B (5:10)

Yeah. And, and I actually have found that once you make the choice, everything else becomes a whole lot easier. Right. And you can move faster. And I'm pretty sure we talked about this early on when we talked about niches. But just in case some people need a reminder because month of November, a lot has happened, like sometimes. And what's been helpful for me is to know that like I'm niching down now and it doesn't mean I'm niching down forever, it's just for now and, but you need to do that in order to figure out exactly where you're going to angle everything. So making sure that you do that is going to be huge.

A (5:48)

Once you've made that hard choice, then essentially day eight, you know, week two through the end of the month, you have a lot of reading to do and that's okay. This, in my opinion, this is the fun part. I'm a learner. I like to read. I can read aggressively and I will list, I will download and I do, I usually do audiobooks. I don't know about you, but I tend to, I use audio to preview. And then if I really like the book, like it's really good, I like I was taking, trying to take notes while listening to the audiobook. That's how I know it's good. If I'm wanting to write things down as I'm listening to it, then I go and buy the paperback. And then because I've already listened to it, it's easy to skim through and go and find the parts that I want to remember. That's kind of my reading system of how I consume information fast because I'm listening to books at 2x while I'm running laundry and driving or something. Do you have a different system for Piling through like a ton of information.

B (6:42)

I think you and I have worked so for so long. I think it's pretty similar.

A (6:47)

We have a similar one. Okay.

B (6:48)

Yeah. Because I listened to it in 2x.

B (6:52)

I will. The other thing I will do is if I'm listening to it and I don't have like my notebook in hand, I have a notepad, like on my phone, like a notes, and I just like dictate the thought that I have and then what insight or things that I want to implement because of that insight. So I'm trying to take quick action on it right away. But other than that, it's pretty similar.

A (7:17)

You know what? I often do too, if I'm going through this 30, 30, 30 plan, which I've done multiple times because, dang it, I've picked wrong a few times. And I'm a learner. So, like, I've had no problem doing deep dives on multiple topics. Now is I often buy the audiobooks, like all the audiobooks and all the paperback books. Even if I don't really plan on, like, doing more than skimming the paperback books. I do it for a couple of reasons. One, I like having them all on my bookshelf, especially if it's a topic that I'm going to be in a long time. Because if, you know, if I'm like making a podcast episode, you like, if. There's been a few times I've done it already in this series where I go back and just pick it off, off the shelf and then I show people the physical copy. It almost becomes a prop, but it also becomes proof that you've read it. Especially when you can go through and be flip open a student page and show the camera. It's also great for social content to have an actual copy of the book to make a remark about and then turn to a page and actually pull open a quote. I don't know what it is, but a lot of times people are faking it so much that they actually have this stack of books. And as you're reviewing it, reviewing one at a time and then being like making a roundup of like, here's all the books that I've read and it's you next to all the books. And it's not AI it's like a literal photo. There's something about it that I just find helps increase that believability that you're actually reading it all. Because a lot of people won't believe that you're reading 30 books in like 30 days here and of course, this is a condensed timeline. This is assuming that you're like hustling. But again, even though we sent it in the the other chapter, we mentioned that reading. I'm sure a lot of you are like this. I'm out. I can't read 30 books. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. Especially if they're all on the same freaking topic. Like, I did this. The first time I did this was on nonprofit marketing back when I was starting that podcast and There was about 15 books on this topic that I could find. Nonprofit marketing books at the time. And after the first five books, it just got so easy because most of it was like the same repeated information. The same. Here's how you get your donor list, here's how you send your appeal letter. Here's the follow up sequence. Like, oh my gosh, everybody's ripping off this one original OG from the 80s. That's when I realized nonprofit marketing. So broken.

A (9:29)

Because I read all the books and found out they all referenced the same studies. But it becomes easier and easier to get through them. You're pretty much just skimming and looking for new content. So reading 30 or even 15 felt more like reading 5, which you can totally get done in a month. A book a week is a lot, but not, not when you're listening to it on audio at 2x and then skimming through it, finding all the information. Plus, if that's just scary to you, then thought leadership might not be your topic. This may be a proving point at the beginning. If you can't knock out that many books, maybe this is not for you.

B (10:01)

Yeah, and you're not saying that you can knock out those books in this timeline that you're saying you can't knock out those books, period. Like you don't want to read 30 books.

A (10:11)

Yeah, maybe you don't get it done in 30 days, but I don't know, I guess I just like to hit it hard over 30 days. That's why we've pretty much come up with a whole book's worth of information. I mean, I've had a lot of this on files and files of files of information in notion for a long time. So it's not like we're making up all this information for this book in 30 days, but we've been recording it all for 30 days. I'm like, let's just do one a freaking day for the month of November and we're a little bit December. But like, I don't know, I just go hard and then I stop and then I Move on to something else and go hard. That's kind of how I roll. Sure.

B (10:42)

If I had not gotten sick, we would have done, we would have been done at the end of December or at the end of November.

A (10:48)

The key part is, while you're doing the reading, you can't just do the reading alone. From day one, before you even start reading the first book, you want to start talking about this on that first, that, that remember, two channel rule. What's your short form channel? We're not starting the podcast yet, but we are starting the short form channel, whether it's LinkedIn or Twitter or Facebook, Instagram, one of those short form ones. And you're talking about your experience as you're reading them. And you need to share at least one post a day. At least one. If not three, three would be great. But at least once a day, what you're reading and what you're learning from it. That's it. Bam. Just share what you're learning. And maybe even because you're a professional, you're actually doing this for your day job. Start implementing it at work. What are you learning and trying and implementing at work? And then finding, oh, aha, oh, this worked. This didn't work. Doesn't matter if it worked or not. What did you learn? Post about it. Talk about your experiments. If you're doing this and you're learning in the light on social media, it's beginning the process of authority. It's the early days, but these are the seeds you're sowing in people's minds that you're really getting into this one topic. Like if you were a generalist marketer and you're going into email marketing and you're reading all these books about email and you're trying it out in your day job, because email is one of the things you get to touch and you're experimenting and posting your, your finds about it, people are going to start picking up the, the, the trail you're putting down real fast. It becomes really obvious. It doesn't take long either.

B (12:15)

Yeah, and then that's, that's the fun part is because kind of what we were talking about in the chapter before too, people start to reach out to you and then the depth of your connections, your relationships, right. All of that just starts to make sense because they know, they're like, oh, yeah, Dan's the AI marketing guy. I'm going to ask him. He might know something.

A (12:36)

There's something about it, too.

A (12:38)

That helps reinforce the learning and actually helps you develop true expertise just by you trying to explain it in a way that's helpful to others, what you're learning. This is why colleges make you write papers, because as soon as you have to actually explain what you read, it reinforces the knowledge. So you might as well put that to work in college. Unfortunately, your college papers count for nothing other than your Prof. Understanding that you learned. But in real life, it's kind of cool because you can learn in the light and gain authority while you're learning. So not only is it becoming like a way to reinforce what you know and actually solidify the understanding truly by teaching it and sharing what you learn, but you're actually building authority in the process. I'm like, freaking win.

B (13:29)

It's a great way to learn.

A (13:31)

That's day one through 30. The next phase is day 31 through 60, you know, the next month in the 90 day plan. And that's the connection phase. This is where if you've read through most of the book and you don't even have to have finished all the books. But I recommend before you start this connection phase, you want to have read at least three to four books, like the initial bulk of them. The most well known books have read those. Okay. And then you could spin up your podcast. The podcast is a critical thing. We've talked about it a lot in this.

A (14:03)

Book because it's, it's just, it's, it's the best tool for building authority. There's no way around it. I can't. There's many ways to build authority, but we just find over and over again, the podcast accomplishes so many different parts, so many different factors of it, and building relationships is one of those. So you want to start schedule reaching out to and scheduling appointments to interview people in the industry. It doesn't. It can be the authors you're reading. It can be people you're seeing on social that are big into this topic too. And that's what they're known for. You can go after small players you want, you know, you can go after big players. Some of the really big players might say no now, but they'll say yes later. But start reaching out. I rarely have people say no.

B (14:47)

Yeah. I mean, just to give you a good example, I did outreach to like several people on LinkedIn today that I was like, man, I really want to get to know them. I should have them on the podcast, every talk to them and they're like, absolutely, bro, let's do it. Every single one of them. So then it's just following up with them and going Through a process.

A (15:08)

The amount of people that DM me and are like, hey, can I get 15 minutes of your time to show you my tool? I'm like, no, no, no, no. Every time someone DMs me, it's like, hey, I'd love to have you on my podcast. Talk about AI marketing. I don't even care if I'm episode one. I say freaking yes. I'm also kind of a podcast guy, so I get it. But there's something valuable even in being asked to be on a show, even if there's no audience, because the value of being asked questions is valuable in and of itself. There are many times where I've hatched new ideas because someone worded a question in some way and it like unleashed an idea in my head. I'm like, oh, the answer to that is bleh. And I'm like, did I just freaking say that? What the heck happened? Experts know this, and so they like being on podcasts unless they're so busy that they can't say yes to another podcast because they've entered the third phase of authority, right? And they're being, they're being hit up all the time for opportunities and then they have to be selective. That's where you want to be. But you know, we have to get there. So you want to start interviewing these. You want to start working that knowledge and asking them the questions that you still have after reading said books or while you're reading the books. Best to always have the book read if you're interviewing a particular author on the book. That's why you need to have a few read. You sound more knowledgeable after reading a few books too. You'll be able to ask better questions. But this is another part of the learning phase because you're actually learning Socratically. You're learning by having a dialogue about the conversation. You're working up your confidence to be able to talk to these kinds of people and be able to speak while on camera. And it takes, that takes reps. So the best way to do it is by interviewing people who have the expertise and just asking good questions, having good follow up questions, listening, repeating, and just doing it over and over and over again. Yeah.

B (16:50)

And as you're doing these interviews, here's just a reminder of a couple, a couple simple principles to take in mind. Number one, right? Use a simple tech stack. Like, don't overcomplicate it, don't like. And this is what stops a lot of people from podcasting. I even got it this morning. Someone messaged me this morning on LinkedIn. They're like, hey, bro, what. What mic should I use? I was like.

A (17:19)

Oh.

B (17:20)

I was like, wow, I never thought I'd get that question asked this many times, but it does. And it's funny because I said, hey, man, you shouldn't even worry about that. And, like, just kind of helping them step by step process of. Just use this as your tech stack because it's simple, it's quick. That's what I was sharing with him and that's what we've been sharing in this book. You know, we use zencast because we like it. It's simple. It does all of the. The hosting, it does all the distribution for us. Making sure you capture video and audio is going to be huge in this.

A (17:53)

If you could do a zoom call, you can make a podcast.

B (17:56)

Yeah, yeah.

A (17:58)

Until you're past episode seven, screw the mic that. You don't need a mic to podcast. If you can do a zoom call or Google Meet, you can make a podcast. That's the same thing.

B (18:07)

Yep.

A (18:08)

It's that simple. It doesn't even have to be good. It doesn't matter. The first. They're like, your first of anything is never good anyway. But people come off thinking they have to be really polished in the beginning. This is hard, too, for executives, I've noticed, who want to start a podcast. They don't really have an authority, but they're already playing at a pretty high level, you know what I'm saying? But it's hard. They think they have to be so polished in order to launch out. They even judge other executives. I've had somebody tell me this. That's why I know they're like, oh, he came out rough. I want to come out, out of the gate polished. I'm like, dude, that's just pride. Go back to being a student, eat dirt for a while and then get good. Even. Even say in the beginning, hey, I'm starting rough, because I don't know if this is something I want to invest in quite yet, but I'm going at it to see if this is something I want to continue doing. So it's an experiment. Just call it. Call it an experiment and then it buys. It buys you time. Call it beta. Beta is like the magic word that makes. That gives you so much latitude, right?

B (19:01)

For sure. And it's like people always expect. And here's what happens and what I find that stops people from podcasting right now, especially in this action plan, is that people expect the 300 episode expertise and professionalism that you get from that in episode one of your podcast. And it's a myth. That's not true. It's never like that. You know, if it's just episode one, people get it. And I mean, dude, I was listening to a podcast the other day. I think I mentioned this has 800 subscribers and it was like, I think they did this via Zoom.

A (19:36)

Like, yeah, a lot to do, dude. I just was a guest on a podcast that was via Zoom and I was, I was surprised and it was a slightly more prominent podcast. Not, it was probably, probably not 800 subscribers, but probably a few hundred. But I was like, oh, okay. But you know, you could even do it for free. I think Zoom, if you have a Zoom subscription, you could record via Zoom. But whatever you can do it on, I highly recommend just starting with Zencast because it's just easier. That's why we plug that all the time. Because it just makes everything easier, in my opinion, because then you don't have to worry with multiple tools, you just deal with one and done. You can record, edit and publish in the same place.

B (20:14)

Yeah.

A (20:14)

And if you remember, there's a few objectives for this phase. One, you're still learning. Two, you're still learning in the light. You're sharing these things as they come out. Of course, you're publishing the episodes as they go, but you're sharing that on social. You're like, oh, look, take a screenshot of you and so and so side by side, giving a thumbs up or a peace sign or something. I've seen people do this. It's fine. I haven't done that particular thing, but I've seen people do it and it works. Take a screenshot of you and so and so be like, oh, just talk to so and so who wrote the book or who is the expert on and blah, blah, blah. Again, people are going to start taking notice. They're like, oh, look at that. He's interviewing so and so. Always look at so and so. He's rubbing shoulders with the people that are the influencers. And so that's going to start rubbing off on you. It works. Especially when you start concentrating it on that niche. People are going to start taking notice of that. Even if you still don't know what you're talking about, they're going to start assuming you know what you're talking about because they're seeing you side by side with the people who do. But of course you're doing the reading, so you are starting to learn some things. And then the third thing is you're starting to build relationships. You're not just interviewing them to learn. You're not just interviewing them to like, like get some of the brand affinity of being associated with them. You're also interviewing them so you can get to know them genuinely. And so you want to actually stay in touch with them. Of course, when they, when the episode goes live, you share the link with them, you email them, maybe you follow up later if there was something that reminds you of them. This is advanced, but like actually the follow up game in this is really important if you want to actually build deeper relationships. This is something I actually need to do better on because I interview a lot of people and some of them I stay up to date with in LinkedIn and some of them I don't. But that's, that's my place where I need to grow. You're, you're really good at this, Ken. James Carberry is the freaking master of this.

A (21:54)

So that's why he's the relationship guy. And, but that's the third major objective is we want to be able to grow strong relationships with these people because they are the gatekeepers, they are the influencers of the community and you want to be with them. One of them appear level with them. So in days 61 to 90 of the student phase of this 90 day plan, you want to start with the output phase. This is where you're taking your learning and you're solidifying your learning now by either creating long form blog posts could be a newsletter, but it's a long form piece of content that answers the most basic questions. This isn't new and novel ideas yet. You're just synthesizing your own point of view on some of the most basic like most frequently asked questions in your industry. I used to do this with SEO and answer the most frequently googled things. I don't think it needs to be written anymore. Ken. I think people could just do this as solo episodes. But you do have to take the question that people have and then produce a whole episode around it and try to answer it better than anybody else has. You can't do this well until you've read all the books to figure out everybody else's answers. And to a general degree you're actually synthesizing everything you've heard from others and, and then laying out and a sort you can source them and be like oh, so and so sends this but I find that I would add this and then I layer in this person's expertise to make this holistic answer right. All you're doing is synthesizing everything you learned to answer the 30 most frequently asked questions. Hence the 30, 30, 30 plan, 30 bucks, 30 interviews, 30 blogs or long form podcast episodes. What would you add to that, Ken?

B (23:37)

You know, I think the, the one thing I would add is that, man, sometimes people would feel nervous that, well, couldn't AI just do all this for me? Or isn't AI just going to replace me? Well, remember, the whole point is that you're becoming the authority that AI is going to actually use if you start writing about this. So if you record all this information, then you could take that information and use AI to make it into a blog or newsletter or threads or clips, whatever it is. That's the beauty of this whole, this whole thing. So don't be afraid that AI is going to come and like take away your authority or your capacity to be an authority. It can enable you if you use it the right way.

A (24:26)

You definitely want to use AI to repurpose content, but you still have to start with original content. You still need to get in front of the camera and give your spiel on how something works. And this part takes time. You know, we're talking about 30 episodes and 30 days here, and it doesn't necessarily have to be 30. The 30 number isn't magical. I just picked 30 because I noticed that a lot of niches, if you go down deep enough, don't have more than 30 bucks. Because I've done this a number of times and I've just noticed they range between 5 and 30 and if there's more then it's too big, you have to niche down again. So that's where the 30 comes up. Also, 30 is a nice just round number, but you want to start answering the most frequently asked questions. And if you do 30 interviews and then 30 posts or 30 episodes where you're answering the most basic questions and it might just be a 10 minute episode, it might be a 20 minute episode. Depends. Generally when I do solos, they're about 10 to 12 minutes and that's me explaining, explaining concept or answering a question. So you want to do those. It starts to get you in front of the camera, not sharing it, but actually getting you in front of your audience. And remember, most of your audience hasn't heard all the best information because they haven't read all the books. Now you have, and you probably discovered some pain points that maybe you had before and you're like, oh, now that I've read all the books, I found some of the answers fantastic. Share that with your audience. Share it where you found it, how you wrestled with it, how it was an answer to it. Share the story behind all of it. If you have backstory on all any of these things like this, that's part of the episode. That's what makes it fun. That's what makes you unique and original and something people can actually relate with because you've been there, you've felt the pain.

B (26:06)

Yeah. I'll give you a great example of how this is super powerful.

B (26:12)

I'm getting ready to teach a class at church on discovering your God given purpose. And it was fascinating because I just forgot how much of I've read so many books on that topic and I haven't taught this series in a few years. So I'm like looking through my notes again and looking through everything and I was like, oh my gosh, I don't think there's been that many people who have read this many books on this topic. Like anytime a new book comes out on it, I've read it. I'm like, I can devour it and I can start seeing people, different people's worldview and, and or how they interpret things. And I'm like, oh, this is powerful to know. When you've able to are able to synthesize people's thoughts and actually bring more clarity to people, you are going to become way more stronger of an authority because people can find a solution faster because of you and that's what they want.

A (27:06)

So true, dude. It's to be an authority, you do need to eventually come up with unique and helpful ideas. That's in the next phase. But the platform that you need to build first is being known for that level of expertise. You have to be known as an expert before you can become a thought leader for unique ideas. You kind of have to build the base of understanding of people knowing. That's why I'm like, even if you're already an expert, literally you have a PhD in the field, but you've posted zero to social media. You should probably still do the 3030 plan. Yep, go dust off all the books on your books bookshelf and go back through reading them and sharing what you've learned through them. Go and interview all the people that you maybe or you've read before, but you probably haven't actually had conversations with them. You need to go through the 3030 plan. You're already an expert. Doesn't matter, Go low, be humble, be a student. Because again, if you just come out swinging because you're already the expert, no One's going to believe you. That's why you want to go low, be a student, learn the light, go be humble and just share what you're learning again. And people will figure it out in a more easy, like an easy to approach way. One last thought I had on this, as you were talking about, like, going through the material and having seen people, like, light up based on, like, basic truths, you know, you're like, dude, this is like, so beginner, dude. That happened to me recently. Amy was hanging out with a mutual friend. He's like, I shared some information with somebody.

A (28:32)

It was in, like, a youth ministry situation. A teen was having a hard time and he shared, like, some advice with her. And he turned to Amy, my wife, and was like, you know where I heard that from? Dan Sanchez. I'm like, what the heck? He's like, yeah, he shared it at a men's retreat as a, as a training a long time ago. It was like that, that concept of, like, don't focus on the gap, know, like gap thinking, like from Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. I essentially shared that. And then it put like the biblical spin on it, but I'm like, oh, yeah, that was so basic. But you forget that the basic things that you know and use all the time are. Is new to somebody. Somebody hasn't been introduced to that trick, that method, that tactic you learned long ago or that you picked up recently through all the reading. Somebody hasn't learned it. Yeah, well, you have to cover the basics over and over again, so you might as well teach it now.

B (29:21)

Yeah. And with that, don't be afraid to share those basics. People might be like, oh, I need to share something unique, man. I can't tell you how many times I feel the same way where I'm like, oh, I got to share some massive expert thought advice that, like, it's going to blow everybody's mind, man. If I go too deep, no one's going to read it. It's like sometimes the things that hits the hardest for people are the simple, profound truths that I post. And they're like, oh, my gosh, I didn't even think about it that way. Like, even when I talk about podcasting, sometimes I write like, here are the top 10 ways I've used podcasting. It blows people's minds. They're like, oh, I thought it was just one way to use it. I'm like, no, man, it's so versatile.

A (30:02)

Swiss army knife.

B (30:03)

Yeah.

A (30:04)

So that's the 90 day plan. You read 30 books, you interview 30.

A (30:11)

Influencers, and then you publish about 30 pieces of content to synthesize your ideas on the most frequently asked questions. Doesn't have to be unique, but in doing that process, you've laid an amazing foundation for becoming a thought leader. But you're not one yet. And that's when we're going to go to track two. For those who are kind of like already in that motion, they're already creating, maybe they have a few thousand followers on LinkedIn and they've been at it for a year or two, maybe longer. Maybe you've been at it for a long time, but you've already got some influence, you already have some cache, maybe you already even have a podcast. You've been doing this for a while. You probably need to start with track two, but I highly encourage you if you haven't. If the 3030 plan seems like, oh, I haven't quite done it that way, well, maybe just start there and do it. It won't hurt and it'll probably make it easier to hit track two than you would ever think.

A (31:02)

So with track two, we're kind of leaving off with where we ended in track one. Because track two assumes you already have read all the books and you know all the stuff and you know it inside and out. And there's hardly a new concept that you've. That you. That somebody else has published that you haven't heard before. If you're at that point, then maybe you should be at track two. So day one through 30 for track two. Here is to start the packaging phase. The packaging phase. This is where you need to do an audit of what I call the idea portfolio, which we covered in the packaging chapter. You want to actually start looking at all your different unique ideas. If you don't know if you have any unique ideas, go into ChatGPT and ask it. Hey, based on all our conversations, are there any ideas I've we've talked about that are unique? That is unique to the how I approach it the week way, based on the way I say it. And chat's actually really good at finding them, bringing them to your attention. So you probably have something there. You might have Gemini go and search your Google Drive or your, I think chatgpt. You can hook it up to your notion database. If you got stuff there, you take all your LinkedIn posts, export it. Yes, just Google how to export LinkedIn posts. There's a way to do it. You have to take it as a CSV, drop it in Gemini and have IT analyze it and see if you've got any Unique ideas there. It's probably the fastest way to take inventory is to find out where you've been publishing stuff and then take inventory and try to start finding your best ideas. You probably know what they are already. There's a few, but there's probably more. But we need to create a list. You need to start listing out the ideas. It doesn't have to be any formal process. Just start listing them out, give them fake names or just holding names for now. But that's step one is just take inventory, write them all down.

B (32:45)

Yeah, and you could do that with other. I believe you could do it with like X and Facebook. Whichever platform you use, you can export your, your content.

A (32:55)

I think by law they have to give you a way to do that now.

B (32:58)

Yeah, it might be buried like 10, you know, just Google it.

A (33:02)

You'll find a YouTube video to walk you through it. I wouldn't, I won't tell you what it is here because it'll change, you know, so just look it up. Maybe have AI tell you how to do it. It'll. It'll walk you through it. Yeah. The next thing you need to do is you need to actually start organizing them, combining. Some of them might need to go together, but you need to start creating like piles and clustering them. You get them all laid out and you start arranging them in like groups. You'll start to notice they, some of them belong together in packages. And you start to notice a portfolio take shape of ideas.

A (33:32)

Once you kind of have them organized and arranged. And it could be as simple as a bulleted list. And then you indent, you know, big idea, all the small ideas that fit underneath that. It's as simple as that in a Word Doc or a Google Doc or something. But then you need to actually start going and making a page or so per one. And for each one you need to actually start packaging it. You know, giving it a name, giving it a short description, like a few sentences, a long description, almost like an article. You can give it a story and a metaphor and a visual. The cool thing is like this part used to take time. It's actually pretty easy with AI now because Chat GPT, like I will just go into ChatGPT and be like, here's the general idea. If it's brand new, then I have it pick it apart and make it better. And then I post it and get feedback and then I try it myself and then I try it with other people. So like that's the process of making the ideas good. But if you've Already have an idea that you work out with clients and you know it works over and over again. Well, throw it into AI, have it clean it up for you and make it more memorable. Maybe make it an acrostic or give it alliteration. Make it, give it a name, you know, like tighten it up a little bit. Some, some of the, it's not just how strong the idea is, but how strong it is for people to share the ideas that is the game. So you actually need to tighten it up and make it more easy for people to share by name so people can like, oh, have you tried the, have you tried the challenger sale method yet? That's somebody's intellectual property. That's somebody's thought leadership. The challenger sale, which is actually a collection of ideas on how to do challenger sale, right, for salespeople. And so they wrote a whole book on it and they've been leveraging that sucker for like 15 years now.

B (35:06)

Company has been milking it. There is a little pro tip for, for people here that as they're trying to use ChatGPT, all this stuff, we've mentioned this before. Sometimes ChatGPT and Gemini, they, they don't come up with the best alliterations or the best titles.

A (35:26)

Right, I got it.

B (35:28)

Yeah, they, they, they. It's a good first phase. So this is the pro tip. Once you have the first phase, do a little bit of editing and then ask some of your marketing friends, right, who might be able to give some insight. Be like, okay, hey, reword this, tweak this here and there, right? That has the human touch element, especially if you don't have a huge marketing eye. I think a lot of people listening to this podcast might have it, but I'm also thinking about people who might read the book afterwards or listen to this, who may not be the best marketer or copywriter. This is going to be a huge tip for you. Use ChatGPT. Then ask a friend to kind of proof it.

A (36:11)

Once you've done all that work and you've started packaging ideas and categorizing them, after you package them, you might find that, oh, some of these go to together. Once you've packaged quite a few of them, you start arranging them in groups, start naming the groups. Even you might find that there is a general through line for a lot of them. Again, this is something you can ask ChatGPT. What's the general through line for all my ideas that's unique about me and it will give you some ideas to go off of. But you need to find Something that's something unique about a bunch of these ideas. It doesn't have to be all the ideas, but generally a lot of your work as a thinker, what's a common thread through all of them? Whatever that common thread is, you want to take that and some of the bigger, bigger ideas that you have that you want to lean with and start with. This idea even of authority is becoming a big one for this show, the AI driven marketer, because this is the missing piece. You need to be AI driven, but you also need to double down on the things that I can't do. The human edge, I've called it, now I'm starting to just call it building authority. These are the two things that are going to make you a superpower marketer because it's the things that AI can do and things that AI can't do. So these are becoming major pillars. It's the AI driven human first coming together and then you want to look at all of your brand profiles, your personal website, your LinkedIn profile for sure, but all your other brand profiles and start rewriting them and start re positioning yourself around these ideas across all these profiles. This part's hard too, because it's one of those things where it's, it's probably easier to have somebody else work with you on it because they have fresh eyes and you. It's. It's a little harder to work on your own stuff, but it is possible. You can probably push it to a certain degree and then run with it for a while and then have somebody else look at it and, you know, make it better. The next part is day 31 through 60 and that's the growth phase. This is where you need to like double down on content. You're probably already doing content, but this is where I recommend commit to the two channel rule. Go all in on a podcast and LinkedIn or some kind of long form and short form channel and just commit. We're going all in on these two channels and we're going to publish at least weekly on the long form, if not a couple times a week, and daily, if not a couple times a day. That's what we're committing to with the two channels. And you need to do that for 30 days in a row. It's really hard, but I promise, if you. There's nothing quite like setting yourself a goal, posting every single day or multiple times a day. It's hard at first. It gets easier and easier and easier. Like working out is hard at first and then your muscles get stronger and then now it's easy. Right now I've, I finally hit like a new point in rowing. I started rowing at the beginning of the year, January, it's December now and I started like 15 minutes of rowing for me was a lot. And then I worked my way up to 20 minutes and now I'm up to 30 minutes and I, I feel like I could easily go to 40, 45 minutes. I'm like, man, it took a long time, longer than I thought. But if you're doing it regularly, then it just gets easier and easier because now 30 minutes is like nothing. I'm like, oh, is 30 minutes gone? Okay.

A (39:17)

Yeah, that's how it is with content.

B (39:18)

It, it is. I mean, I'll give you a great example. I think the. This last month in November when we did this podcast challenge, I was posting two times a day on, on LinkedIn and that's the most I've ever done. I mean, normally I've done like one post for five days or four days, you know, but not like, hey, every day, two times a day, except for the Thanksgiving Day through Sunday because I got sick. But man, it, it reveals a lot. And when you commit to it, you start to grow quite a bit and people start asking, people will start coming out of the woodworks when you start doing it and you start following all the tips that we shared about on how to grow on LinkedIn. So don't be afraid to do that. This is where daily we would encourage you to execute the engagement strategy we talked about in the previous chapters. This is a heavy lift, but man, if you comment right, 20 to 50 posts a day, this is going to be huge. Very practical tip. Block this out on your calendar, right? The way I think about this, I block out like sales or revenue generating actions. The first thing in the morning, I just do all these. Then I do my social media content, right? I block out another two hours and I'm like, here's what I'm going to be posting. Here's where I'm commenting on people and I'm just going around on LinkedIn, commenting, commenting, commenting, right? Make sure you're doing this so people don't all of a sudden miss out or that you miss out. This is going to be huge. If you don't engage and you just post you, it's going to feel like a. I'm not, I don't know what the good analogy is, but it's almost like you're shooting in the dark a little bit.

A (40:58)

I don't know what it is, but there's something especially for LinkedIn. But this is also pretty true for X. If you're not cranking the engagement wheel, it's kind of like you're putting content into a feed and they're just kind of like they're just falling flat. But if you're cranking that engagement wheel, man, like they just, they get distribution, man, because people are interacting. You, they're going to your profile and LinkedIn's like, oh look, someone's, these people are interested. But it's like by manually doing hand to hand combat and engaging with like 20, 30, 40, 50 people a day, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And people are starting to show up. People are starting to recognize you because you keep commenting. You know, they keep seeing you and all the other influencers post here like, okay, like this guy means business. And that's, that's just how it is in the beginning. You have to put in a ton of manual effort in order to begin getting the traction to where you can let off a little bit. This is just a temporary thing, but the longer you can hold it, the farther you'll be able to go. I often, I can't. I go through periods and where I'm like engaging heavily for like a month, two months at a time. And then I wind down and sometimes I go dark for a little while and then I come back and start engaging heavily again. I will say that it's, I found that the people who can stay pretty consistent do better, but I don't know how they do it.

A (42:11)

Well, if you didn't go so hard, you wouldn't burn out. But I'm like, I don't know, I, I just prefer it that way. So.

B (42:15)

And there's like, there's things that people could do. Like I, I am definitely more of a consistent like every morning. Here's when I do things, I'm, I'm more regimented in that stuff. Yeah, but man, so sometimes it's okay. Like when I think about consistency and creating content, I, or the difference between consistency and creating content is that I would rather you be creating content than focus on consistency. And what I mean by that is that sometimes people like, because they don't have a framework of like, oh my gosh, I'm not being consistent. They just don't create content at all and it just kills them. And I'm like, just create content. If so if an idea comes into your head and you got five minutes to post it, go post it, right? Like, go take the time to do it. And this is what this action Plan is all about is like, you legitimately just taking action on all the thoughts that come to your mind. And now you don't have any excuse. You have ChatGPT. Dan has built a Insta post, right, with LinkedIn.

B (43:17)

It's a custom GPT that you could get for free. You could put that in the show notes, right, where you can legitimately just be like, I have an idea. Here's my idea. And it's fleshes out your LinkedIn post. You literally have no excuse to not go do this and make this happen.

A (43:32)

You notice everything we've talked about in both of these plans are things you control.

B (43:36)

Yeah.

A (43:37)

There's a reason for it. It's because I've seen action plans for authority before, but they're things. Oftentimes they're loaded with, like, lagging metrics, things you have no control over. Land, client, get, big deal, get, speaking event. You're like, dude, if I knew how to do that, I would do it. But everything we've given you, you have 100 control over. You can send pitches and get people to speak on your podcast. You just have to DM enough people, you know, like, all these things you actually have control over. And these are the leading indicators for all the lagging metrics we want, which are authority, which are leads, which are revenue and profit. Like, these are all the things you have to do on the front end in order to get all the things that we actually want on the back end.

A (44:17)

I think the last thing in the growth phase is that you're still doing all the things that we've talked about in this whole podcast episode. If you've read all the books, then you're continuing to buy new books that come out on your topic to stay fresh. Every time I get a chance to read a book or a big podcast series on AI, even general AI, but especially AI marketing, I'm buying it, I'm reading it, I'm taking notes, and I'm posting about it. Uh, I continue to interview people. I interview less people now because I'm doing more of my solo episodes, but I still interview people and get to know them. In fact, I'm gonna be doing a whole lot more soon, so I'll answer that later. But I'm gonna be doing a lot more interviews just to stay fresh myself and build more relationships with people in the game. Like, none of those things stop. You don't stop being a student. You continue learning because other people are putting out ideas and you need to know what their ideas are in order to make sure. Yours are actually unique and they probably have some great ideas. You need to share their ideas, too, because they'll. You want them to share your ideas. Right. We're all in this together, so we need to continue doing those activities as well. But let's finish off with the last, last phase of track two, which is day 61 through 90, which I'm calling the retention phase. Uh, there's a lot of things you can do, but this is one of the ones that I find really helps. There's a few critical things you can do in order to overcome the audience growth ceiling, which we covered in the book, where you're starting to plateau because your growth rate is being eaten away by your churn rate. Something all product marketers measure, but we never measure it as thought leaders and, and creators when it comes to our audience growth, but it totally counts here as well. So a few things you want to do is day 61 through 75. You need to build a lead magnet. Not a whole book, just a small piece of content that delivers a quick win that you can give your audience member. Put in an email, subscribe to a newsletter or your podcast, or subscribe to something where you can gate it and then give it to them. And then not only give them a quick win with the lead magnet, but also introduce them to the general mission and who you are and what you're about. That way you can actually start creating depth with your audience. I create a lot of lead magnets. I probably created too many lead magnets. Can I probably have like a dozen and a half lead magnets floating out there? Probably need to double down on just one. I think it's the scorecard we talked about yesterday, actually. I think that's going to be the one I push harder and harder.

B (46:35)

Yeah, it's a good one. I know I'm going to do it or push it, but yeah, I'll say this for a lot of people. When you build, start building lead magnets, you know you're going to build in this action plan, one lead magnet. But if you're trying to grow a business, you're going to be testing out multiple different lead magnets, you know, throughout a given month or two. Right. You're testing out which one's going to work. Right. Especially if you haven't had. If you haven't had a lead magnet, it's going to take a lot of time. Right. But once you do, you. You'll still need a good five or six lead magnets that you can rotate through that people are going to want to engage with. And we, I'm pretty sure we talked about this, but one of them is going to be a lead magnet to your newsletter or a lead magnet to something that you're selling. Or you know, lead magnet magnet could be a micro problem or a problem to the overall solution that you're going to offer later.

A (47:32)

Right.

B (47:33)

So there's just a lot of different ways to think about lead magnets and what they do. But just making sure that you start building lead magnets is going to be huge.

A (47:43)

So after you do that, the best way to increase retention with your audience is by act. That's we're doing the lead magnet essentially to activate them, onboard them into your way of thinking, give them a quick win to really endear them to your brand and what you all, all the other things you have going on with your podcast, your social and all that kind of stuff. So once we do that, we have an activation method, but then we want to do more. We actually want to create more depth. And we do that by creating what we call a depth asset, which is something like a book, a course, a workshop, something that they can really sink their teeth into. I highly recommend starting with the course because it's easier, even if it's like a smaller sprint course, a five day course, five videos over five days kind of a thing. It's a place to start. That's what I was leaning on for a long time with the AI fundamentals course. But now we're kind of eating our own dog food and that's why we're putting out own the show. We're building this book podcast with via podcast episodes in order to create more depth for the audience of the AI driven marketer. Because it's no longer going to be enough just to be AI driven. We need to have build our authority as well in order to stand out and have essentially put humanity back into AI. Otherwise AI is just going to be creating slopping mass. It's the authority and your expertise and your actual experience. And all this stuff that we're talking about in this book that can actually run like this with AI is unstoppable, which is why we're doing this. But we're creating depth by creating the book. And we'll be giving the book away for free in the audio book. But of course it'll be, people will be able to buy the paperback and the audible book and all that kind of stuff too. And then I will be talking about it throughout the whole year. But the reason why we're doing it is because we want to add depth to the edge of a marketer. You need to think about how to do the same. And maybe you do it via podcast, or maybe you use it to create a course or whatever you do, you need eventually, once you're farther on, this is more towards the end, you want to start creating these larger assets, starting with one, then eventually two. That's why, like, the OGs of like the authorities out there, they usually have written multiple books. Gary Vee, multiple books, Pat Flynn, multiple books at the rhythm of like one every other year or so. It's kind of the rhythm I've noticed the big OG thought leaders do in this space anyway. So you kind of want to start thinking along those lines. What big piece can I do once a year or every other year?

B (50:07)

Yeah. And as we wrap up this conversation about this action plan, we want you to take this, the 90 day authority plan, and say, okay, I'm going to make it my own. We've given you a template, and with this template, we couldn't add everything that we've talked about in the book, Right? Like, we didn't talk about core values and we didn't talk about like, like the ideation process or the niching pro. Like, we talked a little bit about the niching process, but there's so much more that we talked about in this book. My encouragement to you would be go listen to more of it. If you want to go re listen to it or when the book comes out, right. Depending on when you're listening to this, go check out the book and highlight the parts that you want and be like, this is going to be a part of my action plan. What we're doing here is giving you the big pieces that really are going to solidify you to grow your authority, to get you to a place where people can start listening to you and say, yes, I resonate with you, I hear you and I want to follow you. That's when you know you've become an authority. When people say, I want to follow you for what you believe in and what you're talking about, because that's what I want. And if you think about it, that's why we follow all the people we follow. There's something about that individual that we care about and we're like, they're part of my values, they're part of who I am, and I want to do that with that individual. And that's what we want to do with you. Right. So if you're listening to this and you've walked through this whole series with us, man. Thank you, first of all. But second of all, don't just, like, listen to this passively take action on it, and you may not do it perfectly. You know what? Imperfect action is always going to be way better than no action at all. So, like, just start taking action. Go start making a podcast. Do whatever you got to do to start growing your authority.

A (52:04)

At the end of the day, we're just trying to help people to know, like, and trust us. And we're trying to do it in a genuine way, a human way, in a way that works best with AI so that we can actually stand out and be the most helpful that we can be.