Die Grundlagen für den Aufbau einer Marke

0:00I wanted to get your advice on my own business and just brand building. A lot of what we built was inspired by you and just like giving content for an audience. Outside of just doing more, we're seeing some really great early results. What are some other kind of practical guides for somebody wanting to build their brand in an audience, whether niche or not? >> I want somebody who's between the they want to start a fund or they already have done their first and they want to get their second or third, right? I'm I'm then thinking like what do these people consume? What is the what are the biggest problems that they're dealing with right now?

0:37And then all of my content seeks to solve all of those problems. I mean that's it. So create the reinforcement loop of listen to David, problem solved. Listen David, problem solved. >> Yeah, he's this guy's helped me so much. That's the hermetization >> Yeah. Well, what do what do business owners struggle with? They struggle with marketing, they struggle with sales, they struggle with cash flow, they struggle with fixing their product, decreasing churn, you know, recruiting. So these are all cuz obviously like we're we're operators. We actually run business. So like that's what they struggle with. And so I make my content for business owners cuz that's what I'm trying to attract. So the two sides the two sides of your business just to distill what's made you so successful. One is you're reinforcing listen to Alex and good things will happen. And two is actually you're building you're building a surplus of of goodwill. So there's both goodwill as well as trust in you as an operator of businesses to make them more successful.

1:33>> you know, interesting cuz the trusting about the like So like I would get into those seem similar to me, both those buckets. Um and probably derive from the same action set. And I think it just comes down to like does this increase the likelihood that someone would would would do something with me for me. Uh and if they have a history of positive reinforcement from me, then that increase that that likelihood increases. And that's that's I just leave it there. Um that's about it. The goodwill I just would redefine as a history of positive reinforcement.

2:07That's it. And so there's this big misconception, I think, in the kind of creator world. You probably heard the like give to ask ratio, you know, that kind of thing. But it's interesting cuz when you when you read Steve Jobs um autobiography, he talks about this. I know not his biography by Isaac Walterson. Walter Isaacson. Thank you. Thank you. Um he he he he talks about how like he still saw that withdrawal deposit concept within Apple, but with via every product. And so he saw some like he believed that if the product was great, then we've deposited into the person's bank account, right? Figuratively.

2:48Whereas a creator feels like if they ask for money, they have withdrawn from their quote goodwill, but the underlying assumption there is that the thing that you sold them was not good. Because if you were a creator and you came up with an iPhone, yeah, then people would be lining up around the block for the next time you sold something. So it's this zero-sum mentality where I've provided all this and now you spend your money you spend you spend something that you don't really need.

3:14>> Reciprocity. >> Yeah. You don't really need it. Whereas your second trade would also be creative. Exactly. And I think that is a fundamental misconception. I think the reason for that is because creators typically don't know how to make products that are exceptional. And they typically don't put not always, but like they don't sometimes don't have enough capital or they you know, aren't good at making products. They're good at making media. It's just a different skill set. So just to double click on that for acquisition.com. So you give all this content, they love it.

3:42You help them go to 1 to 10 million. They come to you 10 million. They're lucky enough for you to invest. You could take them to 100 million. So you're not taking 30% and you're saying this is mine for helping you. Right. You're [laughter] actually you're helping them even further. You're like give me the opportunity to help you further. >> Yeah. And the reason that you can believe that I can help is cuz I already have. Mhm. So it also self-selects cuz if they if they if they adhere basically if if they have changed their behavior based on the content that I have, then it's likely that they will be able to respond favorably again in the future to the same types of direction, right? Then now the nature of what they do is also likely that they're grateful in that they're aware that you helped them. Cuz some people will be helped and just never never attribute it to it. We'll just internalize it.

4:27>> actually a super interesting one. Um Yeah, attribution's very um Most like think about it's think about how tough it is to have something amazing happen in your life and say that wasn't me. That was that guy or that was something else. Like we usually take the opposite approach, which is everything that's good is because of me and everything is bad is because of other people and circumstances. And so it's actually >> true in successful people? Um I think it's true in humans. I think there's just degrees. Like not binary. I think it's just a continuum. Probably some people are more this way, some people are that way. Um but no, I 100% getting attribution the and this is why I think having directives that are so specific is so important. If I if I gave vague vague directions, right? That somebody has to derive behavior change from, then basically the more derivatives they have to to do, then I think and I think rightfully so, the more they should attribute that to themselves.

5:28If I said on this podcast make it this headline and I will give you the thumbnail and then it outperforms the click-through rate. If you thought that was because your team did it, I would be like that feels a bit odd. If I said I think it should be you and me and both of our faces kind of you know, big in the middle and this you know, let's start it with the the tweet that we know already you know, performs best.

5:53Maybe that's a middle. Like he gave us some insight. It was kind of helpful, but like we still made it, right? And that if that last like well, we still like whatever that part is, it's like the less gap there is between whatever your your your advice was and the action. I think the smaller the gap, the more the attribution will be there, which is why I am so specific with with the the stuff that I put out. And would you would a good criticism of my strategy be it's always podcast, it's always with LPs or GPs and there should be more talking heads or if people are observing this and getting the getting the value from the actual guest, that's fine. Do I have to go to a talking head as well? So thinking about this from like a short-form long-form. How do I translate this into action for us, right?

6:36Short-form, let's say somebody watched one short a day from me for a year, okay? And let's say that a short is 30 seconds for simple math. All right, so I have 365 shorts. That's 180-ish minutes, right? So that's 3 hours that they watched from me. Now we know that most shorts are not 30 seconds. It's probably probably a third of that, right? So if they watched a short every day for a year, it's probably an hour-ish of content. Okay.

7:04I would for sure rather have someone just watch I mean I would probably like that frequency of exposure. Like if it was 1 hour to 1 hour, but if I had to pick, I'd rather have a one 3-hour podcast versus that. But that's to me I see the purpose of short-form >> why podcasts are underrated medium? Because you have one listen, but it could be 2 hours and it goes pretty deep. I've thought about this a decent amount. So like I see podcasts actually as email lists.

7:29So with the exception like true podcast, this is like YouTube plus pod like you have you repurpose there. But the the vast majority I would bet of the channel growth comes from YouTube and then it sustains on the audio, right? If you did audio only, it's very difficult to grow audio only cuz there's very little suggestion. Spotify's beginning this, but for very long time people had to only grow off of word of mouth sending podcast to to friends and family, whatever.

7:54And so if we see podcasts as a an email list, then when someone comes to me and says, "Hey, I'm thinking about starting a podcast to grow my business." I'm like that's like saying I'm thinking about starting an email list. Like that's not going to grow the business. Now unless you have a way of getting, you know, exposure to it, then that's the way that it's going to grow. But if we look at, you know, percentage likelihood of conversion, a podcast listener who subscribes is is more valuable than any other subscription.

8:22If we just think about percentage of kind of time share, if you will. Which is the average person I think has like five or seven five or seven podcasts something like that that they subscribe to. You think about Instagram, it's like most people have like a thousand people they follow. It's like not even close. Order of magnitude different. >> You go on a lot of other podcasts. Tell me about the calculus. Why would you go on somebody else's podcast as essentially you're building their their listenership. Tell me about the the thought.

8:49So I don't do a ton. Um I almost exclusively do with people that I like it's somebody that I actually do really want to have a conversation. I would say that's probably the biggest single the biggest factor. Yeah, it's the biggest yeah, it's like I'd seen your wall and I I I always I always find our conversations fascinating. Um cuz you have such a different perspective from the from the like super LP side. You [laughter] know what I mean? Like that always brings such fresh eyes to the to what I'm thinking about like in the super kind of like operational side.

9:18Um that's probably the biggest thing. From a from like return on time perspective, I think it's like clips will generate that's like what's the the only upside for me realistically is probably like clips and relationship. Those are those are the two kind of like alphas for for doing it. It's not because you get to talk to a whole new audience and part of part of them will convert to you. With your audience, it's it's it's so niche and unique like there's definitely value there because you have a superstar audience.

9:48I would say asking as a general like why what why do I select them in general? Um The audience that I have is the audience that I want. >> [laughter] >> Yeah. Um and so when I'm going with someone else's audience, I'm basically trying to like I I don't even think about it this way, but I guess you could you could imagine it's like, okay, of the people where's the overlap of business people who listen to Chris Williamson, you know, on Modern Wisdom. Okay, like I'll some of those people will then start, you know, following my stuff that they hadn't heard about me before that. But if that were the case, then I would definitely be maximizing like only new podcasts rather than doing the same podcast over.

10:24And I tend to do the same podcast over. So if I'm looking at my behavior rather than what I would like, so my behavior would dictate that I usually just go to people that I enjoy. Real quick, if you're a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So my team and I put together the $100 million scaling roadmap, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so we broke it in these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you, what to do for each of the functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources and finance. And so no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information and if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out. On the thank you page, you can book a call with my team and we will look at your business, see if we can help and if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live.