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Unleashing Your Voice: Personal Brand, Speaking, & Audience Growth w/Nausheen Chen
56 Plays11 months ago
In this episode, Dan Sanchez talks with Nausheen Chen about the importance of authenticity and amplification in public speaking. They discuss Nausheen's journey from using LinkedIn as a platform for storytelling to becoming a recognized LinkedIn instructor. They also delve into the challenges of diversifying platforms, the concept of personal branding, and Nausheen's passion for helping others become impactful speakers. With insights on building an audience, engaging with communities, and finding one's voice, this episode offers valuable tips for anyone looking to captivate attention through public speaking.
Timestamps:
00:00 Accomplished public speaking coach.
06:48 Discovering the authentic self through audience growth.
10:27 Limited social media use, focus on LinkedIn. Content creation realization at turning 40.
12:47 Taking risks, learning from failures, and engaging.
17:23 Purple hair became the unique brand.
18:07 Public speakers use visual cues for personal branding.
21:44 Results require consistent time investment on LinkedIn.
26:23 ChatGPT automates newsletter content creation from videos.
30:29 Free 5-day impactful speaker course with videos.
33:57 Balancing multiple tasks limits time for creativity.
36:47 Houdley: AI tool improving public speaking.
38:26 Fascinating interview, learn more about content.
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Transcript
Introduction to Nasheen Chen and Her Unique Brand
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome back to the Attention podcast. My name is Dan Sanchez. My friends call me Dan Chas. And today I talked to Nasheen Chen about her story and growing an audience on LinkedIn. If you haven't seen Nasheen, she stands out across the sea of faces with the bright purple hair and the yellow background as she talks about public speaking on LinkedIn. She has racked up quite a following and has quite a story to share. So as you jump into this,
00:00:28
Speaker
Make sure to stay tuned till the end where I give my two cents as far as what stood out to me and how I'm going to be applying it in my own audience growth journey. So let's dive into it.
Nasheen's Career Transition from Corporate to Public Speaking
00:00:43
Speaker
I was looking over your, like my story page on your website and it's quite a list of like all the things, all the things that you've done from being the number one ranked manager at a fortune 50 or a proctor and gamble. Right. Um, award-winning filmmaker training improv in New York city, uh, being a director of PR and now being a professional speaking coach.
00:01:07
Speaker
and especially having grown an audience on linkedin like you've done a lot of stuff but like where like where did this all start for you like did it just kind of piece together was it like kind of like a just a an interesting journey i kind of want to get to where you started and how you landed on public speaking as your thing um and i would love i'll probably interject some questions along the way but tell us a little bit about your story about how you got to where where you're at today
00:01:32
Speaker
Sure. First of all, thank you so much for having me on your show. It's a pleasure talking to you today. And where it all started was, you know, that annoying kid who always shows up in front of the whole family and starts reciting the most boring poem ever. I used to be that annoying kid. I have loved performing in front of people ever since I can remember, but figuring out
00:02:01
Speaker
that speaking in public and helping others speak in public was my calling in life took a longish time. I started off in the corporate world, like you said. I was at Procter & Gamble. I became one of the youngest communication skills trainers when I was there. This was an addition to my actual job, which was marketing and PR.
00:02:24
Speaker
But I liked doing this training so much that I ended up doing workshops and teaching and training different kinds of people, even after I left BNG.
00:02:37
Speaker
But I always did it not even as a side hustle. Sometimes I just did it for free. I did it because I enjoyed speaking to people. I enjoyed being on stage. At the end of the day, it's because I craved attention, and I happened to turn that into a calling in life. And the next stop in my career, as you also mentioned, was filmmaking, which I also stumbled into.
Filmmaking Insights and Career Reflection
00:03:00
Speaker
So I'm a big stumbler. And while I was a filmmaker for seven years, by the way,
00:03:07
Speaker
I never once felt like one. I always struggled with my identity because I never wanted to be a filmmaker. I didn't feel like I was this visionary director with a creative vision who had to bring it to life. What I did like was that part of the process where I worked with my actors. And sometimes I work with nonprofessional talent, which is basically a fancy way of saying,
00:03:34
Speaker
CEOs who were speaking on camera for the first time, doing a corporate documentary and shaking in their socks, not being able to be themselves on camera. And I had come from not just doing workshops and trainings, but also exploring life in theater, doing improv on stage. So to me, it was weird. It was actually weird to see people become robotic.
00:04:02
Speaker
and stiff and pale versions of themselves the moment that a camera was aimed at them or the moment they had to step into the spotlight. That was the first inkling that maybe that's the direction I should go in, but it still took me those seven years to figure out that when I leave filmmaking, what should the next identity be?
00:04:26
Speaker
was really sparked off by a question that my husband asked me one evening when I was really sad. And going through my 20th existential crisis of the month, he said, you're so unhappy with filmmaking, but you love speaking on stages. You love public speaking. You know that, right?
00:04:52
Speaker
And he knows because I would drag him to all my events and I'd be doing all this stuff on different stages, sometimes coffee shops, sometimes these co-working spaces. And I said, what? I can't make a living off of public speaking. I'm not Tony Robbins. Like, who am I kidding? No one even knows I exist. And that was the first, the second seed really that was planted. And that's the time I started building on LinkedIn, believe it or not.
Building a Public Speaking Brand on LinkedIn
00:05:22
Speaker
because I thought that let's get some proof of concept here. Let's figure out what's going to resonate with people. And I started boasting about communication and creating commercials, filmmaking, public speaking, everything that I liked doing. And public speaking was the one thing that resonated with people immediately. They started catching on to it. And that actually is what propelled me into becoming a full-time public speaking coach.
00:05:53
Speaker
That's interesting. You were, you were behind camera for your filmmaking, not in front of the camera. I was not in front of the camera. I was directing my actors. I was doing script writing. I was producing. I feel like that has a whole education for speaking in and of itself, because being behind the camera, you kind of get a feel for like, Oh, well, if they could only do it this way, you start to have opinions on what it should look like or what it should feel like.
00:06:20
Speaker
So naturally when you step in front of the camera, you kind of have an idea of what you're looking for because you've been watching people do it so many different ways. Good and bad. Um, it's almost like a secret hack. I think to, I think that's why YouTubers get so good at speaking because they have to do both, right? They have to speak on front of camera and then actually like go and watch it and be like, Oh, I need to retake that. It's like the added advantage of doing, doing both.
00:06:45
Speaker
And there was a very interesting world that we were a part of because when you create commercials, you're essentially recreating a better version of reality.
00:06:56
Speaker
So if you show, for example, a husband and wife on a couch, it's evening, they're watching TV, they're not going to be kind of sitting back and lolling on the couch like you do in real life with like, you know, your shirts up, your bellies out, you're having chips. No, you're going to be sitting nicely on couch and very prim and proper. You're of course going to have your makeup on and your hair done, but also you're going to behave in a way
00:07:25
Speaker
that seems almost real, but a great version of real, the version of real that we aspire to be. And that's what aspirational commercial filmmaking is all about. And I took that concept as well. And I teach that in a more authentic way in public speaking, because speaking in public, speaking to an audience is presenting your true, natural, authentic self, but amplified.
00:07:55
Speaker
So if you're funny, lean into that, make sure that what you talk about comes across as lighthearted exaggerate your expressions just a little so that people very easily understand the emotion that you're aiming to convey. So there, there are a lot of barrels there between fill the filmmaking world and the public speaking world.
00:08:19
Speaker
So I want to dive more into this LinkedIn journey, but before that, it's funny, as you're talking about how people kind of become their authentic self through public speaking, I found kind of the same thing for their audience growth or growing an audience really on any platform online. Even myself, I found them like, you know, it's not that I'm picking and choosing what I think the audience wants, but as I post, I get a better taste of what parts of me resonate the most. And so I ended up leaning into those more.
00:08:45
Speaker
And I almost find that my voice or when I create videos now, I'm actually coming out. Like it's actually a real part of me and I'm just learning how to, you could say exaggerated a little bit, but I'm really, it's really just highlighting the parts that are unique to you more and taking some of the parts that maybe are less interesting just off the table to make it simple for others. You know, you have a few things that you're known for and you kind of lean into those things.
00:09:09
Speaker
So it's kind of interesting you're talking about that in public speaking. It's almost like people think you need to learn how to become yourself or learn what the true them is before you do it. And I'm like, nah,
Amplifying Personality in Public Speaking
00:09:21
Speaker
just start going and you'll begin to figure out what those parts are through the process. It's like the journey will teach you what those things need to be. Yeah.
00:09:31
Speaker
I love that parallel. And with public speaking, there's actually two stages to it. What happens first is that for a lot of people, when they feel this stress of being in the spotlight, they freeze, they become robotic and stiff and they forget to be themselves. So the first step of the journey is actually remembering to be yourself and then to amplify. You said earlier, it's not exaggerating. I believe it's amplifying parts of your personality.
00:10:00
Speaker
to make it even more impactful than it would be when you're grabbing a beer with a friend, for example.
00:10:07
Speaker
Right. Except with a friend, you could be more subtle, right? And they'll kind of pick up on the humor, but with strangers who don't know you, you have to over exaggerate. I remember Ramit Sethi talks about that with even just being a normal person. It's like, Hey, when you're around strangers and you want to be more charismatic, just take it up to 120%. If you're not used to being shy, over exaggerate it and people will just, that'll just come across to normal other people as being normal. Right. You think you're just being over the top and then people will be like,
00:10:35
Speaker
Oh, look, he's, he's a normal person. Right. So I, I like to, I like to think about it as over exaggerating. I like the word amplifying too, though, because I think for a lot of people, like, no, like in your, in it'll feel, it'll feel like over exaggerating. Yeah. But to everybody else, it's actually just kind of being charismatic, being, uh, uh, being thoughtful with how you're portraying yourself.
00:11:01
Speaker
And it's crucial to combine that with being able to read the room and sync with the vibe of the room because it's also possible to be a steamroller. Yeah. Yeah. And that becomes obvious, especially if you're not in tune with what's going on in the room.
00:11:23
Speaker
Absolutely. So with LinkedIn, you started off by posting about lots of things, marketing, probably PR, communications, filmmaking, all those things. Did you do that intentionally just to kind of see what would, what would click on LinkedIn and were you still employed while you were trying to figure that out? Like how long did that period last for you?
00:11:43
Speaker
So yes, I was still employed. I was actually doing two jobs at the time. I had in a way fallen out of love with filmmaking, but at the same time, I didn't want to just sit on my butt and do nothing. So I was doing some PR work on the side, which.
00:12:01
Speaker
was more or less a full-time gig as well. So I was in a way doing two full-time gigs when I decided to also do LinkedIn as a third full-time gig.
Audience Growth and Strategy on LinkedIn
00:12:10
Speaker
Maybe not the wisest of decisions, but I had zero friends and I wanted to make sure I was investing my time wisely as we do.
00:12:19
Speaker
In terms of strategy, I had none. I was very much a social media noob because I didn't, and I still don't post on Instagram regularly. I was an elder millennial, so still doing Facebook every three years or so. I think that was the good frequency there.
00:12:41
Speaker
And I had gathered all these random or not so random followers and community on LinkedIn since I first made my profile, perhaps back in 2007, 2008, when I was still in the corporate world and I never did much with it. But that attention craving part of me that I told you about earlier was always convinced that, Noshin, you have not just one, but many stories to tell. Why aren't you telling them to a wider audience?
00:13:09
Speaker
And that thought had nagged away at me for years till 2022, where I realized I'm a year away from turning 40. I have not worked hard at building my personal brand at all. And I'm not doing something that I absolutely love.
00:13:32
Speaker
So I had this big talk with myself, January, 2022. And I told myself, I'm going to start building on LinkedIn and I'm going to start figuring out what it is that I actually want to do for a living that is close to my passion. I got into Ikigai. I did a lot of research, soul searching, searching for advice, asking everything to every single person I could come across.
00:13:57
Speaker
And that's where LinkedIn started. So very much stumbling across things, trying everything I could for the first three months that I was posting, I didn't even realize I had to engage. I was just posting because I didn't understand how algorithms worked. And then when I started reading other people's content, I realized, Oh, that's what I need to do to go beyond 200 impressions. Yeah.
00:14:25
Speaker
I know it's a mystery, right? But I still, like, one of the things you said that amazes me, because most people, it takes them a long time to figure this out, you're like, no, LinkedIn was my third gig. I'm like, oh, and that's why you grew. You actually thought about it as like, no, like, this is going to take some time. I'm going to put some serious effort into this. Because most people, it's kind of like a little, a little side, you can't even call it a side hustle. It's more of like, oh, I'll just post a couple of times a week. I'll put 30 minutes into this a week. And I'm like,
00:14:51
Speaker
Yeah, it ain't going to work. It has to be a big thing, but you went into it. Um, and I mean, kind of failed forward at first, not engaging with anybody, but that's, that's the only way you can learn that we all have massive missteps. And with a lot of platforms, you can post and not engage and still do relatively well, like Tik TOK and Instagram reels and those kinds of things. I think YouTube probably would be places you don't really have to engage if you just are consistent with posting. Of course, engagement helps, but LinkedIn.
00:15:21
Speaker
LinkedIn's game is definitely, you have to, you pretty much have to engage unless you're bringing an audience from somewhere. So you posted to LinkedIn, you were testing all kinds of different things and you were posting about public speaking. Was there a post that went viral or did you just find through consistent feedback that this was the thing that was working?
00:15:42
Speaker
My videos started getting a lot of attention. They didn't go viral, but they gained momentum. And that was super surprising for me, especially because that was never part of my plan to begin with. I was doing mostly text image posts till one of my first clients pointed out to me and he said, Noshine, great. You've done this TEDx talk. At that point, I had done one and then I did two more afterwards.
00:16:11
Speaker
So he said, great, you've done a TEDx talk. That's great. I can look that up. But then when I see your profile, I don't actually see you speaking. But if I'm going to hire you or other people like me are going to hire you as a speaking coach, we absolutely need to see how you speak. So just start posting videos about you speaking on any topic. And I said, ah.
00:16:33
Speaker
That's an idea. Why didn't I think of that? So I started posting videos back in September and in two months I had been featured on, at that time there was something called a LinkedIn video spotlight. I think they've discontinued it since then. I was featured on LinkedIn news. People started noticing, started sending me messages, reposting my videos, and it
00:16:58
Speaker
became a thing. I became an official LinkedIn instructor and I now have two official courses on LinkedIn because of my videos. That's what caught people's attention. So without going viral, my first video that actually went viral was probably in Jan. So a good three or four months after I started posting videos.
00:17:19
Speaker
Without going viral, it was that snowball effect and it was undeniable. I had to pay attention to it and I had to realize that, wow, there is something that you can do that can grab attention and get people talking about you. Absolutely. What stands out to me about the conversation is small steps, but it's also a few key voices in your life.
00:17:43
Speaker
that saw something, it's like, you need to lean into that. I do find even that consistent with my own story, like the whole Dan Chas thing, you know, I was going by just Dan at the time. And then I actually did a poll because personal hashtags were a thing a couple of years ago on LinkedIn. And I was like, Oh, I'll make one. What should I do? And I took a poll of Sanchez says and Dan Chas and some other nicknames I don't remember. And most people voted for one thing.
00:18:08
Speaker
but a few friends that I knew, I knew well, they're like, no, bro, lean into the danches thing. That's, that's the winner. Don't, don't do what the pole's doing. I was like, okay, I trust you. Ended up working out really well. And that became kind of like a core part of my, my personal brand. Um, so if you're listening now, like those few voices that know you well, pay attention to them because they have good things to say. They see the things that you don't see, but know you well enough to know what's, what's working for you.
00:18:40
Speaker
your personal brand, your personal brand is like enviable, it's strong. I'm like, ah, part of me is looking at your your LinkedIn profile on your page. And I'm like, dang, I'm like stealing little pizza pieces of it, that I still need to work on myself. But a big part of it is the colors, right?
00:18:58
Speaker
Um, when, when, when did you start dying your hair purple as, as part of your personal brand?
Consistency and Personal Branding
00:19:05
Speaker
Had it always been that way? And it's just kind of like, no, like this has been me the whole time. Or was there at a moment where you're like, no, I need to mix it up. I need to do something that stands out because these profile pictures are such a big part of influence online. I have believed that your appearance should be a natural extension of your personality.
00:19:27
Speaker
So I'm very much in the school of thought where you should dress the way that you feel and that you want to be perceived. So I take appearance demeanor very seriously. It's probably that PR side of me that I got trained on very early on. So I had always experimented with my hair. I was red, then I was blue. And at the time, when I started posting on LinkedIn, I happened to be purple.
00:19:56
Speaker
The purple hair came first and then I leaned into it and I realized, yeah, people are liking the purple. It's something new. I at the time didn't realize it was that unique, but I guess there aren't a lot of purple hair speaking coaches on LinkedIn. So that's where I really leaned into it and I constructed the whole brand around the purple. And then the yellow came in as a complimentary color. Yep.
00:20:22
Speaker
So now it's very interesting because the hair has absolutely assumed an identity of its own. And it's something that I have to invest in. There's a part of my business expense that goes into hair dye, that goes into making sure that I go to the right people to do the right stuff to my hair. It's bizarre, but it makes sense to me.
00:20:48
Speaker
I mean, it makes a lot of sense for social media, but it also just makes a lot of sense for public speaking because this, like many public speakers have taken some visual thing and leaned into it. I mean, you think of like Seth Godin, the fact that when he's bald and he always has these like goofy yellow glasses, right? You like think of Seth and you think of that. Um, like Jay Baer usually has a bow tie on, I'm trying to think of like other speakers, but they all like, a lot of them have like a specific thing that they do, especially on stage.
00:21:15
Speaker
Um, and yours has become, become the hair color, which honestly, that's probably the thing that I knew you for first. I'm like, Oh, there's a girl at the purple hair again. There she goes. You know, even if I didn't read the post, I just noticed that because you couldn't, you couldn't ignore it. Um, and then of course I started actually listening to the videos and reading the content and picking up stuff and learning from you, which has been fun. Um, but catching attention is, is the game. Hence the name of the show is called attention. So that's fun. I'm always looking for those little tidbits.
00:21:44
Speaker
Um, what else have you done to align your brand around that? Like it's more than just the color scheme. Like what other personal branding elements have you put together that you've noticed people have commented on? Hmm. The backdrop for sure gets a lot of attention and this is where I work. So every single meeting, every single call,
00:22:10
Speaker
happens with the background. I love that alignment and coherence because I want people to experience exactly what they were expecting and more hopefully, but the experience of talking to me should not be in dissonance with what you see on my LinkedIn profile. So that's something that's also very important and actually a lesson that I learned from someone else as well.
00:22:37
Speaker
because very early on I had a different profile picture. I had a very short bus cut and I had, I liked that picture at that time because it was me posing with a mic and I looked cool, but I still had this long purple hair. And this guy jumped on a call with me and said, no, Shane.
00:22:56
Speaker
The first thing you need to do is update your profile picture because if people see that picture, they're expecting a call with this young woman who has this bus cut. And that's not you anymore. And just that simple observation made me realize that there needs to be this coherence and this air of consistency and predictability.
00:23:22
Speaker
So people should know exactly what to expect when they visit my website, when they have a call with me, they see a newsletter, they see a podcast. So there's a lot of consistency that I aim to bring both in terms of the design, but then of course in terms of the tone as well. People see me as someone who's very friendly, very approachable.
00:23:44
Speaker
who's not afraid of sharing her story, who's old, but who's also very helpful. So those are very specific characteristics of my personality. I'm not lying. Those are specific characteristics that I hope to bring in both through the text as well as the overall look and feel. What have you done to grow your audience? Or are there any tactics that you've applied where you saw a noticeable increase in followers on LinkedIn or maybe subscribers to your newsletter?
00:24:14
Speaker
Yes, I became a LinkedIn nerd back in September, October last year when I realized that the videos were getting attention and my personal brand was in a way taking off. I went all in. I became obsessed with LinkedIn. I spent eight hours on LinkedIn every day. And I tell people this with no shame because I really believe that you need to be obsessed with something to make it work. You can't just.
00:24:45
Speaker
Like you said, half asset, you can't just put in 30 hours, not 30 hours, 30 minutes a week or a month and expect results. So now it's very interesting because there are a lot of posts about, Oh, no one should be spending this kind of time on LinkedIn. It's just a social media platform. How narcissistic are you? But if you are building your business on LinkedIn, which is very much what I did. And if you're a bread and butter.
00:25:13
Speaker
depends on how much you can grow, how much noise can you generate, how much
00:25:19
Speaker
attention can you get then absolutely you do what it takes and for me at the time it was spending eight hours a day every single day on LinkedIn I consumed every single post I could find at the time I did not get a coach I didn't buy a course I just wanted to absorb as much free knowledge and there was a lot of free knowledge so I followed all the greats I got into some calls with them at times I
00:25:47
Speaker
ask them questions on DM. I understood in as much detail as I could how the algorithm worked. And I engaged like crazy. There was a time when people were telling me, you're everywhere. I see you everywhere. And I said, that's the point. That's what I want to do. And that was the point where I believe I must have grown from 6,000 followers to 15 or 16,000 in about three months or so.
00:26:16
Speaker
And I was posting at one point twice a day, every single day as well on LinkedIn. So I absolutely all out became obsessed with it. Then later on I got coaches. Now I'm aiming to figure out how I can expand to other platforms and spend less time on LinkedIn, but that's absolutely the way that I did it.
00:26:39
Speaker
You kind of have to have your beachhead, that one thing you go all in on before you diversify, right? Because then diversifying is easy. You can pull people from one to another just like Justin Welch did, right? He started with LinkedIn and then pulled into Twitter and started building a newsletter and diversified
Diversifying Audience Engagement Beyond LinkedIn
00:26:54
Speaker
away. It does scare me a little bit to only be invested in one platform. LinkedIn right now is kind of like
00:27:00
Speaker
showing signs and I'm like, we'll see how long LinkedIn continues to work. Right now it's still working, but I'm like, it's not as good as it was a couple of years ago and it's still, it's getting different. Of course, things can change. LinkedIn's weird in that it can be affected by the economy more than others in that like if a lot of people lose their jobs, also they're spending a lot more time on LinkedIn and all of a sudden there's a lot more attention to be had, right? So you never really know how it's going to go on LinkedIn.
00:27:25
Speaker
What are you intentionally doing to bring people off of LinkedIn? Are you plugging your other channels within LinkedIn? Are you focusing on sending everyone from LinkedIn to a newsletter where you're then pushing them to the other channels?
00:27:37
Speaker
I'm going to say that's a work in progress. So what I did last year was I had the shiny object syndrome where I also launched a podcast. I also launched a newsletter. And then of course I moved countries and continents three months later. So there was this entire period of massive change in my life and I couldn't keep up with everything. So there was a time when, yes, I was doing exactly that. I was.
00:28:05
Speaker
putting out a newsletter every week. I was putting out posts very Justin Welch style, talking about one thing, hooking people and then getting them onto the newsletter or talking about the podcast and getting them into the podcast. Right now I am evaluating how to restart those things. So my podcast has been on hold for a while. My newsletter has been on hold for a while. I do
00:28:31
Speaker
still remain convinced that for sure your own channels are much better than the rented space that we get on these platforms. But I also want to do it in a way that's effective because with the newsletter, it's been so much harder for me to build momentum on that till very recently when I launched a new lead magnet, I have a free five day course on speaking fearlessly and that's brought in more people in a month.
00:29:00
Speaker
than I had in about seven or eight months where I was just pushing out different kinds of topics on the newsletter. So I'm in the process of rethinking things and figuring out where to direct traffic to.
00:29:15
Speaker
Absolutely. I do find I enjoy video much more than I do writing long form content. So a newsletter has always been struggle for me. What I found recently though is if you lean into video, you can use it to do really good newsletters. What I do now is I record about a seven to 10 minute video and the length is intentional.
00:29:37
Speaker
Um even shorter about five minutes usually and i'll embed the thumbnail I record it to loom, you know where they give you that little You know gift thumbnail where you can have some kind of action going on to entice people to click I embed that into the newsletters the image it clicks over to loom or maybe even embedded newsletter or some of some kind where you can watch the video
00:29:54
Speaker
But then I throw it over, I throw the transcript over to chat GPT and the outline that I use to speak through that video. And chat GPT does a fantastic job if it's between five and 10 minutes of turning into really good newsletter content. Um, at least that's the way I do it because it's just saves so much time. And then the rest of the newsletter can be like what I found interesting this week or things that I'm paying attention to. You can have a few more sections, but your main content can literally just be a video. And then chat GPT can do 80% of the writing work.
00:30:22
Speaker
I do find that newsletters are the best way to diversify. Only after playing with this, I've worked at Sweetfish for a long time helping people grow audiences. From LinkedIn to podcast is what we try to do for a long time, but I found it was so much easier to get someone to subscribe to a newsletter. It was just a smaller ass than jumping to a 30-minute episode.
00:30:43
Speaker
And then for the newsletter, you can push them anywhere because a newsletter can be so much more call to action heavy. You could do a single email being like, Hey, I've just relaunched Instagram and push everyone to Instagram. Um, and of course embedded in the bottom of newsletters for all the channels or whatever, um, news. So obviously I've been a fan of newsletters recently since I'm promoting it, but that's just what I found. Um, so it's interesting. You're,
00:31:12
Speaker
going to be restarting all those things soon. What has been your take on where LinkedIn's been at recently? Gosh, it's interesting to hear all these complaints about LinkedIn. And I'm sure a lot of them are true. But when you've been on a platform for more than a year, you see the peaks and the lows.
00:31:42
Speaker
It happens all the time. So I'm not very worried at this point about the lower reach. To be, to be honest, my reach has always been a little bit unpredictable. It's not like every single post I do reaches 30,000 or 50,000 or a hundred thousand people. Not at all. Sometimes I average 20,000 or so impressions, sometimes less than that 15, 10,000.
00:32:12
Speaker
And sometimes there have been maybe two or three times where I've gotten to the hundred thousand plus mark. So I've done everything in between. And because I've been on this roller coaster, I've gotten used to being on the roller coaster. So I don't think it's as doom and gloom as people are making it out to be.
00:32:36
Speaker
But I also completely agree with you. It's good to have your backups and it's good to make sure that you have people on multiple platforms so that you're not just relying on this one platform because people also get blocked. You get into LinkedIn jail. Hasn't happened thankfully for a long time through a lot of people, but there was a time when everyone was in LinkedIn jail and that was a thing. So.
00:33:03
Speaker
you get locked out of one platform, you shouldn't be locked out of your living.
00:33:10
Speaker
That's true. I haven't thought about that. It's been a while since I've heard about someone getting caught in LinkedIn jail for a while. I've had to break some friends out of LinkedIn jail a few times. I haven't been caught in there, but I've certainly gotten warnings because they're like, you've opened 30 profiles. It looks fishy. I'm like, how can you not catch all the spammers on here, but you're catching me opening 30 profiles for some reason. I literally love your platform so much that I'm giving so much time and attention to it and you're punishing me for it.
00:33:39
Speaker
Yeah. Just boggles the mind. It is what it is, but we get to do it. I mean, I guess I don't do it for free anymore. I've started paying for it since they let you put that link in your profile. I'm like, oh, I'm paying for it now. I get to have a link to my website in every single post now that tipped it over for me.
00:33:59
Speaker
Do you have a method or a thing that you like to get people
Engagement Strategies and Future Planning
00:34:04
Speaker
started on? People discover you for the first time. Your post might not be the thing that you would show them as your first thing or the thing that will help them the most. Do you have a plan in place for new people? Like, hey, for everybody discovering me for the first time, start here. What do you do to activate your audience into your best content?
00:34:26
Speaker
I don't think I do that, so that's a great question. Oh, you might be. Like you said, you just put out a lead magnet, right? With a mini course?
00:34:34
Speaker
Yeah. If you're asking about the lead magnet, yes, I do want people that are visiting my profile for the first time to enroll in the free five day course, because that's five different videos that I've made that are designed to help you through becoming a more impactful speaker, or at least plant the seeds in your head of what you can do better. And.
00:35:02
Speaker
is designed as a video a day, which I really love because I want to be in your inbox and I want you to actually see me explain the thing that I'm talking about. So that is something that I would love people to see and I want more and more people to benefit from. I've had maybe 1500 to 2000 people who've taken the course now and they absolutely love it. I get so many people, so many emails coming in from people.
00:35:31
Speaker
saying, oh, this was great, and I can actually see how this will impact my next meeting, my next presentation. I wouldn't say it's the best content, because that's one part of the question that you asked me that threw me off. So it's not my best content, because the best content, A, keeps changing all the time, because I'm posting and creating content all the time.
00:35:53
Speaker
And B, I don't actually have a little package that I can show people as to what my best content is. So that's why I was saying that actually gives me a great idea. But yes, the lead magnet is there.
00:36:06
Speaker
There you go. So lead magnets work great for that. And I think you're probably doing that a lot with the mini course you put together. But you could always go back through and take inventory of like, if somebody's starting new, where would I start them off with? What's the one thing? If they could do this one thing, we'll change the game for them. And I'm sure, like I said, you're probably doing it in that lead magnet already. But there might be some other things as well.
00:36:31
Speaker
So I'd like to finish this interview with some rapid fire questions. So I'll ask a question. I just want a short answer and I do this with all the guests so I can kind of compile them and I'm putting together a report of everybody's answers. First, where did you learn the most about audience building? It could be a book, person, newsletter.
00:36:55
Speaker
I would say some of the creator and coach friends that I've had on LinkedIn, they've been absolutely the best resource. So Taslim Ahmed, who's been on and off LinkedIn this year, but he was a force to be reckoned with last year. For sure, the greats, so Justin Welsh and Luke Matthews and now Yasmin and Lara, who's been both
00:37:21
Speaker
a client as well as a friend, as well as a coach. So the creators who are testing things all the time and sharing what they know, that's really been the best resource. And where do you consume their content? I'll assume LinkedIn. LinkedIn, and then with the ones that I've developed relationships with on DM and through calls. What's the largest obstacle you're running into in growing your audience now?
00:37:55
Speaker
time. It's always going to be time, isn't it? We all wish we had 50 hours a day. I am working on my actual business, which is public speaking coaching. So I help clients figure out how to speak better. And that takes a lot of time, both in the actual client coaching calls, as well as of course, prepping for the calls, being available for support to them.
00:38:22
Speaker
They share their videos with me. They're speaking exercises with me and I give them feedback. And along with that, I know exactly what to do on LinkedIn to keep consistency. But if you combine that with also now running a new website, so writing a lot of blog posts for it and creating video content and
00:38:47
Speaker
working on the newsletter and I also am currently running a bootcamp for a small group of people. Combine all of that, I don't have enough time to actually nerd out as much as I did when my business was just launching and I had two clients because that's when I could really spend a lot more time in doing all that research and figuring out how to do these new things and these experiments. One of my biggest
00:39:17
Speaker
fears. And I don't like calling it a fear because I'm a very action-oriented person, so I'll take action against it right away. But one of my biggest priorities is not to become stale. I never want to be that creator that people say, oh, she's just flogging a dead horse. This is something she said a bajillion times, and she has nothing new to say.
00:39:42
Speaker
That is one of the big challenges for me. So I still write, despite having a year and a half of content that I could repurpose, I still write 80% of new content. So 80% of everything you'll see from me at any given time will be absolutely new. That's taxing. It takes a lot of time. That's a big goal. What single tactic has been the most reliable for you to acquire a new audience?
00:40:14
Speaker
going broad. This was one of the first tips that my first LinkedIn coach Taz gave me. And he said, Narsheen, great, you talk about public speaking. All of that is fine, but every single person doesn't want to get better at public speaking. You know what they want to get better at? Speaking. You know where people are speaking? In meetings, in job interviews, on discovery calls with clients.
00:40:42
Speaker
If you can go broader and talk about the psychology of speaking well, speaking with impact, communicating effectively, then you will tap into a broader audience and that's what's going to lead growth. And you will absolutely also have people in there who are interested in public speaking. So that was the single piece of
00:41:04
Speaker
advice that I implemented and I really saw a whole bunch of viral posts go live, go viral after that, after I went a little bit broader. Because earlier I was very much kind of just niching, niching, niching, niching down to the point where it just became relevant to about 2000 people. Yeah. Dang, that's good advice. I haven't heard that one, but I can instantly see where that's going to make a big difference. Even for myself, I'm like, that's what I need to start doing. Okay.
00:41:32
Speaker
Thank you. And last question. In your opinion, what companies are doing audience growth, right? Companies. Yeah, you usually think of creators, right? But are there any companies you've seen doing it well?
00:41:50
Speaker
There's a company that I work with, not work with, I'm, I suppose I'm a client. I'm one of their clients that is doing community building really well. And I think this is worth mentioning. So they're an AI tool for public speaking called Udily. And that's of course how I got to know them. And now I use them with all my clients and this is completely unsponsored. You can see how much I love using this tool. And they had this great strategy
00:42:20
Speaker
where they got essentially their competition to become part of their community, which I thought was a stroke of genius. So this is an AI tool that is helping you speak better.
00:42:36
Speaker
And they have this claim that we are your AI public speaking coach. So of course, their competition is human public speaking coaches. So what they did was they reached out to public speaking coaches and they brought them into their community. They made them ambassadors of the tool.
00:42:54
Speaker
they give them free access they give them a slack community which i'm still on and the ceo and his entire team became their friends i've jumped on three different calls with the ceo at this point.
00:43:07
Speaker
And they listen to every suggestion. They have these workshops. They have these sessions. And it's a brilliant strategy. I haven't seen anyone else do it that way, where instead of working in a silo and making these people out to be your competitors, you're literally making them your ambassadors. I mean, who wouldn't love that? That's so good. What are they called again? You said Udily? Udily. It's Y-O-O-D-L-I.
00:43:39
Speaker
I have to look them up now. That's fascinating way to do, to build community, but also does a go to market strategy. It's really fascinating. Well, cool. Ashin, it's been a fantastic interview. Where can people learn more about your content and yourself? So I just launched a new website that I'm super excited about and I would love for people to check that out. The easiest way to find it is to go to speaking.coach.
00:44:08
Speaker
So speaking.coach, and that's where you'll find me. And that should tell you everything that I may not have told you today. So there's a lot more there that you can discover. Fantastic. Thanks again.
00:44:24
Speaker
Whoo! You know it's a good interview when you have a number of takeaways and a lot of notes and I've written down a bunch of things but I want to share two with you that I'm going to be working hard into my audience growth plan in order to grow for the future. The first one is kind of something I've known but it's something that I it's always good when it comes back to my attention and that is growing takes time. Nasheen spent eight hours a day growing on LinkedIn to get where she's at today and went at it for a long time in order
00:44:53
Speaker
to grow it's like of course of course she did that's what it takes to grow but now she's running into an issue where like that sess grew into financial success but that also takes time taking away from the thing that got her there and it becomes a balancing game at some point if you're a solo creator um if you're a business like no wonder why your content marketing team hasn't been able to grow it's because not one person's throwing their whole like
00:45:20
Speaker
whole force into it right it takes i'd say it even takes more than eight hours like nashin wasn't just putting in her time or even doing well at it she was obsessed with it and that's the difference between a content marketer and a creator a creator has a bit of an obsessive personality in getting into it and wanting to figure out what she can do to get more views a creator is going to think like that
00:45:43
Speaker
Most content marketers, this is just the job, and one where they're trying to not get fired from, right? And they're afraid of making mistakes if the management's too strict on it. So if you're a company, consider hiring some creators that can go all in with that kind of focus. Or if you're a solo person trying to grow an audience, consider
00:46:03
Speaker
having some seasons of running out of intensity, even if you have a client base, you have to serve maybe waking up at four o'clock in the morning. Yes, crazy. I know, but that's kind of the stuff it takes to have seasons of growth in order to get more growth out of these social platforms. Something I'm looking at myself as I'm starting to pick more clients up. It's hard to stay consistent on LinkedIn. I'm like, ah,
00:46:23
Speaker
starting to feel the burn already. So creating a plan for me is what I want to be doing so that I can be consistent and still give my clients the time and attention they need in order for them to win. The second thing that I took away from is, man, that last one right at the end, the rapid fire questions.
00:46:43
Speaker
have a niche value proposition. Now, Sheen has a very specific thing that she does. She helps people in public speaking, but her content is broader. And I'm like, huh, that makes a ton of sense. I don't have to just talk about audience growth and one little nuance or develop, uh, I don't know, like one thing and then just repeat that thing over and over again and tweaking it so lightly as we go along so that I'm not a broken record.
00:47:07
Speaker
but I can speak more broadly about audience growth and give little audience growth trips and tricks and tactics in order to grow audiences and bunch of different applications. Like I can go a little bit broader potentially and still be within the general, like still be known for the thing that I want to execute or help people execute, right?
00:47:28
Speaker
So I'd probably need to think about this for myself a little bit more of what the broad topics would be versus my core value proposition as an audience growth consultant. But this is, this is what I got to figure out and is the second thing that I'm taking away from this interview. So there you have it. Thank you for joining me on the attention podcast and stay tuned for our next episode.