An online personal brand is vital to your success whether you’re an entrepreneur or an employee. Find out why your personal brand matters and how it creates social proof. Leonard Kim shares his top tips.
Leonard Kim’s TEDx Talk
Mentioned in this episode
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Transcript
Leonard Kim:
Hi, I’m Leonard Kim of influence treat and we’re talking about what a personal brand does to your income and your lifestyle. And today you’re listening to The Brand Journalism Advantage.
Announcer:
The Brand Journalism Advantage, the podcast that teaches the power of storytelling to increase business by attracting, engaging and influencing consumers. Now it’s time to think like a journalist with your host brand journalist, Phoebe Chongchua.
Phoebe: [00:41]
Hello, Brand Journalism community. I’m Phoebe Chongchua. Thanks for tuning into the brand journalism advantage podcast. Here we go with the inside scoop on today’s show, Leonard Kim Leonard is recognized as a top marketing influencer by Forbes and Brand 24, a top digital and youth marketer by Inc Magazine and a top personal branding expert by Entrepreneur Magazine and Red Letter Resumes. Welcome to the show. How are you, Leonard?
Leonard Kim:
I’m doing great. How are you doing Phoebe?
Phoebe:
I’m doing really well. And you know you are probably one of the top people to have on the show to talk about this episode. Brand journalism community. We are focused on what a personal brand does to your income and your lifestyle. And I love that you incorporated that part because personal brand really does make a difference not just to your income but how you’re living, right?
Leonard Kim:
It does, it changes everything about your life and every single aspect from your personal life all the way into your financial life. It’s pretty impactful.
Phoebe:
Oh, it’s huge. You know, I come from a career in TV broadcast news and you know, you back then you built your whole brand and your whole persona on the evening news and it made a big difference. I became really well known for fitness out here in San Diego where I had a show that was all about keeping fit and I carried that into the online world as soon as online videos and things like that started transpiring up on the web. So I know all about how important that is to be recognized. You know, in the area that you want to really niche down and, brand journalism community, Leonard’s gonna take us deep into that. He’s going to tell us what it does for your brand and what it does for your lifestyle, but also how you do it. And we’ve had several episodes in the past where we’ve talked about this, but each person has a new and different way to approach this. So, I’m really excited to hear that Leonard, and you know, I, I just love that you’ve also been named one of the socially strong entrepreneurs that every VC should be following that really says something. Why don’t you just, you know, whet our appetite right now by telling us a little bit about how you got there.
Leonard Kim: [02:49]
Sure. Well, my journey was a lot different than many other people’s journeys out there. Most people highlight their expertise, they get tossed up and next thing you know, they’re one of the shining stars out there like Tony Robbins, Oprah and so forth. And these are people who like develop their brands out for like 15 to 20 years. And if you’ve seen what kind of income they make, what kind of lifestyles they have, that’s really the true impact of a personal brand when you stick with it for such a long time. Now, me personally, when I started out, it was a lot different than that. I didn’t have the easy route. I mean it was a lot of struggle and much like there’s stories like you know, Tony Robbins, went out there and he had to live in his car for a while. Oprah had to go from different things to really get to where she is, but they all had the starting point.
Leonard Kim: [03:21]
For me, my starting point was a resume full of like failures in broken dreams. When I looked at my accomplishments in my mid-twenties I was like, “hmm”, this company went bankrupt. That company went bankrupt. That company went bankrupt and the other one went bankrupt too. So what do I really have to share? When I went through a self-reflection stage, I realized that what I needed to do was I needed to take all these lessons that I learned in my life through each of the failures that I encountered and start sharing them with others so other people wouldn’t have to go through the same mistakes I did.
Phoebe: [04:09]
That is so juicy. I love it because when you can learn from someone else’s mistake and not have to make that actual mistake even better. So we’re going to unpack it a little bit more, but you know, we want to get to know you a little deeper and, and this is just too cute. His icebreaker reads that you have a stuffed Kermit that a friend gave to you. Alright. Alright. Do, do tell, tell me about that.
Leonard Kim:
So one day, my friend was on Ebay, he was sitting around and he’s like, “Whoa, there’s an old school Kermit.” Like one of the first ones that were ever made, like for babies and everything, and they’re like, what? It’s only like 99 cents. I had to buy this right now. It has to be worth more than that. So they got the Kermit and like every time I came over I kept playing with the Kermit, bouncing it around and everything and he’s like, you could just have it.
Phoebe: [05:12]
You don’t want it back anymore. I love it that, that’s cool. All right, well I want you to weigh in on this quote that I found, picked it for this episode. It goes like this. “All of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies, me inc to be in business today. Our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called, You Tom Peters, Fast Company. Your thoughts?
Leonard Kim: [05:31]
That’s exactly how it should be. Tom Peter’s, I believe he came out of the McKinsey camp, right? And he went out there and built this huge dynasty behind himself. And the reason he was able to build up such thought leadership, I think he was even one of the original thought leaders out there. One of the first gurus who got into the market of building out a strong marketing presence for what you’re doing, a Tom Peters. He was out there and he did all these great things and he’s a huge testimony of exactly what the personal brand can do. But here’s the thing. A lot of people go, “why should I build a personal brand?” If I just want to stay in my simple career for the rest of my life, “why should I build a personal brand if I’m just doing this or that,” whatever it may be.
Leonard Kim:
The thing is a personal brand. You don’t have to just be an entrepreneur and journalists and columnists, a TV star or whatever it is to go out there and build a personal brand. It covers all aspects of life because let’s say you’re sitting at a desk job and, you’ve been there for maybe like a year or two. At some point you’re going to be like, I want that promotion. And when that point comes, you’re going to go in and apply for it and it’s going to be really tough to get that job because one, there’s outside candidates too. Is your experience better than everyone else in your office? Three, there’s so many different factors to this. Now, let’s say theoretically you had a great personal brand within the office. People looked at you as respectable, they saw you as a leader and things like that.
Leonard Kim:
Another thing that they’re going to do is they’re going to look out outside of the company to see what kind of recognition you’re getting outside of your company as well and how do you find that out? You just do a quick Google search and let’s say when they do a Google search on you and you’re trying to get promoted, your LinkedIn page comes up and you have about 200 connections. Most of them are within your company. They do a day find your Twitter profile and there’s like 35 followers. I mean they see you as the expert, but then you might not be the expert to the outside world. Then let’s say they Google another candidate from the outside. That person has over 500 Linkedin connections, seven recommendations. That’s a few more than what our internal staff member had a, they go and see that maybe this person has like 2,000 Twitter followers.
Leonard Kim:
They see that they have their own website and the website talks about their expertise within the uh, subject area where you’re trying to get to the promotion with San Diego. And maybe they see an article on like Huffington Post and entrepreneur, some accounting publication, whatever it may be. And they’re like, Whoa, this person recommends him as well. So now what this person built up is something called social proof. Now what social proof is, it’s kind of like when you go to two different restaurants and one’s empty and one’s busy, chances are even if there’s a lie that the busier restaurant you’re going to want to go there because other people are like saying this, restaurants are great and that’s what other people are doing with this candidate as well for the job. So you’re looking, so the recruiter is looking at both people and let’s say you did both the fairly wide and the interview and it comes down to the last step, they’re probably going to look at who’s got more credibility and who has more social proof.
Phoebe: [08:51]
Absolutely. Absolutely. No, that was a great way to explain it. So it’s hitting on both sides of the court, both the entrepreneur, solopreneur as well as those people who you know, maybe working for a company or companies for the rest of their life. It’s still invaluable and a lot of times people who are working for companies, they’ve got that side hustle going on and you know, it just, it just helps all the way around. Share with us a success quote or a tip that’s meaningful to you, Leonard, that you’d like our audience to remember.
Leonard Kim: [09:12]
My favorite quote is, “no one is absolutely useless. You can always serve as a bad example.”
Phoebe: [09:41]
Ah, that’s so good. Let, let’s hope not, but that’s too cute. I love it. No one is absolutely useless. You can serve as a bad example. All right, I love it. All right. We’ve heard a little bit of your background, a little bit of the highlights, but I want to press you to share with us your proudest moment. You know, a time that you just go, this was really, really impactful for me. Tell us about that time.
Leonard Kim: [10:05]
Well, on May 27th of 2017, I had the opportunity to speak on the TEDx stage over at UC Irvine and the week before I was so their service, I’m like, “oh my God, this is gonna be, I need to call them and back out.” It was like the scariest moment ever. And like my friend called me the day before and he was like, “dude, just calm down and just be yourself. Don’t be structured. Don’t be rigid. Don’t think about it. Because if you do, you’re going to be off-brand because your brand is just doing it as it is. So just stop thinking and just go do it.”
Phoebe:
So tell me about that talk and, of course, we’ll drop it in the show notes, brand journalism community. So you’ve got a link to it and to be able to watch it. But tell me a little bit about, you know, gearing up for that because that must’ve been like you said, you know, you’re crazy nervous, but how did you get the Ted Talk, first of all? So, what was that process like and then take us to that moment where you’re stepping on stage?
Leonard Kim:
Well, when you have a personal brand, the interesting thing happens where like before I had a personal brand, I have to reach out to like everyone to do anything. And now that I have a personal brand, I don’t really have, I don’t reach out to like anyone, people come to me. So the TEDx talk was an invitation, which was kind of nice.
Phoebe:
Very.
Leonard Kim:
And I think I got that maybe about a month and a half to two months before. So, the interview process, I sat with Julie Arthur, who’s the executive director for the Tedx over there and she interviewed me for about an hour and I just told her my backstory and she’s like, “you know what, we want to have you here.” And in that process of two months what I had to do, was develop out a script, what I was going to talk about things like that. Now I printed out this long piece of paper that was like maybe five pages long and it was all paragraphs and I went with my business partner, Ryan Foland and then Daniel and Tedx wanted the sample video and I sat there and I was like reading this thing to them first and they’re like, okay, I think you have a lot of details in here. Then they’re like, just tell it to me. Like you’re at the bar. And they’re like, okay, cool. You kind of have this down, but um, you’re a little too happy at the sad moments. I’m like, “oh, but you said tell it to you like I’m at the bar.”
Phoebe:
Ah. So did you have to work on it for a long time or how much did you put into it to “perfecting” it?
Leonard Kim:
That same day, Ryan throughout five boxes. He’s like, intro, this part, this part, this part conclusion. I’m like, “okay, I just need to remember these five boxes.”
Phoebe:
Yeah, yeah. That’s a good way to do it.
Leonard Kim:
Yeah. So my main focus was remembering those five boxes. Then I went to rehearse on stage and they’re like, you could tweet this and this and this. And at the end, I was like, step one, step two, step three that I’ve repeated it. And they’re like, incorporate those steps in your talk. I’m like, I have no idea how to do this. And there’s two more weeks left.
Phoebe:
Oh, so how’d you pull it all together?
Leonard Kim:
I had to talk to another speaking coach, Nathan, they told me to do this. Can you help me? what stories should I put here? And we just talked it out and like the week before, like that helped clear everything out. But the week before, like I can’t think, I can’t really do anything. Like, all I could think about was the TEDx is coming. It’s coming, it’s coming. It’s coming.
Phoebe: [13:34]
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Getting through that is tough. I, I remember the first time I was on TV. It’s much like that. Yeah. Very scary. Well, let’s talk about a time when it didn’t work. You know, every entrepreneur has those moments when they’re just darn right, tough. You know, and sometimes they even give up. Share with us a story and tell us what happened, what you learned from it and how it might help our audience.
Leonard Kim: [13:59]
Well, I actually gave up at one point, this was back in about 2010 I tried for three or four different ventures and each one they were going well for a while, but then either the company ran out of money, the industry fell apart, kind of like the investment fund industry and the stock market industry, like real estate and everything. Those all just crashed back in 2008
Leonard Kim:
and a lot of the things I was working on just kept falling apart and falling apart and falling apart. So I had to do a few different side jobs and I got to a point where I was like, I can’t try it anymore because I started getting like panic attacks, anxiety, things like that. So I kind of just gave up and I stayed at home for like six months and not really doing anything and I didn’t pay my electricity bill. So the lights kind of shut off. And then, and then I got the eviction notice shortly after and I called my mom. I’m like, hey mom, I’m going to go live under a bridge now. Hope you have a great life. She calls my grandma. My grandma comes and picks me up. I’m okay. I guess I’ll stay with you though. That’s better than living under a bridge.
Leonard Kim:
All right, so yeah. Yeah. Come on. Let her dish. Wait, wait, what’s the lesson here of this year? So my grandma yelled at me because when I was staying with her, all I did was play video games and she was like, go find a job. So I went out, found the first job I could and made next to no money. But after doing that for a long period of time, I got to a point where I’m like, you know, I’m so embarrassed about myself. I can’t be living with my grandma for the rest of my life. I don’t know why I didn’t think of the scenario, but I was like, I can’t live with this area for the rest of my life. If I keep doing this forever, then I’m going to be stuck here and there’s going to be no way out. So I made the decision, I moved back to La and I tried doing a few more projects and I mean they didn’t really work out that well.
Leonard Kim:
It took a long time. But what really helped me was the self-reflection stage. Yeah. And that came at a weird time. It was like February or March of 2012 I broke my ankles so I was stuck for like three months with like nothing to do. So I had to just think and reflect about my life and I realized the biggest mistake was I went from like one venture to the next to the next I hop project from project to project without actually sitting down thinking and reflecting and going, why did this go wrong? What did I do? And examining my actions to figure out what I could change in regards to my habits. Because for years and years straight, all my habits were exactly the same. Try to find the thing where I could make the most money in the least amount of time. Try to take shortcuts, try to do this, try to do that. Once I examined what those, um, flaws were, I had to work on each and every single one of them. Now I take the longterm path. Now I try to make more educated, thoughtful decisions. Now I tried to be nicer to the people and things like that. So that self-reflection stays was really what helped me turn that all around.
Phoebe:
And so when you turned it all around, what was the first thing that you ventured into and just share with us just briefly as I know we need to get into our top tips, but just briefly how that rolled out.
Leonard Kim:
Well, and uh, I didn’t start riding until about, uh, may of 2013. Uh, my, I lost my lunch money because $80 a month was taken out of my check at my job at American Honda where I was barely getting paid over and minimum wage and I couldn’t eat any wars. So I had to make a decision. I had to put my all into anything to see if it worked. I applied to a hundred jobs. No one hired me because of no personal brand. I tried going back to school, but that’s a long term plan and I try riding and I got like 2 million reads in like six months. Then it became like 10 million within a year and a half. Wow. And Yeah. What do you think caused that? What was the key there? Oh, I think it was just being like, eh. I was like holding back everything up until that point. Like I went to share like my vulnerabilities or things like that. When people asked me what was going on wrong or if I was okay, I’d be like, yeah, things are great. I’m saying they’re about to be evicted from my home, and I finally decided until I share those stories of all the hardships and the pains that I went through and just be real with it and a lot of people were able to relate to it too because everyone fails. They’re just too shy to talk about it.
Phoebe:
That is the truth. All right. On that note, let’s move into our top tips section where we’re talking about what a personal brand does to your income and your lifestyle and brand journalism community. You’ve already been hearing this. One of the things that I think is so key and that I think a lot of people struggle with is exactly what Leonard just said, which is the vulnerability factor. You know, Facebook has done an interesting thing to all of us. It’s made us want to put our best foot forward and of course, why shouldn’t you? But it creates this unreal reality, right, Leonard?
Leonard Kim:
Yeah. It’s like you’re in a world where everything looks exactly the same. It’s like all sunshine and rainbows, but there’s life, all sunshine, and rain.
Phoebe: [19:13]
Ha Ha. So give us your top tips. Tell it you know, we’ve been hearing why it’s important and yes, it can change. In your case, t tell us, well, just from your perspective, how did it change? You were making barely minimum wage. You start getting 2 million reads and it goes from there. How did it change your income and your lifestyle? And then share with us what we need to do to follow.
Leonard Kim: [19:32]
Okay. So how it changed my income and my lifestyle is back in 2013, I was there anything about $16 and 24 cents an hour. I then show up to work a lot because I was kind of depressed and I really hated my job. So it was really like 30,000 a year and I’m in California. That’s not a lot of money. I had to take the bus to work. That was an hour trip, two and an hour and a half trip back. Uh, if I missed my bus, I’d be stranded for that hour in the rain with the broken the bell or something like that. And um, how it changed my life is instead of having to go to a job I hate, I had people reaching out to me, offering me better positions, more pay client work and things like that. Uh, let’s see, from 2013 to 2014 I, my income didn’t really change, but I was able to go out there and make a lot more connections.
Leonard Kim:
Like before I was this loser who really had no friends, no credibility or anything like that. By being humble and sharing my vulnerabilities, I was able to make better connections with lawyers, doctors, investors, business owners, etc. Et Cetera, et cetera. And like all of these successful, what I thought were successful people in the world and it like reshaped my entire life. And then the next year what happened is I started getting a little bit of client work here and there. Then that was 2015. Then in 2016, um, [inaudible], uh, the end of 2015, I was able to launch a company. And in 2016, uh, we really built up that company to build out a course that teaches people how to build out their brand, get featured in publications and grow their social media following. So we may more income from that. And this year I’ve been able to sign on like actual big, like a c level and executive clients from like bigger companies like Cisco and other companies like that and build out their personal brands as well.
Leonard Kim:
So things have moved up a lot. And also I got these accolades that say that I’m like the top marketing influencer and stuff from all these different publications. Uh, you get interviewed by the media kind of a lot. And um, I guess my income raise significantly more than $30,000 a year. Yeah, I can imagine that that changed quite a bit. And you’re no longer living with grandma. Yeah, and I’m not living with grandma anymore.
Phoebe:
All right. All right, well let’s, uh, let’s go a little deeper. Take us through the, you know, maybe your top three to five tips on, on how somebody would start to build out that personal brand to do what you’ve done.
Leonard Kim:
Let’s go with three, I think three simple with you think.
Phoebe:
Sure
Leonard Kim: [22:18]
Okay. So step number one is all about positioning. And what I like to say for positioning is your bio, your bio tells you, tells anyone everything about you, what you do, what you like and everything like that.
Leonard Kim:
Now the biggest problem I see people make when they make their bios, it’s, it kind of make it like their resume. And I’ve read a lot of resumes in my life and they’re pretty boring and they don’t really show who you are. So what I like to do for a bio is the first sentence or two I like to start out with credibility. If you don’t have any credibility, guess what? You could just skip that and just say what you do. Like maybe my name is Leonard Kim and I’m a marketer. Now what you have to do is you have to move into the next step. The next step is to go out there and really tell people about yourself. So, uh, and then why you’re the expert that you are. So in this area, it’s kinda like writing a letter to someone. Uh, what you do is you’re describing who you are and your passions and why you got involved with what you’re doing.
Leonard Kim:
So let’s say for me for marketing it would be like, I’ve always wanted to go out there and become a market there because I’ve always had a passion for being able to connect with people on the larger scale. I used to do sales, but I didn’t really like that I was able to only impact one person at a time as opposed to groups in groups of people. So I decided to go out there and learn from like the best, the greats like X, Y, Z to learn how to um, influence more people at once, something like that. Then what you want to do is you want to make yourself relatable. Are you married? Do you have kids? Do you have hobbies? Let’s say I was married, I’d be like, I have a wonderful wife and X kids at home whom I adore and I like to go out there and go fishing on the weekends and uh, watching, uh, Polo Games in my free time.
Leonard Kim:
So you’re kind of building out this backstory. So, and then at the end of it, what you want to do is you went to put in a call to action so that they know how to contact you. And in case he went to work with you or interview you for a publication or something. The reason you want to shape it all this way is because, and the sales process, the first thing you should do is meet and greet. The second thing you should do is sell yourself. And the third thing you should do is sell your company. Back in 2005 when I used to work at a Toyota dealership, like we had a superior product and a lot of the people within my first two months would see the cars. They like it, they test drive it, then they go to another dealership and buy it from there instead of from me.
Leonard Kim:
The reason for that is because I didn’t sell myself first. And person how you sell yourself as you go. So do you like pizza? You like cars, you like this and that and you find common ground on the Internet. You can’t really go out there and ask these questions. So what you do instead, as you talk about what you like, someone, people are reading your content or your bio, they’re like, oh, he likes pizza. I like pizza too. Let’s be friends and that’s how they’re thinking in their head. Or maybe they like Kermit or they maybe they’ll take care of it. Alright, that’s cool. So you got your bio and you’ve got two more for us. So the next thing you have to do is you have to go out there and create content. Now experts like Gary V say go make lots and lots and lots of content.
Leonard Kim:
The problem with that philosophy is you end up with a hundred posts or like five things you need to do in your business right now. And all of them were the same exact five steps, just weird in a different way. And there’s nothing unique about whether they go to the next. What they do in these articles is like, let’s say step one says, um, let, let’s be facetious and say jumping jacks, step one dude jumping jacks. You should do jumping jacks because they’re great. Step two, do squats. Squats are really good for you. Like this is how all these articles looking at, Oh, it all looks the same. If you’re going to make an article and you’re going to make it a list, it’s okay if it’s a list, but if it says Step one do jumping jacks, jumping jacks, it should be like jumping jacks are great for you. What they do is, according to this study, they increase your metabolism by X percent according to this other study, um, this other research indicates that if you do jumping jacks every day, you’ll have this x percent increase in happiness. So what you’re doing is you’re getting one research study and the second research study to go and back your claim. So now your content is not the same as everyone else because you have experts backing what you’re saying.
Phoebe:
Yeah, It’s so funny to me because really it’s just basic, kind of journalistic writing, you know and it’s so yeah, so obvious to me, but so many people get stuck on this and then they put up these crappy posts, you know, that, that aren’t well thought out and I get it. You know, we all get busy. Sometimes it’s just a matter of your lifestyle. You’re so busy and you don’t have time to do the post, but truly it isn’t better you guys, if you’re putting up stuff that isn’t quality, you know it just because you have it. Um, and so I know you know a lot of people who come on my show, myself included, we talk about, but you have to be consistent. But if your consistency is crap then I’m not so sure that that’s the better way to go. In fact, I know it’s not. So you can be damaging your reputation with your name associated with that. So, all right, really good. Create content. But I think what you’re saying is really, you know, put some, put some meat into it, research it, then we’ll look at how journalists write stories. You know that’s, that’s what I focus on is the brand journalism style.
Leonard Kim:
Exactly.
Phoebe:
And bring in the supporting evidence that that helps.
Leonard Kim:
And after you have the evidence, what you do is you do maybe a personal example, like I do jumping jacks every day and because I do ten a day, I’ve seen this kind of result. Yeah. And then you tie it into how they could use it in their life. You’re like, you can do jumping jacks every day by just doing it. Once you hit your alarm clock and this is how you could implement it into your routine.
Phoebe:
Yeah,
Leonard Kim:
So when you tie all that together, you have this article that has a higher chance of going viral, a higher chance of being read more, a higher chance of connecting with other people and all this other stuff. So I mean, if you structure your article the right way, it’s a lot better than just going out there and just creating a lot of content. Now with the consistency, you can post one time a day, one time a week, one time a month, one time every six months, one time a year doesn’t matter. As long as you’re consistent with how long you’re producing content, I’m making sure that it’s as close to really good as possible.
Phoebe:
Excellent.
Leonard Kim: [29:02]
Then we go to step three. Step three is content amplification or syndication. Now if you go and stick this content onto your blog, people have to know about your blog before they can read it because it says hell isn’t going to show up in Google. So the great thing is there’s contents in the casing that works out there. Uh, my favorite two are Quora and Medium. They both have contents indication teams as well. Where let’s say you were to put something onto Quora and let’s say it met the same rather guidelines of maybe like a Forbes article. Chances are if that content, those well on core or medium Forbes may go pick it up where entrepreneur or inc may go pick it up as well. So the great thing about that is they have these internal networks. So they go out there and they get your content in front of their people because they want, they want, they’re always looking for new content to get in front of their, and that works at millions and millions of people. So now you get hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands of people who are able to see your content immediately versus no one who’s on your blog except for like maybe your mom, brothers, sister, and um, maybe your friend who you paid.
Phoebe:
That’s right. That’s right. So talk about, um, what do you think about Linkedin for blogging?
Leonard Kim:
Linkedin is fine. They go out there and push content out as well. If it’s Linkedin, that has to just be a little bit more business tailored. And what you have to do is, uh, you, I, I’d say a Linkedin post is good if it’s about 300 to 500 words, that’s what most people read on Linkedin.
Phoebe: [30:41]
Excellent. All right. I love what you’ve shared with us. Brand Journalism community all be in the show notes at ThinkLikeaJournalist.com under Leonard’s page. You can find it there. It’s time to think like a journalist. Leonard, you’ve been hired to help an alien company. It’s about to financially collapse its reputation shot. You have a month, $1,000 budget, a smartphone, and a laptop. How do you begin to turn this company around?
Leonard Kim:
A thousand dollars; great.
Leonard Kim:
So you’re falling apart, your business is going down, everything’s falling apart.
Leonard Kim:
What kind of industry are we in?
Phoebe:
It’s an open game, that that’s all we give.
Leonard Kim: [31:18]
Okay, sure. So everything is falling apart and everything’s collapsing. What you have to do now is you have to control the narrative that’s most important, then you have to do right now. And the narrative from everyone else is saying, look, you’re falling apart. What you need to do is create a message, uh, at least signifying some kinds of faith into the, uh, giving some faith back into the press and the media and the public side. So let’s say you have maybe 2,000 people who are your loyal customers throughout time. You want to make sure that they’re not as worried in case you do collapse. So you have to let them know that you still have their back. You have to put out a press release stating your position and then send out a message to the community, letting them know about what your financial situation is and plan to recover, which means before that you need to have a plan to recover.
Leonard Kim:
So, I’d spend the first week creating a plan on how to get out of the mess. The second week would be establishing the communication that would go to the outside world, which starts with your, uh, current customers, your current Shareholders and to the outside media. Then three, we’d use that thousand dollars and probably go and amplify some, create some landing pages with the copy, talking about the new, talking about the products and services that the company has to offer and put those into either like Facebook ads, core ads, or Google Ads, whichever ones were getting the lowest cost per conversion on. Test out, a few different samples of copy to see which one is performing well and which one isn’t; then slowly begin to amplify those budgets within that thousand dollars. So, And the third week you’re testing different campaigns to see which one is working better than the other ones and where to go put your whole ad spend in. On that fourth week, you go and you dump that thousand dollars or what’s left of that thousand dollars which would be about $950 after your testing and put that all into that one platform so you could go and carry over and earn some more profits.
Leonard Kim:
So you could do that the next month, then the next month, then the next month and you continually upgrade those ads so you can go out there and earn whatever money off whatever product you’re selling, which is, hopefully, a consumable product that you can buy over the Internet.
Phoebe: [33:44]
Good plan. What is one piece of technology, video, multimedia equipment or an app that you just can’t live without?
Leonard Kim:
I just got this new app. It’s called Switcher Studio and it’s $300 a year. It lets you go live on like Facebook and youtube and it’s best used on the iPad. How you can set it up is you could have one iPad that’s, you switch your device and you could set up like three different like iPhones and you can have a three cameras set up and you can switch from screen one screen to screen three, like a professional video studio. And you can put it in like little slides. You can put it on in the lower thirds to put your name and have that pop-up. You could then all these different images and videos. So you can do, have all these interactive features while you go live on the platform as well. So it doesn’t look as dinky as.
Phoebe:
Yeah, that’s totally cool. So have you ever heard of Manycam?
Leonard Kim:
No, I haven’t.
Phoebe:
Check that out. I know you just got that one, but I’ve had Manycam for a while now. Um, and it actually was before the days of even Facebook Live. Uh, so it’s been around a little while, but you should check it out. It kind of has the same concept. It brings a studio mechanism to a single laptop so you can put up, you know, you can link in different cameras, you can have graphics. I love it because it, it reminds me of my days of being in the studio.
Leonard Kim:
Awesome. That sounds pretty good.
Phoebe: [35:08]
Yeah. How about a book, a documentary blog, podcast or internet channel You’d like to recommend?
Leonard Kim:
Great question. A blog, a discovery channel or what?
Phoebe:
A documentary, podcast, or Internet channel.
Leonard Kim: [35:30]
Oh, let’s see. One of your favorites. Um, Neil Patel’s blog is pretty good. Quick Sprout. That’s where I learned most of my beginning online marketing experience. Uh, I went to high school with him and I saw him do extremely well and I was sitting there going, I’m not doing well. Maybe I should just do what he did. And that’s where I learned a lot of my marketing from expert predictions.
Phoebe: [35:48]
Expert predictions. The year is 2025. Give us a look at what you think the world is going to be like and how important that brand is going to be–hat personal brand out in 2025–and then leave us with some parting advice for a competitive advantage.
Leonard Kim: [36:04]
That sounds pretty scary, 2025. I think it’s going to be a lot of people with forward-facing cameras talking into their phones and communicating over the Internet and it’s going to be a lot of noise. Um, the only way that you’re going to be able to stand out in an environment like that is to start building your personal brand. Now, while the competition isn’t really that Steve, because once that happens and once everyone’s doing video to communicate, then the whole environment’s just going to be very competitive. It’s going to be harder to stand out and it’s just going to, if you start now, then you have a fighting chance and you could probably have a good chance at winning. But if you start, then it’s going to be a whole different ballgame.
Phoebe:
Yeah, a lot more cluttered, a lot noisier. So get busy now and don’t think that, uh, if you’re working a day job that you don’t need to have a personal brand. We already, we already addressed that one. I hear that a lot, but it’s so, so important. It’ll help you in more ways than you can ever imagine. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Leonard. Love what you’ve shared with us on The Brand Journalism Advantage podcast. rand journalism advantage podcasts,
Leonard Kim:
Anytime, Phoebe, thank you so much for having me.
Phoebe:
Hey, Brand Journalism community, you know that you can find all the valuable information in the show notes. All you have to do is head on over to think like a journalist.com and in the search box, type in 436 and this interview and the resources mentioned in this episode will pop right up.
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