How to be remarkable and make your business stand out with Rich Brooks

Your Dream Business

English - November 01, 2021 00:00 - 43 minutes - 39.4 MB - ★★★★★ - 34 ratings
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Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with Rich Brooks who is a digital marketing expert, author, podcast host, and public speaker who helps entrepreneurs and business owners reach more of their ideal customers online. We talk all about how to stand out and find out what is remarkable about your business.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

You don’t have to post on every single social media platform – quality over quantity!Public speaking is really important for business owners and can have a huge positive impact on your business.The ability to stand up on stage and present is really important and great for your visibility.It is really hard to market your business if there is nothing remarkable about it!4 lenses – find, focus, fashion and frame. Use them to get a better understanding of your business.Remarkability is in the eye of the beholder – the people you wish to serveFind – why do people choose you? Look at your reviews, feedback and look at everything you are already doing. What are you doing differently to your competitors?Is there a smaller audience you could serve? You could tailor one of your products to different industries – this helps you to understand their needs even further.If you want to become remarkable – one way to do this is to niche down.Retaining your clients is so much more important than always gaining new ones.Spend more time and attention on your current client base and they won’t go anywhere!Fashion – creating something intrinsic to your offering that is in line with your vision, mission and values.Frame – reframe the conversation so people appreciate what you are doing is remarkable.Once you have figured out your remarkability – you need to get this message out to your audience in a consistent way. Identify who will care about it and speak to them.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

Find what it is that makes you different and get that out there!

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS

An introduction to Rich 05:09Public speaking for business 10:50The remarkability formula 15:57How to find your remarkability 21:07Do I have to niche? 29:45How to market your remarkability 38:45

CHECK RICH OUT:

Website

Twitter

Facebook

Agents of Change Podcast

Transcript:

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? So I've got an interview this week and I just want to like dive straight in. I just thinking, have I got anything else to tell you before I get going?

No, I don't think it's like any bulletins. Any news, anybody want to share on a thing? No, we can crack on. So this week I am interviewing the very lovely. And I know, I say everyone's lovely, but you really is Rich Brooks. Now I was originally on Rich's podcast. You know, when you just hit it off with someone like straight away that when he talks about coming on mine, I was like, yeah, absolutely.

A hundred percent. He is very smart. He's been in marketing for some crazy amount of years and he really knows what he's talking about. And him and I are very similar on some of our thoughts and opinions. And it's just really nice to have a conversation with someone who, who is...

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

Find what it is that makes you different and get that out there!

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS

An introduction to Rich 05:09Public speaking for business 10:50The remarkability formula 15:57How to find your remarkability 21:07Do I have to niche? 29:45How to market your remarkability 38:45

CHECK RICH OUT:

Website

Twitter

Facebook

Agents of Change Podcast

Transcript:

And it is nice when I speak to someone when I don't know anything. Cause then I get to learn brand new things and I did learn stuff from Rich. It's just really nice when someone is like really on your level. So it was great fun, and he's a very, uh, charming and funny guy. I think you're really going to like him.

Okay. So I just pause, not that you do, because obviously you just hear the stream of normalness to get Rich's bio so I could read it to you. And I'm already laughing to myself because this is what I mean. That is quite funny. Quite funny. No, he's very funny. Rich has written his bio on his website and I'm reading it. So it said Rich started b1 communications–now flyte new media–in his living room in 1997. His design skill, project management, and the ability to understand the most basic accounting concepts have required him to hire much smarter and more talented people than himself.

Regardless, Rich seems to think a lot of himself, he calls himself an “Internet Marketing Expert.” Apparently, he likes to talk about himself in the third person as well. Like if that doesn't give you an idea of like you know, this episode and how funny he is. I don't know what does. Going to continue in this bio cause it's very funny. Rich loves to hear the sound of his own voice.

So you can often hear him speaking in front of both local and national audiences on web design and internet marketing. He founded The Agents of Change Podcast, which is the one I went on at the weekly internet radio show where he interviews marketing experts from around the world. He also started The Agents of Change Digital Marketing Conference, an annual conference that takes place in Portland, Maine and is streamed worldwide.

Rich is also the "tech expert" on 207. I don't know what that means. Oh, hang on an evening news program. And on the NBC affiliates here in Maine, he creates most of the content here at flyte contributing to our web marketing blog, our YouTube channel and Facebook business page.

He is an Expert Blogger at FastCompany.com and contributes regularly to Social Media Examiner, the world’s second most popular blogs on social media. Rich's also active in social media and you can follow him on Twitter friend him on Facebook or can get LinkedIn with him and you'll find a dozen other sites as well. He welcomes your questions and looks forward to discussing your website. Honestly, that is funny, man.

He, this just sums up like what he was like. He was so much fun to interview. That I just don't think I've got anything else to say. I probably should tell you what we talk about. We talk about how to make you stand out in your business and how to find what's remarkable about your business. So I'm just going to leave it to him to explain the rest. Here's the lovely, Rich.

Okay. It's my absolute pleasure today to welcome to the podcast Rich Brooks. Rich, how are you doing?

Rich: Teresa, I'm doing great today. I've been looking forward to this conversation all day.

Teresa: And what time is it Rich? So is it like nine o'clock in the morning?

Rich: No, no, no. It's 12:30. I've had two meals already today.

Teresa: I love it. Well, you're actually my last podcast of the day. So I've had a day of interviewing and I thought I'd saved the best for the last.

Rich: Excellent. Appreciate it, kind words.

Teresa: My pleasure. So Rich, I'm really excited for today. We've already had a couple of chats already, which is lovely and it was good fun. So I'm excited that my audience gets to hear from you. And I always start off the same way, which is probably very dull for my audience, but we'll do it anyway.

Rich: Exciting for me.

Teresa: Exactly. It's all new for you. So it's fine. Can you introduce yourself and tell us how you got to do what you're doing now?

Rich: Sure. My name is Rich Brooks. And for the last 24 years, I've been the founder and president of Flyte New Media. We're a digital agency located in Portland, Maine, which is kind of the top right corner of the United States.

We do web design. Uh, we do development. We do search engine optimization, social media, email marketing, just about everything under the sun when it comes to digital. I also run a podcast and a conference under the brand Agents Of Change when there's not a global pandemic, we have an annual conference here in Portland, Maine, and then I do a weekly podcast that you've been a guest on and we'll come back again because we had so much fun doing it.

And those are kind of the big professional things going on in my life and happy to answer any other questions you might have about that.

Teresa: Love it. So, first off, I just need to address 24 years, like in the same company. You're doing all right then I guess.

Rich: Yeah, you can see it in my face. Right. Those 24 years just carved in there, like a scar.

Yeah, no, it's, I, I honestly thought that I'd have maybe two years when I first started this gig running my own business. I thought that either programmers would learn how to design or designers would learn how to program. And that would be the end of my job. And then I go find something else. I really just wanted to kind of do my own thing for a couple of years.

And then here we are, 24 years later. Because I discovered you can hire people who are much more talented and focused than you are. And so that's where I find myself that I have surrounded myself by some very talented driven by, and I'm happy to say ethical people who work here at Flyte.

Teresa: So I've been in marketing 16 ish years.

And the world that I've seen in marketing has changed beyond almost recognition. You know, 24 years ago, it would have been a case of like, what's a website. Do I need a website? That's surely.

Rich: Yeah, there were definitely early on. I'd have to convince people. And to be honest, one of my first paying clients was my dad.

And you know, he's like, he's a psychologist and he's a well-known psychologist. He travels all over the world. He's written a lot of books, but he's like, what is the psychology? This was back when he was still seeing patients. What does the psychologist need for with a website I'm like, 'Dad just it's either that you are going to move home because everyone want it.'

So he said 'Absolutely Rich. I totally believe in you here's some money build me a website.' which actually led to a bunch of jobs after that. But yeah, back then the customer journey was not online as we like to say. So the idea of having a website was kind of a strange thing. And then once I started, I just found it really fascinating.

I was doing sales for medical supply company at the time. And when my boss wasn't looking, I just figured out how to build a website. And I, the company was called Ultra Care Services. I found the guy who owned ultracare.com. I asked him if I could buy the domain off of him, he actually worked for like some giant corporation, like Procter and Gamble here in the States.

And he was like, 'Yeah, we're not using it.' And he just gave it to me. And so I built a site, I showed it to him and my boss was so happy. He took me off the road, put me in the office and that was pretty close to the end of my time there. Cause I didn't want to be in the office, but, uh, but yeah, so that's kinda how I got started.

It was a lot of trying to convince people that this was going to be a big thing and turned out to us.

Teresa: Yeah. And then, because, like I said, I remember having some of the conversations of why people need a website and then the whole conversation of what's this social media thing. And why do I need that? Like, you know, just basically has everything news come in.

You've probably had to battle with people to convince them why it's worth them putting that time and effort into it.

Rich: Sometimes. Absolutely. I mean, I was definitely an early adopter for social media. I just happened to be lucky that I got involved with some people who are big bloggers at the time. They got me to speak at an event called the BlogWorld out in Vegas.

And from going to that, I started, people were talking about Twitter and Facebook and I couldn't even understand or fathom how that had anything to do with business. But I paid attention. I came home, I started trying things. And then all of a sudden I was giving presentations on how do you use Twitter for business?

How do you social media for business? And there was a, there was, you know, the, the foreigners in their businesses said like, this seems important. And so I started working with them and then time grow on. And then everybody's, you know, doing social media, everybody's doing email marketing, everybody's got a blog or a podcast.

What have you, these days, actually, more of my conversations are like, you know what, maybe you don't need a big presence on Facebook. You're a B2B company. You're selling to a very segmented group. They're not on Facebook for business. So let's find you a better solution. So these days I feel almost like a curator of digital marketing on what's really? Where is your audience hanging out? Where can you perform well? How are you going to generate leads and sales? And let's develop a plan around that. So it's definitely shifted.

Teresa: It's almost come full circle. Hasn't it? Back to. Like everyone had to do it. Now actually, no, not so much because there's so much out there.

Rich: Now it's definitely more quality over quantity, where there was a time when it's just the more blog posts you put out, the more emails you put out, the more successful you'll be. And now if you remember, when they used to tell us, you had to post to Facebook five times a day. I'm like, holy cow, what bad advice that turned out to be.

Teresa: Like what absolute trash would have been put it out.

Rich: Right. Well, there were less people then. So five posts a day. You probably could get some good visibility with that, but that's just not the case anymore.

Teresa: I'm interested. How much do you think your early speaking career had a benefit to your business? Like do you credit?

Rich: 1 million %

Teresa: Yeah.

Rich: For a few reasons. One is, I really do think that public speaking is one of the most important skills in entrepreneur. And I wasn't always comfortable standing in front of the stage now or standing on a stage now I love it. And I can not. I've actually got my first in-person speaking event coming up the beginning of next month and I could not be more excited.

Yeah, it's awesome. But I think that that's one of those unheralded, but critical skills that entrepreneurs should learn. And yes, you can do stuff on zoom and zoom will never go away. Or some version of zoom will never go away. But the, the ability to stand up on stage and present is critically important.

And for me personally, like I remember when the guys who were on this blogging group with me said, 'Oh, who wants to speak at Vegas?' And I'm like, 'Who am I to speak at Vegas?' In Vegas to a group of bloggers. Like I run a tiny little shop with three employees. I have nothing to share, but I decided to roll the dice. I went out there and quite honestly, I sucked.

It was not, I was forced to do the topic.

Teresa: Someone recorded that?

Rich: Probably. Oh, maybe not back then, but yeah was like I was forced to do a topic I knew nothing about. I did it. It was mildly okay. And probably the saving graces friends of mine there put me on a blogging panel because they, somebody had dropped out. That actually was great. And then they asked me back the next year and I started kind of pushing for the topics I was comfortable doing.

And it really just got my name out there. It also connected me with people. And when I started doing my own conference here in Portland, Maine, I made all these people. I got these really big names to come to a State. They had never been to a tiny little place in America, or at least from a population standpoint.

And so all of those things were critically important to the growth of my company. And these days, and I'm sure you do this too. You take a look at well, where is my business coming from? Where are the leads coming from? And our biggest and best projects right now, almost all of them either listen to the podcast or more likely saw me speak, or it came from somebody who saw me speak.

So it's always comes back to that, getting up on stage, even though we're a digital agency, you would think that inbound would be our bread and butter, but because it's so competitive, We've actually found that where we go and there's less competition and we can have more intelligent conversations with our ideal customers. That's where we get this.

Teresa: I think you're right. I think over lockdown don't get me wrong. I've done a lot of online stuff. Lots of conferences and some conferences. The one I did was stringed something like 104 countries and translated into some obscene amount of languages and was out something like 500,000 people.

Now, this got any chance I could have that in an in-person event, but actually one thing I've really noticed is my visibility has really reduced as, as people are getting more tired with the online world. There's people who like I've done all the millions of online conferences, and I am desperate for the in-person stuff again, to start bringing that back.

And also that you said that you know, when we were on your phone, cause we were talking about Amy Poterfield and the only reason I have a relationship with her is because I met her in person and because we had coffee together and then we have mutual friends and like that stuff is so important for building those relationships.

Hence why she was one of the first guests on my podcast like that I couldn't have got, if it hadn't been for being out there and speaking and, and the same with Pat Flynn, I spoke on the same stage as him. Hence, why he was able to come onto the podcast. So I think you're right. I think for me, it's a big business thing and I feel like not I'm suffering at the moment, but I feel like it's definitely had an impact, that I haven't been able to go out there and do it like you. I just flippin love it.

Rich: Right. Well, and it's funny because both Amy and I, both Amy and Pat, I got to know because live events, it was Jaime Masters who was in our group with Pat and I met Jaime flying for me. And one of the only other digital marketers I...

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