S4E36 – Nico Lagan – Social Media Strategies that actually work

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Key Timecodes

• (00:43) – Show intro and background history
• (02:18) – Deeper into his business model
• (05:28) – Understanding his business philosophy
• (10:06) – Deeper into his social media strategies
• (14:42) – A bit about his business model tactics
• (22:25) – Deeper into his marketing and social media strategies
• (31:37) – His insights about team size and AI today
• (36:33) – A key takeaway from the guest
• (39:05) – What is the worst advice he ever received
• (39:22) – What is the best advice he ever received
• (40:12) – Guest contacts

Transcription

[00:00:00.320] – Intro

Hey, this is Sean Tapper, the host of Payback Time, an approachable and transparent podcast in building businesses, increasing wealth, and achieving financial freedom. I’d like to bring on guests to hear authentic stories while giving you actionable takeaways you can use today. Let’s go.

[00:00:17.130] – Sean

How do you get better at social media? My next guest was a sales engineer turned coach who specifically helps entrepreneurs improve their brand and get more reach with social media. In In this episode, we talk about why it’s important to be authentic, why trying to serve everyone won’t do you any favors, and a fun tactic that can actually increase your followers almost immediately. Please welcome Nico Lagan. Nico, welcome to the show.

[00:00:45.330] – Nico

Thanks for having me.

[00:00:46.590] – Sean

Good to have you here. So why don’t you kick us off and tell us about your background?

[00:00:50.310] – Nico

Sales engineer by trade. I was in the telecommunication world for, wow, 20 years, 12 of which I was a sales engineer. I was in front of customers day in, day out from high corporate to government entities. We supplied telecommunication services from connectivity all the way down to firewall protection, SAAS, Software as a service, everything as a service. Now, it’s hard to remember everything that’s as a service, but everything that’s available doesn’t matter if it was on premise or if it was Google, Amazon. So we specialize anything that was meant to be Part of your communication, we did it. And I stopped doing that about 14 months ago. At least I stopped doing it full-time, and I opened a coaching business where I help men, and I also help men with their content creation, especially when it comes to strategizing on how to use social media platforms as the marketing tool that they are. And as we’ll talk today, it’s more than just understanding that social media is a marketing tool. It’s really about developing the individual, because today everybody wants to know who owns a brand. If you have a brand, if you have a company, if you have a small company, if you have a medium-sized company, a large company, you’re the face of your company, guess what?

[00:02:16.160] – Nico

People want to know you.

[00:02:17.740] – Sean

Yeah, right on. Well, congrats on going full-time or close to with your new venture here 14 months ago. You mentioned you serve men. You don’t want to open up that to a wider spectrum? I’m sure there’s women that will come up to you and be like, Hey, can you help me with my social media?

[00:02:37.350] – Nico

Oh, yeah, absolutely. When I say I help men, I grew up without a father. My father left. I was 14 years old. So over the years, I’ve struggled to find mentors. I’ve done a lot of… I don’t have a very positive background. Until the age of 21, I was a high school dropout, drug addict, alcoholic. I did a lot of bad things back then. And over the years, I went back to school, went to college, started the corporate world, and met some great men along the way that helped me a bit obtain the skills that I have today. This is why I have a soft spot for men, because when it comes to social media, it’s a lot easier for a woman to get attention on social media than it is for a man.

[00:03:22.280] – Sean

Okay, so dive into that.

[00:03:24.350] – Nico

Yeah, sure. It’s about looks. Men will listen to a woman because she’s pretty, even though they will get more attention right off the get-go. I was just looking at a video this morning about this woman talking about a service. And instead of starting to talk right away, normally, I would always recommend to push your hook right then and there because they say our attention spans about 8.25 seconds, which I would argue that on social media is probably like 2 seconds, three seconds. But she took 2 to 3 seconds without saying anything just because she’s good-looking and she knew… She knows she’s not stupid. She knows exactly what she’s doing. She panned up, and it has nothing to do with the service that she’s selling. She just knows that men will pay attention to that because she’s a good-looking person. That does not work for men. Unless you’re half naked and you’re really targeting women, a very specific type of women, this does not work. Men would have swiped you. My Men are already looking at something else. So that’s what I’m saying. There’s a lot more… Now, if you have a good-looking woman that possesses, that knows how to create a report, that understands how to resonate with her audience, it’s unstable.

[00:04:44.140] – Nico

Women that are great content creators. There’s a really good reason why. But those skills, as I said, are not harder to acquire, but you need to work on developing those skills. You can’t rely just on your look. And again, I’m not saying that women are only getting attention because they’re good-looking. All I’m saying is men will forgive that with a woman, and they won’t forgive that on a man.

[00:05:08.250] – Sean

Yeah, good perspective. That’s funny.

[00:05:11.530] – Nico

It’s good perspective, but I tend to irritate people when I say that, but it’s okay. That’s what I do, I guess.

[00:05:18.700] – Sean

Hey, you’re not here to make friends with everybody, right?

[00:05:21.190] – Nico

No, no, no, no, absolutely. That we agree on right off the bat. We are in agreement.

[00:05:28.140] – Sean

Right on. As soon as you try to please everybody, you’re going to make a lot of stress in your own life, right?

[00:05:35.830] – Nico

You know what they say, if you try to please everybody, you’re not going to please anybody. It’s the same thing in marketing. If you try to resonate with everybody, you’re not going to resonate with anybody. This is why understanding who your target audience, understanding who your avatar is, and all the ways keeping that in mind when you’re producing content, that you’re talking to a very specific type of individual. The people that don’t resonate with your content, who cares? Because it’s not meant for them. The service that you’re selling or the product that you’re selling is not for them. So why worry what they have to say? And the worst thing that you can do is to rearrange your content in order to target an audience that don’t care about your service. But why is there being a very good example for what they did last year? And they’ll never recuperate that. Whatever they try, it’s done. They’ve lost. They were the number one beer in the US. Now, they’re like, I don’t even think they’re top 10. They might be top 10, and they’ll never recuperate that because the damage that they done. And agree what they did or not is irrelevant.

[00:06:42.540] – Nico

They went out of their target audience and they’re paying the price for it. There’s just a great example.

[00:06:47.810] – Sean

Yeah, I see that with brands. They deviate from their target audience thinking they can scoop up more market share. It’s like, you want to continue serving those who really appreciate your brand, are buying from you already, and it’s their word of mouth that can bring more people like them to you. That’s the expansion.

[00:07:07.840] – Nico

The founder of Lululemon said something similar a couple of weeks ago. I’m very heavy in fitness. I take extremely good care of what I eat, and this is something that I talk to all my clients and everybody when I do content creation. And he was saying that they’re deviating by changing the people that they’re targeting. They’re not targeting people hitting the gym. They’re targeting the everybody, people, people that might buy. And he’s like, this is not the target audience. Not only are you promoting a non-healthy lifestyle by targeting those people as a brand that is meant for physical activity, You’re promoting an idea that does not resonate with the brand in the first place. You’re alienating the people that actually will buy your pants at 90 bucks a pair because they felt that it was for them. It’s like a gym, Orange Thierry. They’re everywhere. I would never go to that gym because to me this is useless type of training, but I’m not their target audience. So whatever I say is irrelevant. But guess what? They’re extremely successful at what they do because they don’t target guys like me. They’ve understood that and they’re sticking to it.

[00:08:19.790] – Sean

So this is these. Planet Fitness.

[00:08:21.120] – Nico

There you go.

[00:08:22.660] – Sean

Exactly. Oh, Planet Fitness does not like me.

[00:08:23.290] – Nico

Get your pizza after you workout. Planet Fitness is a great example. We’ve been traveling the US and Mexico for 14 months now. And unfortunately, Planet Fitness sometimes is the only gym that’s available in certain places. So we did have a membership, but they have a picture in there that always makes me laugh. It’s insanity that it’s in there, but it’s a picture of a guy that looks like me, muscular guy in a wife beater, in a tank top with a big water bottle. And they’re making fun of saying that this is not the type of guy. It’s this, there’s a cross on top of it. And I’m sitting there, I’m like, Yeah, thanks a lot. Like, thanks a lot.

[00:09:05.630] – Sean

This is basically-The way you came in, you can just go right back out. That’s not the story.

[00:09:11.110] – Nico

But I always found it interesting that they say that out loud, but at the same time, when you consider it, I am not their target audience. They are looking for the people that are out of shape, that will not commit to exercise, that will pay a full year in January. And this is a I’ve been hitting the gym for more than 20 years now, and this is a joke that every guy that goes to the gym knows. January is extremely busy, a bit of February, and then it’s back to normal. There’s nobody at the gym except you and the people you. You almost know by name because You don’t know what they do outside of there, but you see them every time you’re there.

[00:09:48.540] – Sean

The usual suspects, yeah.

[00:09:51.600] – Nico

I’m not their target audience, so I’m not assaulted by what they do. It’s funny, as you said, that a gym gives pizza. But It’s working. They’re everywhere. They’re the biggest chain of health, gyms.

[00:10:05.350] – Sean

I know we could go down the rabbit hole on this all day, but to tie this back to social media, because we have a lot of entrepreneurs in our audience, or at least people who are… Maybe they work for a business as well, and they’re leveraging social media to build brands. We’re talking offline a little bit before we hit record. And this isn’t the ’80s and ’90s anymore, where you can create a business So you can sell a product or service and be on your way. It’s like now, social media started to really take off probably late 2000s, I would say. And then now 2010s, it started to gain momentum. And now today, it’s like people want to know who’s behind the brand. And so why don’t you give us some insights there on how business owners or leaders can leverage social media correctly?

[00:10:57.690] – Nico

Let me start by saying that this is either a very good thing or a very bad thing, depending on who owns the business. Because if you’re more sales-oriented, which is why I think that sales is the number one skills that everybody, even entrepreneurs, should possess, you should know how to present yourself. You should know how to speak to people. It’s something that I’ve done for more than a decade, and the skills is transferable in everything in my life. It doesn’t matter that I’m on the podcast. It doesn’t matter that I’m running my own podcast, that I’m doing sales calls, or that I’m just creating content. If you’re capable of selling yourself or explaining yourself in ways that resonates with people, it’s key. You’ll be able to be successful at selling your products, selling your services. And if you understand that we live in a world of reality TV, everybody wants to know who’s behind everything, what’s behind the closed doors, they want to feel like they’re included. This is why most people will buy from a celebrity before they buy from somebody in their family or somebody that they know personally. It’s very interesting concept, but if you understand that this is how people are.

[00:12:04.420] – Nico

People want to know who the product owner is. Understand that you should develop your skills in order to be able to present your service, your product to the audience that you’re targeting. You need to become the brand. Your brand, quite often, is attached to somebody’s face. If that face is yours, learn how to sell, learn how to sell yourself, learn how to create content every day that will resonate with your audience, with the people that you’re trying to sell to. And at the end of the day, there’s methodology that I teach clients on how to do it, but it’s not complicated. We tend to overcomplicate things. A lot of my most That’s what we were saying before we jumped on a call. My cell phone, write this. I’ve created so much content right off of my phone. The editing software is right in my phone. No external microphone, just me on speaker phone I’m talking in my phone. I can clear that all up in post-editing. It takes 2 seconds. But this is the skill that you want to possess, being able to grab your phone at any given time, record a video that will resonate with your audience.

[00:13:13.550] – Nico

This is what business this owner should focus on. If your marketing research has been done properly, you understand who your target audience is, you understand your avatar, you understand what keeps them up at night, why would they even listen to you in the first place? Why do they need you as an expert? If you understand that, catering to their needs is pretty simple. You just need to understand. But this, I think, to all the entrepreneurs out there is to understand that social media is the best marketing tool out there, and it’s free. I get multiple millions of views on my content every month, and I do not spend one dollar on ads. I don’t spend a dollar on anything. I just do it organically, but I’m always testing. I’m always trying. I’m never scared to have a video with almost no no views on it. I’ll review it and understand what happened. Why didn’t it do well? Was it me? Was it the content? What is it? Identify what works, identify what doesn’t work. But it’s really understanding what social media is supposed to do? Where is your target audience? Because obviously, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Rumbl, what is it?

[00:14:25.390] – Nico

I’m losing my X, is completely different. The people that you’re going to find on those platforms are completely different. So there’s a lot of homework to be done. But if you’re a brand, you need to spend the time understanding this because your customers are right there. For free, you can reach them.

[00:14:41.890] – Sean

We’ve got a lot of people in our audience who are quite analytical and tactical. Let’s use your business model as a great example. You’ve got a service business, consulting, coaching, and there’s probably a lot of listeners in my audience that have the same model. You hear a number like millions of views. How did you get there?

[00:15:00.720] – Nico

I build what I like to call social media funnels. So it’s not a sales funnel, but the principle is the same, right? It’s once I understand who my target audience is, once my branding is done, and let’s assume that I understand psychology, I understand NLP, I know how to create rapport with my customers over a camera, you start going broad. What is the way that I can hit my target audience in the broadest way possible while remaining focused on them? What is the type of content that I can create that is the most popular in that niche? And let’s say that you have a service-based offering like I do. I will find videos of competitors or videos of people out there that are doing something outrageously wrong, and I’ll just react to it. Just react, and in my comment section, in the description, I will give some of my opinions on it. Very successful. If you look, reels are extremely, extremely successful. On TikTok, the average reel, the most successful reel is about 22 seconds, and it’s pretty constant on Instagram, too. So reels, extremely popular. There’s millions, if not billions of them out there.

[00:16:18.560] – Nico

Find, once you understand where your target audience is, find your competitors in that market and find things that you can maybe make fun of or just point out that you agree with, you disagree with. One of the things that most entrepreneurs are scared of is to be controversial. Yet this is the biggest mistake you’ll ever make is not to be controversial. Let me ask you this, if Let’s say you’re looking at my services and you’re trying to gage if that makes sense or not. Do you not want to know what I stand for?

[00:16:53.740] – Sean

100% I’d want to know.

[00:16:55.560] – Nico

How many brands out there can you really say that you know what they stand for? What what they really stand for?

[00:17:01.270] – Sean

Right.

[00:17:02.220] – Nico

Yeah. Yet look at the extremely successful brand. You know exactly. We use Gary Vee. Very obvious what Gary Vee stands for. He has no shame in sharing it. He will swear, he will share it every day of his life, 20 times on different podcast. He posts at least seven times a day on every single platform out there. So you know what his opinion is. You have no… Look at an Elon Musk. You don’t have to go very far to know his opinion. But this is how you should be. Your audience should know, because at the end of the day, we’re so scared to hurt our brand by saying, If I say this, it’s going to alienate people. Yeah, but who cares? They’re already not for you. The people that don’t agree with you, we’re so scared to get comments that are negative. This is something that we’re so scared of. As a person, I believe instead of developing my services, I develop my brand, me as a person. I went from a few thousand followers a year ago, and I’m about 100,000 now. So this is what’s mattered to me. I went the complete opposite way of the average people out there.

[00:18:17.510] – Nico

People out there want to sell their service without having an audience. I would rather build an audience, concentrate on building my audience, then sell services to that audience. Services are meant for that audience. It’s a completely different approach. You need to have more money at the beginning to give yourself the time to build that audience knowing that you’re probably not going to sell much. But that’s not your main focus. Your main focus, because at this point, my brand is not attached to a service. My brand is me. And this is where to me, if people out there want to know who they’re buying from, I’ll tell you exactly who I am. I have no shame. I’ll tell you what I believe in politics. I’ll tell you if I’m religious or not. I’ll tell you all the aspects of my life so that you can agree with me or disagree. Oh, I feel to you right away. I’m not scared. And you know what? I probably get 30 to 40 % negative comments on my stuff. But if you look at, let’s say, my Instagram and you look at the statistics, the average, if we understand how Instagram works, we’re talking 10, 20 % of your audience will We’ll see your posts, will see your reels, will see your stuff.

[00:19:32.130] – Nico

This is how Instagram works because they want you to pay to get access to your audience. Every month, 98% of my content is viewed by non-followers.

[00:19:43.200] – Sean

What platform do you have the most followers on?

[00:19:47.570] – Nico

Tiktok. Tiktok?

[00:19:49.060] – Sean

Really?

[00:19:49.490] – Nico

Okay. Yeah, about 60,000 on TikTok. Tiktok is the easiest one to grow. If you understand how the algorithm on TikTok works extremely differently from on Instagram, for example. So Instagram, let’s say that you post a video, it will compare you to all the people that are posting at that same time. Similar audience, it will go ahead to your video, your content is going to go head to head with them. And they will give priority to the people that are paying, to the people that have a bigger audience than you. So it’s very hard for you to compete on Instagram head to head with your competitors if they have a bigger audience and if they inject a lot of money in their content. If you look at a TikTok, TikTok does not look at it that way. It looks at it by a number of views. So it has a bunch of different steps. It will say, okay, all those videos were published at the same time, same environment, like same avatar, same type of target audience. And it will show them to a bunch of people, let’s say 250 people, and gage their reaction. And then they show it to 500 people, gage their reaction.

[00:21:00.160] – Nico

Then they show it to about a thousand people, and then it goes up and up and up. You can see, I’m so used to looking at them, I can know right away, Oh, my video stuck to 500, to a thousand views. That means I didn’t do very well. I did something really bad, or my competitors just put something out there that was so much better than what I put in. But this is the advantage of a TikTok. It’s more the analytic is a bit… It’s so different from an Instagram, a Facebook or a YouTube. It’s easier to understand. So as someone that has an engineering background, I like the numbers. It’s easy for me to break it down. But the advantage is that it will not take for granted the audience. This is why TikTok, you got guys that will gain 10, 15, 20, 1,000 followers overnight just because they put a video out there that became successful. And TikTok allows this. Tiktoks allows videos to go viral without having to be backed monetarily or even if you’re competing against competitors that are a lot bigger than you are.

[00:22:03.640] – Sean

Okay, here’s a quick commercial break. So if you think investing is too confusing, too time-consuming, or too risky, I’m just assured there is a solution. That solution would be Tykr. Tykr is a platform that helps you manage your own investments with confidence. So if you want to know what’s a good stock, what’s a bad stock, when do you buy, when do you sell, and how do you reduce risk, Tykr can help you with all the above. Now, if you want a little extra confidence before you buy or sell a stock, I got to show you a feature we just added called the 4M Confidence Booster. Check this out. All right, so looking at Apple, you can see the 4M is in the center, and this is a tool that walks you through the 4Ms, which are the margin of safety, which is the math part of investing, the meaning, which is the business model and how scalable the revenue streams are. The moat is how the business compares to other companies in the same sector and industry. And the management is a track record of the CEO. Investing is more than just math. You need to look past the math and look at the business.

[00:22:58.890] – Sean

And if you can find a strong stock with a high 4M score, that should give you the confidence to move forward and buy that stock. Now, looking at Apple, you can see to have an 80 out of 100. If you can get above 80, that’s actually really good. Now, don’t take my word for it. I always say, go to Trustpile and see what our customers have to say where we have a 4.9 out of 5. And if you’re interested, you can sign up for Tykr for free. We started using the tactic you mentioned a few weeks back, which is commenting on other influencers out there. I do not consider I’m not an influencer. I consider myself an entrepreneur, but I’m using YouTube and Instagram and Facebook and a little bit of TikTok to share the brand and get people interested in Tykr. And it’s working. We did see a nice jump by making the comments on other people. Some of them are popular. I could list the names, right? Alex Hormozy, for one. He had a comment about how to invest $25,000. So I made a comment on what I would do. And bam, that popped.

[00:24:01.740] – Sean

Anything else like that? Any quick wins you can give our audience like that?

[00:24:06.950] – Nico

But that’s part of my funnel, too. So the way I see it is what’s the easiest type of content that I can create? React. I don’t even give an opinion. I simply react to something. Just my reaction will say everything. This is the easiest one. And I’ll spend an hour or two every week and I’ll just look at videos. I’ll save the good ones that I will react to. And then on that day, I’ll either just do a reaction video or I will download it as you’re talking about. I’ll download it, I’ll shove it into CapCut, which is the best editing software for for cell phones out there. And I will react to it. Just say, Hey, guys, have you heard what Alex or Morsy just said? Pup, cuts to Alex or Morsy, and then it comes back. You’re just like, Man, that guy is insane. As good as he is, as good as he is at marketing, as much money as he’s made in it. In this one, he’s absolutely wrong. Here’s why. Yeah. I don’t even know what you’re talking about, but you can tell that I know how to hook people because those are the skills that I’ve developed.

[00:25:11.620] – Nico

So I got people now. I’m to a point where I have enough followers that people send me videos. So often I don’t even need to look for them. People send me a bunch of videos. I’m like, Oh, I like this one, and I’m going to react to it. I’m going to say something. But exactly like you said, this is a great way to do it. And then, again, you have your funnel. So how do I get the most people possible? Then how do I get people to start knowing what my opinion is? Then you have your evergreen content that you talk about all the time. So you’re always funneling, funneling, funneling, funneling. I get it. But the goal is to bring them to what you want to do. So if I use a reaction video, chances are I don’t have a lot of call for action except to get views, except to drive views on that content so that people, there’s a certain amount of people that will go on my profile and see what my page is about. Awesome. This is my goal. Then you have a reaction video. But in your reaction video, you have to have a call to action.

[00:26:08.590] – Nico

This is another thing that most people don’t do. Every single piece of content I put out there has a call to action. There is something. It could be as easy as like the video, comment, follow. I have cool animations that I add to my videos that just says like and comment, and just the way that they move, I time them perfectly so that they’re in your face at the end of the video. So As you go down your funnel, as you look at what your videos are less and less popular, but more and more about what you do every day, your evergreen content, you’re always using call to action. You’re always saying, Hey, if you like this video, you should see the long form comment, the long form content of this one. This is a real taken from this. Go check my YouTube channel. This is where the full interview is. Or go check my website. If you’re interested by what I was talking about here, make sure to go check my website. I have I have a free ebook for you. You should go check it out. So always this is the thing, and this is why you need to really look at the numbers.

[00:27:07.410] – Nico

Look in your target audience, what are the type of videos they look at? Now start reacting to it. Start giving your opinion on the leaders of that target audience. What are the people that they look up to? And don’t be scared to draw your line in the sand and to say, you know what? He was right five years ago. He is not right anymore. Time has changed. This is what you should be doing. Don’t believe me. Here are my numbers. Want to know how you can do it? Contact me. And this is where people need to grow a pair and actually not be scared to give their real opinion to go, are you for it? Are you against it? If you’re for it, say why? If you’re against it, say why? The worst thing… Nicolo Machiaveli wrote The Prince in the 1600s, I think, in Italy. And he talks about a principle that everybody should know about, never be neutral. People have no respect for neutral people. If you don’t have an opinion on something, This is the worst place you can be because if you end up being wrong, the winners won’t respect your opinion because you didn’t take a stance.

[00:28:24.310] – Nico

The people that were wrong won’t respect your opinion because you didn’t stand with them. So no matter what, always take a stance, because even if you were wrong, but you took a stance, the people that are not in alignment with you will respect you. The people that are following you are like, You know what? He did take a stand and he stood by it. That shows that he has courage. People respect courage. Never be scared to take a stance and explain why you’re different. Plus, that’s what a product is. Why would I do business with you? Why is your product different from another one? Why would you scare? Are you scared to say why you’re better? Why? You are better, so Say it. Don’t be scared of it. And point it in other people’s face. Don’t spend your money with that guy because that’s why. That’s why I’m better than that guy. Social media allows you to do that. It’s really how courageous are you? How far are you ready to take it? Because social media will not give you any attention if you’re vanilla and you’re like everybody else out there.

[00:29:21.930] – Sean

That’s good advice. Yeah. What do you say to somebody who is starting a business or they’re growing their business? They want to level up, but they’re afraid to jump into social media and start leveraging it?

[00:29:33.850] – Nico

Get a coach like me. This is one of the things that baffles me. I always have coaches. I don’t care how successful you are, always have coaches. If a guy like Elon Musk, that’s the richest guy on the planet, has business coaches, who are you to say that you don’t need one? If the richest guy on the planet understands that he need, that there’s people that know more than he does in certain aspect of his life. And you You can learn it by yourself. It took me four years to learn everything that I’m talking about and how to take advantage of it. But if you told me four years ago, Hey, here’s a guy that can show you how to do it in a year, you’re saving me a lot of time. Is it an investment? Absolutely. Absolutely. You’re going to pay for it. But how much is your time worth? How much is your business worth? Because this is what it comes down to. If you don’t understand social media, get somebody to explain it to you. Not only get somebody like me to explain it to you, but get somebody that can build a strategy for you.

[00:30:31.720] – Nico

Because unlike the digital agencies out there, I’m a content creator. Man, if you saw the number every day I’m targeted with ads from agencies that can build your social media. And I look at them, they barely have a couple of thousand followers. You’re telling me how to grow my social media when you can’t even do it for yourself.

[00:30:54.770] – Sean

Congratulations.

[00:30:55.800] – Nico

Good job. But there’s a sucker born every minute, I think is the expression. So I’m not surprised that they’re doing well. But don’t be scared to invest with somebody that can build a strategy, teach you how this work, how to mainstream your content Content Creation, how to integrate AI into your content creation process. Because this is something today that, man, if you don’t have a massive team, if you’re a one-man operation on your marketing department or you’re a small business and you don’t have an employee that’s dedicated to that, learn how to do it. And AI can definitely streamline the whole process.

[00:31:36.960] – Sean

Let’s talk about that. And just to give context there to the audience, offline, we’re talking about Nico had a team with him. He had employees or contractors, and you scaled down. And you were able to do that because you’re leveraging AI. Let’s get into that a little bit. What are you doing specifically that is saving you so much time?

[00:31:57.100] – Nico

The thing is, I used to have six or seven different video editors that would help on content creation. Just I was producing so much content and I didn’t want to edit it myself. And a lot of people are doing that. A lot of podcasters are doing that. And by the way, if you’re a business owner, start a podcast. This is one of the easiest way to market your opinion and put it out there and to create content creation. The reason I had so many is because I was told by somebody that I hired that I should be creating a specific type of content. So he wanted me to do a live every day. So for months at a time, I created a 30-minute live. I was going live on two different cameras, two different cell phones with three different microphones all at once, every single platform out there. So I was creating so much content. I needed it to be edited, and I needed it to be edited in a timely fashion that was the day after. And I did that for a while, and I looked at the numbers. The numbers didn’t make sense.

[00:32:57.350] – Nico

Why would I spend so much time doing that and spend so much money and manage people when instead I can apply all the techniques that I’ve learned over the years in sales and record most of my content off my cell phone. This is the thing. There’s a lot of personal skills that you can… If you’re not scared to look at the numbers and call a spade a spade, be careful not to fall in love with a certain type of content and look at the numbers. Is it working or not? No, stop doing it. Try something else, test something else, test something else. If you’re not scared to experiment, you’ll start to realize pretty fast that for you to create two, three pieces of content every day doesn’t take you that much if you know where to look, if you know where to create it, if you’re aware of the trends. And this is where AI can help you. Ai can help you. I’ve tried pretty much a vast majority of AI softwares out there. Most of them are not that great. Ai is nowhere close to where it should be. Again, if you’re a podcaster, you create a lot of long-form content.

[00:34:03.520] – Nico

There’s not a lot of good video editors out there that can do it. Ai-wise, they’re pretty terrible. I’d rather do it myself or have one of my guys to do it than use the platforms that are out there because they don’t do a great job. But there are platforms like a ChatGPT, for example, that is great for brainstorming. I literally treat ChatGPT like it’s one of my employees, and I’m just, okay, I just wrote this piece, or I’m thinking about writing a piece of content What do you think? Oh, yeah. Right now people are talking about this, this. Okay, cool. All right. Let me say this, though. I did take quite a few copywriting classes. I wrote a book last year. I’m writing my second one. So this is something I’ve invested my time and money to learn those skills. Because ChatGPT is not going to create great content for you. You can recognize ChatGPT content a mile away if you post it the way it is. But it can give you structure. It can give you You’re speaking with someone to say, Hey, what’s trending right now? If I’m offering this type of service, what type of content is trending on right now?

[00:35:11.220] – Nico

It will give it to you. Hey, what do you think of this piece of content? Oh, yeah, you should have a better call to action, or this is not specific enough, or this is how I use ChatGPT. Or to say, You sell T-shirts. What are the 10 biggest problems people have with T-shirts? Enter. It I will tell you what are the 10 biggest pains. Develop content around that. You can do that whatever service or product that you’re selling. Go on ChatGPT and see what are the biggest pains. Why do people buy these products? What are the reasons they buy it? What are the reasons that they don’t buy it? Instead of you doing the research and do it manually through Google, ChatGPT can put that together for you. And that to me, is the attraction that I have with that piece of software.

[00:35:56.760] – Sean

It help you refine copy you originally came up with, refine ideas, use it, bounce ideas back and forth with.

[00:36:05.030] – Nico

Or the complete opposite. Sometimes I will say, You know what? I want to write a piece of content on that subject. Give me 750 words with professional tone, but… There we go. Sarcastic at the same time. Enter. Then I will take it, copy paste into a word document. I will end up removing 95% of it. But the structure, it teaches you how to build a structure, how to introduce a subject in a way that will be appealing to people.

[00:36:33.350] – Sean

Right on. All right, before we jump to the rapid fire round, what is one key takeaway you can give our audience when getting started with social media?

[00:36:43.080] – Nico

Build your skills. Build your personal skills. It’s all about your natural skills. The number one thing people expect on social media, as funny as this is going to sound, is authenticity. People want to buy from people that feel authentic to them. How do you build authenticity? How do you get to that point? They have to trust you. How do you have them trust you? Show them that you’re the expert they need. How do you do that? By creating content that resonates with them. And this is why your whole… You need to spend days upon days upon days, if not weeks and months, understanding your avatar. This is the biggest overlooked portion is understand who you’re trying to sell to and Find them on social media, find what they find attractive, find the type of people they listen to, the type of content that they create that resonates with them, and see how you can create similar content by using your personal skills, by using your personality. This is what’s important, too, right?

[00:37:48.680] – Sean

Right on. All right, let’s jump to the rapid fire round. This is the part of the episode where we get to find out who Nico really is. If you can try to answer each question in 15 seconds for last. You ready?

[00:38:00.040] – Nico

Yeah.

[00:38:00.770] – Sean

All right. What is your favorite podcast?

[00:38:03.890] – Nico

The ultimate one, Joe Rogan podcast. Okay.

[00:38:08.140] – Sean

All right, what is a recent book you read and would recommend?

[00:38:11.750] – Nico

I would recommend, I read so many of them You know what? Read The Alchemist from Paulo Coelho. It has nothing to do with business, but most impactful book I’ve ever read in my life, and I’ve read 300 to 400 ones.

[00:38:25.210] – Sean

Sure. All right. All right. What is your favorite movie?

[00:38:28.680] – Nico

That’s a good question. Coach Carter. Really?

[00:38:31.770] – Sean

That’s a first Timer on this podcast.

[00:38:34.670] – Nico

I help men. Yeah, there you go. What he does is very inspiring to me. And the fact that he’s real, that guy existed, phenomenal.

[00:38:43.870] – Sean

That was Samuel Jackson. Is that correct?

[00:38:46.290] – Nico

Basketball team from a very poor area and a successful businessman that decides to coach the basketball team because he wants to help change a very specific subset of the community by teaching them. Teach them life lesson by using basketball. That’s what coaches do.

[00:39:04.120] – Sean

That’s awesome. All right, let’s get more serious here. What is the worst advice you ever received?

[00:39:09.570] – Nico

I’ve received a lot. You know what? The worst advice is the one I gave myself to listen to those people when I knew I shouldn’t, just because they were good at selling.

[00:39:20.830] – Sean

Sure. All right, flip that equation. What’s the best advice you ever received?

[00:39:25.830] – Nico

I think I gave it to myself is just always trust your instincts. Always, always trust your instincts.

[00:39:32.390] – Sean

Right on. All right. Then last question here, the time machine question. If you could go back in time to give your younger self advice, what age would you visit and what would you say?

[00:39:41.160] – Nico

I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t change anything even if you gave me the chance to.

[00:39:45.000] – Sean

There we go. That’s what shapes your character.

[00:39:48.220] – Nico

I wouldn’t be the person. That means if I did that by the time I came back, I would disappear because I wouldn’t be that same person.

[00:39:53.420] – Sean

Right.

[00:39:54.330] – Nico

Plus, who knows if I would even listen? It’s It sounds like you were the smartest person on Earth, your younger self. So you thought. Yeah, so I knew. Yeah, of course.

[00:40:12.230] – Sean

Cool. All right. Well, where can the audience reach you, Nico?

[00:40:15.910] – Nico

Nicolagen. Com. All my stuff is there. Cool.

[00:40:19.170] – Sean

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it.

[00:40:21.720] – Nico

Thanks for having me on.

[00:40:22.940] – Sean

We’ll see you. Hey, I’d like to say thank you for checking out this podcast. I know there’s a lot of other podcasts out there you could be listening to, so thanks for spending some time with me. And if you have a moment, please head over to Apple Podcasts and leave a five-star review. The more reviews we get, especially five-star reviews, the higher this podcast will rank in Apple. So thanks for doing that. And remember, this show is for entertainment purposes only. If you heard any stocks mentioned on this podcast, please do not buy or sell those stocks based solely on what you hear. All right, thanks for your time. We’ll see you.