we all rich. We above ground. We got life, we got we breathe in. You know, I'm saying we got time right now. I say you I'm rich because I value life and time. I value material shit to these I can't get back is life and time. So I value that shit more than anything. So if somebody's late to the meat, I'm out that bitch in the leg but I'm out because they didn't value my time. I never get me to see. Yeah, a few minutes you didn't text me and say Zoom is closed. Well, you see, I reach out here right now, literally. He was like, Okay, where's the value time of everything in life? I value time. And just like, what's the movie? Timeless ah, I think it's time and time in time. Like, I value that shit. Yo, yo. We always wrap up our last segment called Off Script where, you know, you don't have to give anything that's related to topic, but just one last piece of advice or something that's on your heart to help our audience give us that last off script moment. They'll never stop, you know, don't never give up. At the end of the day, you have the choice to keep going or you have the choice to start. Nobody else around you do, right? And you got to be strong as hell to be able to move that mountain, even if nobody else is there to help you. You know what I'm saying? So clearly, whatever it is that you focused on, get out there and do that shit. It might not happen today. It might not happen. Ma said it might not happen next year. But it's going to happen. You know, you just got to stay consistent. A lot of the greats that we look at today, this time when they was this age of ours, they wasn't great. They was they became grace when they they they they stood time, right? So they stood the time. They stay focused. That's what made them great. So when you look at them like them when they was 29, 28, whatever your age is, they wasn't great. They were still finding themselves so as okay if you don't got yourself all the way together yet just keep going. If you just started your business a year ago, that means you won years. Oh I don't care if you're 30 years old, you one years old because you just started that business, you a brand new baby so allow yourself time to grow. Don't try to move fast because you see people on social media with that bullshit material and you trying to get that shit to ma half of that shit is fake. A lot of them, a lot of people are under. You ain't got to be focused on her. Focus on your goals and your passion, what it is that you trying to do and you will make it there don, too. I like you, man. I like you, bro. I'm inspired. This is real. Like, yo, I ain't got no sweat I love it. Stay connected with Don Taylor. You can do that several ways. Follow him on social media at Don Taylor. Antonio Check I's website W WW dot Don Taylor and total dot com. We talked about the cons bible. Pick that up it's less than $100 he said that's that's a steal for the information that he's dropping and giving absolutely. It is the ultimate guide to planting your car to ride the best in the industry you can do so by texting the word growth to 678722868. Oh that is text the word grow 26787228680 stay connected I'm a stop I'm a stop right now. No no no no I want you to if you try to understand how to grow your business online, I created a free guide called Social Media Business Growth Secrets. And it's literally going to give you all of the secrets that you need to scale your business online. So some of the stuff I was talking about today on this podcast, literally, you got to understand how to put them systems together, put it together so you can grow your business to six figures, seven figures, eight figures, whatever it is. What I want you to do right now is text the word grow to 6787228680. Teach it right now so you can get that link to get that guy so you can grow your business. Today. I'm the king of content. Don't tell Antonio I stay connected right here, unscripted join our page our family support the show page outcome backslash ask of the leadership. Follow us on our social media platforms. Add unscripted leadership on all social media scripted that's leadership dot com. And of course, our podcast is available on all podcast streaming platforms. Again, we say thank you to Don Taylor for having this amazing conversation with us. He provided so many gems. This could have been a masterclass literally about creating content to level up your business and I'm good. Thank you so much that if you guys got if you guys literally let us know that it came from Unscripted Podcast, we got something special for you so do not overlook this. Make sure that you go and text at work growth to that number right now so you get your special gift just for listening to this podcast. Absolutely. As always, we pray that you be the leader that God is called you to be. We're here to build bridges and not walls, bridges connect and walls divide until next time. God bless you.