Built For The Game with Rob Cressy

My 5 Secrets To Creating Content & Brand Building

Broadcast on:: 18 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: other

If you want to build a powerful brand by creating content then what I am about to share will save you 12 years on your journey. In this episode of Built For The Game, Rob Cressy shares his 5 secrets to creating content and brand building. These principles will make getting started scaling your brand easier, as well as elevate the impact and growth you create for your business.
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Ways I can Help:
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Let's Connect:
Rob Cressy - Instagram: @rob_cressy - LinkedIn: /cressy/

Before we get to today's show, would you love to be more confident on camera, where you're leveraging video as part of your brand building strategy? If so, we've got a free masterclass coming up for you on Wednesday, September 25th at 12pm Eastern. You can go to unlimitedlivetalks.com to register and on this you're going to learn three things. Number one, how to look the part visually on video. Number two, how to create an on camera presence that shines, and number three, a simple framework for knowing what to say every time you're on video. I've been a professional host and creator for the last 12 years, so this is your opportunity to learn how to be more confident on camera in way less time than it took me. Once again, go to unlimitedlivetalks.com to register. If you want to build a powerful brand by creating content, then what I'm about to share with you will save you 12 years on your journey, because that's how long I've been doing what I'm about to share with you. What's good? I'm Rob Cressy, and I'm going to share with you my five secrets to creating content and brand building. In four contexts, in the last 24 hours, I hosted a building your brand call for unlimited, where this is the topic of conversation, and then this morning, I had a coffee meeting with someone for the first time where this came up again. This entire experience is going to be for both beginners and advanced master creators. Why? Because you're always doing something new or looking to add something else to your creator toolbox. If you vibe with what I'm sharing right here and you would like some support on your journey, then I encourage you to join us in unlimited coach. You can go to creatingunlimited.com, and one of the very important things from a framing perspective is a superpower that I was given 12 years ago, right after I left my corporate job and became a full-time entrepreneur. A mentor said to me, "Rob, if you ever hope to get paid to do what you love, you better be doing it already." At the time, my dream was to get paid to talk about sports for a living. So I asked myself, "How do I talk about sports?" And the answer is, by teaching myself how to launch a podcast, be a host, audio and video editing, social media marketing, brand building, essentially all of the things around building a marketing or content company is where my dreams were. So for many people, they face resistance around, "Oh my God, I have to learn this, or I don't know what I'm doing, or I'm brand new." For me, that was the entry point into the game where I was like, "Listen, if you want to play this game of building a brand and creating your dreams, then these are the requirements just to get in the game." It doesn't even mean you're getting paid for it. This is just to get in the game. And the reason this became a superpower for me is because I learned to love creating content because that's what I wanted to do with my life at the time. And there's two foundational mindsets to building a brand that have served me so well and can you, too. Number one, everything you do is a reflection of your brand. And then number two, everything you do is an opportunity to create a positive brand interaction. And when you understand these two things, the entire world of content creation is something that is seen as a get to, not a have to. And I'll give you the very simplest example of this, and this is all around having an attention to detail as someone building a powerful brand. Think about when you create your very first website or a landing page. And for many people or companies, they'll have a way to contact you at the bottom. And it might say contact@yourcompanyname.com or info@yourcompanyname.com. When I see that, I'm like, man, that is a missed opportunity. Why? Because it's generic in nature. And if I was to think about the user experience, how many times in your life have you clicked that little button and emailed info@ or contact@ and never got a response back? To me, everything's a vibe, everything's an energy. Instead, imagine if it was, hey, Rob, at yourcompany.com or what's good at yourcompany.com or boom@yourcompany.com. Why does this matter? Boom, positive brand interaction, man, there's a little bit of a vibe and an energy just in the little details of how you contact someone. So this is just a very simple example, but now every single thing that your brand touches and every single thing that you create, you can come from the lens of, well, you know what? This is reflective of my brand because we want to build a brand of excellence and I can create a positive brand interaction. So I'm going to start by sharing what the five secrets are to content creation and brand building. Then I will drill down on each one. And the first thing that we're going to talk about is number one, how to start getting good at content creation, whether you're a beginner or advanced. Number two, how to decide what content to create. Number three, I'm going to call content creation vision, your ability to see the big picture. Number four, take an advantage of the game. And number five, metrics and analytics because this is an area where so many people get caught up of, oh my God, everything I'm creating is not going viral. I can't feel comfortable posting something where 17 or 300 people saw it. So we're going to break each of these things down. And if you're someone once again who wants to build a powerful brand, you're an entrepreneur, you're a coach, you're a leader. This is for you and this is going to be a master class that will change the next decade of the way that you create content and build your brand. So let's start with this. Number one, how to start creating content and I'm going to give the very simplest tip. And so often in the name of mastery, we overlook the fundamentals and I'll give you the example from this specific piece of content that I am creating right now. There's only one thing that I do every single time to make creating content easier for me. And you know what that is? Turn on my equipment, so that means I'm turning on my camera, my microphone, and my light in front of me. Total time that takes probably about seven seconds. But why is this important? Because this is a trigger for I'm about to create a piece of content and share it with the world. But Rob, what if I don't know what I'm going to create? That is exactly why I do it because so often in the name of content creation, it's easy to sit there in your fear, judgment, self-loathing beliefs, your uncertainty of why I can't do something what I don't know. I want to throw all of that in the trash and instead, I just want to turn on my equipment because 100 times out of 100, every time I've turned all of that stuff on, I've created a piece of content and it is impossible for me to create content if I don't have the equipment turned on. So, in the most simplistic side of things, if you're starting at the very beginning right now, that thing is just press record. And if you're more advanced, that might just be light up your studio and get things ready. And the analogy I like to give for this, and this is going to take a page from what I do on the self-development side of things as a coach, is building consistency around going to the gym and working out and living a lifestyle of fitness. And one of the very simple habits that I do and I coach around is just laying my workout clothes in my living room the night before. Why? Because I work out at 6.15 in the morning and what I do not want to do is have to make it harder on myself to get my clothes figured out I'm doing it in the dark because I'm married and I'm trying to be quiet. So, create that commitment at the very beginning before you even start. And that's what this trigger is. When you turn on your equipment, you're creating the commitment because uncertainty leads in action. And if you do not create that commitment to yourself, you're more likely to do nothing. Therefore, whether you're putting your clothes out in the living room to go workout or you're turning on your commit or you're turning on your camera, that first commitment is the domino that allows the rest of content creation to become a lot easier. And of course, I'm speaking right now all around video and audio and of course you can do this with text or written but I love to share this because there's an entire strategy around how you will use video, which we will get to in a second. And one other thing I want to share here, which came up on a call on the call for unlimited yesterday is around people just getting started with video for the first time. And there's a really good teaching lesson here and I want to share this and I really enjoy this person and I love them and they're one of our clients and they said that you know what? Later on this year, I want to start creating video and I was like, great, when's that going to be? And their answer, November and as I sit here recording this on September 17th, I sat there and I was like November, we're going to wait a month and a half to start recording video. When I know you can just very easily press record right now and create your first video because what I subliminally hear is all of the things that we do to delay us doing something that might be new or uncomfortable for the first time, a.k.a. kicking that can down the road. If you're sitting there right now and you have this thought that you would love to create video or a podcast and you don't know how or you've got a later date in the future, my encouragement for you is to not believe that line that you are telling yourself because it's head trash because the reality is the sooner you get the process started, the sooner the process gets started because the misplaced focus is that somehow just doing it for the first time is getting you in the game? No, what you want to do is to open up your aperture and say, listen, I want to go from zero to one and that just gets me started. But I realize that I actually need to create 20 videos for me to learn by doing because one of the keys to mastery and content creation is all around confidence and getting comfortable. So the longer that you delay getting in your reps, the longer that you're delaying your progress in your growth. And one of the quotes that I say often is comfortable is always comfortable. So it's always very comfortable to not press record to say that I'm just going to start doing video in November. You know what's not very comfortable? Just picking up that phone and hitting record and creating your first video. And if you're feeling that right now, I've got such a simple tip for you and this will change the game. And if you do this, please tag me on social media @robcressy no matter what platform it is. So if you're feeling resistance around creating video for the first time, here's what I want you to do. If you pick up your phone and I want you to hit record and I want you to say, this is my first video. And I do not feel comfortable doing this, but my friend, Rob Cressy, said, if I just push record and I share this with the world, then I am making progress on building a more powerful brand. I don't even know what to say right now. So all I'm going to do is say, this is my first video. And if you're watching this, thanks a ton. Have a great rest of your day. Hit record and then upload that and here's what you're going to learn. Just your simple act of doing that and being willing to put yourself out there for this first time is telling yourself who you are by living in that action. And then you have the social proof of doing that because now you're being a little bit vulnerable. Man, I'm creating a video and I don't even know what I'm doing. I don't even know what I'm saying and I'm sharing that with other people. I smoke stranger danger, but a crazy thing is going to happen. You're going to see in the comments people saying, way to go. I remember when I did that for the first time or people saying, I've been thinking about going on a video, but I haven't done it yet. Can you tell me how you did what you just did? And you'll sit there and you're like, wait a second. You're asking me how to be on video when I just created my first video and I have no idea what I'm doing, yes, because people love to see others who are doing things in the name of discomfort or for the first time. So of course we're going to be a champion for you in all that you are doing. And I promise you, this may sound simple. This may sound scary. This is legitimately the easiest thing in the world to do that will teach you so much about yourself. If you are just getting started, all right, moving this on to number two, how to decide what content to create every single day. And this was the topic of conversation yesterday during our unlimited call. Once again, if you're looking for some brand building tips and support and guidance in your journey, go to creatingunlimited.com. We would love to have you join us. So I'll give the original beginner in advance framework that to me changes the entire game for you with content creation and brand building and how I like to put this, stacking ones over zeros. And here's what this means, did I post or not? If I posted, that is a one. If I did not post, that is a zero. It's hard to build a powerful brand if you're not sharing anything. If you don't give people that opportunity to experience you, that value, that energy that you bring to the table. And this is very simple here because if you sit there and think about, oh my God, is what I'm creating right or wrong or what are people going to think or what are the results going to be? You've already lost. Of course, we'll get to that later in the advance level. And by keeping this simple and making your metric of success, a one or a zero. Did I post or not? If yes, good because so many people never get in the game. They don't actually post anything. They just sit there and kick that can, can down the road until November. Oh yeah, I'll get to it at a later date. But then November gets there and you're like, oh, it's a holiday season. You know what? We just got so much going on in my life right now. I'll do it in December. December comes around and you're like, wow, holiday parties, we got the holidays. I'll do it after the new year. And then the new year gets there and it's like, whoa, new, new year, new me. I don't got time for this. I got so much going on in my life right now. You see how easy it is just to keep kicking this thing down the road. I hear it over and over and over again. And instead, just sit there and say, did I create something or not today? One or a zero. And once you come from that position, I know, super simple, super basic, but guess what? This is why fundamentals stack on top of each other because here's the advanced level where we're going to get to once you get comfortable enough where you're just stacking ones, one, one, one, one, content, content, you're sharing, you're sharing, you're getting comfortable making this part of your flow and you're building your brand. What we will then do is graduate you to what we call content with intent. And this is where you'll be creating that client attention winning content. The content that speaks to your ideal client, because of course, so many people, entrepreneurs, coaches, leaders say, Rob, I would love to use my content to help create new clients. Great. So what we will then do is be more intentional about what it is that we are sharing that speaks to where they are in that customer journey. So one of the things that I love that I learned from my partner, Colin Scotland, is a very simple framework we're going to call prison to paradise. And you can just write down, what is the prison that my ideal client is in right now? And then what is the paradise of where I would love to take them? And then what are those steps in between? So maybe you're just going to do a piece of content around the prison. Maybe you do a piece of content around the paradise. But one of the things that I learned and shout out to Gina from Mighty Networks that I love is speaking to people in transition. So they're in transition from what is the pain that they're in and what is the paradise you want to take them to. And it doesn't mean that this is what all of our content needs to be all the time, but it's a simple framework. Remember, one versus zero, stack in those ones. All right, let's graduate to a little bit more advanced and strategic level where you're not concerned that I don't know that I won't show up today because showing up is the game that we are playing. The next level of this is I want to share some ideas around some other ways you can think about what you're creating. Number one, what's alive in me right now? So for me, this is a great example of this, two conversations in the last 24 hours about building your brand. And I'm like, boom, this is feeling alive. I'm going to share some value with everybody else. Number two, and I'm a yes, and what I just said, what would provide value to one person? And one of the things that I share often was I was the MC of a marketing conference years ago and they're doing Q&A, and a woman raised her hand and said, why would anybody care about what I have to say on a podcast? And the answer is, if you have something inside of you that can help even one person, it is your duty to share it with the world. Therefore, if there's something you can help one person with, boom, share that bad boy. Because guess what? They will be a lot more thankful that they did. All right, next thing, super simple, and this also goes to the world of what I do on the coaching side of things in the world of AI. Later our good friend Chad GBT in ask, what are the top 10 pain points of my ideal customer? It'll go there and it'll listen for you. You can then say, all right, I would also love you to give me a sentence in the language of my customer. So what does it sound like going through their head? Chad GBT can create you endless ideas. Last thing, I would love for you to create a list of stories that you can tell, that you can then weave together as a lesson. So sit there over your life journey and say, all right, what are some of the best stories that I have? And then sit there and think about what you do and say, all right, how can I tie this back together with a lesson? And I'll speak this one here directly to coaches and I'm living this right now. You can ask yourself. What am I talking about with my clients every single day? What are the things that they are asking me? What are they struggling with? What are they challenged with? What are you working on for yourself? Use your own experience being on the receiving or giving end of coaching to use that as a conduit for what to create around. And what I'm going to share now is going to be a mastery level concept for you. Think about this. I would love for you to be open to the perspective that it doesn't even matter what you say on content, because it is actually your energy and your state of being that resonates with somebody else. And you can feel this in experience right now, because you can hear the passion of my voice. You can feel how much I would love to support you on your journey of building a powerful brand. And why is that? Because I have a goal of helping 10 million people and one of the best ways that I can do that is by sharing what I've learned on my journey of more than a decade to help you be a more powerful creator in building your brand. And boom, it almost doesn't even matter what I say, because one of the things that I hear is, and Rob, I just love your energy and your good vibes, and you don't have to have this high performance personality like me to have an energy and an aura and a vibe where every time you share something, someone's like, man, the way that you make me feel is just unbelievable. What I hear, no love and trust factor, KNOW, boom, and if you got from that place, you're like, wait a second, you're telling me second one's over, you zero is just created piece of content. And then what I create doesn't even matter because it's the energy and state of being that I'm transferring to somebody else. Yes. Of course, we can be strategic in how we do this, but what we're really doing is removing the fear, judgment, and self-limiting beliefs, and instead focusing on sharing and shelling up and channeling that for everybody else. Because the way that I'm going to wrap a bow on this, and I heard this in my coffee meeting this morning, was the fear of running out of ideas, man, I don't know how I'd ever create a podcast. I just don't even know what I would talk about or hey, I've been doing 20 episodes. I'm just fresh out of ideas and I sit here and I'm like, you do realize this is the easiest part. If it amounts of ideas, I promise you, you will never run out of ideas for content that you can create or things that you can share that can help people or stories or speak to the journey of how you transform that with other clients. Number three here, what I want to talk about is content creation vision. And this is your ability to see the way that you create content and build a powerful brand. And for me, this is an absolute superpower because of how I started. Rob, if you ever hope to get paid to do it, you love, you better be doing it already. I legitimately hear and see in content because as a coach, I'm a master of listening because your language will tell me everything that I need to know about the story about what's really going on. So I can pull out one specific word or one specific sentence in boom. I'm like, that's a piece of content that you can create. And so often you just don't see what is accessible or possible for you. So let's break this down in a few different ways. Number one, when you're creating your content creation vision, what I would love for you to do is to focus on the power of consistency. Let's keep showing up, stack those ones over those zeros and in my coffee meeting this morning, one of the things that I shared is, yeah, I've published over a thousand podcast episodes. He's like, wow, Rob, that is so impressive. And from where I sit right here, I don't see that impressive at all because I actually see it as super simple. I was like, you do realize a thousand episodes is just publishing one podcast or two podcasts a week for eight straight years. And it's like, huh, you don't really think about that because when you're starting at zero, it's like, oh my God, I just got to go from zero to one. And then you go from one to 20, 20 to 50, 50 to a hundred and then you're like, oh my God, I'm new. Facebook posts around. I just published a hundred episodes, but you'll get to the point where it doesn't even matter because sharing and creating content is just who you are and is part of the game. So the power of consistency of keeps showing up, showing up, showing up, and you sit there and you're like, well, what am I willing to do that? Others aren't simple. I'm just going to keep going. I'm not going to give up. And because of that, my numbers just go zero, one, 20, 50, a hundred, 200, 500, 700, a thousand plus. And you're like, oh, so that's how you become a master creator. You just keep on doing it because number two, you're doing this to play the long game. Give, give, give, you're given value, you're given energy. You keep showing up and you say, you know what? I've got this long term vision that if I keep giving and like attracts like, it'll come back to me, especially once I start getting a little bit more strategic about this, but more importantly, you're getting in the reps because going from one to 20, you'll be infinitely better, 20 to 50, infinitely better, 50 to 500, you're doing this thing with your eyes closed and all of a sudden you're teaching content creation. So the key in all of this becomes the power of consistency is about getting in the reps. And then the mastery level of this of where all of this loops together is all around building your ecosystem, AKA your world, or as I would say, Rob's world. And what this is, is the various ways that people can consume and engage your world, your content, your information, your value. So maybe you start out saying, you know what, I'm just going to do an audio podcast. And then you're like, man, I wonder if I could also do this as video. So you do audio and then you create a YouTube channel. And then once you're doing your YouTube, you're like, man, maybe I want to start chopping this up into shorts. So now you got audio, video and shorts. And then you're like, well, what about doing some organic blog posts? So now you turn those videos and blog posts your those videos into SEO optimized blog posts. And once you're doing this, you've got this ecosystem. Wow. Maybe I'll create my own newsletter. And once again, we're just stacking ones, one, one, one, one, one. And you look up and you started with a podcast. And the next thing you know, you've got a full blown media company. Welcome to the world of building a powerful brand. All of these things stack on top of each other. Number four, take an advantage of the game. And when I speak to the game, this is the game we are playing in the way that we share in distribute content. And think about this, what do the social media platforms want more of for you? They want you to spend more time on their platforms because more time on the platforms means more ad revenue for them, more ad revenue for them equals boom, winner, winner, chicken dinner. And if that's the case, they are going to prioritize video and live streaming. Why? Because those have higher longevity of how long someone stays on there because you can see one tweet, boom, gone in a second, one just image, boom, gone in a second. But you seeing or watching this video right now, all of a sudden you're like, wow, maybe I watched 13 seconds or 13 minutes or this entire thing. Now the platform's like, I want to give more of that. Therefore, this becomes about organic reach. If you're not using paid as part of your social strategy, you say, what can I do to keep showing up in more places more often? Huh, video and live stream, because the next part of this becomes what are others not willing to do that you are? Video and live stream, why? Because I know 95% of people are going to allow their fears to stop them from ever being on video or God forbid doing a live stream. Oh, I've never done it. What if people see me and they don't like it or what if I sound stupid? Oh irrelevant. I want to play the game that nobody else is playing or a select few are. So you strategically use this and it's no surprise that so many people are like, prob, I see you all over the place. Well, why is that? Because right now with this piece of content, I'm live streaming this on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. I'm then going to turn this into an optimized YouTube video, then I'm going to SEO optimize it for long term blog post. Then I'll probably do a post in my unlimited community and probably put something in the newsletter and it's like, oh, there's levels to this game. What are others not willing to do that you are? And the way that I'm going to wrap a bell on all this, impress yourself, impress yourself with your consistency, impress yourself at your ability to do things that feel uncomfortable in the name of growth. And then number five, we're going to talk about metrics and analytics. And if you're a beginner right now, here's the only thing I want you to think about. Did I post or not one or zero? Do not be concerned about how many downloads, podcasts, listens, likes or comments. Why? Because there is a silent majority and a vocal minority by design. Most people are never going to comment on your stuff and you have to be totally okay with that. And where I really learned this and this blew my mind and changed my life forever. It's probably five or six or seven years ago, I met Grant Cardone's 10x growth conference down to Miami at Marlon Stadium and the event's about to start and I'm going there and I only know the two people that I'm with and we're in the concourse going to our seats and a person stops me and says this guy and he goes, are you Rob Cressy? And I'm like, yeah, he goes, I love watching your LinkedIn lives. My jaw hit the floor because at that time I was sitting there, wasn't getting much engagement, not many likes, not many comments and I would wonder, is this working? Is this working? Then out of nowhere a complete stranger says, I love watching you on LinkedIn immediately for the rest of my life. Everything that I thought about, is this working or not thrown in the trash? Because people are watching whether you realize it or not. Therefore, did I post or not? The advanced level of this is when you start to use some data to inform your decision around what you're going to create. And for me, this is around YouTube, Google or social media, Instagram or TikTok. And you can do some search results around what are people searching for? Is there high or low keyword difficulty or competition? So now you can start to play the data game where you're having more of the conversations or content around the search terms that people are searching for in your industry, where you can rank for or in the event of social posts, you see what is trending or where the best video is out there, you look at the hooks, you look at their structure and format and then you put your own spin on this. And the last nugget here I'm going to share came from Tim Ferriss and it really helped me. And if you ever listen to the Tim Ferriss podcast, he talks about biohacking or hey, here's Richard Branson or here's somebody who loves to grow their own sprouts or here's habits for high performing people. It's all over the place. And he says, I only expect 20% of my audience to listen to any one episode because for so many people, they allow, well, is this right or wrong? What if I talk about this in this, does that align with my brand to stop them from creating something? Because for so many of us who are multi hyphenate, we do this and this and this. For me, I do self development, I do brand building, I do AI and chat GBT. Boom. Those are three pillars of what I talk about. So I don't expect everybody to listen or consume everything. But if 20% of my audience does, boom, I am good. So those are my five secrets to content creation in brand building. I hope this helps you out on your journey. I would love to hear from you. Is there anything that I said that resonated with you or caused you to take action? You can hit me up on Instagram, LinkedIn or Facebook at Rob Cressy. And if you're someone who's looking for a coach, a champion to support you on your journey of being the best version of yourself in your business, in your life, where you want to make a bigger difference in less time, then hit me up, rob@robcressy.com. Let's have a conversation about how I can support you and create that roadmap for everything you would love to create in your life. Sending tons of good vibes your way, hope you have yourself an amazing rest of the day. [MUSIC]