April 20, 2016

#AndyTalks 038 – Why I’m not “building a list”

Maan, I sure did ramble in this video!

Things I talk about:

  1. The GhostCodes app – a Snapchat directory/discovery app.
  2. Why teaching others is good for you.
  3. Why I’m on Snapchat even though my clients likely aren’t.
  4. How I’ve accidentally generated leads from TheFastLaneForum.
  5. How I normally generate leads.
  6. Why having “clients” that you don’t charge can still be good for you.

 

TRANSCRIPTION

Kids: Yeah…

Andy: Lovely, isn’t it?

Kids: . . . crows. Not so nice any more.

Andy: What’s wrong with crows?

Kids: Cos they’re stupid.

Andy: You’re tired now?

Sports Centre, nice.

— go for a nice stroll back along the way I came with the kids. Bit of peace and quiet this time. They didn’t stop asking questions all the way there. It was funny.

— no gym or run this morning, a shame. I’ve got a meeting at quarter past nine. Damn. I arranged that wrong.

When I get back I’m going to print out that forum post, where I answer a question. Somebody says, “How would you make three grand in thirty days?” Quite a few people contributed to that post. I wrote a bit and I’m curious as to whether if I just read it will it come across as like a normal Snapchat story. If it does then I can kind of pull that part out. You Snapchatters get to see the before and after of me getting set up trying to do it and then me working out whether I think it’s any good.

I’ve heard a few people talking about the Ghost codes — that’s plural — app a few times.
— a discovery app for Snapchat. So you go in you register yourself and put your Snapcode up. Categorize yourself as being either business, marketing, vlogging, cool, sexy, whatever it is. A few weeks ago when I tried to do it, it was invitation only and you needed a password, or something like that. I tried it last night and it didn’t need a password so got straight in. I think it’s very clever of them to have created an app where it’s like directory, you put yourself in and then I think people vote for you or give you a like and then you rise up in your category and then because you’re higher up in that category more people see it, you get more followers, you know self-fulfilling thing. . . . immediately see people gaming it because as soon as I signed up, somebody liked my little directory listing or whatever it was. I don’t know how they even found it so quick. Just for fun I went into a couple of categories and found all the people with hardly any likes, or whatever they’re called — hearts — and I just gave them a few to see if they would do it back, but I don’t like that kind of tactic that’s like the Twitter Follow One follow box and rubbish like that. Just curious.

This morning, no more likes, which I think is good, don’t want that stuff to be working. I think Snapchat has done a good job making it so that you can’t have bots creating Snapchat stories, so you have to physically hold the button down, create your video and various other things. Maybe somebody will sort something out, but who cares.

The thing is, it’s interesting. I wake up this morning and I’m tempted to delete my listing because I don’t want it in there. I changed my name from Andy Black to just “AdWords” because that’s all you can kind of see. You can see somebody’s handle and their name — “AdWords.” I just want to put people off, because I really don’t want random people just following my Snapchat stories and maybe if I got feedback from these random people it’s not going to help me.

Because I’m in the B2B space. My clients are businesses. Business owners are my ideal clients. I want to be talking to the business owners and they’re not going to be on Snapchat randomly looking for some marketing dude or a business dude to just follow and consume 10 minutes of content a day or whatever it is. Marketers might be. Like a business person who’s a marketing consultant; they might be interested in finding out what other people are doing as I did.

I’m more than happy to be found and interact with people who inhabit an entrepreneurial forum because they’re close, they might not be a business owner yet but they might be later on. No, I’m not trying to catch them in a couple of years, “Oh, I’ll go and hire that guy in two years time.” I can relate to somebody that’s in a job trying to get a business going, because I was that person and I’m on a path and I’ve got further to go myself. I’m enjoying the journey and I’m more than happy to look back and help other people who are a few steps behind me.

— when I was doing Kick Boxing in London I would help other beginners in the beginners class that I was in. The old Japanese gentleman who was the head of the school, he took myself and another guy aside and he said, “Do you know the secret to learning and going faster? The secret is to teach.” Because you won’t get it properly until you try and explain it to someone else. That’s part of the reason why I talk about stuff I’ve worked out and help other people is because it helps solidify in my head. If I’ve got six ways of explaining it, I understand it a lot better.

By the way, that sort of answered your questions, Brett and Sagar. I’ve got a list of all the questions and there’s quite a few about — Why do you help people? Does it really help you?

So, that was me going off topic for a second. What I wanted to talk about was the fact that I’m in the B2B space. Why would I be on Snapchat? . . . before, I’m using it as an app so that I can create videos and I get better at creating videos. Since I started doing it — vlogging, wow, legacy. Grandkids can see this stuff, get to know Daddy and Grandad, who he was. Maybe I can pass on some of my knowledge so that they’re ahead of where I am at my age. When I mean ahead I mean mindset-wise. . . . a bank of video content every single day and I can pull out little snippets of things that are good — maybe — and upload them later.

I’m not interested in building a big list of followers. If people are following me it’s because they want to. They likely want to get to the point where I am; maybe they’re a marketing consultant. I’m guessing, I’m just guessing. . . . the owner of a solicitor’s firm or the owner of a plumbing company or the plumber who’s out on his own, they’re not on Snapchat and they’re not going to find me.

— video logs — vlogs — my “why” is really big now. It’s my kids and my grandkids. I’m not going to stop now. That’s a good hack by the way, if you’re losing motivation and stop doing something and it’s something that you kind of want to do, try and find a better way. But Andy, you’re spending a lot of time doing videos and working out a process to getting it transcribed and then posted on YouTube, your blog, Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter. Someone’s mentioned Instagram — I hadn’t thought of that — and maybe there’s other places. . . . doing that to get a following.

No, I’m not. But I am obviously doing that to help more people to understand AdWords, to understand lead generation for their business so that they can have a go themselves. I’m not going to charge people for that; I don’t want to charge people for that. People who want to do it for themselves are not my ideal client. . . . business is not successful enough for them to hire somebody, they don’t value their time enough to hire me. By default, if somebody wants to learn how to do AdWords from me, they are not going to hire me. It’s not like I can train somebody to understand my 6 years of AdWords and 15 years of IT in a few flipping e-books or membership sites. . . . give away for free little tips on how to get set up and avoid the common pitfalls.

But Andy, how is this going to help your business? I was even asked this yesterday, “Is this going to help your business?” I think it will, because what happened in the forum, the FastLane Forum, when I joined 2 years ago, I was coming from a different forum that had shut down and I was looking for a home online, because I like being online chatting to people who get what the hell I am talking about. I joined; I opened my briefcase of content that was actually sitting on my blog and I just started dropping them in to help people. I get so excited once I’ve worked something out and I can explain it to people, I get excited to just explain it to people.

— at that point I always had a small paid forum, had 5 paying members who were learning AdWords from me, paying $50 a month. But I quickly realized they were getting so much of my time compared to clients who were paying thousands a month and they were wrecking my head. Actually, they weren’t all wrecking my head, just one who was asking questions he could have googled and when I gave the response he was arguing with me, it’s like, “dude.” Just because other people are making money with membership sites and e-books and info products and what not, that’s not the route I want to go down.

Busy business owners are likely not on membership sites and buying e-books and stuff. But, what I noticed in the forum is that after a while I was starting to get work from the forum, not from people in the forum. So, like I say, busy business owners often are not going to be in a forum because they’re too busy. Some people do — and honestly thank you so much for those people who drop gold and then leave the forum and then come back and drop a bit of gold and leave again, it’s brilliant. By and large people in an entrepreneurial forum are trying to get better at being an entrepreneur and likely are trying to get started.

What I noticed was I was starting to get work through referrals, people in the forum were referring me to other people, business owners.

Damn I was getting on a roll. I think I really should go on to Periscope and just flipping go for it. I was building momentum there but now I have to go to my meeting. Oops.

— from spreadsheets.

Tom’s been around to have a look at our decking which we’re going to get painted tomorrow. While he was here, we are looking at getting that manhole there lowered a bit, because it protrudes and it’s a bit dangerous for the kids. . . . dropped a little bit, one breeze block and then get astro turf, artificial grass on the top of the manhole. Here he had a little piece and he just put it there, we’ll get a thicker piece, he’s got some with longer grass on it, which is great, hides the thing I had underneath, rubber, which was green but showed up a lot more. Think we’ll do something under the swings.

— telling you that though, was because Tom, he lives round here. We get him to do some of the painting for us, help us. Tom knows the guy who has all this artificial turf and does sort of maintenance work who’s just gone into business himself. I know him as well; he’s a biker, locally. Tomorrow when he comes around to do the decking, painting it for us, or whatever it’s called, Brian’s going to come around with him. We’re going to have a look . . . what kind of competition there is on AdWords and what the volume searches are that are relevant to whatever his offerings are and whether it’s worth trying an AdWords campaign to see if we can get him more work.

This. Your mouth. Talk to people. It helps if you want to get more work in business and just have an attitude of wanting to help people. I said “oh I could have a look at that, see if it’s worth doing.” Say he’s going to come around in the morning. He’s only just started in business himself; he’s not going to be a massive client, if he becomes a client even; I might just do it for fun anyway. If Brian paid for the ad spend, even if he paid me a tiny bit per month or nothing, I get to learn with his ad spend whether AdWords paid search works for whatever his service is and if it works in this county for his service, I can go to other counties and do the same thing.

One of my favorite quotes is by Mother Teresa, in it she says, “never worry about numbers, help people one at a time and start with the person nearest to you.”

Sorry guys, I’ve just listened back to some of that and I’m missing the first word every now and then. I’ll be a bit more careful. And Jordan, if you catch today’s Snap… Tom is your Dad — you know that.

— a quick call with somebody in Dublin who has a very — I don’t know how big it is — a little radio station, talk about all sorts of things. Obviously she’s after as much material as possible, people to interview and I’m going in next Wednesday morning to do a radio interview. The lady I’m speaking to, she is actually going on a start-your-own-business course, or something like that. She’s loving it and maybe I’ll get in . . . presenter and I can talk about AdWords and specifically how you can get started on a whiff of spend and validate — validate. I hate all these start up words by the way — and how you can find out if there’s demand for the product or service that you’re trying to sell before you go and spend thousands building a website and getting logos and business cards and all the rest of it done and then afterwards finding out nobody is even searching for it — which is fine by the way. Of course you can go and sell products that people aren’t searching for on a search engine like Google. It’s just I like to start there. Hopefully there’s people already — already — looking for what you’re selling.